Thursday, December 29, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
McNay T-shirt Design Contest Entries due February 24, 2012
McNay T-shirt Design Contest
Entries due February 24, 2012
Click HERE to download the McNay T-Shirt Contest Entry Form Below are the rules and other information you need to create and submit your entry for the McNay T-shirt Design Contest. Your design could be sold at the McNay Museum Store and worn by McNay fans all over the country. Read all of the rules very carefully, failure to follow them could result in disqualification of your submision.
Prizes
Grand prize winner. In addition to having his or her Entry Design selected as the design for the McNay T-shirt (which the Museum Store will print and sell), the t-shirt’s sales tag will feature the winner’s name and a brief bio. The winner also receives a McNay individual membership and a $100 gift certificate to the Museum Store.
Second prize winner receives a Modern Art at the McNay catalogue and a $50 gift certificate to the Museum Store.
Third prize winner. The third prize winner will receive two general admission tickets to the McNay Art Museum and a $25 gift certificate to the Museum Store.
Design Guidelines
Your design must be inspired by the McNay Art Museum.
Your design should include the words “McNay Art Museum” (although not mandatory).
Reproduction of works of art in the collection is not allowed, as it might infringe on the original artist's copyright.
T-shirt color can be either black or white.
Your design can only be on the front of the t-shirt.
You may submit up to three designs, but they must be submitted as separate entries.
Your design must be completely original. By submitting a design you are guaranteeing that you hold rights to everything on it, and that it does not contain any copyright material.
Design Specifications
· Your design may contain a maximum of four (4) colors (plus the shirt color).
· Design should not exceed 8 ½” x 11” inches.
It is best to create your design in a professional design program. If using Photoshop or other paint programs, then design must be no less than 600 dpi at 8 1/2" x 11" in dimension. If using Illustrator or Corel Draw, no dpi is required.
If design is hand-drawn it must be scanned and converted into a PDF file.
Please specify if your design is intended to be printed on a white or black t-shirt.
Your submission should be a PDF file no larger than 5MB. If you win we will ask you for the high resolution files.
Submission Agreement
· All submissions may be sent as an attachment to daniela.oliver@mcnayart.org or on a CD to
McNay Art Museum
Attn. McNay T-shirt Contest
6000 North New Braunfels
San Antonio Texas, 78209
· All submissions must be accompanied by the official McNay T-Shirt Contest Entry Form, submissions that do not include the form will be disqualified. Electronic submissions should include the completed form as an attachment. If you are unable to complete the form electronically please fax it to 210.824.0218.
· You must be 18 years or older to submit. If you’re younger you can still make a design, but it must be submitted on your behalf by a parent or guardian.
· The McNay Art Museum will have all rights to the winning design. By submitting you agree that if your design wins, it will be sold by the McNay Art Museum store on a t-shirt and other promotional items.
· We reserve the right to make adjustments to the winning design.
· You must submit your design by midnight Monday, February 24, 2012.
· Entries will be judged by the staff of the McNay Art Museum.
· These and other rules are elaborated in the legal agreement below.
· By submitting you are agreeing to all contest rules.
Click here to download the MCNAY ART MUSEUM T-SHIRT DESIGN CONTEST OFFICIAL CONTEST RULES
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Scott Adams
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
- Scott Adams, 1957, American Cartoonist (Dilbert)
Monday, December 12, 2011
Happy Birthday, Edvard Munch!
Edvard Munch
(born December 12, 1863—died January 23, 1944)
Edvard Munch developed a painting style that revolted against naturalism, using tortuous, free-flowing lines to express and personify emotion. His series Frieze of Life, which grew to 22 works, includes paintings The Voice, The Kiss, and his most famous work, The Scream. After a nervous breakdown in 1908-09, Munch's work became less intense, but his early, darker paintings define his legacy.
 |
| Munch's Summer Night's Dream (The Voice), from 1893, at MoMA. (Photo: Courtesy of MoMA)  The Scream |
To find out more about Edvard Munch, click on the link below:
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Turning Graffiti Into A Positive Art
Turning Graffiti Into A Positive Art
By Azi Paybarah
It’s noon, hot, and Astoria’s chic Cavo nightspot is dead quiet.
The only person around is a 35-year-old woman who is preparing to paint a mural on one of the café’s courtyard walls.
The mural is supposed to look like a vine and brick facade, and that’s exactly what she will paint. After all, when there’s money involved, the client gets what they want.
