Digital Collage and Painting

Here's what looks like a great book that was just delivered to me today, "Digital Collage and Painting" by Susan Ruddick Bloom.  It's a thick book, much like a school textbook.

Included as a guest artist in the book, is Alexander Jansson, whom I wrote about on my previous post dated 3-28-11.  As Alexander points out in his tutorial, one of the issues with digital art is that it often comes out looking very sterile, smooth and without feeling.  I was especially reminded of this over the last couple of days, since I went back to working in 3d modeling in Blender.  It can take a conscientious effort, artistry, and lots of computer memory in order to give a worn, worked-on look to a digital image.   Of course, Alexander takes texturing very seriously in his images of desolate dwellings in bleak landscapes.  The digital painting that he writes about in the book, is a gate entrance that was included in his "Ramone Bosco" video (shown on my 3-28 blog). I'd be interested to know what software he used to animate the different layers of his pre-existing digital paintings, for the Ramone Bosco video. I assume it must be Blender, as he lists it as part of his toolset.


Back to work on my animation now.  I need to do some texture work.  :)

A moving portfolio

Following up on yesterday's test of an animation...  My current project is creating a short animated movie, to highlight my digital artwork!  The movie is primarily being made in Blender, and will likely be spliced together and edited with iMovie.  Here is a Blender screen shot of the work in process:

The movie will probably be only a couple of minutes long, at most!  I would love to output the scenes with the LuxRender engine, for global illumination and maximum realism, but I estimate that it would take 3 months just to render a final version of the movie.  That doesn't include modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, and the killer test renders.     


I'm currently working in Blender version 2.49b.  I haven't upgraded to the new Blender 2.5 yet, as the last time I tried it, the button panels had graphical glitches.  Plus I haven't had time to learn the new interface.  :) Version 2.5 has a totally revamped interface (much better organized than the current edition, whose button panels have suffered for too long from continuous forced additions).  Also 2.5 features stronger sculpting tools, and at some point will allow for multiple open windows that are further customizable by the user.  Lots of changes really, but all that will just have to wait while I try to get stuff done.  :)   

Animation test

Okay, today's blog post is really lame.  Basically I'm testing if a self-made animation can be successfully installed onto this web page (rather than grabbing a movie off of YouTube)!  I made a simple animation in Blender (a 3D modeling and animation program):

Hey, it's working!  
If anyone has trouble running the animation, please let me know (and indicate what browser you're using).  The movie is simply three seconds of a blue ball following an invisible path, against a purple background. Thanks.
Yes, this is all simple baby stuff.  But you'd be surprised how much trouble I've had getting simple movies to run on different people's computers.  So I don't take anything for granted!  In one case, a person claimed not to have QuickTime on his computer, even though it's pretty much standard equipment (a bold assertion given all the different operating systems out there).  But also I've wondered if there are issues with movies that are made with Blender.
Anyway, if you're all extraordinarily unfortunate, maybe I'll be posting more exciting animations here someday.  :)

Alexander Jannson

Here is a Youtube video clip from the artist Alexander Jannson of Sweden... It's a trailer for an upcoming graphic novel called "Ramone Bosco":






The video has the look of a Tim Burton production (or even a level from the LittleBigPlanet games), with its playful but sinister domestic landscapes and a wide variety of dysfunctional characters.  I really like the abundant textures, which seem to stand out as much in the background skies as anywhere else.  The inhabitants of this domain must surely be despondent about their lot in life, but most are likely not inclined to leave anytime soon (where else would they fit in?).  Little clips like this one make moviemaking an attractive looking endeavor... as was the case with "Carpates Express"!  (See post dated Feb. 6, 2011).  


Alexander Jansson's cool website can be reached by going to www.alexanderjansson.com

X-Rite color test

My uncle Jerry, who is a landscape painter, showed me this interesting test online, which evaluates your ability to differentiate shades of color (basically testing for any degree of color blindness).  The test can be viewed and taken here.


The test is administered by a color technology company called X-Rite (which owns the company Pantone Inc., who is well known for their color matching system that is used as a color benchmark in different industries, such as printing companies).  


I scored a 7 on the color test, which I think is pretty good (zero is the best score).   A few people I know who took the test, whom are not artists and are not impressed by working with colors, did not score as high.  However, I do not feel that the test scores are extremely valid. While taking the test, it was immediately apparent that patience and effort were critical to success.  Anyone who blew through the test and settled on something less than their best evaluation of the colors, would not score as high.  Thus the resulting test score could really not be a measurement of their "color blindness", but rather their impatience. Indeed, some of the differences in shade of color were quite subtle, and without proper attention and comparison on the part of the test taker, one could easily score lower than necessary.  On my test results, I could see differences in colors which the computer claimed I had had trouble, which might mean that if I had concentrated a little harder on the test, I would have scored better.  Also, there's no accounting for the way that different monitors display color, so I suspect that some colors which should appear different, have no discernible uniqueness at all on some computers.  I've worked on some monitors in which the color is absolutely horrible (in comparison to the gorgeous hues on my current computer, an Apple iMac).   


