Brads ART 101 Blog

I would like to discuss my overall experience inside Second Life.  I was first introduced to Second Life my sophomore year of college inside one of my education classes.  We used the program to communicate with people with disabilities around the world.  It was pretty crazy when I first heard about it, I thought why would people want to have a second life.  I do understand now, that it is very important and is a great social opportunity for some people.  This past spring I had the opportunity to do a little bit of architecture inside Second Life.  I was able to partially design my professors office for the Technology Education program at Bowling Green.  Finally it was awesome this summer to be able to use Second Life interactively to complete an online class.

Second Life this summer was really cool to use and sometimes was rather difficult given the situation I was in.  Currently I am living on Fort Carson Army Base which has a ridiculous amount of restrictions, and one of those has to deal with bandwidth and the availability of it.  On base their is no wireless that is free and none of the computer will allow you to access Second Life.  But I think I have been able to manage alright.  The Internet was definitely the most difficult part for myself, and I have also had a little bit of trouble with my availability due to the two hour time difference. 

Second Life is a great opportunity for any individual to learn about different cultures, art, and design.  Before this class I had never had the opportunity to design my own character, or upload my own images inside Second Life.  Also it was great to be able to work with others inside Second Life and interact as much as possible making it as close to real life as possible.  Overall it was a very good experience, and I hope this class continues in this fashion.

I would like to talk a little bit about architecture and one of the most influential architects of the 20^th century.  Architecture is defined as the art and science of designing and erecting buildings.  Architecture and design is very much an art, and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright was very much influenced by art.  In most of his buildings he also designed the interior everything from the furniture to the stained glass.  Wright was born in 1867 and did not actually get recognized as an influential architect until early in the 20^th century. 

Wright promoted Organic architecture, which is stated as “More than green, beyond individual, Organic Architecture describes a way of thinking about design that transcends the common, everyday buildings around us. (organicarchitect.com)  He was also a leader of the prairie school movement which is “usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, solid construction, craftsmanship, and discipline in the use of ornament. Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the native prairie landscape.”  (wikipedia.com) He also developed the concept the usonian home which is Wrights vision of the landscape of the United States and how all architecture, and cities should be created.  Wright designed approximately 50 middle income family usonian structures.  Wright designed over 1,000 projects that resulted in over 500 completed projects.  Frank Lloyd Wright was finally recognized in 1991 by the American Architect Institute as the greatest American architect of all time.

The following are a few images of some of his projects and a little bit about each project.

The Falling Water house was designed in 1934 for Edgar J. Kauffman an American business man.  The House was built partially on a water fall, and is considered to be the best work of Wrights.  In 1996 it was listed as a National Historic Landmark.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened its doors in October of 1959, and is one of the best know museums in New York, and it was also designed by Wright.  What makes this museum so interesting is most of the walls are rounded with very few being flat.  This makes it very difficult to hang artwork.  It is also very little natural light which means a lot of artificial light must be used.

So this past week for project number four I contacted a local artist named Stacey Bushey.  I contacted her through email and the following is a couple questions that I had asked her and her responses.
What kind of style or genre would you consider your art to be?
I consider my style to be a combination of realism and contemporary. I like my work to look like something that people would recognize right away and be able to relate to it, which would be the realism aspect. I also like to put a little twist on the image, so when people look at it they say “why is it angled like that?” or “I think I know what this is, but I’m not exactly sure”, thoughts that would provoke a more contemporary feeling.

What do you use to create your artwork?
I am currently considering myself to be a dry point printmaker. I mostly use clear plexi glass, a stainless steel needle/pen tool, oil based ink, cheesecloth, and paper.  I also am dabbling in linoleum and wood prints.

Have you ever been able to sell a piece of your art?
Up until six months ago, I was a landscape painter (in oils), and I actually had an exhibition in January where I was able to sell three paintings. I also draw tattoo ideas for people and I usually sell them for ten dollars a drawing (depending how detailed), I currently have about six of my images on skin.

Are you inspired by any artists, and if yes who?
Of course!  Several artists inspire me and it becomes hard to keep track of names and styles. I will say that I am a huge fan of Dana Hawk.  She is an oil painter from Colorado. She has this great style that I dream of being able to do someday.

What is unique about own artwork?
I believe that all artwork is unique.  It is easy to copy a piece and make it look identical, but when the time is taken to put creative thought and effort into a piece, then the result will always be truly unique.  As for my work at the moment, I am making prints of a series of different animals, which is not unique, but I am using images and adding elements of humor and quirkiness to them that I believe makes them entirely unique.
The following is an image that she created.  Its an image of a dog shaking water off its fur with a tennis ball in between its feet.