Years ago, there wasn’t any money involved for Lady Pink, the first lady of graffiti who now paints murals and has artwork in museums.
As a teenage vandal, she would have spray-painted her name in curvaceous letters on Cavo’s wall in a search for attention and a chance to show off her talents.
Nowadays, Lady Pink is a respected artist who is known throughout the country for bringing street art to the walls of museums and for using her talents to convert spray-painting vandals into positive artists.
When she covers a wall with color, her name still pops up, but in her 20-plus-year-career, it has gone from being “graffiti” to arguably the best deterrent against it.
‘Pink Smith’
For Lady Pink, an Astoria resident who’s been featured in museums world wide and in the cult classic film “Wild Style,” said she likes to be known as Lady Pink and not by her real name, Sandra. She said, “Nobody knows who Sandra is.”
She does go by Pink Smith, with “Smith” referring to her husband’s name.
As a student at Manhattan’s High School for Art and Design in the late 1970’s, Pink said she began hitting trains and subways with her art because people said she couldn’t.
“I could not go and play in those subway trains, cause I was a girl, the same way you could not breed a baby because you’re a boy. It’s just not done,” recalled Pink. “I was like “I’m a (sic) prove you wrong. I’ll prove you wrong.
I’m a (sic) prove you all wrong…by late 1979, by 1980 I painted my first train.”
Pink’s status as the only female graffiti writer won her instant celebrity status in the heavily male dominated scene.
Although coy about her exploits, Pink’s well-documented work speaks for itself. In the world where pieces go up literally overnight, graffiti writers and admirers today still revere Pink’s work, 20 years later.
Except now, they admire her work in museums like The Whitney, the Queens Museum of Art, P.S. 1, the Museum of the City of New York and a host of others. They buy her artwork, and admire it in murals that she paints to stop illegal graffiti.
Yes, Lady Pink may have come above ground and hit the mainstream artworld, but her roots and connections are still with the street.
Graffiti: Art & Crime
Queens Museum of Art Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl said public art “is the best ways for people to express themselves in this city.” Finkelpearl, whose museum often hosts socially conscious exhibits, added, “Art gets dialogue going. That’s very good.” But to him, graffiti isn’t art.
“I can’t condone vandalism,” he said. “It’s really upsetting to me that people would need to write their name over and over again in public space. It’s this culture of fame. I really think it’s regrettable that they think that’s the only way to become famous.”And Pink agrees.
The legal distinction between graffiti and art is permission. With permission, it’s considered art on a legal wall. Those who paint without permission commit vandalism, she said, whether it’s public or private property.
“You can’t give them a legal wall,” said Pink of vandals, or “bombers.” “They’re not interested. They’re more interested in the aspect of breaking the law, being vandals and being rebellious. They don’t have the skills for it or the desire to paint something in the daytime.”
Paint Wars
So how can residents deter vandals, who Pink said often have medically recognized obsessive-compulsive disorder with writing their names?
With paint, she said. Lots of paint.
She suggested covering the graffiti immediately with a slab of fresh paint, and staying on top of it.
“I have two white garage doors. The first thing I had to do when I bought my house was clean off the graffiti. Anything that appears there is gone by morning. I maintain my property,” she said.
“I will not let it go to pieces.” The message that sends is “This is not a fame spot, this is not a permanent spot. Don’t waste your paint, just go somewhere else.”
But since surfacing from the subways and trains, Pink has devoted herself full-time to the art of graffiti.
She said another way to deter graffiti is to paint murals. She organizes mural paintings throughout the City, including one that might go up in the Steinway Street municipal Parking Lot on June 19 and 20 if the Department of Transportation approves it.
Similar to the one under the Hell Gate Bridge done earlier this year, Pink will be assisting students from the Frank Sinatra High School for the Arts.
“These walls have never been known to be tagged on,” said Pink under the Hell Gate Bridge when it was painted.
The walls are smooth, at street level, in the heart of Astoria’s bustling business district, and considered by vandals to be prime real estate.
Pink explained the walls aren’t “tagged on… “Because I’ve paid my dues, painted the trains in the ‘80’s.” Tony Meloni of the Anti-Crime Office, who helped bring murals to Hell Gate, said, “Kids do have respect for murals. They don’t hit a mural out of respect.”
As a world renowned artist who commands $8,000 a piece, she considers her free murals a way of “giving back” and not being “a culture vulture.”