Still, the test is quite interesting, and could be of some value.  If you put in your best effort and still struggle to score well, it could indeed indicate that you have some problem with color blindness.  I found the test to be rather eyestrain inducing.  :)

Dorothea Tanning follow-up

Today I heard from Pam Johnson (Director to Dorothea Tanning's collection of artwork)... I had requested information on where I could send a personal letter to Dorothea, and Pam was happy to oblige.  She even said that she would make sure that Dorothea receives my letter!  So I was happy about that.  Pam said that the email address I had sent my request to, had been having issues with delivery, thus the delay in getting back to me.  Anyway, I'll send a letter off to Dorothea shortly!  


Here is a photo that I took of Dorothea Tanning's painting "Birthday", as it hangs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art:

The painting is a self-portrait of course.  (I'm showing it here at a small resolution so as hopefully not to conflict with any copyright laws). When I see a painting like this, I sometimes wonder, what's lurking just off the canvas, out of sight?  I guess only Dorothea knows what lies beyond the doors.  Although as most Surrealists might say, it's whatever your deranged mind can imagine!

Castle Dracula

Ooooh, oooooh, this here was one of my favorite toys as a youngster! The awesome "Castle Dracula" Colorforms set!  

It's hard to express the creative urges that were kindled in me while I was playing with these Colorforms... I LOVED them.  It's safe to say that this toy was one of the earliest catalysts for my love for art and (ab)using my imagination.  I think I must have gotten the Colorforms from my parents as a Christmas present.  I just remember that from the moment I saw the artwork on the box, I was hooked.  The famous characters of horror, the colors, the detail, the haunted house / laboratory, and of course the personal customization of 1,000,00 scenes, it was truly an inspired gift.  


Playing with the Colorforms is the first time I remember getting that frustrating creative dilemma... That deep desire to create something grand, something which is beyond my capacity to imagine, and needless to say beyond my artistic technical ability.  This reminds me of an old Batman comic book, in which the Joker acquired from the Shaper of Worlds, the unlimited ability to create anything his mind could conceive.... But instead of building a universe to his tastes, the possibilities drove the Joker insane and put him in the mental asylum.  I was actually getting those frustrated feelings today (thus prompting me to look up Colorforms on the internet).  The Colorforms introduced me to the joy of arranging things in space, which eventually lead to my certain tastes in video games, and even in how I imagine scenes when I was drawing comic strips.


I remember wearing out the vinyl stickers until they would no longer cling to the board, and I'm sure that this wonderful toy ended up in a landfill somewhere.  Aaaargh!


I don't recall ever having another set of Colorforms as a kid, which is kind of odd, given how much I enjoyed this one.  This is the second time that I've seen this item for sale on Ebay.  Maybe I should put in a bid for it, although this particular set is missing pieces and is banged up a bit.  


Today, I often like to tell an expectant mother that one of the great joys of having a kid, must be exposing that child to things which will spark his / her imagination and perhaps set him / her on a path of exciting self discovery.  I don't have kids, as I'm still trying to corral the one that's inside me.  That little guy is still playing with his Colorforms and occasionally peeing on my sense of mature responsibility.  

Boop-Oop-A-Doop!

Here's something different that I did for a friend.  We were discussing the last painting that I finished (ref. post dated 03-19-11) and I mentioned that I could change the woman to be Betty Boop (her favorite character)!  Then I decided to do a whole new image instead, because I had been wanting to do something cartoony anyway!  Clicking the image will impose a larger view.   :-)

Store update

I've added a few more items to my store (www.zazzle.com/michaelricketson), for my latest painting of our heroine with her cat, skull, and bone collection.  :)  I had to do a little cleaning up of some white anti-aliasing on the painting in order to make it presentable on a dark t-shirt (if I had used layers properly in my paint program, that wouldn't have been necessary)!  Also, a mug, stickers and a coaster are available.  There's always the danger that more is forthcoming, as well!  As mentioned previously, I am still leaning towards creating a vector image version of this artwork, but I won't start working on that immediately.  Right now I'm doing a personal artwork which I'll show shortly!


