Monday, August 31, 2009
Contemporary Cube Artist
Jasmin from Brisbane, Australia emailed me a little over a week ago after finding my sites come up in queries for cube art online. You can see HER work at the following Myspace account:
Friday, August 28, 2009
Cube Release: 08-27-09
Yesterday morning at 9:30 world traveler & high-school chum Milena left for continued sight-seeing in the company of one cube. I can see already that the trip will be amicable, judging from the mutual admiration seen here to the left.
Auf Wiedersehen
&
Viel Glück.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Broadway Bicycle School Opening
Jen Pipp and Brittany Gravely at the Broadway Bicycle School Door 3 Gallery from 8-9pm this evening!
Friday, August 21, 2009
Three Announcements.
1) New portrait sketches in my Picasa album Sketchbook.
2) Two new portraits in my Picasa album Portraits.
3) Kate Smart is now being accompanied on her travels by one little cube. Good luck to them both. Hindsight being what it is, I should start taking photos of the cubes before I send them onward and upward ... stay tuned for the next cube release.
2) Two new portraits in my Picasa album Portraits.
3) Kate Smart is now being accompanied on her travels by one little cube. Good luck to them both. Hindsight being what it is, I should start taking photos of the cubes before I send them onward and upward ... stay tuned for the next cube release.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
NY Guggenheim: Top Floor
This is my final posting about the museums I visited in NY. Today’s area of focus spotlights the top floor of the Guggenheim. While I recognize that there were other works in the space, such as a full spiral of Wright’s drawings, the most captivating show I experienced was that of some very young artists. As one featured participant put it, “It’s an artist’s job to think about amazing things, then to draw the things they were thinking about.” The children in the Guggenheim’s LTA (Learning Through Art) residency program, including the second grader the G. recorded that quote from, did just that.
Here is a partial list of projects I would like to work with this year in a classroom context:
1) Lucid landscapes.
This could be a one-afternoon project in answer to, “what should I draw?”
2) Collage
Better start collecting magazines now – can’t wait to work with this great cutting-skills builder and fun imagination utilizing activity.
3) Things Worth Collecting
A project that seemed focused around appreciating museums and making the concept behind museums current and interesting. The teachers had the students create the following:
a) a desktop displays of a small collection (like bottle caps or toys)
b) a collage of or about the collection
c) a group collection
d) notebooks containing research about other collections (What do the signs and displays look like? Who is able to see the work? How are they allowed interact with the work?)
e) a group brainstorm for a final presentation
f) a group presentation of the class collection!
4) Symbols
Designed by each student and printed from styrofoam. As a continuation: imagery, symbolic and/or abstract, for what non-physical concepts look like (like pride). As an adaptation on styrofoam prints: COLLOGRAPHING. I always forget about this great medium, and reliably become excited when I see it in action.
5) Bridges
First the students looked at city bridges, drew them, thought about them. Then, using the bridges as metaphors, they collaged about the path and bridges to their individual goals.
6) Community Portraits.
7) Posters
This would be a project about design, color, and meaning (one they chose was the topic, “what are you willing to stand up for? ... another topic used in a separate project but useful for posters was, “what makes people get along?”).
If you’ve read through this list, you’ll notice that most of these will involve a physical craft coupled with a lot of serious brainstorming and introspective journaling. My special challenge: convince the kids they want to write. Also, find them sketchbooks and convince them to think visually in those sketchbooks. Game On.
Thanks Guggenheim.
Here is a partial list of projects I would like to work with this year in a classroom context:
1) Lucid landscapes.
This could be a one-afternoon project in answer to, “what should I draw?”
2) Collage
Better start collecting magazines now – can’t wait to work with this great cutting-skills builder and fun imagination utilizing activity.
3) Things Worth Collecting
A project that seemed focused around appreciating museums and making the concept behind museums current and interesting. The teachers had the students create the following:
a) a desktop displays of a small collection (like bottle caps or toys)
b) a collage of or about the collection
c) a group collection
d) notebooks containing research about other collections (What do the signs and displays look like? Who is able to see the work? How are they allowed interact with the work?)
e) a group brainstorm for a final presentation
f) a group presentation of the class collection!
4) Symbols
Designed by each student and printed from styrofoam. As a continuation: imagery, symbolic and/or abstract, for what non-physical concepts look like (like pride). As an adaptation on styrofoam prints: COLLOGRAPHING. I always forget about this great medium, and reliably become excited when I see it in action.
5) Bridges
First the students looked at city bridges, drew them, thought about them. Then, using the bridges as metaphors, they collaged about the path and bridges to their individual goals.
