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Posts Tagged ‘artist’

Art the Tide Will Wash Away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 1, 2014| 2 Comments »

Photo and Art: Andrés Amador

Much obliged to Paul for posting about this sand-painting artist on Facebook.

Andrés Amador, of San Francisco, creates lovely designs with a rake. He maintains that his work is “more about the process and less about the result.”

The website Viral Nova explains that Amador “uses a rope as a guide so that he can make the geometric patterns. … By raking up the wet sand at low tide, he is able to make contrasting sand colors.”

And he apparently takes orders — for marriage proposals (“Love Letters in the Sand”?) and even for corporate team-building exercises.

If I lived in San Francisco, I might ask Amador to create a message about something — maybe peace or kindness or helping the homeless. Some year, a sand painting could be my donation to the San Francisco-based Homeless Prenatal Program, an outstanding organization that Suzanne told me about.

Check out the collection of Amador’s other works is at Viral Nova, a site that bears watching.

Photo and Art: Andrés Amador
I caught my breath when I saw the inevitable happening to this painting. With sand art, it seems that “Ars longa, vita brevis” becomes “Memoria longa, ars brevis.”

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Swedish Artist, 1882-1918

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Photo of John Bauer: Wikimedia Commons

When I was poking around the web for art to illustrate my post Iceland Has Elves, I found a lovely picture by John Bauer.

I didn’t know anything about him. But Stuga40 wrote in the comments that he was Swedish. She knew where he had lived before his untimely death in 1918 and said she grew up on his fairy stories.

I decided I wanted to know more.

Wikipedia says John Bauer is “best known for his illustrations of Bland tomtar och troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls). Princess Tuvstarr and the Fishpond  [is] perhaps Bauer’s most notable work. …

“Bauer’s early work was influenced to a large extent by Albert Engström and Carl Larsson, two contemporaries and influential painters. Bauer’s first major work was commissioned in 1904, when he was asked to illustrate a book on Lappland. It was not until 1907 that he would become known for his illustrations of Bland tomtar och troll, the yearly fairy tale book.”

A contemporary story collection called Swedish Folk Tales uses Bauer’s illustrations and is available here. Also, someone posted a bunch of his illustrations on Pinterest, including a sweet Santa Lucia.

John Bauer art showing a boy and a troll: Wikimedia Commons

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Iceland Has Elves

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2013| 7 Comments »

Jenna Gottlieb of the Associated Press has a great story about elves.

“In this land of fire and ice,” she writes, “where the fog-shrouded lava fields offer a spooky landscape in which anything might lurk, stories abound of the ‘hidden folk’ – thousands of elves, making their homes in Iceland’s wilderness.

“So perhaps it was only a matter of time before 21st-century elves got political representation.

“Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from to the tip of the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer. They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church. …

“It’s not the first time issues about ‘Huldufolk,’ Icelandic for “hidden folk,” have affected planning decisions. They occur so often that the road and coastal administration has come up with a stock media response for elf inquiries, which states in part that ‘issues have been settled by delaying the construction project at a certain point while the elves living there have supposedly moved on.’ …

“Terry Gunnell, a folklore professor at the University of Iceland, said he was not surprised by the wide acceptance of the possibility of elves.

” ‘This is a land where your house can be destroyed by something you can’t see (earthquakes), where the wind can knock you off your feet, where the smell of sulfur from your taps tells you there is invisible fire not far below your feet, where the northern lights make the sky the biggest television screen in the world, and where hot springs and glaciers “talk,” ‘ Gunnell said.

” ‘In short, everyone is aware that the land is alive, and one can say that the stories of hidden people and the need to work carefully with them reflects an understanding that the land demands respect.’ ”

More.

John Bauer 1913 illustration found at nordicculturespot.blogspot.com

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Classic Poems Meet Graphic Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2013| 2 Comments »

I’m adding Julian Peters to the blog roll on your right. He’s a genius. A graphic artist from Canada who has chosen to illustrate some of the greatest poems ever. At least, some of my favorites.

Matthew Gilbert did a spread about Peters and his work on T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” for the Boston Globe. Illustrations that could break your heart. I am in Matthew Gilbert’s debt for this gift of happy-sad. Read his essay, here.

Below are a few frames from Peters’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” by Keats, a poem I can’t read without hearing my father’s voice choke up on my cassette tape.

Go to Peters’s website, here, and luxuriate.  

Art: Julian Peters

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Steel Sculptures at Arts Center

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The other day I was walking past the Emerson Umbrella and saw some new sculptures  on the lawn. I thought one, the graceful bent metal below, looked like two people dancing.

Geoff Edgers of the Boston Globe came to town to watch the installation and interview the sculptor, David Stromeyer.

