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.

Happy Birthday, Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon
(born Oct. 28, 1909 - died April 28, 1992)

Irish-British painter. He lived in Berlin and Paris before settling in London (1929) to begin a career as an interior decorator. With no formal art training, he started painting, drawing, and participating in gallery exhibitions, with little success. In 1944 he achieved instant notoriety with a series of controversial paintings, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. His mature style emerged completely with the series of works known as “The Screaming Popes” (1949–mid-1950s), in which he converted Diego Velázquez' s Portrait of Pope Innocent X into a nightmarish icon of hysterical terror. Most of Bacon's paintings depict isolated figures, often framed by geometric constructions, and rendered in smeared, violent colors. His imagery typically suggests anger, horror, and degradation.



Artist Ray Villafane

The quick and the dead: The artist who carves petrifying pumpkin portraits in just two hours

By Daily Mail Reporter

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.'

Haunted Halloween Card

Food for Thought

 "One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity."

- Auguste Renoir, 1841-1819, French Impressionist

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. 

Chewing Gum Art on The Streets By Ben Wilson

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.

***A version of this article appeared in print on June 14, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Whimsical Art, on Canvases Stuck to Sidewalk.***

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.

 

POP CULTURE -- Turning already-chewed gum into art

The Associated Press

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

by Michael Felberbaum

POP CULTURE -- Turning already-chewed gum into art

Jamie Marraccini's humble home smells like bubble gum. And it isn't just because he's chewing a piece.

The place is filled with original "paintings" and sculptures made from a substance commonly known as "ABC gum" -- as in already been chewed.

And now Marraccini is helping others find a new use for what most people chew for a while and toss in the garbage -- or, let's be honest, stick to something that they're not supposed to.

"I always felt it was a waste of gum," he said. "But I was happier they'd do that than throw it away because at least then it lived on."

And he's not kidding -- besides the countless pieces of gum art, the 36-year-old father of two has amassed a collection of more than 5,000 pieces of chewed gum, some more than 10 years old. And he's made his own share of raw-material contributions to his collection, thanks to his personal love for gum and an aversion to throwing things away.

His teachers also unknowingly played a role in developing his gum aesthetic -- when he was a kid, Marraccini was forced to smear his gum inside his locker to keep from getting in trouble for chewing it in class.

Over time, his collection evolved from locker wads to the more elaborate pieces that grace his living room walls -- some of them about 2 feet wide. The art, made entirely of gum, ranges in subject matter from outer-space scenes and random faces to sculptures of eggs partying in their carton. In one unfinished piece, eggs sit around a campfire cooking bacon.

And all this art takes, well, a lot of gum. So Marraccini is almost always chewing two or three pieces at a time.

He also enlists friends and family to keep the collection growing by handing out packages of gum, a storage container and instructions: Chew gum for 20 to 30 minutes and put in case. He then collects the masticated wads for use in his art. (Even old, hardened pieces can be used -- a little warm water brings them back to life.)

With an eye toward his continued artistic development, Marraccini also tests new kinds of gum by chewing it, storing it and seeing how the color looks and lasts. (He keeps the rejects too -- it's all part of his collection.)

Marraccini also has a real job, at a technology startup. But that "leaves plenty of time for chewing gum," and he's also found time for a side project encouraging others to try out his brand of art.

Marraccini's $15 Chew By Numbers kit provides chewers with an opportunity to make art from packs of gum by matching the labeled pieces to a cardboard sheet with numbers on it. In the end, the gum gets transformed into, say, an apple with lips, a pile of gum balls or a planted pot with lips.

Marraccini realizes some find this whole idea disgusting. But he offers a reminder that there are benefits to chewing gum -- it helps with motor skills, concentration and creativity, and it can even speed up metabolism.

Chew on that.

___

CHECK IT OUT ONLINE

Marraccini's art: www.GumArt.com

The Chew By Numbers kit: www.ChewByNumbers.com

********************

5 Tulips

Hands on Sticks

The Detective

Believe It or Not!

Segment008 from Ripley's Believe It or Not! on Vimeo.