Responsible Graffiti
Although her name still appears on walls as part of murals, Pink does her graffiti responsibly.
“No nipples. How often do I have to say that? No nipples. Look at the neighborhood we’re sitting in,” said Pink, recounting directions she’s given over the years.
For the artist whose canvas is left along the street, affixed to the street, the responsibility of public art is a matter of survival.
“We can’t do crazy political statements, or we can’t do social statements. We can’t do anything that’s crazy controversial because the opposing view will have our wall at their mercy.” Without a trace of regret, Pink added, “I end up having to censor our artists.”
Sitting in Cavo, before painting, she said, “You should maintain quality that is appropriate for the neighborhood.
And here in Queens, I can’t get away with the [art] that happens on the Lower East Side by Chico [another graffiti writer turned muralist]. I can’t get away with the crazy [art] that happens in the South Bronx. In Queens, it’s a mild mannered borough and people want quality work.”
That work includes an image of firefighters raising the American flag at Ground Zero, similar to the Marines at Iowa Jimo in World War II.
That is located on 36th Street by 47th Avenue in Long Island City, across the street from the High School for Aviation.
From Annoying To Famous
“By not just staying indoors and being aloof from the whole culture,” Pink said, “I can say ‘look baby, this is what you can do. Just save a few cans and practice a little, and then you can be really, really famous as opposed to just being annoying.’”
And giving back to the kids, and the community, is why she is still writing. In a sense, that’s why she’s always written.
“What we originally did on the subway trains was gave,” said Pink, “a bit of art and a bit of culture…to the public to our peers, our family to our friends, the common folk.”
In the end, Pink empowers.
“I empower community people because once we spiffy up a wall, they realize maybe we should clean up this wall, clean up over here.”
The only person around is a 35-year-old woman who is preparing to paint a mural on one of the café’s courtyard walls.
The mural is supposed to look like a vine and brick facade, and that’s exactly what she will paint. After all, when there’s money involved, the client gets what they want.
Years ago, there wasn’t any money involved for Lady Pink, the first lady of graffiti who now paints murals and has artwork in museums.
As a teenage vandal, she would have spray-painted her name in curvaceous letters on Cavo’s wall in a search for attention and a chance to show off her talents.
Nowadays, Lady Pink is a respected artist who is known throughout the country for bringing street art to the walls of museums and for using her talents to convert spray-painting vandals into positive artists.
When she covers a wall with color, her name still pops up, but in her 20-plus-year-career, it has gone from being “graffiti” to arguably the best deterrent against it.
‘Pink Smith’
For Lady Pink, an Astoria resident who’s been featured in museums world wide and in the cult classic film “Wild Style,” said she likes to be known as Lady Pink and not by her real name, Sandra. She said, “Nobody knows who Sandra is.”
She does go by Pink Smith, with “Smith” referring to her husband’s name.
As a student at Manhattan’s High School for Art and Design in the late 1970’s, Pink said she began hitting trains and subways with her art because people said she couldn’t.
“I could not go and play in those subway trains, cause I was a girl, the same way you could not breed a baby because you’re a boy. It’s just not done,” recalled Pink. “I was like “I’m a (sic) prove you wrong. I’ll prove you wrong.
I’m a (sic) prove you all wrong…by late 1979, by 1980 I painted my first train.”
Pink’s status as the only female graffiti writer won her instant celebrity status in the heavily male dominated scene.
Although coy about her exploits, Pink’s well-documented work speaks for itself. In the world where pieces go up literally overnight, graffiti writers and admirers today still revere Pink’s work, 20 years later.
Except now, they admire her work in museums like The Whitney, the Queens Museum of Art, P.S. 1, the Museum of the City of New York and a host of others. They buy her artwork, and admire it in murals that she paints to stop illegal graffiti.
Yes, Lady Pink may have come above ground and hit the mainstream artworld, but her roots and connections are still with the street.
Graffiti: Art & Crime
Queens Museum of Art Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl said public art “is the best ways for people to express themselves in this city.” Finkelpearl, whose museum often hosts socially conscious exhibits, added, “Art gets dialogue going. That’s very good.” But to him, graffiti isn’t art.
“I can’t condone vandalism,” he said. “It’s really upsetting to me that people would need to write their name over and over again in public space. It’s this culture of fame. I really think it’s regrettable that they think that’s the only way to become famous.”And Pink agrees.