Here's another Zazzle store which impressed me... The artist, Chad Wiles McCown, does some stylish illustration which has a feminine flair to it, if you'd like to take a look at it!  www.zazzle.com/wiles44

The Comics Code Authority

Today I was reading about the crackdown on comic books which occurred during the 1940's and 50's, in which the issue of over-the-top violence, gore and sex in comics came under heavy scrutiny and criticism in both the U.S. and Canada.  The central figure behind the movement to clean up comics was Dr. Fredric Wertham,  whose book "Seduction of the Innocent" took no prisoners in describing the decaying filth of society which was a result of children reading uncensored comic books.  The public was outraged about the publishers' crimes that Dr. Wertham brought to light.  Eventually the U.S. Senate held hearings to examine the scope of comic books' influence on the nation's youth.  One of the voluntary witnesses at the hearings was Willaim Gaines, publisher of Mad magazine and the notoriously graphic EC Comics (there's a website featuring Gaines' testimony, which can be viewed here).


Although there had been some local community / state laws passed in the United States, which enforced approval of comic content before publishing and distribution (or outright banned certain comics), no federal government action occurred in the U.S. as a result of the Senate hearings.  Instead, publishing companies found it necessary to police content of their comics themselves, through their creation of an independent supervisory board, called the Comics Code Authority.  This was effectively necessary since wholesale distributors of comics, completely spooked by an angry American public, were refusing to sell uncensored comics.  The publishers had to regain the trust of the consumer, and the Comics Code Authority's big stamp of approval on the covers of their watered down comics was just the thing to do it.  Woo hoo.  It's only very recently that the Comics Code Authority's influence on publishing houses has been reduced to zero (after a long, slow decay), with some publishers now creating their own ratings systems for their comics.    


I have mixed feelings about the crackdown on comics, but ultimately I would have been against the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Something such as what is available to read, and what children are reading, should be left to individual adults / parents to decide.  If adults don't like violent comic books, then the publishers will go out of business on their own (strangely, parents seemed totally unaware of the content of comics being read by their children, until Dr. Wertham and his cohorts pointed it out to them.  That's the real problem most likely).      

Dirty Donny

If you haven't already, you should check out the art website of "Dirty" Donny Gillies (www.dirtydonny.com).  I was reading about him yesterday in "Rue Morgue" magazine, and although I'm sure that I've seen his artwork before, I had really not been exposed to enough of it to be familiar with the artist (his kind of art is typically not what you find hanging in museums).  Donny does "lowbrow" artwork for album covers, pinball machines, skateboards, etc. and his work usually consists of hideously grinning monsters residing in garish terrains, accompanied by motorcycles, soaring rocket ships and the occasional bare chested lady friend.  Of course the first thing that hits you when you look at the artwork (aside from an errant nipple) is "Wow, this guy has a style alright!"  It's a celebration of arrogant color and strong linework, and is a reminder to me that there are so many ways that one can put color on a canvas!  Donny's art looks like something that you'd see painted on a wall at some cheap deli restaurant in Florida.  


Today I ordered his book "Monster Revolt!  The Art of Dirty Donny" so that I don't have to tour cheap deli restaurants trying to find his work.  :)  

Big fun in the virtual world

Tonight I spent a little time online in Second Life, the virtual world simulator which has been a wonderful creative and social platform for some years now.  There's really nothing like it, in my opinion (aside from real life itself).  The simulator features a real world economy (with Linden dollars that are convertible to real dollars), with people using highly personalized avatars to exchange virtual goods, services, and even weird kinky stuff if you're into that.  Here's a picture of a virtual party that I just went to:

What really makes Second Life unique are the creative and personal development tools.  You can pay money to buy virtual land for any purpose, such as opening a store, running a dance club, or creating a role playing environment.  You can build your own graphical objects, such as a vehicle, and then attach a script to it, to make it functional and interactive.  Some years ago, I created a comic book in Second Life (featuring comics drawn by hand in real life), which was basically a handheld viewscreen operated by a script.  Touching the viewscreen would cause the "book" to advance to the next page.  I even built a little store from which to sell the comic book to other avatars, but technical issues with running Second Life prompted me to leave the virtual world for about 2 years.  I returned to Second Life a few months ago, and interestingly, it is much more stable on my computer now than it had ever been before (even though I'm using the same computer). When I have time, I would like to buy some land again and re-open a store!
  
