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Tag: art/Archives

2007-12-04

The Rolling Exhibition

Photo- Man; Prague, Czech RepublicPhoto- Boy; Sighisoara, RomaniaBorn with no legs, photographer Kevin Connolly rolls thru the streets of the world and takes pictures of the folk looking down at him: The Rolling Exhibition.

(The guy lives in my hometown so you can bet I’ll be doing a radio story with him.)

via Ben- Comma Q.

UPDATE: ABC News 20/20 ran a piece on Kevin. Thanks for all your comments, however, this is NOT Kevin’s site. I’ll forward your notes to him, but do visit his web works at The Rolling Exhibition and Kevin Michael Connolly.

2007-11-27

Gennie DeWeese

Montana May- Painting by Gennie DeWesseArtist Gennie DeWeese died yesterday. Anyone in the arts who ever crept thru our community (s.w. MT) was affected by her aesthetics. Her scrolls (like “Montana May” to the right; © Gennie DeWeese) were inspired. As was the period she put away her paintbrushes and painted instead with cattle markers, bought at ranch supply stores.

She and husband Bob were immortalized in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which Pirsig wrote after he, like the DeWeeses, taught here at Montana State U. Some excerpts from the book:

From where the deck disappears around the corner of the house, suddenly comes Gennie DeWeese with a tray of beer cans. She is a painter too and, I’m suddenly aware, a quick comprehender and already there’s a shared smile over the artistic economy of grabbing a can of beer instead of her hand, while she says, “Some neighbors just came over with a mess of trout for dinner. I’m so pleased.”

[and from a later conversation at the DeWeeses …]

“Did I ever talk about an individual named Phædrus?”

“No.”

“Who was he?” Gennie asks.

“He was an ancient Greek — a rhetorician — a `composition major’ of his time. He was one of those present when reason was being invented.”

“You never talked about that, I don’t think.”

“That must have come later. The rhetoricians of ancient Greece were the first teachers in the history of the Western world. Plato vilified them in all his works to grind an axe of his own and since what we know about them is almost entirely from Plato they’re unique in that they’ve stood condemned throughout history without ever having their side of the story told. The Church of Reason that I talked about was founded on their graves. It’s supported today by their graves. And when you dig deep into its foundations you come across ghosts.”

I look at my watch. It’s after two. “It’s a long story,” I say.

“You should write all this down,” Gennie says.

I nod in agreement. “I’m thinking about a series of lecture-essays…a sort of Chautauqua. I’ve been trying to work them out in my mind as we rode out here — which is probably why I sound so primed on all this stuff. It’s all so huge and difficult. Like trying to travel through these mountains on foot.

“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.”

“You should do it anyway,” Gennie says. “Without trying to get it perfect.”

“I suppose,” I say.

[more conversation…]

“Well, it isn’t just art and technology. It’s a kind of a noncoalescence between reason and feeling. What’s wrong with technology is that it’s not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that. People haven’t paid much attention to this before because the big concern has been with food, clothing and shelter for everyone and technology has provided these.

“But now where these are assured, the ugliness is being noticed more and more and people are asking if we must always suffer spiritually and esthetically in order to satisfy material needs. Lately it’s become almost a national crisis…antipollution drives, antitechnological communes and styles of life, and all that.”

Both [Bob] DeWeese and Gennie have understood all this for so long there’s no need for comment.
–© Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Many of us remember the DeWeese gallery which showcased dozens of Montana’s finest artists. Best wishes to Gen & Bob’s ridiculously talented family. Boatloads of us here in Bozeman are gonna miss ya, Gen.

Waiting for Tina- Gennie DeWesse Painting
© Gennie DeWeese, Waiting for Tina,
Oil Bar Scroll, 52 x 68 inches, 1993

2007-11-09

L’Eau Life

Still from filmAnimating water in watercolor, the beautiful short film “L’Eau Life” is at The Animated Life – Opinion – New York Times Blog. It’s by painter Jeff Scher: “I wanted to get the feel of water and the emotion of being in it, while capturing the water action moments that are the most fun to draw: jumping, swimming, falling in and climbing out.”

2007-10-12

Kara Walker Silhouette Exhibition

Usually when you think of silhouettes, the images conjured up consist of rabbit heads on the wall or the quaint illustrations in old historical novels. That’s not the case with this exhibition at the Whitney:


“…a danse infernal of sex, slavery and chitlin-circuit comedy.”

2007-08-28

Storytelling — How Toons

[ How Toons ] Digg turned this up today:

How Toons

a collection of science- and engineering-related web comics.

