Category: art

East Bay Open Studios (or, What I’ll be Doing This Weekend)

This weekend is the second weekend of East Bay Open Studios, an event during which artists around the East Bay (as in, the region across the bay from San Francisco) open up their studios (or other exhibit spaces) to visitors. It’s a great chance to see a wide range of artists–over 400 artists participate.

My mother, whose fabulous mixed media artwork you see below, is exhibiting some of her recent work along with several other local artists in Oakland, CA. I’ll be keeping her company during the show. I’m really happy that I get to be in town for this show, as I tend to miss out on such things due to living 3000 miles away…


One of 49 images from my mother’s collection of 6”x6” pieces entitled Butterflies at Iguassu.

More information on the show can be found here.

curved (PhotoHunt)

This week’s PhotoHunt theme is “curved.” Curves are amply represented in my photo library, but what came to mind in particular were some sights we saw on our recent trip to Barcelona. Namely, works by Antoni Gaudí, an architect known for (among other things) an avoidance of using straight lines.

On our last full day in Barcelona, prompted by strong recommendations from azahar and Sally, we paid a visit to Casa Battló, a house full of plenty of curved lines. Windows, doors and even walls showed plenty of curves. This was my favorite photo I took there.

I’ll hopefully get around to posting more photos from that visit soon, as well as others from our trip to Spain. (I know, I know, I keep saying that.)

For other people throwing us some curves, stop by tnchick.

moo too

Before my other cow posts get too far behind me, I had another cow I wanted to post:
stone_cow

I painted this cow for a painting class I was taking a few years ago. The instructor had recently seen Cow Parade in Chicago, and was inspired to ask us all to paint cows one week.

This was one of the cows I painted. (I painted two others in very different styles, too. I used to sometimes go mad with the painting. I’d share them, too, but haven’t manage to track them down. Our house sometimes swallows things.)

Fork, spoon, or other?

As so often happens after I post a list, I was struck by an omission. I left a spoon off yesterday’s utensil list. A big spoon:

spoonbridge_and_cherry
Claes Oldenburg‘s Spoonbridge with Cherry sculpture, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It occured to me that where there is a spoon, there is likely also a fork. And sure enough, there exists at least one giant fork:
giant_fork
A giant fork sculpture by Jean-Pierre Zaugg and Georges Favre, stuck into Lake Leman in front of the Alimentarium (the Food Museum) in Vevey, Switzerland.

In case you would like a few more utensil-related tidbits to stick your fork into, I offer up a quiz. (First seen at raincoaster.)


You Are Chopsticks


People see you as exotic, unusual, and even a bit intimidating.
You are a difficult person to figure out.

In truth, you try to live a very simple life.
But most people are too frenzied to recognize the beauty of your simplicity.

(It would appear that I am actually two utensils, as chopsticks are generally not a single item. I suppose if I came up as a single chopstick it would mean that I am a rather dull instrument, largely useless except for clumsy poking and stabbing.)

photo credits: fork by µµ, and spoon by Mulad.

re-enter the dragon

I posted some pictures last night from a visit to Paris in the Summer of 2007. Several people were quite taken with the dragon sculpture, which was made of recycled materials.

These are the two photos of it that I posted yesterday:
The dragon. The claw of the dragon, showing the aluminum can scales.

The first of these prompted the flying mum to ask: “…why does the dragon have a big ball of fluff for a face?”

Ah. An excellent question. It was actually just my angle for that shot, which didn’t do the dragon’s face justice. In the sense that it didn’t actually show that the dragon had a face. But it did. Have a face, that is. The “big ball of fluff” was the dragon’s fire and smoke breath, made of plastic bags.

Here are a few more photos, some of which show the dragon’s face:

The dragon from afar.
The dragon from afar.
A closer crop of the dragon.
A closer crop of the dragon.
The dragon from the front.
The dragon from the front. (If you click on this one, you can see the picture at full size, so you can make out some more details.)
Another claw of the dragon, with vines growing over it.
Another claw of the dragon, with vines growing over it.

There’s also a nice shot of the dragon over at a post called A sunny afternoon in Paris at the “Jardin des Plantes”, which has some more photos of and info about the botanical gardens.

heart in my hands

figure12.png Happy Valentine’s Day. Or what’s left of it.¹ Well, today is a day most strongly associated with one symbol: the heart. Whether it’s heart-shaped boxes of cheap-ass waxy chocolate, chalky-tasting little candy hearts with messages, or the good old-fashioned construction paper heart cut-out, Valentine’s Day is an affair of the heart. Or at least the heart shape. Because let’s face it, the actual organ itself gets the short shrift. So this ThThTh list is for you, you hard-working, blood-pumping bundle-o-muscles.

