Art Related Things I’ve Done to Improve Myself - and indirectly my Art - This Past Week

1. I saw The Tree of Life, winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, staring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. Set in the 1950’s and 2000’s it is the somewhat nonlinear story of the relations between the members of one family, in particular one of three brothers, the universe, and God. Though a tall order, the producers, Pitt among them, writer and director, Terrence Malick, and actors have achieved what is the most beautiful film I’ve seen in 35 years.

Moshe Safdie, Arts and Science Museum, Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort (June 23, 2010)

2. I Looked up architect Moshe Safdie, famous for his Habitat 1967 in Quebec, Canada, and the brand “spandie” new Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort in Singapore among a zillion other projects. He is an architect who grew out of the mid 20th century boxy building culture into stacking the boxes, and finally into a Metamodern designer of more organic-like green spaces for Twenty-first Century mega-cities.* *1

Moshe Safdie, United States INstitute of Peace, Wahington D.C. 

3. I Discovered that the United States has an Institute of Peace because I looked up Moshe Safdie. The magnificent Safdie designed Headquarters building is in Washington, D.C. Who would have thought that with all the wars we’ve fought during the past 50 years - the most recent of which we started - that we would actually have an Institute of Peace? Perhaps despite our crazed politics our government manages to do some things correctly. However, our current illustrious congress voted to cut all spending to the Institute. Of course, peace - who needs it or wants it!!! (I refrain from further derogatory reference to our AUGUST congress.)*2

John's Graphite Photorealism (closeup section) "Norma Jeane" (1979)

4. Had a brain-fart in which I began to meld some of the old 1970’s to 80’s Photorealist techniques with my current more organic mark making pastel techniques. These would include, blurry depth of field, and glowing spots where color is lost to intense light.


Notes

* Miles, Linda, “A Convergence of Disciplines: Singapore’s New Arts and Science Museum,” imag nation Lincoln Center Institute for the arts in education at http://imaginationnow.wordpress.com/. Posted March 30, 2011. Viewed 9:50 A.M., EST, Monday, February 13, 2012.

*1 Photograph of the Museum is Copyright 2010, Las Vegas Sands Corp. All Rights Reserved. However, it is understood that one time use of an image for intellectual purposes is within United States copyright law. I have taken the additional liberty of adding a layer to the jpeg image that discloses the copyright by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation.

*2 Gangal, Sanjay, “United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC by Moshe Safdie Architects,” Photographs by Tim Hursley. AECCAFE Blogs: the latest posts on the AEC Industry at http://www10.aeccafe.com/. Posted November 26th, 2011. Viewed 10:35 A.M., EST, Monday, February 13, 2012.

Human Detritus

Following my last journal entry with a photographic exploration of some of the more obvious junk we throw into the worlds circulation system, I can't help but ask, "Are we like a disease?"

I constantly take photographs and use them in the art process, and in my art work, though I don't pretend to be a great photographer. These particular photographs may be interestingly composed with nice brown and gray tones and strong contrast because of an extremely bright sun blasting our beach in late spring. However, all the manmade objects in them, plastic and otherwise, were found within a few paces of one another on our south Florida stretch of sand, and all on the same day. The beach was covered with plastic items, old articles of clothing and fishing apparatus. It is hard to know where all the worn manmade junk came from because we know that what washes out is transported around the world and washes in somewhere else.

Never the less, some days when my partner and I walk on the beach we see people leave their trash behind as they gather their towels and chairs to go. Amazingly, the trashcan and recycling bin is on the path that leads through the coconut palms and off the beach. I’ve been known to walk to groups on the beach and pick up the scattered new trash around them while they watch, probably a futile act on my part. Interestingly, folks in Rehoboth Beach and in Lewes Delaware pick up after themselves more often than not. Why do these two sets of beach goers from different parts of the same country behave so differently? I know what the local response here in south Florida would be. "Oh, it’s those other people," and my reaction to that is a resounding NO! It is any/all types of people. And, we need a public campaign to get people to pick up after themselves. The book of Genesis says that we were given “dominion” over the earth, and with dominion comes responsibility.
Yes, God is in the details, and here in south Florida we need to stop passing blame, and be responsible.