“Stromeyer, a Marblehead native who splits his time between Vermont and Texas, has had his work shown at, among others, the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and the University of Vermont’s Robert Hull Fleming Museum, in Burlington. Stromeyer also has a connection to Concord. His sister-in-law, Mimsey Stromeyer, is a painter and mixed-media artist who is one of 54 artists renting space at Emerson Umbrella. …

“On the first day of installation, in the rain, Stromeyer and crew unloaded the steel pieces. The first challenge was lifting the heavy steel pieces over a series of wires on the site. On the second day, with the sun out, the artist worked on moving those pieces into place and mounting them properly. …

“He takes pride in the fact that he creates his art, from the twisting of the metal to the sandblasting and painting.

“ ‘It sounds really simple, but you don’t grab one end and turn it in the way you intuitively might think,’ he said. “[Each piece has] to be built incrementally, every inch, bending it in multiple directions at once. I spent two months building jigs for the hydraulic press to create those forms. And each twist is different.” More.

I’ve known Mimsey West (her professional name) for 30 years. One of her sons was in school with John. I love her art, especially some slightly abstract watercolors she did years ago of sheep in Wales.

A couple times a year the Umbrella artists hold open studios, and it really is a treat to go — lots of art available for one-of-a-kind holiday gifts.

waltz-of-the-sculptures

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Toronto: Ai Weiwei’s Nighttime Magic

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2013| 2 Comments »

Someone tweeted this today, and I thought you would like it.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has created a nighttime art installation made of bicycles all lit up.

On October 5, says Alice at the website My Modern Met, “Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei presented a new version of his incredible Forever Bicycles installation. As the centerpiece of this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the all-night contemporary art event that takes over city streets, 3,144 bicycles, the most Weiwei has used of this work to date, were stacked 100 feet in length and 30 feet in height and depth in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. This was the first time the installation has been displayed in an open air, public space. Since this was a night-time festival, it was spectacularly lit up with pink and blue lights.”

Check My Modern Met for a stunning array of photos, here.

Photo: http://www.mymodernmet.com

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Tree Stump Breeds Wildlife Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2013| 3 Comments »

This was posted at an Arlington blog last May, but I just saw the sculpture it refers to.

“You are invited to watch the ladybugs for the Waldo Park Tree Sculpture being made right before your eyes … Work by artists has already begun to transform a tall tree stump on the hill in Waldo Park … into multimedia sculpture that features local birds, animals and insects. The Friends of Waldo Park are holding two community participation days as this work is created. …

“Watch the metal-smiths at work as they cast aluminum ladybugs to be bolted onto the tree sculpture. Stop by for however long you’d like to see how metal-casting is done!” More.

Note the metal ladybugs crawling up the trunk, the bunnies peeking out from inside, and the hawk on top.

carved-hawk-and-metal-bus

bug-close-up

rabbit-in-tree-waldo-park

hawk-carved-from-dead-tree

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New Dewey Square Mural

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Remember the new Dewey Square mural I blogged about recently, here?

The Boston Globe has a brief update for you, but their picture is blocked by a cherry picker. As soon as the Greenway moved the heavy equipment, I shot my own picture.

Be watching for more on Dewey Square. I have blogged about the two months that Occupy Boston camped there. I have blogged about the Greenway’s teaching garden alongside the Big Dig exit and about the farmers market that sets up Tuesdays and Thursdays. Soon I will show pictures of the pianos that arrived today — with people playing them, I hope.

Dewey-Square-mural-Sept-2013

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Interactive Street Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2013| 4 Comments »

Candy creates interactive street art. Her “Before I Die” wall garnered a lot of attention — and contributors. Folks wanted more.

So she decided to create a website explaining in detail how others could replicate the wall.

Here she tells how it all started: “It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget what really matters to you. After I lost someone I loved very much, I thought about death a lot. This helped clarify my life, the people I want to be with, and the things I want to do, but I struggled to maintain perspective. I wondered if other people felt the same way. So with help from old and new friends, I painted the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint and stenciled it with a grid of the sentence “Before I die I want to _______.” Anyone walking by could pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space.

“It was an experiment and I didn’t know what to expect. By the next day, the wall was bursting with handwritten responses and it kept growing: Before I die I want to… sing for millions, hold her one more time, eat a salad with an alien, see my daughter graduate, abandon all insecurities, plant a tree, straddle the International Date Line, be completely myself…  People’s responses made me laugh out loud and they made me tear up. They consoled me during my toughest times. I understood my neighbors in new and enlightening ways.”

Candy’s how-to page reads, in part, “Once you’ve created a wall, you can share your wall here by creating a mini-site! A mini-site is a page where you can post photos and responses and document the story of your wall. It’s super easy to use, absolutely free, and no technical skills are required. Visit the Budapest mini-site to see an example.”