The legal distinction between graffiti and art is permission. With permission, it’s considered art on a legal wall. Those who paint without permission commit vandalism, she said, whether it’s public or private property.
“You can’t give them a legal wall,” said Pink of vandals, or “bombers.” “They’re not interested. They’re more interested in the aspect of breaking the law, being vandals and being rebellious. They don’t have the skills for it or the desire to paint something in the daytime.”
Paint Wars
So how can residents deter vandals, who Pink said often have medically recognized obsessive-compulsive disorder with writing their names?
With paint, she said. Lots of paint.
She suggested covering the graffiti immediately with a slab of fresh paint, and staying on top of it.
“I have two white garage doors. The first thing I had to do when I bought my house was clean off the graffiti. Anything that appears there is gone by morning. I maintain my property,” she said.
“I will not let it go to pieces.” The message that sends is “This is not a fame spot, this is not a permanent spot. Don’t waste your paint, just go somewhere else.”
But since surfacing from the subways and trains, Pink has devoted herself full-time to the art of graffiti.
She said another way to deter graffiti is to paint murals. She organizes mural paintings throughout the City, including one that might go up in the Steinway Street municipal Parking Lot on June 19 and 20 if the Department of Transportation approves it.
Similar to the one under the Hell Gate Bridge done earlier this year, Pink will be assisting students from the Frank Sinatra High School for the Arts.
“These walls have never been known to be tagged on,” said Pink under the Hell Gate Bridge when it was painted.
The walls are smooth, at street level, in the heart of Astoria’s bustling business district, and considered by vandals to be prime real estate.
Pink explained the walls aren’t “tagged on… “Because I’ve paid my dues, painted the trains in the ‘80’s.” Tony Meloni of the Anti-Crime Office, who helped bring murals to Hell Gate, said, “Kids do have respect for murals. They don’t hit a mural out of respect.”
As a world renowned artist who commands $8,000 a piece, she considers her free murals a way of “giving back” and not being “a culture vulture.”
Responsible Graffiti
Although her name still appears on walls as part of murals, Pink does her graffiti responsibly.
“No nipples. How often do I have to say that? No nipples. Look at the neighborhood we’re sitting in,” said Pink, recounting directions she’s given over the years.
For the artist whose canvas is left along the street, affixed to the street, the responsibility of public art is a matter of survival.
“We can’t do crazy political statements, or we can’t do social statements. We can’t do anything that’s crazy controversial because the opposing view will have our wall at their mercy.” Without a trace of regret, Pink added, “I end up having to censor our artists.”
Sitting in Cavo, before painting, she said, “You should maintain quality that is appropriate for the neighborhood.
And here in Queens, I can’t get away with the [art] that happens on the Lower East Side by Chico [another graffiti writer turned muralist]. I can’t get away with the crazy [art] that happens in the South Bronx. In Queens, it’s a mild mannered borough and people want quality work.”
That work includes an image of firefighters raising the American flag at Ground Zero, similar to the Marines at Iowa Jimo in World War II.
That is located on 36th Street by 47th Avenue in Long Island City, across the street from the High School for Aviation.
From Annoying To Famous
“By not just staying indoors and being aloof from the whole culture,” Pink said, “I can say ‘look baby, this is what you can do. Just save a few cans and practice a little, and then you can be really, really famous as opposed to just being annoying.’”
And giving back to the kids, and the community, is why she is still writing. In a sense, that’s why she’s always written.
“What we originally did on the subway trains was gave,” said Pink, “a bit of art and a bit of culture…to the public to our peers, our family to our friends, the common folk.”
In the end, Pink empowers.
“I empower community people because once we spiffy up a wall, they realize maybe we should clean up this wall, clean up over here.”
When Graffiti Is Not Art . . . When residents need to remove illegal graffiti from their neighborhood, they should call the Mayor’s office’s Paint Program, which is part of the Anti-Graffiti Initiative. Organizations interested in cleaning up their streets can apply, and will be granted up to 26 gallons of paint, 26 rollers sleeves, 12 roller frames and the opportunity to request more supplies if needed. Applications are available on-line at www.nyc.gov/html/cau/html/anti_graffiti/main.shtml or through 311. 311 can also be used to report graffiti vandalism in progress or to report graffiti in any NYC public park. 311 is useful for reporting graffiti on street signs, highways, city owned residential buildings and any New York City Housing Authority housing. Residents can also call their local post office to take part in the adopt-a-mailbox program, which gives residents the supplies needed to paint over graffiti on mailboxes. | |
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Happy Birthday, Walt Disney!