Like Grains of Sand

My partner and I often walk on the beach in the early evening because the light accentuates every detail in the sand and water. I took this photograph just before sunset a couple of years ago, and I’m posting it now by way of contrast to those that follow in my next entry. *1 Late in the day frothy wave crests have yellow-orange halos because the rays of photon particles splatter through the tiny bubbles and microscopic globes of splashing water. The sand particles are highlighted, each and every one. All the highlighted colors are tilted toward the warm side of the spectrum, and the shadows toward the cool. As I have often heard from others, "God is in the details."

This image hints at the importance of every single detail in the universe. However, the lines and indentations left by the wave’s leave-taking also indicate that those details can be changed in an instant by normal physical properties. It is not God’s intent to wipe away that perfect moment. It is just that the perfect moment is seized upon by one person, and perhaps appreciated by others. So too in our lives - whether good and perfect - would that such were possible - or bad and defective - God does not wipe any one of us away with intent . It is just that we have our moment, perfect or not, and then the universe changes.

For me that fact of life demonstrates how necessary it is to live and love, to make as perfect as is humanly possible every moment I exist because the waves of change will happen despite the fact of my existence and God’s love.*2


Notes

*1 The next entry highlights photographs taken in the same location that demonstrate how our carelessness can destroy the perfect moment.

*2 I am not an evangelical Christian. I am just an ordinary Christian who believes in God’s love and the fact of Jesus Christ’s life as testimony to that love. I do not believe that God would consign any man, woman or child to burn in eternal hellfire just because he or she had not accepted Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. If such were the case what would have happened to all those unborn single cell (persons?) evangelicals are so worried about (just "sayin").

By the Sea

*

"By the Sea," mixed media and distressed paint (30” x 30”) January 28, 2012

By the sea, Mr. Todd, that's the life I'll covet,

By the sea, Mr. Todd, ooh, I know you'd love it!

You and me, Mr. T, we could be alone

In a house that we'd almost own,

Down by the sea!*1

Mixed media distressed Painting is a technique that demonstrates a history in each and every artwork because of the many layers of paint that hide, obfuscate and disclose laminated items and text.*2 The blurred history in this particular painting demonstrates the possibility of parallel historical outcomes. In one we have the sense to keep our clean water and save all life on this planet. In the other we destroy our clean water, and all life on earth. At the same time I have always been in love with bright colors, the colors of life. That infatuation with intense color imbues this painting with optimism not always felt. On the surface, this is a confident work that displays the success I feel in my own life and work. However, lurking immediately below that facade is the not so well hidden presbyopic vision of human recklessness.


Notes

* Upon seeing the painting in the blog, I’ve decided it isn’t quite done. I’ve got to do some damage to that boat in the middle. ☺

*1 Sweeny Todd The Musical, Lyrics (1979) http://broadwaymusicalhome.com/shows/sweeneytodd.htm

*2 There is no link in Google for distressed painting in fine art. I very much doubt that I am the only person on earth using the technique in the creation of fine art. Never the less, all the links I found were for commercial processes, and/or craft products and techniques.

Fifteen Minutes

Katherine (Woman of the Year), Powdered Graphite on paper, 32" x 40" (1980) On loan from a private collection.

I met Andy Warhol at the reception for his show at the Philadelphia College of Art back in the dark ages.* During his brief conversation with several of us students I remember thinking, “he’s a space cadet.” Of course, it was an act and we ate it up as though it were pabulum for babies. Years later Andy would make the now ubiquitous statement that “everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” and, during the late 1970’s to early 80’s I had mine. The brief span of success on a large scale was based on the creation of a series of Photorealist graphite portraits of iconic personalities. Many were motion picture stars like Katherine Hepburn, Christopher Reeves, and Marlin Brando. Others were various music, literary and historical figures like Leopold Stokowski, Jack Kerouac, Robert Oppenheimer, and Abraham Lincoln.*2 I started these drawings in the mid 1970’s by making marks with pencils on paper. Over time I discovered a plethora of techniques that allowed me to gradually move away from using the pencil alone. Instead, I began to grind the graphite into powder and applied it to archival paper using paper stumps, various kinds of cloth, and a variety of erasers. I also learned to use erasers to make marks of their own in the fields of layered graphite by removing and/or smearing some of the graphite from the surface. *3

I had a show of these drawings at The Walnuts Gallery, Philadelphia in 1979. After that show I camped out in telephone booths in New York City with my 3 x 5 card file and called hundreds of galleries with my little questionnaire, asking first, “are you interested in new and unknown artists?” I practically lived in one booth at the Hotel Carlyle, the concierge making change for me as I continued through the card file, X’ing out gallery after gallery. A close friend gave me the nick name "Clark Klomp."*4 However, after a long summer of telephoning and visiting galleries in person, I found a gallery that was willing to look at my portfolio. The owners of Good Company Gallery at 69th and Columbus loved the drawings and for several years the drawings hung in the gallery and sold on a regular basis to motion picture and theater personalities, writers, and entrepreneurs.

