evening art project

I've been trying to do more artistic things lately—it's not really a new year's resolution, but it stated during the holidays.  After a few frustrating half-finished things, I finally completed a piece this evening.  NWC wanted me to name him, and after he refused both Seahorse and Seahorsie, I went with Herbert. 

Hebert.

random stuff

I've been storing some of these up for a while, but it's high time they get posted. These links run the gamut from artsy videos to a Bayesian inference package. And yes, I intentionally don't say much about each one so you have to click. Maybe you'll discover something new!

leap motion controller
arial photos of tulip fields
beautiful nature GIFs
CONTACT: a LEGO masterwork
Henry VIII: the game
geometric projection art
floating temple
why wives don't out-earn husbands?
longest roadtrip
dynamic target tracking
night stroll
♥ Stan ♥
updated egg box
time is finally finished

a case of the crazies

It's February.  This means that I'm very anxiously awaiting responses from the graduate programs I applied to end of last year.  I shouldn't hear back until mid-month, but it weighs on me.  That plus cold enough weather that I need to stay indoors most of the time has lead to a major case of the stir-crazies.

Food-wise, I baked eight loaves of french bread earlier this week, made my own chicken stock, concocted Zuni Cafe's Chard and Onion Panade with said bread and stock (and fell in love with Swiss chard--I couldn't recall having it before, can you believe it?), and made a simple but colorful pilaf with barley cooked in the stock, kidney beans, onions and Italian parsley.  The last item was pretty normal, but made for a nice picture (right).

Art-wise, I started a new oil painting and did a one-night watercolor landscape (below) for which we happened to have a fitting frame.  I've been practicing the guitar daily, which is a novelty, and started reading the 50 cent used copy of War and Peace which was re-discovered in a giant stack of books when started filling the new bookcase we bought last weekend.  (Incidentally, it still doesn't get rid of all of the book piles.)  N and I have also started building an igloo outside.

I suppose I'm always up to these same things in varying degrees, but I feel more crazed right now.  Oh!  One more thing: N and I made a pact to not spend more than one hour of goof-off time on the internet per day (I don't count writing blog entries because it's mildly creative in nature, but I do count reading news/blogs) and we both installed the Thyme application, which is helpful in monitoring that commitment.  The reason I mention that pact is because it's yet another contributing factor in my needing to distract myself--one of my defaults is now limited.  At this point, I almost just want to know one way or another.  N says we'll be celebrating either way.  Only a few more weeks to go.

rambles about the color of man's nature

Having just read Steinbeck's East of Eden, I'm plunging with more focus into a book I received for Christmas and started soon after: When Souls Had Wings by Terryl L. Givens.  In doing so, I'm discovering how little I know of classic philosophy.  Plato, Socrates, Aristotle: I couldn't tell you who wrote what or had which thoughts or anything.  It's quite a gap in my education.

Aside from that realization, I was shocked at how related the two books are.  Steinbeck's focuses on men's inherent natures and that we have choices despite our natures--all told in a story, of course.  Givens' book focuses on the history of the theory of pre-mortal existence, which is really getting at the spiritual component of that nature.

All in all, it's been fun to read them one after the other, especially since N and I had an extensive nature vs. nurture debate regarding gender with his parents over the holidays.  Maybe I'm just wearing nature-colored glasses.  ...If "man's nature" had a color, what would it be?  Green?  Brown?  Red?  Upmostly silly digression.  Another moderately-less silly digression: wouldn't it be fun to have book lists organized like old-fashioned music albums, where the books flow together, sharing some sort of theme between each pair of consecutive reads?

Also wik: mini painting!  I'm on a roll!  (Though I like this one less.)

full of sky

I started and finished a painting tonight!  The composition is pretty simple, but it was fun to get the color blending just right.  Here's a picture of it drying.  I haven't signed it yet, nor have I decided what exactly to do with it.

Film Review: Arranged

Last night N and I took some down time from unpacking and setting up the house to watch a 99 cent iTunes movie rental: Arranged. It's a story about two women who meet as first year elementary school teachers at a Brooklyn public school; one of the women is Orthodox Jewish and the other Muslim. The film focuses on their friendship as they deal with a very ignorant Principal, challenging students and family members, and the process of arranged marriages.

I thought it was an excellent film on many levels. The cinematography was beautiful: lots of detail shots that brought the cultures to life. Both the script and the acting were believable and honest, with many moments of genuine humor. One of my favorite quotes was "Someone should be shooting a commercial for world peace right now." I also felt like the film addressed some real issues in a gentle way without focusing too much on them--for example, religious tension obviously existed as a plot element, but it was expressed as a part of their personal struggles.

Overall, I think it was a wonderful use of 99 cents and a perfect break from unpacking.

speaking of balloons

In my last artist post, I mentioned that do balloon work, which tends to be along the lines of silly hats, funny animals, and weaponry, but I've done some bigger and more elaborate things too.