(born: Dec.5,1901 - died: Dec.15,1966)
Born December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, Walt Disney started a small animation studio in 1922 where he and a partner made one and two-minute animated advertising films for distribution to local movie theatres. By the1930s, he was famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Disneyland opened in 1955, and Walt Disney World, which was under construction at the time of his death, opened in 1971.
To find out more about Walt Disney, click on the link below:
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Tessellations Exam
Date:
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
What to Study:
- Tessellation Vocabulary
- Blog post: Nov.11
- Blog post: Nov. 06
- Blog post: Nov. 03
***You will not be able to use your notes for this Exam***
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Revolution in Photography - The Atlantic
The Revolution in Photography - The Atlantic
Bryan Christie
A new camera captures hundreds of images and lets you choose your own reality
By
Bryan ChristieWhen a set of online teasers for a new camera called the Lytro appeared earlier this year, you could have been forgiven for seeing the invention as just another gimmick. The camera’s attention-grabbing feature is a kind of after-the-fact autofocus: with a click, any blurry portion in a picture can be snapped into sharpness—another step in the march of idiot-proof photography.
In fact, such image correction is merely a side effect of what is genuinely different about the technology. The Lytro, scheduled to reach buyers early next year, creates a wholly new kind of visual object, one that both exemplifies and exploits the way images are consumed in the digital era.
The underlying technique is called “light-field photography.” A traditional camera, of course, captures light reflected off its subject through a lens and onto a flat surface. Proper focus is important to ensure that the image you get is the precise slice of visual reality you want. But “computational photography,” pioneered by Marc Levoy of Stanford University and others, takes a different approach, essentially using hundreds of cameras to capture all the visual information in a scene and processing the results into a many-layered digital object. One of Levoy’s former students, Ren Ng, added the twist that resulted in the Lytro: instead of using multiple cameras, he integrated hundreds of micro lenses into a single device.
The upshot is a photograph that’s less a slice of visual information than a cube, from which you can choose whichever layer would make the most pleasing two-dimensional image for printing and framing. But you can also leave the picture as it is—a three-dimensional capture suitable for digital display or distribution—and let others do the fiddling. Rather than a definitive, static image, a light-field visual object is intrinsically interactive.
In the pictorial examples the Lytro company has released online, this flexibility comes across as a fun novelty: you can focus on the Empire State Building in the distance, or the raindrop-splattered window in the foreground. But the implications are more profound. “It’s fair to say that this technology is a game changer,” says Richard Koci Hernandez, a photographer and assistant professor of new media at the University of California at Berkeley. The company gave Hernandez a Lytro prototype to beta test, and he argues that it represents as important a breakthrough as auto-focus itself, or even the great shift to digital photography.
Imagine, he suggests, a photojournalist covering a presidential speech whose audience includes a clutch of protesters. Using a traditional camera, he says, “I could easily set my controls so that what’s in focus is just the president, with the background blurred. Or I could do the opposite, and focus on the protesters.” A Lytro capture, by contrast, will include both focal points, and many others. Distribute that image, he continues, and “the viewer can choose—I don’t want to sound professorial—but can choose the truth.”
Hernandez admits to mixed feelings about this, and suspects many photographers will find it threatening. “In some sense, you’re losing that control,” he says. On the other hand, he notes, the technology enables the creation of a new kind of image, whose full meaning actually requires viewer interaction. “I’ve already been thinking about the crazy things you could do with this.”
That’s what Lytro’s founder, Ng, wants to hear. As he puts it, “You inherently want to click on a Lytro image and discover things in it. Crafting that moment of discovery becomes a new kind of picture-taking.” He adds that the first Lytro models—priced between $399 and $499—will be accessible to mainstream consumers and pros alike.
Given that most photographic images these days are viewed onscreen and never printed (let alone framed), our expectations about what a photograph can be were bound to come into question. The Lytro camera is about to offer us one compelling answer.
In fact, such image correction is merely a side effect of what is genuinely different about the technology. The Lytro, scheduled to reach buyers early next year, creates a wholly new kind of visual object, one that both exemplifies and exploits the way images are consumed in the digital era.