If you haven't tried Second Life before, it could be a valuable experience for you.  There are a lot of competing social websites available today, but SL can give you a unique way to express yourself and to meet and interact with other people, from all over the world.  I've met a lot of people through Second Life, and it's fascinating how your online experiences can be as much a part of your memories as anything that happens in real life.  There are good times and bad times, good people and bad people, and really, all the little nuances in SL that drive us nuts in the real world too.  There are even little mice that run around the virtual dance floors (don't step on them).   :)          

New image in gallery

Here is the finished painting that I've been working on!  It's been added to my main website, www.michaelricketson.com.  By tomorrow, I'll have it available in the store as well!  Be sure to give the kitty a little scratch behind the ears, while you're here.  :)

Rebecca Black

As many people have seen, a young girl named Rebecca Black has become famous over the last few days,  due to her music video "Friday" (on Youtube.com), which is being widely proclaimed as "the worst song in the world" (the music video was not intended to be a joke at the time it was made).  More than just a "critique" of an artist however, this episode obviously demonstrates one of the things that's wrong with our society.  Per my viewing of the video on Youtube, and reading over a few news articles, I'm disgusted by the amount of venom and hate that's being directed towards this girl on the internet.  The bitter posts include such things as asking her to die, asking her to develop an eating disorder to become more attractive, calling her every obscene word you can think of, and at least one person begging "please kill me". Come on people, Rebecca is 13 years old!      


There's a certain point when "criticism" becomes less about the person being examined, and more about the person expressing him or herself. There's a difference between constructive criticism and a personal attack (yes, that's basic, but some people don't discriminate between the two). And I'm getting tired of the assertion that artists who put themselves out in public with a product, deserve whatever trouble comes their way. That's like saying that a person who walks through a bad neighborhood deserves to get mugged.  No rational person thinks that way (no matter how many times he says it).  Sure, insults are inevitable, but it's sad when people defend that as "freedom of speech" (when one's only defense for saying something is that he has the right to say it, probably he's put himself in a position which opposes his own common sense). More people could refrain from such personal attacks against decent persons, and say something pleasant instead, but that would take courage.  It's a lot easier to attack a 13-year old girl than it is to stand up against the many angry people in the world.  Indeed we have to marvel at the way some people feel superior, when they're calling a young girl the "C" word and apparently ridding themselves of some dark, inner demon.


It must be hard for people like Rebecca, to grow up in a world in which people's aggressiveness is so blatantly on display.  The internet has made the world a lot different from when I was growing up, and I feel certain that it's going to have repercussions on the collective emotional maturity of entire generations of people.  People will want to hide more (as seen already in the broad deterioration of social skills and the family unit) but I suppose some people will be toughened and made better by having to fend off the slander of weaker persons.  I don't envy Rebecca's position, but hopefully she'll be a good soldier and carry on.

Marshmallow, hello!

So Conor won the big prize last night on the season finale of "Face Off"! Although in past episodes it seemed that creativity was valued over technical skill, I suppose that Conor won for being relatively and consistently quality minded, if not the most creative person in the contest.  The inflatable throat on his frog costume was brilliant.  I kind of wondered if Sam made things hard on herself by selecting "The Little Mermaid" as her theme for the final project, given the likelihood that the competition would be looking to build hideous monsters and other attention grabbing creatures.   And her secondary theme of "psychedelic", while colorful, didn't really scream out the need for prosthetics.  Anyway, I look forward to the promised next season, which is odd for me to say, as I normally loathe television!


Lately I've been going to www.reverbnation.com in an effort to expand my musical experience.  Reverbnation seems like a good place to find musicians with whom you were not previously familiar.  One artist that I found today that I really like is Melissa Mars, particularly her songs "Army of Love" and the cute and funny "Marshmallow".  Unfortunately she seems to be better known in France than in the U.S., so I find her music hard to locate (only segments of Mars' songs are provided on Reverbnation).  


I checked out a book from the library today about the comic artist Harvey Kurtzman, which I shall now partake of in an attitude of repose!   

12 years old, and already a disaster

When I was attending Chisholm Trail Middle School, in Texas, I had a couple of art classes taught by a woman that I'll refer to as Mrs. Smith.   Things seemed to go okay in those classes for the most part...  I remember that we had a "free sketch" due every Friday, and that I would invariably draw a Star Wars picture.   At one point we had to make a plaster mask of our own face, and I remember being so proud when my mask was set, and removed from my face.  The mask had no cracks... it was perfect!  And Mrs. Smith was so pleased.  


Well, the glory days were not to last.  I think it was near the end of my time as one of her students, that Mrs. Smith took a leave from the school, to have a baby if I'm correct.  While she was gone, I and a few other students were given the task of painting a mural on the wall which was right outside the classroom.   Things proceeded as planned initially, but on the last crucial day of the painting,  every one of my fellow artists decided to fool around and do nothing.  It was left to me to do the bulk of the painting.  


I don't recall precisely, but I think the painting looked something like this, except sloppier:

As you might expect, a work of such bold imagination and vision was an arduous task, especially while my classmates were goofing off, rolling around like tumbleweeds and eating Star Crunches behind me.  Well, Mrs. Smith returned to school the next day, and she was furious!  Not because I was left high and dry by my partners in crime, but because the mural was awful!  She despised it.  And no amount of my explaining what happened made any difference.  At only 12 years of age, I was already considering hanging up my art career and going back to choir class. 