Inges Idee takes it to another level.  Piecewise construction is common to those that dabble in balloons, but Idee doesn't just use what's given him; he creates balloon-like forms that are kind of alive.

Take this balloonish creature for instance: holding a baby up in the air which elicits much more emotion than a simple twist tie balloon.  The difference is that there is gesture here and not just a figure's form.

I think there may actually be a person inside the balloon, but I can't tell, and I can't read his website well enough to figure it out (not in a language I can read).  Perhaps with further research I could determine it, but I kind of like leaving the mystery as-is.

He also covers other things in latex, like cars, and interior spaces, leading to really cool effects.

basic building blocks

Having realized I haven't posted on artists in a very long while, I'm going to share some of my recent findings over the next little bit.  First up: Legos.

Nathan Sawaya does what I wish I could do--build amazing things out of Legos.  I mean, my 6" spaceships are cool and all, but they aren't really art.  From renderings of photographs to cutesy sculptures and signs to compelling pieces, this fellow takes a simple child's toy and runs with it.

I think working with Legos would be similar to the balloon work I've done in the past--it's a fairly restricting medium, but you can still do "anything."  The art comes from what you do within those restrictions, incorporating them or using them to explicitly make a point.  The image I've included, for example, would be very different if made of clay, bronze or wood.  It takes a piecewise medium to have the same effect... you could do something similar with woven branches, brick, or balloons.  Legos are especially interesting because they are supposed to fit together and because they are so commonly associated with children.

paper art

Recently Google Chrome came out with beta releases for Mac and Linux.  In playing around with it, I set my theme to be a design by Yulia Brodskaya and then continued to investigate her artwork.  I really like both paper art and illustrative styles, so enjoyed looking through her work, which is wonderfully color and diverse in style.  I might be imagining Slavic influences because I like Russian Lacquer Boxes so much, but this kind of intricacy and color are themes I've seen among the work of some Slavic artists.  Her work reminds me tangentially of some things by Brittany Lee, who often works with paper.

C3PO's girlfriend

Jeremy Mayer "disassemble[s] typewriters and then reassemble[s] them into full-scale, anatomically correct human figures. [He] do[es] not solder, weld, or glue these assemblages together- the process is entirely cold assembly." Way cool.

Some parts of the sculptures feel a little sterile--the faces mostly--but that happens easily with rigid parts. Overall, very nice.

media madness

Recently I've been thinking a lot about art and media with regards to copyrights. In the digital age, artists that create or sell their work electronically are faced with a huge hurdle of protecting their creations and performances so they can still profit from them and continue to pursue their lifestyles.

However, it seems that everyone has become hyper-sensitive in protecting their creations, particularly in the realm of music. It's no longer about protecting recordings of specific performances, but about the songs themselves. Recently, there was the story of a UK shop worker singing regularly at work being asked not to sing without a performance licence. Thankfully, the PRS realized they made a mistake, but that fact that they asked her to stop in the first place signals to me that something is very, very wrong. I can't tell if it's greed or if people are just worried about giving an inch and then being walked over by the public.

On the complete other end of the spectrum, Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono band is has released a track under CC Attribution-NonCommercial license and is asking people to remix it. That pushes some of my happy buttons. So why is it that so few artists release their work under CC?

First, let's think about why CC works so well for software (which is just as valuable as music in many ways). First: there is substantial community support for it. When something is released under CC, the releasers get lots and lots of gold star stickers. Second: software code lends itself well to sharing. If someone else already solved a problem, no reason to reinvent the wheel. Third: Anybody with a computer can use it or generate it. Forth: it's inconspicuous to do. The CC notice is like having the bibliography of a written work be inherent in the paper rather than being printed on top of it. That's just a cursory list.

And how about music? I think that all of the reasons I mentioned above could easily be applied to music as well. So why don't we do it? Why is software considered to be something that should belong to everyone and music should belong to those that pay? Is software more "needed"? I think that those who argue that music is more of a luxury commodity than software need to look closer. Song and music has been part of human culture from the very beginning. I'd argue that we need it more than we need software, but that its digital forms are on par with software in terms of "need." Artists and record companies just need to relax a little.

One reason that they can't relax, however, is that there is no equivalent way of citing sources the way we can with software. To re-use some code, the CC blip is already there. You use it and that's it. I think we could use a similar system for music. You just have the original files tagged, and then when you generate music, or any other virtual media using that source, it propagates the tag and you can tack on your own. Done. Easy. Imagine the day when school paper bibliographies are as easy as this.