A Successful Return
Dry Point Print on Plexi Glass
June 2009
Stacey Bushey

Original Image – Canyon de Chelly – Ansel Adams

Original Image – Dark Canyon

Photoshop Edited Version

Version Before Critique

Final Version

This artwork that I was influenced by is a photography piece that was taken by Ansel Adams in 1942 in Northern Arizona at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This photograph is black and white as most of his photos were. In 1941 the National Park Service commissioned Adams to create a photo mural for the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. The theme was to be nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks. The project was halted because of World War II and never resumed.  This photo mural included the photo of Canyon de Chelly National Monument, this is the reason the photograph was taken.

Ansel Adams was a photographer, and an environmentalist most of his work was done for the purpose of pleasure, and because most of the places he was photographing had never been photographed before. He was also an Outdoor Enthusiast that was well involved with the Sierra Club and many other organizations of his time. It is actually because of the Sierra Club that most of his work got recognized and published.

I chose this particular photograph of Canyon de Chilly because of the canyon.  The Canyons of the four corner region of the United States are such a beautiful and spectacular area, which has been relatively untouched by any modern society.  For my artwork I have chosen to take a photo of Dark Canyon in Southern Utah.  I chose the late-afternoon to get the best shadows inside the canyon and to not have to much glare from the sun.  I have edited the photo in Photoshop to bring out more color in the red rock, and also to add more contrast to the sky, that originally looked rather bland because of the clear sky of the day.  I have also added a title to the image with a gradient to bring out more contrast in the lettering.  Finally I added a poem by Edward Abby from Desert Solitaire.  Desert Solitaire is a book in general about the Southwest and the four corner region where both of these photos were taken at.  I feel that this poem brings out more meaning in the photograph and also adds to the spirit of the poem.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to check out Art21 which is a website hosted by the public broadcasting system that is geared to showcase artists of the 21st century.  One particular artist that caught my eye was Mary Heilmann.  On the homepage of Art21 there is photos of pieces of each artist’s artwork and her particular work caught my eye because of all the shapes and patterns that she uses in her artwork, here is an example.

All of Mary Heilmann’s work involves abstract paintings, ceramics, and designing furniture, and what makes her work really remarkable is that there is a back-story for every piece of artwork.  In her biography Art21 website they state that her artwork is “Imbued with recollections, stories spun from her imagination, and references to music, aesthetic influences, and dreams, her paintings are like meditations or icons.”  She also finds inspiration for her colors from TV cartoons, for example The Simpsons.  In recent years Heilmann has received numerous medals and grants including the Anonymous Was A Women Foundation Award in 2006.  This award is worth $25,000 and is given to women over the age of 30, and there is no application process, a committee must select you.  Her work is also showcased in many collections through out the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  You you can view some of her artwork that I have selected that is very intriguing to me.

So this week we have been working on a project based upon influential art in history.  I have chosen to work with some of Ansel Adams photography and work.  First off I would like to talk a little bit about Ansel Adams, and then exactly what I plan on doing for this project.

Ansel Adams was a photographer, and an enviromentalist most of his work was done for the purpose of pleasure, and because most of the places he was photographing had never been photographed before. He was also an Outdoor Enthusiast that was well involved with the Sierra Club and many other organizations of his time.  It is actually because of the Sierra Club that most of his work got recognized and published.

I have chosen to do this project ton Ansel Adams because he was an amazing photographer that showed immense passion for the outdoors throughout his whole life.  He showed this passion for the outdoors through his very own lens every time he took a photograph.  In particular he loved the southwest, and the valley inside Yosemite National Park. 

I am choosing the  photograph of Canyon de Chilly (see below) because of my immense passion for the Canyons of the four corner region of the United States.  They are such a beautiful and spectacular area, which has been relatively untouched by any modern society.  There is also no other place in the world that is like the four corner region of the United States.  It’s a very spectacular place to travel through and a very peaceful, it has always brought rest and relaxation to me.  The canyons are where I have come to feel at home.

I am currently spending sometime this weekend in Southern Utah, and I have been taking some photos, and in particular Dark Canyon.  I would like to comeback and edit this photo in Photoshop and possibly bring out the colors in the image or change it to black and white and play with gradients inside the photograph.  Once done with this I will  be adding this particular quote/poem into the image.  This poem I feel will bring out more meaning in the photograph and will add to the spirit of the poem.