Everything you need if you’re going to create a “Before I Die” wall is here.

Photo: Before I Die

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Micro Museum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Cultural institutions are getting smaller. And more local.

We wrote about a library in a phone booth here and the Little Free Library here. You can see fully realized short films on YouTube and street art just around the corner.

Now folks in Somerville have launched a museum in a doorway. It’s The Mµseum.

From the website: “Judith Klausner (Co-Founder, Curator) is a Somerville MA artist with a love for small, intricate, and overlooked things. She first dreamed up the Mµseum in 2010, as a way to combine her love of  serious miniature art with her passion for making art accessible, and her conviction that New England arts institutions should show the work of New England artists. Three years (and a lot of planning) later, she is delighted to see it become a reality. … Contact Judith at judith@themicromuseum.com.

“Steve Pomeroy (Co-Founder, Engineer) is a programmer and a builder, both by profession and by nature. He’s largely responsible for the engineering behind the Mµseum, from the solar-powered miniature track lighting to the 3D-printed doric columns and laser-cut façade typography. He formally studied computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he discovered a love of communication protocols and formal computer languages. Contact Steve at steve@themicromuseum.com.”

WBUR had a story on the micro museum here.

There is something childlike and innocent about miniature enterprises. Didn’t you always think as a child you could take a few toys and tea cups and bags of flour and new sponges from around the house and set up a table on the street as an authentic store? You thought, Why not? Just do it.

I get a kick out of people just doing it.

Photo: Mara Brod, http://marabrod.com/fineart.html

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World’s Largest Solar Chandelier

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Did you like last week’s entry on stained glass windows that produce solar energy? Well, there’s more.

Kristine Lofgren writes at Inhabitat about an amazing solar chandelier.

“British artist Luke Jerram is known for his stunning art installations, which are often inspired by science. His latest project, unveiled [last year] at the Bristol and Bath Science Park, is the world’s largest solar chandelier! The 16.5-foot-tall chandelier is made of 665 glass bulbs that spin when exposed to light …

“The chandelier was created using glass radiometers rather than traditional light bulbs. As the sun hits each radiometer, it begins to turn, speeding up and slowing down as the light changes. The overall effect is a shimmering, gently moving piece of artwork. At night, it is lit up using electric light.” More.

By the way, Inhabitat also features a piece on a sculptural sound chamber that sings when the wind blows, here.

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More on Community-Supported Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

And speaking of payment systems, community-supported agriculture has been around for years and, more recently, community-supported art. I blogged about the approach here in 2011, when the Cambridge Center for the Arts embraced the concept.

The NY Times has written about it, too. Randy Kennedy lays out the principles: “For years, Barbara Johnstone, a professor of linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University [in Pittsburgh], bought shares in a C.S.A. — a community-supported agriculture program — and picked up her occasional bags of tubers or tomatoes or whatever the member farms were harvesting.

“Her farm shares eventually lapsed. (‘Too much kale,’ she said.) But on a recent summer evening, she showed up at a C.S.A. pickup location downtown and walked out carrying a brown paper bag filled with a completely different kind of produce. …

“ ‘It’s kind of like Christmas in the middle of July,’ said Ms. Johnstone, who had just gone through her bag to see what her $350 share had bought. The answer was a Surrealistic aluminum sculpture (of a pig’s jawbone, by William Kofmehl III), a print (a deadpan image appropriated from a lawn-care book, by Kim Beck) and a ceramic piece (partly about slavery, by Alexi Morrissey).

“Without even having to change the abbreviation, the C.S.A. idea has fully made the leap from agriculture to art. After the first program started four years ago in Minnesota … community-supported art programs are popping up all over the country …

“The art programs are designed to be self-supporting: Money from shares is used to pay the artists, who are usually chosen by a jury, to produce a small work in an edition of 50 or however many shares have been sold.”

Read all about it, here. Could be risky if you really don’t want a sculpture of a pig’s jawbone. But if you look at it as supporting the arts, you are likely to be satisfied with that side of things — and there’s always a chance you will love what you get or find its value increase.

Photo: Zoe Prinds-Flash
Drew Peterson’s prints and Liz Miller’s collages were among the art for members of this C.S.A., community-supported art, in Minnesota.

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Reverse Graffiti

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 24, 2013| 2 Comments »

Oh, boy, what a cool site! Modern Hieroglyphics started following me after my last Banksy post, so I clicked and took a look at his site. It’s all about street art. I especially loved this post on “reverse graffiti.”