Fortunately, no serious repercussions came of the debacle, except for the good tongue lashing.  I wonder if the mural is still there, looking faded on the old school wall, and prompting the occasional pitiful glance from passers-by.  I wish that I could talk to Mrs. Smith again, and let her know that my painting has in fact gone from bad to worse, and that she had really had it pretty good back then.  After all these years, maybe her pain has subsided.  Or maybe the school building collapsed, and we can all feel free to resume our lives again.  

In one hand I have Order, in the other hand...

One of my favorite blog-writing artists, Sam Nielson, is going to write a series of blogs relating how the concept of order and chaos applies to design in art.  His idea is that art which strikes a balance between having structure and a looseness of form, is the kind of craft that people take a liking to most readily.  This is something that I think we might agree with, as even though discordant trash may fit the definition of art, it doesn't mean that it's art that will appeal to a significant number of people.  I suppose that too many people question a work with "Is it art?" when really they should admit that it's art, but perhaps not very interesting art.  
Aimee Mann of the band 'Til Tuesday wrote that to work without a set of rules is actually very limiting, that you have to adhere to some sort of design sense in your art if you are to produce something worthwhile. But then we have the artist Jackson Pollack apparently splattering paint randomly on a canvas, and we have the Surrealists practicing "automatic" drawing in which they insist that no conscious thought plays a part in their work... and from that they produce art which many people connect with.  So, subjectivity rules in art, of course.  I think that there is a question of whether randomness actually exists, that maybe it's just a complexity from which we are unable to discern the recognizable patterns.  Art and science merge on this topic certainly, and it will be fun to read what Sam has to say!  

Somebody poked me

I neglected to mention that my store is now accessible through the main website, www.michaelricketson.com.  I've been pleased to be able to expand upon my original website with the addition of this blog and the store.  Otherwise the website might seem as active as a dormant volcano.  :)


I really like some of the fun, colorful artwork at the website www.pokedstudio.com, which I discovered today through the magazine "3D Artist", issue # 25.  PokedStudio was started by a guy named Jonathan Ball.  Apparently Jonathan uses the program Blender for his 3D work, which is the same program that I used to create the image featuring the piano in an interior setting (shown here):

It interests me to see someone use a 3D modeling program to help create images so whimsical as the ones at PokedStudio.  I suppose that my technical illustration background prompts me to make more straightforward and realistic images, when modeling.      


Today I learned via the internet, that my local library considers me the proud holder of a book called "Broken to Beautiful".  While they're at it, why don't they just put me down for "Elmo's Favorite Tickle Spots" and "Come Weep with Me, Sweet Mia".  I have no idea what they're talking about.  Meanwhile, the book that I actually checked out, "Adjustment to a Nudist Colony" (special edition for pasty skinned persons) is totally missing from my online record.  I guess I can just keep that book.      

Love these colors

This is another painting that I always enjoy seeing when I'm at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (you can click on it for a bigger view):

The painting is "Fish Magic" by my favorite abstract Expressionist, Paul Klee.  One thing that I like about Klee is that in spite of his knack for constant visual innovation, I almost always manage to recognize a painting as being done by him.  To me this is something that makes abstract art so worthy of our admiration... the development of a style and a language through which an artist communicates.  It's irresponsible to dismiss abstract art as being unskilled, as the art highlights capacities that are uniquely human... The ability to appreciate not just physical aspects of color, form, line, and texture, but also playfulness, humor, tragedy, and a limitless number of other moods and intangibles.  Indeed, it is partly these ethereal qualities of humanity which have had some theoretical physicists declaring that science cannot explain everything (the limit of science being that everything we "know" is based on some other assumption being accepted as true) and even the Grand Unified Theory, if it's ever found, won't explain what love and hate are.  (Or maybe the reason that we can't find this Theory of Everything is because western science has spent decades dismissing life as a meaningless accident in the universe, thus downplaying a significant part of what we know is reality, that being our thoughts and emotions).  Anyway, let us not demand merely representational art (a common issue in today's digital art realm).  We can demonstrate concepts beyond just technical competency.  Abstract art reminds us of why we are different from inanimate objects and even intelligent animals.  Color and line are amazing things in themselves, and we can appreciate them easily.