“How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth
With its swirling vaporous atmosphere,
Its flowing and frozen climbing creatures,
The croaking things with wings that hang on rocks
And soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas…
How utterly rich and wild…
Yet some among us have the nerve,
The insolence, the brass, the gal!
To whine about limitations of our earthbound fate
and yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky
We are none of us good enough
For the world we have.”
Edward Abbey – Desert Solitaire

This past week I spent three full days on the Colrado River in Utah in the recreation area of Westwater Canyon, which is about an hour northeast of Moab, Utah. I am currently working for the Adventure Programs and Education, at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. This rafting trip was our annual staff trip for the program. Throughout the week we covered about 50 miles of river and hit some awesome class IV rapids in Westwater Canyon. It was a rather big trip that required a lot of preparation as you can see in the photos below. All and all we had 8 Oar Boats, 10 Kayaks, and Food/Drink for 25 people. It was a lot to carry down the river and strap on for three days. You can see photos of this trip below:

This past Thursday in class we completed an artist role play assignment in which we were pared up with one other person in the class and were required to research the artist and do a skit, some sort of dramatization to educate the rest of the class about our particular artist.  I chose to research Jeff Koons which is a modern American artist that has created giant reproductions of ordinary objects such as balloon animals.  Here is an image of one of his baloon animals in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2007.

This Roleplay assignment was a good oppertunity for myself to find out more about Secondlife and all that it can offer.  I was able to redesign my aviator to resemble Jeff Koons, that was a really cool to learn how to design your appearance inside Secondlife.  I was also able to explore the virtual world when shopping for clothes.

Finally with this project, I had the opportunity to work with a partner and her character was Georgia O’Keef which was an early American artist that challenged the boundaries of the modern American artistic styles.  She did many paintings that involved flowers, rocks, shells and animal bones.  These were sometimes very abstract images.  You can view our presentation below:

So for the rest of this week I have been working quite a lot. I have spent the past three days on the river raft guiding, and currently I am on the way to Westwater Canyon which is a portion of the Westwater River in Utah. This will be a four day staff trip, basically to celebrate the culmination of all the work we have done this summer. We work 60-70 hours a week and get paid for only 40, but it has been an awesome experience! So, that’s what I have been up to for the week, and I will be surte to post some photos and some video of our Westwater trip when I get back on Thursday.

In relation to Art 101 I would like to talk about a particular website that is a very unique community that enables users to upload, share, and comment on other forms of art. These forms of art can be anywhere from digital to photographic. This website is Deviant Art. I stumbled upon Deviant Art back in 2003 and have been an active member ever since. Personally I use Deviant Art in my every day life to gather stock photos for me design work that I am currently doing for the U.S. Army and MWR. I highly encourage for anyone reading this to check out the website and become a member. Here is a link: http://www.deviantart.com

Here is an image that I uploaded on my Deviant Art site last summer.

This is an image inside Black Canyon in Southern Utah, during my National Outdoor Leadership School Canyoneering Course.  It is a long exposure image with an F-Stop of 4.5 and exposure time of 30 seconds.  I took this image on my Nikon D40 with a 35-55mm lens.

This past Tuesday in class we visited a recreation of the Sistine Chapel, which is the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City.  Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512.  The ceiling of the chapel and the Last Judgment painting are believed to be Michelangelo’s best paintings throughout his life.  Through a little research I was able to find that Michelangelo resented the commission for his artwork, and believed his work only served the Pope’s need for grandeur.  Grandeur is a form of dignity.  Another interesting fact is that most of the paintings inside the Sistine Chapel were done with a technique and style called Fresco which consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a thin layer of wet, fresh, lime mortar, or plaster.

During the discussion of the Sistine Chapel and paintings inside, we were introduced to a few definitions that we would be required to understand and comprehend throughout this course.  I chose two definitions for the painting of the Resurrection of Christ.  These terms were Lighting and Asymmetrical Balance.  Lighting is the deliberate manipulation of light to increase emotional or visual impact through value.  You can see lighting in the image all around the body of Christ because he is the emphasis in the photo.
Asymmetrical Balance is a visual equilibrium achieved by adjusting such qualities as the scale and placement of elements in different parts of a composition.

When discussing in class about Asymmetrical Balance I was actually mistaken in the interpretation and it does not exist in the painting of the Resurrection of Christ.  A great example is found in the following photo of Johannes Vermeer called Young Women With A Water Jug.