6) Community Portraits.
7) Posters
This would be a project about design, color, and meaning (one they chose was the topic, “what are you willing to stand up for? ... another topic used in a separate project but useful for posters was, “what makes people get along?”).
If you’ve read through this list, you’ll notice that most of these will involve a physical craft coupled with a lot of serious brainstorming and introspective journaling. My special challenge: convince the kids they want to write. Also, find them sketchbooks and convince them to think visually in those sketchbooks. Game On.
Thanks Guggenheim.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
NYC MoMA: Tall Building, Many Things.
NYC 01: MoMA
Being greeted by Tacita Dean’s ghostly sailing vessel diptych was a great start to a long afternoon at the NY MoMA. Since I like to start from the top, the look down onto both her work and the Song Dong installation, “Waste Not,” made me feel a little anxious. Song Dong's piece made me want to leave and purge my apartment of even more items from my already shrinking collection. Ironic, considering any trash leaving my apartment may end up in someone else’s house as part of a collection later shown in an installation ... even so, I can’t bring myself to hold onto that much material to show as a piece on the floor of a museum. A good counter installation might be to put a purse and single backpack in the middle of a gallery and title it, “Self-contained.” Would that be a luxury of the west? I don’t think so, not completely.
Moving on.
I saw eager museum-go-ers being measured by a neatly-dressed man for Roman Ondak’s Performance 4. One visitor would go up to the wall of a room whose walls are covered with a reverse milky-way. The man would hold his hand over his or her head, he stopped in an expressionless pose with the grinning participant, then continued to record the visitor’s height with a mark, name, and date on the wall. I’d love to see a really large door-frame for this project.
That performance was preceded by high-ceilinged halls of small treats. The collection of contemporary drawings from the Judith Rothschild Foundation, "Compass in Hand," was filled with classic examples of artists like Lewitt and Marden.
The design exhibits, "Rough Cut: Design Takes a Sharp Edge" and "What was good design? MoMA's message 1944-56" also held reminders of enduring shapes created with very specific jobs in mind. The bike rack and the enclosed ball-bearing system particularly caught my pedalophilic eye.
Other names of note:
Shahzia Sikander - Beautiful watercolor & gouache drawings packed with symbols. Her combination of precisely rendered details with open areas of free-flowing, washy color caught my attention.
Andre Derain - Go team Fauv.
Steven Levine - Ribbon-bike rack designer!
Frantisek Kupka - Though not taught about him, seeing a few of his works on display will have me looking into his collection for his varied yet always carefully colored approaches to abstraction and figures.
Being greeted by Tacita Dean’s ghostly sailing vessel diptych was a great start to a long afternoon at the NY MoMA. Since I like to start from the top, the look down onto both her work and the Song Dong installation, “Waste Not,” made me feel a little anxious. Song Dong's piece made me want to leave and purge my apartment of even more items from my already shrinking collection. Ironic, considering any trash leaving my apartment may end up in someone else’s house as part of a collection later shown in an installation ... even so, I can’t bring myself to hold onto that much material to show as a piece on the floor of a museum. A good counter installation might be to put a purse and single backpack in the middle of a gallery and title it, “Self-contained.” Would that be a luxury of the west? I don’t think so, not completely.
Moving on.
I saw eager museum-go-ers being measured by a neatly-dressed man for Roman Ondak’s Performance 4. One visitor would go up to the wall of a room whose walls are covered with a reverse milky-way. The man would hold his hand over his or her head, he stopped in an expressionless pose with the grinning participant, then continued to record the visitor’s height with a mark, name, and date on the wall. I’d love to see a really large door-frame for this project.
That performance was preceded by high-ceilinged halls of small treats. The collection of contemporary drawings from the Judith Rothschild Foundation, "Compass in Hand," was filled with classic examples of artists like Lewitt and Marden.
The design exhibits, "Rough Cut: Design Takes a Sharp Edge" and "What was good design? MoMA's message 1944-56" also held reminders of enduring shapes created with very specific jobs in mind. The bike rack and the enclosed ball-bearing system particularly caught my pedalophilic eye.
Other names of note:
Shahzia Sikander - Beautiful watercolor & gouache drawings packed with symbols. Her combination of precisely rendered details with open areas of free-flowing, washy color caught my attention.
Andre Derain - Go team Fauv.
Steven Levine - Ribbon-bike rack designer!
Frantisek Kupka - Though not taught about him, seeing a few of his works on display will have me looking into his collection for his varied yet always carefully colored approaches to abstraction and figures.
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