Klee was a master of working with different painting media.  He often made considerable effort prepping a ground for his canvas, and in his "Fish Magic" painting, he actually cut out a rectangular piece of fabric and pasted it onto the main canvas (easily visible).  In a book titled "Klee", Douglas Hall / Richard Verdi described the extra piece of canvas as a window of time, splitting the head of the red figure at the bottom of the painting.  The little fellow is somber, looking inside the box, where the manmade clock is, but the face is happy which looks to the outside, where nature runs amok.  I suppose that this suggests well the benefit of freeing ourselves from the self-inflicted, limited perceptions and attitudes, the desire to explain everything with logic and reason!      

Yes, this was necessary

I added some stickers to the store today.  I hope no one has trouble seeing any of the products, as sometimes no items come up, when I visit the store page!  Overall though things seem to be working okay.


I thought I'd do something different today, so I wrote a little poem.  I call it "A Rose":


A rose 
is distinct from a thorn.
A nose
is where boogers are born.
Bad times
are teeming with flaws.
Stop signs
give me no pause.
A quarter 
is one-fourth a dollar.
A goiter
will rarely get smaller.
Be fickle,
but strong, and not mean.
A pickle
is so long and dark green.
A rose
is sad like a kiss.
Who knows
why did I write this.


I was going to write another verse, but I decided that tabernacle rhymes very poorly with carbuncle.  Tomorrow I'll be going back to painting!  

Store's open!

Hooray, technical issues are out of the way, so I'm happy to say, that my store is open!  :)  Now if so inclined, you can buy all sorts of knick knacks which feature my artwork on them.  The store can be reached by going to www.zazzle.com/michaelricketson, or you can click "Michael's Digital Art store" in the right hand sidebar of this blog.  Thanks very much for taking a look.  Regarding the shirts, the style and gender of any shirt can be changed after clicking the image to go to that item's page.   The mugs and key chains also feature variations on them which you can select.  I'll probably be adding a few more items to the store very shortly. I still have to finish the previous image that I was working on, for use as a t-shirt design, but here is another update on it (you can click it for a larger view): 

Ummmm... where'd it go

It may be another day or two before my Zazzle store is functional!  I created a product for sale, but it's not showing as being available in my store.  I'm not sure what's wrong, so I'm waiting for a Zazzle person to get back to me.  Thanks for your patience.  Meanwhile, here is some light music...


The other day I mentioned the artist Arshile Gorky, on whom I saw an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a little over a year ago.  I find that such exhibits do help to give an appreciation for artists whom I had not spent a lot of time studying previously.  This was the case especially for Gorky, Frida Kahlo, and most recently Amedeo Modigliani (with his appearance in the Marc Chagall exhibit).  Gorky was a highly intellectual abstract artist whose life and work was influenced by his survival of the Armenian Genocide in the former Ottoman Empire.  His mother died shortly after they had fled the suffering in their homeland, and of course he carried the resulting scars for the remainder of his short life.  His most famous painting is "The Liver is the Cock's Comb", a large work which was on display at the exhibit.  In his 40's, Gorky wound up committing suicide after a painful 2 1/2 year period in which he lost a studio, paintings and treasured books in a fire, was diagnosed with cancer, was seriously injured in a car wreck (the car being driven by the influential art dealer Julien Levy) and then was left by his wife and children.  It seems that paintings in an exhibit become that much more touching when one knows the somber events of an artist's life.  Their lives weren't about the great works of art that they created, but rather what they had to survive in order to leave something behind, for us to know them by.  The paintings themselves are like little hands that are thrown up in the air, trying to grasp at a life that might have happened, a life less painful.


I hope that my store is working by tomorrow!

Store almost ready

There's a good chance that by tomorrow, I'll have an online product store operating through Zazzle.com!  I was looking through my existing artwork and trying to determine which pieces meet the minimum specs required for each Zazzle product.  The initial offering will possibly include five different t-shirts, three coffee mugs, a magnet and a key chain.  Not every piece of artwork will be able to be put onto every type of product, due to requirements with image resolution and aspect ratio. But hopefully there will be enough variety to keep the store interesting.  :)  The store will be accessible through my main website, plus this blog, after some tweaking!  I look forward to sharing my artwork on something that you can put your hands on!  :)   

The Perelman Building

I went to the Perelman Building today, which is a satellite location of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  It was my first time at the Perelman! Probably the best part was seeing Marc Chagall's painting "Paris Through the Window" (indeed there is a special exhibit at the Perelman highlighting Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Jean Metzinger, among others).   Today was really the first time that Modigliani struck a strong interest with me.  I like the influence of African art on his paintings, and it seems that he had quite the tragic life.  He died young and poverty stricken, his death influencing his pregnant wife to kill herself shortly thereafter.  Ugly stuff, sounds just as bad as what Arshile Gorky went through (I have got to write about Gorky at a later time).


