Kinetic Sculpture

This is the best video I could find on YouTube of Theo Jansen's Strandbeest. He has a webcam on his website too but the studio is quiet and dark just now.

Simon Schama's Power of Art

We caught the first episode on Van Gogh of Simon Schama's teevee series, The Power of Art, which I find was released on the BBC last fall, but we managed to miss the second, on Picasso's Guernica, due to local broadcast weirdness. Next week, Caravaggio, but I see in Milwaukee they've decided 7 a.m. is the time for that bad boy. When it plays depends on the PBS affiliate in your area, so check your local listings. If the the episode on Rothko happens when I'm out of town, I'm taping it.

Chris Jordan

A friend of mine sent me to this website for a Seattle artist I'd never heard of, Chris Jordan. These images are trying to illustrate the magnitude of some currently relevant numbers, the sort of thing that would have political implications once we can get past the educational bit of understanding something of the global scale of our mass culture. It's a sort of wow factor, that the artist says is much better live than on this tiny screen -- no doubt.

They are all arranged with a view of the entire work first, which are each mild-mannered abstracts, and then progressive views of the elements of composition and details that are lost inside the big picture. Personally I think if you can wait for all the JPGs to load, it would be better to view these images the other way round, scrolling from the bottom instead of from the top. Either way, pertinent.

Laura Timmins

A few years ago I was talking to someone while waiting in line. She was wearing a necklace that I admired. She told me she was working for the artist in her booth. When I visited her booth, it was filled with the most beautiful jewelry made from polymer clay. Laura's website is fantastic, wait till you see her work.

What's new?!

Jae mentioned that I have a new job. It's actually the same job that I've been at for the past 3 months working as a Kelly Temp. They liked me and asked me to stay-so I did. Still working as a receptionist, I'll be getting more duties so it won't be so boring, but I'm not allowed to post on the blog......bummer. At some point I'll be working part-time there (oh, can't wait). Working full-time doesn't leave much time for posting here or doing much of any art work, but it IS teaching me how to manage my time. I'll have time off in July (2 more weeks, but who's counting)~~planning on getting into the studio and getting some work done. I've journaled a lot in the past months and have lots of fodder for art. Oh, did I mention the aging parent issues.....oy-vey! Thank you so much for stopping by to read! Chris

John Schirmer

A few years ago I met John at an art fair. Our booths were back to back. He creates the most fabulous woodcuts. Look at "Evolution" (it's a few pages in). John has a great sense of humor--you'll see!

Photosynth

I depend on my Number One Son to keep me up on technology. Here is a video he directed me to that explains Photosynth, I give up on making it link properly, here is the URL:
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html
which if you are not up on the latest and greatest, is a really astonishing thing, er, medium, er, software, er, way to look at things. What really impresses me is the collaborative nature of the sources: basically all the photos of a certain site (Trafalgar Square for instance) that everyone, pro or amateur, puts online (say on Flickr) are overlaid like a big mosaic. Microsoft has a few sites set up experimentally, so that you can tour those places the way Google Earth does, but in more detail.

The artist's studio they used as an example has a close relation to Lewis' Garageography that I mentioned yesterday, or what it might look like in the near future. (Or maybe in the future artists' studios will look more like Lewis' garage, I dunno.)

And then the BBC has started to get the population of Britain to photograph the stately homes and tourist sites and such. You can look at Ely cathedral. The whole island could be virtual in pretty short order.

Garageography

Here is a link to a virtual installation by a photographer I know, Lewis Koch, his Garageography. The way we met was because our kids were in grade school together years ago, and then we ran into each other last year at a neighborhood gallery opening. I had no idea.

This was an actual installation in his garage, which interests me particularly since I am planning to have Open Studio in my garage in October. (My garden horsies, lincoln logs and barbie art are pretty twee compared to this, so I have to think about that.) Lewis took photos of the installation, of course; and then someone else made this cool website where you can click on the stuff and see the photos. You can even see photos from his previous garage installation (if you find the photo of the garage in the photo of the garage). I particularly like the stuff in the yard.

Don McLean's Van Gogh

That YouTube animation (morphing of idealized women, very interesting) that Chris posted a few days ago brought me to this and this. Apparently there is an entire little genre of Van Gogh slide shows set to McLean's song about Van Gogh, "Starry Starry Night". Nice song, and more images of paintings by Van Gogh that I have never seen before. And I have been looking at Van Gogh in various places from the time his sunflowers hit Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts when I was six, to the big Van Gogh-Gauguin show in Chicago a few years ago, and how many galleries and prints and photos in between.

Here's another one that pans the paintings, not such good resolution, but yet more paintings I haven't seen, although some of them are iconic Van Gogh. It's a four-minute song, and the pace of each slide show is a painting every two to three seconds. I knew he was prolific, but gee.

OMG! there's one for Gauguin too! YouTube is still mysterious to me. Where do you get permissions to use this kind of stuff? I bet you don't! the information wants to be free! It's digital folk art.

Debra Lee Helwig

I met Debra Lee at an art fair in Appleton a few years ago, our booths were next to each other. The thing that attracted me to her booth was that she uses lots of vivid color in her work. Love color! Debra has a very fun sense of humor which comes out in her art. One of her prints hangs in my kitchen..."Ham & Eggs". She has a very nice website!

Connie Toebe

Well, Chris has a new job, and I've been pretty busy. I've been busy cause I had some stuff in the art show at Wiscon, among other things. Another one of the artists there was Connie Toebe who makes cool assemblage boxes of dioramas and gilding and stuff. The two she made for the Tiptree Award winners are right at the top of her Boxes page. We sat at the same table near the front during the awards ceremony after dessert Sunday evening, but you still couldn't see the boxes so well as on her website.

Inspire me thursday

Each thursday this site posts a new topic and quote geared toward giving an artist a springboard to create something and post it to share with other creatives. If you check out the archives, you'll find past topics and lots of inspirational quotes. Very fun!

Johnny Cash??

Okay, this really isn't Johnny Cash, it's the pastor of the church Paul and I go to. (Yikes, scary wig) A little fun before a congregational meeting.