Annotation 4

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The Art Annotation: A Concept G.F.Sewell

15 February 2022

The “Art Annotation” combines your ability to closely analyze a work of art/image/music/nature, etc, and use analytical language to notice those details, and how they work on your senses (emotions, quantum-scientific- level senses and/or spiritual sensibilities, etc).

Previous work in the literary annotation pieces helps ground students in the efforts of in-text citation and bibliography usage in MLA, along with displaying an ability to interpret what is read in regards to how it affects the life of reader, and the interpreted (un-written) intent of the author(s) of the work, not just glossing over the material and taking on the surface interpretation (without much application to more critical, introspective, deeper though). This effort is no different when dealing with numerous forms of art, from entertainment mediums, to photographic essay work, to analysis of visual news and events interpretation.

Image Courtesy: In the kitchen - Langdon flat – (c) Sewell, 2015

Sculpture, paintings, photography, nature imagery, etc., allows for this same kind of analysis. Students in the past have even analyzed an interpretation of images and sculptures considered art in one culture, and contentious (violent, pornographic, etc). Since we do not deal in

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absolutism in critical analysis (considered uncritical or an easy-way-out in academic analysis and study), we find ourselves being challenged to fairly analyze and advance our interpretations of such artistic and media works, to include considering how far back in time such material was in use. This concept can be used on an artistic tree-stump or rock. It doesn’t matter as there are few limits to the art annotation.

One such image is above. One doesn’t have to interpret the image; it is merely an example. Just the act of visual interpretation produces a different experience in each individual. A more full version of the above image is attached to this description. Again, students not only choose their own, but take an image of themselves with their choice, even if located online.

Goddard College G3 Term Art Annotation-Packet 5 Sewell 1

Art Annotation

That Damned Ethereal House Followed Me!

Discovering Becky Parker’s ​Birdhouse.

I walk into the wine and tea shop in Montpelier, interested

in just one thing: finishing off Chapter 7 to ​Guardians of [​Forever​]. On my mind is that damned house, the deeply unsettled location in or near a forest, where Lilith finds

herself being drawn to, so dramatically, by her dead child, the

same house where she finds herself trapped with the spirits of

the unsettled. This seems to resemble the house she came across

in her earlier experiences of the strange, mental/ethereal world

she finds herself, where some strange man was building a bed.

Now, my character can’t remember.

Becky Parker’s

Birdhouse. Oil on

Canvas 18" x 24" ©

2014

I have yet to

understand just

how I am going

to extend the

horror and put

Lilith through

her trauma. I

can feel a

story coming

along; I get

the feel of my

fingers wanting

to type of on

the keyboard.

This has been

going on for

two or three

days, just

inside the

four-day due

time. I walk

towards the

back room of the tea shop, where there are private tables. I set

up, turn on the laptop, and sit back in my chair. I stare at the

far wall across from me, and realize -- to my complete horror --

the house where Lilith not only grew up, where she first

Goddard College G3 Term Art Annotation-Packet 5 Sewell 2

encountered Emory, but the house she finds herself psychically

bound to the floor and surrounded by the darkness and the dead.

The blood-red roof stands out in the interdimensional

blurred lines of a ghostly image to a house that I swear does

not exist. Nevertheless, the old, beat-down porch (as whole as

it seems to be) looks like it may be full of thorns and peeled

paint. I can almost make-out the ghostly image of a thin, frail

woman standing in the shadows of what might be the front door to

the house. The red along the front is more ominous, unlike the

birdhouse, the only thing inviting. Then again, maybe there is

evil within that slightly clearer birdhouse.

I think the painter might not have meant it, the image

technique of a high-speed pass and oil-paint copy-over, to come

across as pleasant and wonderful, a place where grandma might

have cookies ready for you or me.

She may just have a knife ready for our backs.

In the green paint streaks of the trees, I keep trying to

imagine faces, dark and depressing eyes, a teardrop, the feet of

a running child. I see none of it. I find that I cannot stop

North Branch Tea and Wine Shop; with Becky Parker’s Birdhouse Painting, 2015

staring at this realistic painted reproduction of a photograph.

I keep wondering how Becky Parker would know what the familiar

house from Lilith’s past even looked like. I want to race and

find another piece of art; yet, I cannot walk away from this

one. It forces me to suddenly sit down and do a noncorporeal

dump at the end of Chapter 7.

Parker, Becky. Birdhouse. Oil on Canvas 18" x 24", 2014.