The Perelman Building has an interesting education room, meant to be used by art teachers as a resource for putting together lesson plans.  The kind ladies in the room there logged me onto a computer, so that I could browse a database of paintings, which featured high resolution images. It was a great way to look at the detail in Hieronymus Bosch paintings!


While I was in Philadelphia, I saw where the new Barnes Foundation will be, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.  I had visited the original Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion some years ago.  It of course featured an impressive collection of Renoir paintings, all jumbled up on the walls in a hardly cared for building.  On the grounds of the new location, they have displayed a copy of a portrait of Albert C. Barnes, painted by none other than Giorgio de Chirico.  I had been previously unaware of this painting (or had forgotten about it)!   Pretty cool anyway.

To York and back

I'm back from my long past due trip to York, to see my best friend from art college, ace industrial designer John Kurcheski (a.k.a. Kurk)!  It only took me twelve years to get out there and see him again!  Entire wars and collapses of nations have happened in a shorter time period than that. Anyway, it was awesome to see John again.  I got to meet up with his family too, all of whom had always treated me like a son / brother while John and I shared a dorm at college.  Getting to know Kurk and his family was one of the real highlights of my time at school.  Kurk pretty much killed the rest of the industrial design students at school by winning Best of Quarter awards with ridiculously excessive frequency.     


I caught up with Kurk's brother Brandon, who himself is an industrial designer and is currently doing a lot of work on his house.  Brandon has a keen sense about packaging and product display design, something that I recognized about him back in school.  I met Brandon's wife Wiley for the first time.  I enjoyed Wiley's relating to me about the strongly creative, constructive approach that she takes in teaching her kindergarten class.  My kindergarten sucked, I wonder if Wiley would mind if I took her class.  Seriously though, Wiley's lively approach in her teaching will give many kids a good first impression of school, which is invaluable.   John's girlfriend, Gina, is a proud Kansas girl who has a zest for life, and who can probably do about 500 push-ups (which is 498 more than I can do).  


One of the highlights of the trip was Kurk and I finding his dad way up on an embankment behind his house, doing who knows what while standing on ground that was at a reassuring 45 degree angle and covered with prickly bushes.  Later, Kurk and I became well acquainted with the prickly bushes while searching for wood to feed a bonfire.  I almost landed face first in a creek after slipping on a rock.  Fortunately, the thorn covered vines snagged my skin and prevented me from hitting the ground.  Kurk always excelled at getting me into big trouble.  


The main attraction of the trip however was to visit an art exhibit at the T.R. Kaltreider Studio / Gallery, where Kurk has his industrial design workshop, and was displaying some of his work, along with Tyler Kaltreider and some other guest artists.  Tyler has a great surrealistic style to his artwork, which I don't see too much of in these times (at least not as much as I would like).  Kurk was exhibiting a wide variety of artwork, ranging from sculpture to paintings, and a great replica of a dinosaur fossil.  Kurk had even made a couple of mobiles, in the style of Alexander Calder, of which I've been very fond.   I would have liked to have bought one of the mobiles, if I had some spending money right now.  


Also on this trip, we watched "Jackass 2.5" on television, which probably showed nothing more asinine than our looking for firewood on a thorn ridden 45 degree slope in total darkness.   My face looks like I was shot up with BB's.  Well, not really, but believe me, I was lucky.  


On Sunday night, John's mom and grandmother made a delicious pasta dinner for family and friends, and then I drove home in the rain. 


Here is Kurk in his workshop studio!

Here is the super awesome fossil replica created by Kurk:

Here is a prop from Kurk, inspired by the "Bioshock" video game:

A view of Tyler Kaltreider's work:

Kurk is an experienced sculptor and mold maker, and will be teaching a related class starting this week at the YorkArts center.  Kurk is also the creator of the Ball Claw holder, used for handy storage and display of basketballs, footballs, etc., and which is available in stores.  The Ball Claw website can be reached here!  

Make a u-turn when possible

As noted last night, I'll be taking a short trip, to engage in a little art, friendship renewal, and from what I hear, chocolate chip cookies.  I'll write more about that when I get back probably Sunday night (in case I don't post anything on Sunday, you'll know that I'm not just hiding in the bathtub again).  Perhaps the first highlight of today will be trying out my new GPS unit.  Yes, the little gizmo that failed to direct me from my bathroom to the kitchen pantry last night, is somehow going to get me over 100 miles away by the early afternoon.  And I trust it.  It's a new day, right?
See you when I get back.  :-)

 