The underlying technique is called “light-field photography.” A traditional camera, of course, captures light reflected off its subject through a lens and onto a flat surface. Proper focus is important to ensure that the image you get is the precise slice of visual reality you want. But “computational photography,” pioneered by Marc Levoy of Stanford University and others, takes a different approach, essentially using hundreds of cameras to capture all the visual information in a scene and processing the results into a many-layered digital object. One of Levoy’s former students, Ren Ng, added the twist that resulted in the Lytro: instead of using multiple cameras, he integrated hundreds of micro lenses into a single device.
The upshot is a photograph that’s less a slice of visual information than a cube, from which you can choose whichever layer would make the most pleasing two-dimensional image for printing and framing. But you can also leave the picture as it is—a three-dimensional capture suitable for digital display or distribution—and let others do the fiddling. Rather than a definitive, static image, a light-field visual object is intrinsically interactive.
In the pictorial examples the Lytro company has released online, this flexibility comes across as a fun novelty: you can focus on the Empire State Building in the distance, or the raindrop-splattered window in the foreground. But the implications are more profound. “It’s fair to say that this technology is a game changer,” says Richard Koci Hernandez, a photographer and assistant professor of new media at the University of California at Berkeley. The company gave Hernandez a Lytro prototype to beta test, and he argues that it represents as important a breakthrough as auto-focus itself, or even the great shift to digital photography.
Imagine, he suggests, a photojournalist covering a presidential speech whose audience includes a clutch of protesters. Using a traditional camera, he says, “I could easily set my controls so that what’s in focus is just the president, with the background blurred. Or I could do the opposite, and focus on the protesters.” A Lytro capture, by contrast, will include both focal points, and many others. Distribute that image, he continues, and “the viewer can choose—I don’t want to sound professorial—but can choose the truth.”
Hernandez admits to mixed feelings about this, and suspects many photographers will find it threatening. “In some sense, you’re losing that control,” he says. On the other hand, he notes, the technology enables the creation of a new kind of image, whose full meaning actually requires viewer interaction. “I’ve already been thinking about the crazy things you could do with this.”
That’s what Lytro’s founder, Ng, wants to hear. As he puts it, “You inherently want to click on a Lytro image and discover things in it. Crafting that moment of discovery becomes a new kind of picture-taking.” He adds that the first Lytro models—priced between $399 and $499—will be accessible to mainstream consumers and pros alike.
Given that most photographic images these days are viewed onscreen and never printed (let alone framed), our expectations about what a photograph can be were bound to come into question. The Lytro camera is about to offer us one compelling answer.
Rob Walker is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and Design Observer.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Tessellations
The word tessellation comes from the Latin Tessella, which was a small Square stone or tile used in ancient Roman mosaics. Tiles and Mosaics are common synonyms for tessellations. A plane tessellation is a pattern made up of one or more shapes, completely covering a surface without any gaps or overlaps. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Some shapes, or polygons, will tessellate and others will not. As for the regular polygons, tessellations can easily be created using squares, equilateral triangles and hexagons. I choose to use the equilateral triangle because of the unique visual arrangements it seems to lend itself to. It seems to both perplex and then amaze first the creator and then the viewer.
|
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Happy Birthday, Walker Evans!
Walker Evans
(born: Nov. 3, 1903 - died: April 10,1975)
Walker Evans’ influence on photography during the second half of the 20th century was perhaps greater than that of any other figure. His most characteristic pictures show quotidian American life during the second quarter of the century, especially through the description of its vernacular architecture, its outdoor advertising, the beginnings of its automobile culture and its domestic interiors.
(born Nov. 3, 1903, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.—died April 10, 1975, New Haven, Conn.) He rejected the prevailing highly aestheticized view of artistic photography, of which Alfred Stieglitz was the most visible proponent, and constructed instead an artistic strategy based on the poetic resonance of common but exemplary facts, clearly described. His most characteristic pictures show quotidian American life during the second quarter of the century, especially through the description of its vernacular architecture, its outdoor advertising, the beginnings of its automobile culture, and its domestic interiors. To find out more about Walker Evans Click on the link below:
Walker Evans Biography
 | ||||
| A Miner''s Home, vicinity Morgantown, West Virginia. 1935 |
 |
| untitled (Barber shop interior, Atlanta, Georgia), March 1936© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art |
 |
| Shack and Ice Machine, Old Lyme, Connecticut, April 1973. (©Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). |
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Thank you!