Well, what if you make a "hard copy" of the media? What, you going to print out that eBook and sell it? Don't think so. And your remixed song? Umb, CD's are still digital, so burning it isn't a problem. You'd have to play it out and re-record it to get rid of the tag, probably decreasing the quality of the piece in the process. Or you could perform it live, in which case I think you should have all the rights to it, even if you're performing another person's work. It's only if you try to sell the results that it'd get hairy.

Digital media should all be CC'ed in my opinion. People are going remix song and frankenstein other digital media for personal use anyway, so why not encourage them, so long as they can't sell the result? Oh wait, people want to be paid for their media. That's right. Well, people will buy your merchandise, tickets to your show, and they'll still buy your music, even if you release it under CC. Why? Because they'll like you and want to support you.

berkeley flowers

Some photos I've taken recently of dem Berkeley flowers.
(click photo for Picasa album)

making money with colored pencils

Last week I stumbled upon an online article highlighting Jennifer Maestre. Some of the article's images are poor quality, but the portfolio on her website is beautiful. Inspired by sea urchins, she sharpens colored pencils and threads them with wire to create prickly but organic forms. I wish I could earn $5k for making art out of colored pencils.

integrated art

I really love Jan Vormann's artwork. This art is of the kind that is truly alive in the world, that makes us love and appreciate things we see. It transforms the mundane into something beautiful, or brings our attention to the beauty that already exists. I also just really like Lego building blocks.

Browsing the aforementioned website reminded me of some works I've seen in Emeryville, Signs of the Times. A thought-provoking series forged from the pedestrian. Ba-dum-ch!

miniature time lapse

I stumbled upon some time lapse videos of a peculiar sort. First, I found this video, for which my thought process was something along the lines of "Oh! Time-lapse! I love time lapse! It looks so miniature...wait a minute....okay that helicopter is totally just a toy. I wonder how they did the ocean, maybe a comp of with a real time lapse?" Then I realized that the scenes were just way too crazy complicated to be stop motion. Instead, this was done with tilt shift miniature faking.

I found Keith Loutit's Vimeo page with a whole slew of these videos--time lapses that look like miniature stop motion animation. Pretty incredible. Everything looks miniature, from the vehicles to the people, but it's all real, as he says. Amazing.

sticks but not stones

I've been taking an art class on nests and nestmaking. As to be expected, we covered a fair amount of Patrick Dougherty's work. These sculptures are are incredibly impressive and inspiring to me. I want to go live in one.
My biggest question is: Where does he get all the willow branches to make his sculptures? I presume they aren't all willow, but with so much material going into these structures, it must take a small logistic miracle every time one goes up.
I think that one of the things I like best about his work is that it photographs so well. The image in this post make it look like those giant tree-sized structures are almost miniature. I wonder if any of the beauty would be lost in real life. I doubt it, but I could potentially see how a rough structure would be less impressive close up.

We Are Burma

Just a shout-out for the We Are Burma exhibition at the Leila Gallary at Cafe Leila. It's up until July 4th, so go see it if you can!

particularization

A while back, when I was at a ceramics supply store, I picked up an art show opening card that caught my eye. The artist was Hasley Chait, and the card accompanied me as a beautiful bookmark all through Gaiman's American Gods, which is a work of art in itself.

Chait's work got my attention mostly because it looked a lot like my own doodling--very detailed with precise lines. And there are similar subjects: a silhouetted bird, a mesh of irregular boxes, organic forms that spore and evolve into other things on the page. But I also feel like I can take a lot out of the pieces, as long as I take care to keep my work mine.

this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence

At some point in college, when I was flying in and out of Philly frequently, I spotted an exhibit at the airport by Lindsay Feuer. Usually I walk by airport exhibits with glance or two, or if I have time, meander around them. Feuer's work stopped me in my tracks and got my nose against the glass for about twenty minutes.

Her work is incredibly detailed and precise. She describes herself as creating hybrids of biological ambiguity, sculptures that look born rather than made. To see a display of her art is like looking on an alien terrain. I think she uses some casts to achieve some of the detail, but there is an amazing art to putting the pieces together in keeping with the detail of the casts and in a way that makes the sculpture look alive.

Feuer works in porcelain (my favorite), so she can achieve amazing precision with skin-like translucency. The surfaces are unglazed and can be smooth or finely textured.

touch wood

Pamela Blotner is the amazing instructor for a figure sculpture class that I'm taking. She works in all sorts of mediums: wood, felt, and clay, to name a few.

Below is a piece called Baba Yaga, and for those that know my penchant for Russian folk tales, this strikes a happy chord. For those who aren't familiar with Baba Yaga, she is a witch figure who sweeps away her tracks with a birch broom. I love the varying complexity and the use of a human-like hand to give the work a little bit of symbolism without hitting the viewer over the head.

In addition to liking her art, I really like Pamela's teaching style. After working for a while, she gives each artist a chance to explain what they do or don't like about their own work, and then she and others can comment. It's a very positive experience and I still learn a lot.