The story of how those 15 minutes came to an end in 1983 isn’t important. They were over, and I stopped making the iconic personality graphite drawings. I have since done a few graphite portraits on commission, and I still love to work with the powdered graphite technique. This past year our Goddaughter, a world-class chef, bought a restaurant in Lancaster Pennsylvania named Characters. She asked if she could use the drawings of motion picture stars. So, once again the remaining drawings have been resurrected from their plastic wrap and cardboard box tombs to hang in the light of day.*5


Notes

* The Philadelphia College of Art has become the University of the Arts after a merger with the Philadelphia School of Performing Arts.

*2 Many master artists had been and were working in a Photoreal, later Superreal/Hyperreal style at the time, and they include Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, and others.

*3 Additive and Subtractive techniques with powdered graphite were pioneered by the French during the mid nineteenth century then largely forgotten.

*4 The "mild mannered" Clark Kent character in Superman comics and TV shows (1952-58) ran into telephone booths to shed his bland reporter persona and become the super hero.

*5 see entry this journal, “Marilyn Monroe Sighting at Character’s Pub, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

Rehoboth Beach Waves, August 21, 2010

Rehoboth Beach Waves, August 21, 2010 (Digital Photomontage) printed version (16" x 20")

As part of my interest in clean, safe water, I’ve done a series of wave progression photomontages at beaches in the Middle Atlantic, south Florida, and Mexico. The color of beach sand has so much to do with the way the waves photograph, and the depth of the water as the waves flow in and out changes the color of the water subtly from image to image. Also, the color of the water varies from beach to beach, and day to day in each location. In this particular composite photograph, taken from 1:00 P.M. to 1:15 P.M. on August 21, 2010, the sun is very high overhead, and so a hot spot exists on most of the photos with the exception of those with rougher and deeper water. In the top row, middle photo, and in the third row, 5th photo from the left, you can see waves crossing the sun’s image and erasing it.

The repetitive motion of wave after wave, flowing in and out in all the photomontages suggest continuity, but also change within the continuity. Each wave is a variation on the theme of “Water Equals Life,” the title of the last journal entry. Destroy the water, and you destroy all life on Earth is a not so subtle undercurrent that flows through all my artwork these days, even the pretty pastel paintings.

Water Equals Life

Water = Life, (8"x 8") mixed media distressed painting, 2011

Water equals life should be a self-explanatory statement of fact because without water there would be no life. However, along with all the other realities we ignore, this one is perhaps the most frightening. I see people in south Florida throw their plastic junk on the beach constantly. On our beach the trashcan is a short walk away. On Delaware beaches people are more conscientious for some reason. Could it be that they are more mannerly in general? Or are they actually more aware of the consequences of their recklessness? It is essential that people everywhere be made aware that their profligacy will damage the future of our planet.

"Why is that, John," my alter ego says.

Plastic bottles begin to decompose in ocean water at temperatures of 86 degrees Fahrenheit much more rapidly than previously thought. They leave behind poisonous derivatives of polystyrene suspended in the salt water. Plastic bottles and bags are found floating in the oceans all over the planet because hundreds of thousands find their way through our run-off into streams, then rivers, and finally into the ocean every year. Additionally, plastic bags especially will kill turtles and porpoises because they are mistaken for food as they float in the water.

Plastics are oil-based products. We already know what oil will do in salt water from watching the 2010 BP Gulf Oil Spill Disaster unfold. Gulf Coast states are still reeling in 2012 from that horror despite BP television commercials to the contrary.

All of my distressed and pastel paintings are aimed at awareness and conservation of the oceans of our planet. Now, I must somehow find a way to put them before the public, though few seem to be interested in art that has a purpose other than being pretty. Never the less, I know that these paintings are handsome artworks and artworks with a purpose.