Thank you to all my students who made my Birthday so Special on Friday. I am very blessed to have you in my life.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Happy Birthday, Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
(born Oct. 28, 1909 - died April 28, 1992)
(born Oct. 28, 1909 - died April 28, 1992)
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Artist Ray Villafane
The quick and the dead: The artist who carves petrifying pumpkin portraits in just two hours
Last updated at 4:02 PM on 27th October 2010
It takes several months to grow the fruit but amazingly just two hours for artist Ray Villafane to sculpt these terrifyingly detailed portraits out of pumpkin.
The American model designer and former art teacher uses spoons and a scalpel to carve the innocent orange gourds into Halloween horrors in double quick time.
As you might expect Villafane, who has worked for D.C and Marvel comics, is very particular about his pumpkins.
Not all pumpkins will look good and the most important thing about a pumpkin is its weight,' he says.
'You need to pick the meatiest pumpkin.
'Sometimes I pick up a beautifully shaped pumpkin but when I do I realize that it is not heavy enough. Its wall is just not thick enough for the carving rigors.
'I also like a pumpkin with character. One with nobly ridges is good, so that I can utilize that in the carving procedure, like with sculpting noses.'
Villafane, 41, has become a minor celebrity in the States and his weird and wonderful work has featured on a range of TV programmes.
Yet he stumbled on his fruity talent almost by accident.
'I used to be an art teacher for 13 years at a Michigan School called Bellaire school and one day I was approached for Halloween to do some pumpkin carving,' he said.
'Sculpting has always been a passion. I thought why don't I try and carve the pumpkin like it is a piece of clay as opposed to a large vegetable.
'It came out alright, but the most important result was that the kids at the school absolutely loved it.
'I used to arrive at school and there would be a dozen pumpkins just sitting there waiting for me at my classroom.'
Villafane, who is still based in Bellaire, didn't perfect his art immediately and had to punch a lot of pumpkins in frustration while honing his skills.
However, working for D.C comics - the home of Superman and Batman - has helped him honed his talent.
Over the last four Octobers his pumpkins have raised his profile to the point where he has become something of a Halloween staple on TV and across the internet.
'For the past couple of years I have been really sitting down and giving my Halloween pumpkin designs more thought than usual due to the increased interest in my carvings,' he said.
'Now that the thing has grown in popularity I am definitely feeling the pressure to deliver on the pumpkin front.
'The most intricate pumpkin model that I have designed is the Zipperhead model, which took the best part of a day. Otherwise, the models take a couple of hours.
'If it is something that I am creating myself then I will do it off the top of my head, like the skulls and gargoyles. They are a pleasure to make.'
Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Food for Thought
"One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity."
- Auguste Renoir, 1841-1819, French Impressionist
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Chewing Gum in Venice by Simone Decker
Large Size Chewing Gum
Simone Decker is the artist who’s responsible for the large size chewing gum. In this series of his work title “Chewing in Venice“, Simone creates large size sculptures of chewing gum and places them all over the city of Venice. Very unique, but we don’t know if the art work is actually chew-able.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Whimsical Works of Art, Found Sticking to the Sidewalk
Muswell Hill Journal
Whimsical Works of Art, Found Sticking to the Sidewalk
MUSWELL HILL, England — When first exposed to the art of Ben Wilson, or to Mr. Wilson in the act of creating it, people tend to respond with some degree of puzzlement.
When I first saw one, I thought it was a fruit sticker,” said Matt Brasier, who was walking through this north London suburb the other day.
A woman named Vassiliki, who was passing by, said that when she came upon Mr. Wilson, prone and seemingly inert on the sidewalk, “I thought he wasn’t very well.” She added: “I was like, ‘What is he doing?’ And they told me: ‘He’s painting the chewing gum.’ ”
That is exactly what he was doing. Mr. Wilson, 47, one of Britain’s best-known outsider artists, has for the last six years or so immersed himself in a peculiar passion all his own: he paints tiny pictures on flattened blobs of discarded chewing gum on the sidewalks of London. So familiar is he here, painting in any kind of weather, that he has become something of a local celebrity and mascot.
“He brings a lot of joy to a lot of people,” said Peter Kyriacou, who owns the local Snappy Snaps photography store, which has a number of Wilson works out front. Mr. Wilson reckons he has painted many thousands of chewing gum pictures around London. Weird as the pursuit might be, the result is lovely: seemingly random spots of color amid the gray that, on closer examination, turn out to be miniature paintings of just about anything: animals, landscapes, portraits and, often, stylized messages of regret, thanks, commemoration and love.