A list for the Heart

  • “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe. The sound of his victim’s beating heart haunts a murderer. (There’s a Simpsons episode that features a diarama of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Someone out there has also made a Tell-Tale Heart scene Legos.)
  • Angel Heart (1987). This movie has a bit about someone eating a human heart.
  • The episode “Hush,” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the one where everyone loses their voice. The villains in this one steal people’s voices in order that they may accomplish their goal of collecting 7 human hearts without the inconvenience of screaming victims.
  • There’s also the famous scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) in which a man rips the still-beating heart out of another man’s chest as part of a sacrificial ritual.
  • Aztec sacrifices: check out the Wiki bit (and do note the “[citation needed]” bit. I really have know idea whether this is true.)

    The Aztec civilization used the heart as a sacrificial token during the sacrifice of a human being. The priest used a stone knife to cut into the thoracic cavity and remove the heart, upon which it would be placed on a stone altar as an offering to the gods. The greatest sacrifice under the reign of Montezuma involved the removal of the hearts of over 12,000 enemy soldiers.[citation needed]

  • Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas): a painting by Friday Kahlo with two versions of the artist with heart exposed.(Go have a look.)
  • Looking for something to impress the cephalopodophile in your life? Consider one of the lovely tentacled-heart images of Ben Lawson. (ht to raincoaster and MasterCowfish.)
  • Still want to give your true love the semi-traditional gift of candy? Why not consider the gummy heart, or the one-pound solid milk chocolate human heart?

    • —————-

    ¹ Here it is, almost 11:00, and I’ve been meaning to toss up a list all day. My plan, you see, was to post something heart-related. John suggests that I should prioritize sleep over posting a list. Pah! I scoff at your well-reasoned suggestion. And anyhow, I’ve got most of the damn thing already outlined.

    image: The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Child’s Day, by Woods Hutchinson,

    Phoebe Lenore, abstract expressionist

    white_on_red21.jpg

    Untitled
    Phoebe Lenore, 2007
    White fingerpaint on red construction paper

    The art world is being taken by storm by the latest works of Phoebe Lenore, a young artist who has left an indelible mark on the hearts of her public, as well as on the walls of her living room.

    The artist follows in the footsteps of the abstract expressionists, and her bold and spontaneous works have been compared to those of such venerable greats as Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell.

    When asked about her inspiration for her most recent work of art, the artist replied simply “moo.” It is left up to us to decide whether she was referring to the moon, or to the cows which live nearby her Massachusetts home. This ambiguity is characteristic of both the artist’s subject matter, and her conversational style. The viewer (or listener) is asked to interpret possible meanings, and is invited to respond based on intuition, emotion and past experience.

    While the artist is new to the medium of paint, she has long been experimenting in other media. Her earliest works included avant-garde three-dimensional works in sweet potato and pureed petits pois, large installations of toys and found objects, as well as rawly emotional performance art pieces. The works for which she is best known are undoubtedly those in a somewhat more traditional medium: the drawings in her series of Crayola on newsprint. This series expresses the gauntlet of human emotions, from the joy of seeing doggies, to the angst of approaching naptime. Her choice of color and line are often vivid and playful, reflecting an almost childlike naïveté. Other drawings reflect a starkness revealing the artist’s capacity for solitary introspection and her metaphysical musings.

    excitement.jpg     swoop_and_dots.jpg

    forest.jpg     green_stark.jpg

    Above: Selections of Phoebe Lenore’s famed series of crayon on newsprint drawings.
    Below: The artist has branched out, experimenting with the Crayola medium on a three-dimensional wood surface.

    crayon_on_wood.jpg     table.jpg
    ———————–

    This post is being displayed as part of this week’s Monday Mission, an exhibit of art critques of up-and-coming young artists.

    my mom is cooler than your mom

    Seriously, my mother is amazing. I’ve been meaning to write about my mother for a while. I’ve been working on a post, but somehow, I haven’t quite been able to finish it yet. And then I thought, “hey, I’ll post something for Mother’s Day.” But then it was a hectic weekend. And then I thought, “hey, I can post any time I want.” Because there’s never a wrong time to say something nice about your mother. Especially my mother. Because, as I mentioned, she is one cool individual.

    For one thing, my mother is an artist. How cool is that? Check this out:

    blue trees

    Look, a picture:

    blue_trees.jpg

    This is a painting I did a few years back. (All of the paintings I’ve done were a few years back. It’s been a while since I’ve painted.) I was experimenting with cubism, and using a limited palette. I should probably get a better photo of it at some point. But there it is.

    Really, I’m just very tired today. In spite of the extremely rare occurrence of having gone to bed before midnight for the last two nights, I’m still just wiped out. I should nap, but have appointments today, plus more of that work-nuisance stuff to do. So I’m not feeling terribly writey today. So, instead I say: “Look, a picture.”