I am not intoxicated

I've long felt that something was amiss in the universe (imagine that), in that there's no point in the sheer size and number of the galaxies, if so little of them can be seen and appreciated by intelligent beings (and me also).  There's no real logic to this impression, except that from what I've read and agree with, I think that humans (intelligent life) are a significant component of our universe (indeed the purpose of everything that exists) and not just a small by-product of some freak cellular accident.  Indeed, the very idea of what is even possible in our universe is partly dependent upon the inclinations and capacities of intelligent life.  (I could talk more about why people are very important, later).  So, if humans are a key ingredient in the universe, it's odd that we're relegated to a tiny prison called the Earth.  It's almost as if I feel that there is some deeply mysterious impediment that blocks our view of 99.9E99% of the universe, that instead of trying to peer through the brick wall, we should simply look over it, and see what we're missing.  Perhaps this impediment is what some Surrealist artists attributed as an inherent disguise worn by objects, which causes us to view those objects with a sense of uneasy confusion and even fear.  When we look to the skies, this impediment appears to us as horribly long stretches of impassable space and time.  

In the book "Bruce Lee -Artist of Life" (edited by John Little), one of Lee's papers relates that things do not form mutually exclusive pairs (such as heat and cold) but rather they are interdependent halves of one whole entity.  One half does not exist without the other.  So our existence is about balance, and not friction.  Lee goes on to explain that a subject (a person) cannot be separated from the world that he experiences, that these two elements, as well, comprise one entity.  (Lee beautifully shoots down Western philosophy's habit of calling into question whether anything exists, as he asserts that the simplicity of life should not be turned into a puzzling problem.  To deny existence is a thought, and a thought belongs to the thinker, who cannot be separated from his world).  Anyway, regarding Lee's interdependency between the subject and his world, I suppose that the vast size of the universe is what is required to form a balance with the mental capacities of all living things (I've suspected that the enormity of the universe is simply the requirement for producing something as intricate as human minds). The universe reaches so far out from any one individual, overwhelming his ability to see and know everything about it.  Lee apparently suggested that as we move toward the extreme of one half of a whole, that we would naturally give way to the other half.  So I think perhaps the way to take the entire universe into our grasp is to withdraw completely within ourselves, which might be what death is.   I have no clue what I'm talking about tonight.  I'm going on a little trip tomorrow, and am happy to finally get something of a vacation!  :)      

Needs more blood

I don't watch much television at all, but my mom was telling me that I should catch an episode of Syfy's "Face Off" (battle of the make-up artists)!   Last night's contest was a good one to catch, with the sub-themes being first who could make the most realistic looking blood, and secondly, who could create the most impressive looking zombie, whose make-up didn't fall off during a choreographed strut on stage.  (The main theme of the program was McKenzie Westmore appearing in different outfits).  My impression of the judges' decisions was that creativity and originality by the artists could make up for any technical deficiencies in the make-up.  There were things that some of the artists could have improved on, but I suppose when the worst complaint is that someone used too much blood, how bad could things be?  Sure, one lady had a visible gap between prosthetics, but who really looks at a zombie's wrist anyway?  I think the program was very inspiring, watching artists pushing each other to be better, and being good sports for the most part.   


Here is another update on my latest digital painting..!

A little excursion

I could have visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art today, as I was in Center City for a few hours.  But I was visiting my accountant, and didn't feel like lugging my tax information all over the city.  I've been wondering what happened to Salvador Dali's painting "Agnostic Symbol", which is part of the Museum's collection, but which I have not seen on display in YEARS.  Not that I visit the Museum every day or anything, but I think it's about time that that painting came home again (I assume it's part of a roving exhibition somewhere).  The same also applies for Dali's "Premonition of Civil War".  According to the museum's website, "Agnostic Symbol" is still not on display, but it appears that "Premonition" might be.  I'll have to get back to the Museum soon, to find out, and maybe to file a complaint.   :)

A fine selection of modernity

A Flickr member named Kraftgenie has what I think is a nice collection of modern art galleries (which you can see by clicking here).  Included among the featured artists are Max Ernst (husband of Dorothea Tanning, the subject of my Feb. 21st post) and also Victor Brauner, a man who seemingly predicted the loss of his own eye in at least two separate paintings.  I've also added Kraftgenie's blog, "Weimarart Art & Modernity" to my list of blogs in the right sidebar.
In Toyen's gallery, the painting "Der Paravent" is quite similar to a vision that I've had in my head since I was a child.  In my vision, a young boy enters a darkened doorway to confront a pair of gloved, disembodied hands that are floating in the air above him.  Kraftgenie wrote that Toyen was not concerned about what the gallery owners thought would sell, she simply painted as she wished.  That scores points with me.
The Franz Sedlacek gallery is also likable.  The interiors that he painted have the precision and luminosity of many of today's 3d graphics, but with a palpable, somber mood to them (mood being something missing in many 3d images, I feel).
I'll be spending a bit of time looking through Kraftgenie's page of artists.