I’m a bit partial to the form, my long-standing affair probably started about the time I got my first Dr. Seuss book. This struck me as particularly infectious — possibly because I’ve been re-immersing myself lately: novelized pastiches such as geoffrey woods’ Leaper and Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible; Moore and Gibson’s The Watchmen, Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come, Frank Miller’s irrepressible Dark Knight and nearly everything Brian Woods has done; films such as Unbreakable, Sin City, Superman Returns, Batman Begins, and, of course Heroes.

What impresses me most, I suppose, is the resilience and versatility — how and why comics have persisted…

2007-07-06

Kinetic Sculptures of Theo Jansen

Theo Jansen “is an artist and kinetic sculptor living and working in Holland. He builds large works which resemble skeletons of animals which are able to walk using the wind on the beaches of the Netherlands. His animated works are a fusion of art and engineering.”

From the videos at YouTube, “Theo Jansen- Wind Art:”

(Found at WFMU’s Blog.)

2007-06-12

Utah SONOSOPHER

Caldiero performingIf you’re swinging thru SLC, check the 2007 Utah Arts Festival, if only to find out what be a SONOSOPHER, TRANSPERFORMANCE, and WORDSHAKE. All three are inventions of Alex Caldiero, one of HV’s favorite poets, who is performing. Here’s a taste, “Metanym One”:

And here’s his email announcement:

2007 utah arts festival presents THE SONOSOPHER AT WORK

JUNE 22 and 23, Friday and Saturday, 9pm-10pm, at THE WORD ECSTATIC in THE ROUND TRANSPERFORMANCE,an architecture of co-operation, placement and simultaneity
with Alex Caldiero & Sara Caldiero-Oertli: sound-text/sonosophy
Stephanie Lietch: film/video projections
Theta Naught: ambient/improv music

JUNE 23, Saturday, 3pm-4pm, at THE WORD ECSTATIC
ARTS AND TARTS, a non-scripted non-descripted discussion
with Alex Caldiero, Ken Sanders, and others

JUNE 23, Saturday, 6:30pm-7pm, at THE WORD ECSTATIC SHAMANIC WORDSHAKE
with Alex Caldiero

aLEX cALDIERO is this year’s recipient of the mayor’s award for literary arts award ceremony in the urban room of the city library on sunday, june 24, 8pm-9pm

2007-06-08

Artificial Eye Maker

Artificial eyeballPhotojournalist Colin Mulvany, of the has this nice flash a/v slideshow on an Artificial Eye Maker. From the Spokesman Review:

Ocularist Kim Erickson is an artist. But his pieces don’t hang in museums. In fact, his masterpieces go unnoticed by all but their owners. Erickson, like his father before him, handcrafts plastic prosthetic eyes from his office in downtown Spokane. “My best work is invisible,” he says.

Found by Lu Olkowski.

2007-05-17

Graffiti Collector

While searching for other things, I happened to come across a great collection of graffiti images from Greece. They’re organized in a nice viewer application too.

graffiti are everywhere if you have eyes to see them…

even behind other newer graffiti like pages one over another…

here I collect them in photos.. apart of groups

2007-05-02

Slave in a Box

Slave in a Box cover

To file under “Things I Never Knew:”

The first illustrator for Aunt Jemima advertisements was none other than N.C. Wyeth.

“Aunt Jemima’s ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a ‘slave in a box’ that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.”

More on the book

2007-03-17

Tin Can Orchestra

An instrument called the sascatunerWeekend America ran the HV story “Tin Can Orchestra” by Ann Heppermann & Kara Oehler: Bobby Hansson is a phtogrpaher, filmmaker, blacksmith, and tin can artist. He’s created an orchestra of musical instruments from them, and other dumpstered materials. They’ve never been played all together before. Until now, for this radio piece. His book is The Fine Art of the Tin Can: Techniques and Inspirations.

This is Bobby Hansson with his friend Andrew Hayes holding the “sascatuner,” a musical instrument made out of a bicycle seat, two horns, plastic tubing and a trumpet mouthpiece.

xThis is where Bobby fires the coals for his blacksmithing work. He built the coal forge himself.

Blacksmith shopBobby’s blacksmith shop. He built it himself out of old tires, recylced wood and bottles for the windows. To the right,
you can see the speaker where he rigged up a record player to blast
opera music.

Bobby seated under his American Golthic artworkBobby sitting in the kitchen table with his own rendition of American Gothic hanging above him.

Bobby Hansson playing “Big Gray Elephant” on an instrument he made out of a giant maple syrup can (0:29):