Says Modern Hieroglyphics, “Paul Curtis (Moose) uses a powerwasher to remove dirt and grime off of walls, resulting in the creation of stunning images and patterns. The new art form is known as ‘reverse graffiti’ or ‘clean tagging,’ and is growing in popularity all over the world. This is the story of Moose. …

” ‘I became an artist by accident really, I was promoting music that my label was releasing by using reverse graffiti. I created it for that purpose, then I would do large pieces for fun or like a strange hobby, then people started to ask me to work for them… and the Internet happened and I became notorious. …

” ‘I discovered reverse graffiti one day when I was a teenager working as a dishwasher in a restaurant. I aimlessly wandered out of the kitchen one day to just be in the restaurant section. I’d cleaned everything I could in the kitchen, and felt like I owned the place. So when I saw a small mark on the wall, I reached for the my cloth and wiped it off, only to find that in the process of wiping the mark off the wall, I made a much bigger mark by cleaning the original mark with the cloth.

” ‘In those days people smoked freely in establishments and the wall was brown with nicotine. I had always thought that the wall was painted that color, and now this almost-white cleaning stripe was shining out of the wall like I had a tin of white spray paint and started to write. It was quite a shock for me, and I spent a long time trying to rectify what looked like damage but was only cleaning.

” ‘Years later, while gazing out of the window on a bus, I saw that in the road tunnels in Leeds, these clean marks appeared everywhere, drunks sliding home along the tiled walls left long streaks that looked like chrome in the car lights. Later on, I finally did something with that observation.’ ”

More samples of Moose’s art are at Modern Hieroglyphics.

Art by Paul Curtis (Moose), creator of reverse graffiti

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Solar Energy and Stained Glass

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

Artist Sarah Hall is killing two birds with one stone. Or solving two challenges with one creation. According to Canadian Public Broadcasting, Hall has made stained glass windows that can convert the sun’s rays into energy for the building the stained glass embellishes.

Emily Chung writes, “Lux Gloria by Sarah Hall, at the Cathedral of the Holy Family in Saskatoon, is currently being connected to Saskatoon Light & Power’s electrical distribution network, confirmed Jim Nakoneshny, facilities manager at the cathedral.

“The artwork, which consists of solar panels embedded in brightly coloured, hand-painted art glass, had just been reinstalled and upgraded after breaking and falling into the church last year.

“Once it is connected, the cathedral will be able to use the solar power produced by the art installation to offset its own power consumption from the regular grid, Nakoneshny added.

“According to Kevin Hudson, manager of metering and sustainable electricity for Saskatoon Light & Power, the solar panels are expected to produce about 2,500 kilowatt hours annually or about a third to a quarter of the 8,000 to 10,000 kilowatt hours consumed by a typical home in Saskatoon each year.”

Read all about it at the CBC, here.

Photo: Sarah Hall on Popsci.com website
Lux Gloria: The solar-stained glass installment features dichroic glass and will be connected to the electrical grid in Saskatoon, Saskatechewan.

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Artist of the Industrial World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Getty Popperfoto
L.S. Lowry, (pictured in 1957), the artist from Manchester, is the subject of a major new show at the Tate Britain gallery.

Some years ago when my husband was in England on business, he acquired a print of workers coming and going outside a factory. The original was by L.S. Lowry, whose paintings of industrial Britain turn out to be very popular in the UK.

Popularity, however, is not a ticket to being shown at the Tate Britain. Belatedly, Lowry will receive a retrospective in 2014.

Oliver Wainwright at the Daily Mail writes, “Clouds of smoke belch from forests of chimneys, while armies of spidery figures scuttle to and fro between narrow terrace houses and imposing factory gates.

“Crowds of fans shiver on the edge of a football field, a fist-fight breaks out, and barefoot children tease a stray cat on the street corner.

“These are the scenes depicted in the haunting paintings of L.S. Lowry who, more than any other artist, managed to capture the strange, bleak beauty of daily life in northern industrial towns.

“His dream-like images captured the popular imagination, adorning chocolate boxes and biscuit tins, tea towels and jigsaws.

“Yet they are scarcely to be found on the walls of our major national galleries. The Tate owns 23 of his works, but has only ever exhibited one on its walls in the past 20 years — and then only briefly. …

“Why has it taken so long?

” ‘He’s a victim of his own fan base,’ said Chris Stephens, Tate Britain’s Head of Displays. ‘What makes Lowry so popular is the same thing which stops him being the subject of serious critical attention. What attracts so many is a sort of sentimentality about him.’

“This is a strangely inverted piece of art world logic,” Wainwright comments, “where the popularity of an artist is seen as an obstacle to showing their work.”

If you’re an artist, be careful to stay off “chocolate boxes and biscuit tins, tea towels and jigsaws” — or wait to be discovered by art experts of a future generation.

More here and here.

 © The estate of L.S. Lowry
L.S. Lowry, Coming out of School, 1927

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