Elise Rasmussen lecture was vary fascinating. I’ve been to artists presentations/lectures before and have had never experienced the amount of research they put into a piece. I was blown away at how deep of an investigator and the amount of time she spent on each one of her works. She seemed more like an investigative journalist, on top of being an artist. The most amazing part was that she had more than one work she was working at a time, most of the time and she was able to bounce back and forth, continuing the research, and staying focused. All her pieces, all of which had a narrative, and a theatrical presence. She almost always had two stories running simultaneously, where they married very well. Her pieces, even though were different in ways of style, from surrealism or modernism, she always had a sense of women and their strengths.
I like all her work, but i did favor the more theatrical pieces a little better, which was most of the work presented. Variations to me was a very successful in terms of going around this death or murder of artist Ana Mendieta. The whole idea of having this almost improv style open scene where people were allowed to add their ideas and thought of what had happened was extremely genius. I also felt that it brought more dimension to the whole piece and worked as a social experiment as she said that there were some pretty extreme responses, from racist to sexist. I also loved that she used that as part of the show and showcased the best ones for all to be able to read.
Overall she is definitely a very committed artist, and this piece made me realize, a lot of artists need to have so much commitment to the subject, where you have to go to places and research on for days and days to be able to give the best representation of the topic. It is definitely not the style of art I see for myself, but it really shows how much work is put in, and at the end of the day, she really seemed to enjoy her journey and what she put out.