Chiclets Bubble Gum Sculpture (Pop Art?)- Stop Motion Animation

Uploaded to YouTube by kazanjianm on Nov 4, 2009
 

Really random??? YES! I was curious if I could turn chicklets gum from a stop motion object into a sculptural object. My last video was a tutorial on traditional painting....This one was as far from traditional painting as you could get. But I learned a lot doing it. For instance, you can layer gum like you layer paint and interestingly enough, gum gives an artist a medium that 1.) dries and solidifies 2.) can be used translucently or applied opaque (different thicknesses) 3.) can be layered 4.) GIVES ME A WICKED SUGAR RUSH!

Believe it or not, I want to experiment more with this medium. If you think about it, chewing gum's artistic possibilities lie somewhere between painting and sculpture. I had fun.....Now I have to burn the 1200 calories that I ingested!!!!! LOL -Merrill Kazanjian

anasazi armature sets set digital studio software clay star wars flash movies tips windows tools examples learn japanese paper puppet lighting cameras final cut frames per second stop frame animation claymation stop motion pro susannah shaw character 3d animation schools chewing gum clove jolt sugarless bubble yum gum dentyne gum beeman's gum wrigleys double bubble hubba bubba spearmint chicklets dentyne black jack orbit gum base how to make flavor thomas glee natural 5 big league chew clorets chewer chewing freshen up teaberry history bubblicious gum buster beechnut gum air waves gum blow gum freedent gum blowing gum peppermint gum cinnamon gum juicy fruit gum spruce gum bazooka bubble gum chicklets commercial cadbury gum nerds gum super bubble chewing gum removal

Artist creates life-size sculptures using chewed bubblegum

By Lucy Cockcroft

1:25PM GMT 15 Jan 2009

Maurizio Savini's intricate works are created using thousands of pieces of the bright pink gum, and have sold for as much as £40,000 ($ 53,439.98) each.

They include a life-size buffalo, a grizzly bear and suited businessmen suspended in gymnastic poses.

Savini, 39, has been using the unusual material, known in his native Italy as 'American Gum' after it arrived during World War II, for the past 10 years.

His sticky sculptures have been exhibited all over the world, including London, Edinburgh, Rome and Berlin, where they have sold for as much.

The artist, based in Rome, said: "The reason I like to use chewing gum is because it seemed to me an amazingly versatile material compared to those used by the traditional arts such as painting.

"Despite its history of it belonging to popular culture, chewing gum does not have a statute of its own within institutional art.

"I believe that in my work on this material is redeemed and acquires a capacity and it has an expressive dignity of its own.

"I work the chewing gum when it is warm and manipulate it with a knife just like some traditional material like clay.

"The most important step is the fixing of the sculptures with formaldehyde and antibiotic."

Art critic Mario Codognato, from Pastificio Cerere gallery, Italy, said Savini's gum sculptures embodied the essence of youth.

He wrote "Maurizio's work reminds of the sensual act of chewing, the voluptuous warmth of rebelling saliva, the artificial and secretly aseptic fragrance which spreads from the mouth as a promise and missed kiss.

"Applying all this to the power and energy of the sculpture and its history causes a short circuit having the capacity of turning the lucid into stately and vice versa."

'Hanging man',  bubblegum sculpture by Maurizio Savini

'buffalo',  bubblegum sculpture by Maurizio Savini

Bubblegum Art

Jason Kronenwald

gumblondes.com

Jason Kronenwald, a graduate of Queens University with a Bachelor degree in Fine Arts, is an emerging artists based in Toronto, where he produces his Gum Blonde Chewing Gum Portraits. Jason smooths chewed gum over plywood, creating realistic skin tones and hair colour, composing his palette from the multitude of different flavours and colors chewed together.

The appeal of his portraits stretch across a wide audience, from some of Canada's top collectors, including TD Waterhouse, to popular culture publications such as this years Ripley's Believe it or Not.

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
                                                                                                                      Chinese Proverb

Make Art Happen

SASIC Art Dept is still looking for students to participate in this year's Chalk It Up event.  We will be working on an 8 ft. x 10 ft Team works Mural downtown! 

Date: Saturday, October 8, 2011
This year's theme is, "Make Art Happen."

So let's go out there to represent our school, have a great time, and Make Art Happen!

**Chalk It Up is a a free, family-friendly creative event sponsored by Art Pace. San Antonio's premier artist will transform city sidewalks into colorful works of art.**