Blowing Rocks, Jupiter Island, Florida:

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Today I write once again about photographs and videos made with the iPhone. As Apple Corporation has demonstrated, their phones can make true works of art, sometimes accidentally. Though I can’t claim the two photos included here are great art, they do fall into the genre, “pretty photos at the beach.” Never the less, yesterday was the perfect day, air - 82 degrees Fahrenheit, H2O – 77 degrees, brilliant sunshine, deep blue sky, nice surf, water various shades of aqua and green, and the iPhone captured it all.* I've included the first photo because my husband is in the background, and because the wave is captured the instant before it breaks.

The second is posted because of the composition, blanket running off the edge in the foreground, the figure behind projecting off the top of the picture plane.

I also shot some video, and I will put together a short movie based on those (time permitting) in a future post.

Note

I am providing links here to information aboutJupiter Island and Blowing Rocks.

Breaking the Mold

Means risking criticism and negative response

“South Florida Atlantic, Calm As A Lake (Flat Water),” a 32” x 40” pastel was the very first pastel painting I made in North Palm Beach back in 2006. For years I refused to do any rubbing and blending with chamois, erasers, tortillons or cloth. If colors blended together at all it was because individual marks ran over one another. So, the paintings were made of millions of tiny scribbles rubbing over one another.

When showing these pastels I had been criticized because my “approach to pastel technique was annoying,” which is just another way of saying it just shouldn’t be done that way. I’ve always rebelled against being told that something shouldn’t or can’t be done. To this day, I almost always use the pastel itself as the tool to rub and blend another pastel color together with other pastel colors, though now I may resort to turning the pastel on the side to blend, so I don’t always have to use millions of little scribbles.

I still like the diffuse quality the scribbles made in those old pastel paintings, especially when I made a new color with two, three, or four different pastels of different hue but very similar value scribbled together. Then too, whether working with pastel, graphite, acrylics, or oils, I’ve always enjoyed breaking with tradition, and/ or reviving old discontinued technique. Moreover, I wouldn’t be using my creative talent to the utmost if I didn’t play with ideas, and break rules.

Portuquese Man O’War

I shoot photos wherever I go. This is one from my picture file or Morgue.* I took the picture in 2010, but when I looked at it accidentally this past Saturday I was taken by the Portuquese Man O’War’s sinister beauty. The really dangerous part is the darkest ink-blue-black shape collapsed beneath and behind the inflated sail. People have been known to drown when becoming entangled in the creature’s tentacles, not because they couldn’t get away, but because of the numbing pain. Some of the tentacles are visible around and over the shells. The blue colors shaded from deepest charcoal-navy to cobalt, and gradually shifting through transparent into pale shades of magenta and rose make me want to reach out and touch even though I know better. That magnificent inflated sail would have been almost invisible as this particular small but deadly creature floated in the warm gulfstream water.

When these are found grounded on south Florida beaches you swim at your own risk.  At such times there may be many more, some much larger and almost invisible with twenty-foot tentacles dangling beneath the surface and often well away from the sail.


Note

*A morgue is an alphabetical file of photos that an artist uses as an aid in creating his/her artwork.

March Graphic Art and Illustration

This month, March, I will review Graphic Art and Illustration in a different manner from months past. 

Instead of writing a brief summary for each year's chosen graphic, photo, and/or illustration, I will simply provide a direct link to the blog entry in which that artwork was published. To view the actual artwork and read about it in context with the blog entry, click on the highlighted text. As usual I will begin with the year 2008 and work toward the present year, 2014.

1. March, 2008 - "Our 40th Anniversary Celebration Sculpture Walk"

2. March, 2009 - "Economic theory: An Extremely Brief History."

3. March, 2010 - "Post-postmodernism Defined: Really now John! (Continued)"

4. March, 2011 - "Flight of the Pelicans"

5. March, 2012 - "Isaac Stolzfuts' Return: Part II"

6. March, 2013 - "Wonderful." The photograph in this presentation was taken by Ginny Dixon, official photographer of the Gay Men's Chorus of South Florida. I copied it from the Gay Men's Chorus of South Florida Website in March, 2013 and I make no claim to it as part of my oeuvre. I used it in 2013 and I use it now because I am in the photograph, and because I am proud of the fact that I sing with this wonderful, professional men's chorus.