Pedestrians tend to crowd around when they see him at work. “People are always coming up to me asking me for pictures, for different reasons,” Mr. Wilson said. He obliges when he can. In Muswell Hill, where he lives and which has his largest collection of chewing gum art, his pictures have become a chronicle of the neighborhood, a representation of its residents’ whimsies, sorrows and passions. Among the pictures dotted outside the post office, for example, are an R.I.P. painting for a postman and a picture of a tiger in honor of a postal worker who is from Sri Lanka.
To mark the closing of a Woolworth’s store a couple of years ago, Mr. Wilson crowded every employee’s name onto a piece of gum, along with a good-luck message from the managers. He painted another in which the employees thanked their customers. The two pictures are still there, even though the store is gone.
Mr. Wilson has also become friendly with the workers in the discount general store that replaced the Woolworth’s, and he recently painted a message of love on behalf of Syed Miah, a cashier there who had had a fight with his girlfriend.
“She thought maybe I’d stuck a sticker on the ground,” said Mr. Miah, 32. “Then I explained that I’d had an artist come and do it. It was brilliant.”
Mr. Wilson, who grew up in a family of artists, might seem like just a local eccentric, but he has achieved much attention for his unusual art, working apart from traditional conventions and institutions. He created some of his earlier pieces — mostly enormous wood structures built in forests and fields, some commissioned, many not — in places as far away as Australia, Finland and Baltimore. Several years ago, he was an artist in residence at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.
Though his girlfriend’s salary from her job as a teacher’s aide helps, as does the occasional sale of his (normal-size) paintings, Mr. Wilson does most of his work for no pay, feeling, he said, that the paintings and how they relate to the community are an end in themselves.
His current project was inspired by a variety of concerns: the scourge of chewing gum on city sidewalks, people’s carelessness about the environment and how advertisements, not art, rule the urban landscape.
He developed a technique in which he softens the gum with a blowtorch, sprays it with lacquer and then applies three coats of acrylic enamel. He uses tiny brushes, quick-drying his work with a lighter as he goes along, and then seals it with clear lacquer. Each painting takes between a few hours and a few days, and can last several years if the conditions are right.
The police often question him, but when he explains that he is not the one who spat the gum on the sidewalk, he said, they come around. He was arrested once and was brought to a local police station for questioning, but the charges were dropped after dozens of people wrote letters of support.
One was from John Maizels, publisher of the art magazine Raw Vision, which has featured Mr. Wilson’s work several times. “Ben Wilson is an artist with tremendous commitment and integrity,” he wrote. In another letter, Penny Northway, the children’s minister at a Muswell Hill church, described how Mr. Wilson painted a gum picture for her son, Max, after his grandfather died.
“My respect for him grew after I noted how sensitively and patiently he dealt with Max and then translated his expressed (and slightly muddled) wishes into a pocket-sized painting,” she said in the letter. “I have found Ben to be consistently caring, always sympathetic, refreshingly humble and driven by a constant desire to please others.”
He is hard-pressed to name his favorite gum picture, but there have been many memorable ones. One came from a young man’s request that Mr. Wilson paint a marriage proposal outside his girlfriend’s favorite store. “He took her to the shoe shop and pointed down at the chewing gum and it said, ‘Will you marry me?’ ” Mr. Wilson said.
She said yes. Some months later, Mr. Wilson said, he ran into the couple again, along with their new baby.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Ben Harben's Bubblegum Society on KMIZ News
Ben Harben’s Bubblegum Society
The Bubblegum Society is a collection of art made up of reality television stars such as Joe Millionaire, Paris Hilton and William Hung. Each star's likeness has been "chewed up and spit out" in ordinary bubblegum on canvas.
Harben uses chewing gum as a medium in an attempt to draw attention to the sugar-coated disposability of television's 15-minute famers. He presents their well-chewed portraits in tribute to their inevitable decline. Harben sees these decomposing portraits as an allusion to the way that society half-digests those relegated to fast fame, before moving onto the next empty-calorie, low-substance entertainment snack.
Ben Harben is an artist and freelance graphic designer drawing from a diverse education in fine arts and graphic design to produce work through a multitude of mediums. Illustrations, painting, interactive and bubblegum are a few of the tools through which brands, promotions and observations are presented. He has been creating bubble gum portraits for exhibition and commission since 1998.
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