Phanatic Caught in Broad Street Riot!

Less than a breath after the Philadelphia Phillies won the National League Championship last Wednesday night, the streets of the victorious city flooded with people. The celebrators, some well beyond intoxicated already, and many well on their way, were joined by an unexpected and very welcome fellow reveler. The one and only Philly Phanatic, known for his famous dancing, tongue taunting, and rival-belly-bumping, the Phanatic took his bad boy mascot behavior to an unprecedented level, when he showed up at the corner of Broad and Shunk, wielding a bat and taking it to an overturned vehicle. Clearly impressed by the Phanatic's handiwork, one onlooker tossed the big green mascot a can of beer, which he struggled with in his large furry hands, but managed to crack open and spray the crowd with. The Phillies organization has yet to comment, but this is certainly one vision of our beloved Phanatic that will linger on for a very long time.

Grit and Beauty

Life, by its very nature, is messy. In our sometimes solemn, sometimes selfish, quest for meaning amidst the chaos of our given niches, we fail to notice that both the ordered and the haphazard truly exist together, and are made of the same elements. Any landscape in which one may find him or herself will surely provide both grit and beauty. Grit can be both earthy and manufactured, and the same can be said for beauty. In my city, no matter how grand the skyscraper, or how sublime the lush green park, grit and beauty coexist. Sometimes the grit hides in shadow while light reveals the beauty, like an elegant statue illuminated by streetlights, while nearby an innocent human life is being taken. The opposite scenario can occur as well. Light can show us a street carpeted by garbage, while in the dark, that same empty urban block becomes a quiet, ethereal vision. I wanted to play in the light and the shadow alone, removing color, and in turn removing the distraction of giving things names. To see beauty requires an experience beyond recognition. I wanted to illustrate the duality of nature and man's influence. In Philadelphia, the two seem to coexist, until one looks closer to see roots cracking through brick and stone, and birds flattened by vehicles. Each is always taking a stab at the other. It's messy. it's gritty. It's beautiful.

Sharon Louden: Making Magic From the Mundane

Yesterday's lecturer was Sharon Louden, a multi-media artist who produces her work through a myriad of ideas, materials, and workspaces, and yet always with an aesthetic and conceptual voice that is uniquely hers. While many, including myself, would not make much of her early gestural drawings; showcasing the cilia-like characters that so often live in her work, in her installations she brings these raw broken down figures to life in a way that makes us recognize a sort of similarity to ourselves while retaining as well a sense that the viewers are experiencing something entirely alien to themselves. Her animations on the other hand, while actually moving, seem less alive than her static pieces. Something about the three minute film she showed us seemed to be under par amongst her other work. Perhaps it was the lack of sound, as someone mentioned, or maybe it is just that I prefer the characters' activity to occur in my imagination alone. Of course, with the intimidating amount of innovation in her other work, I would assume she'll figure out exactly how to make animation bow to her commands. As someone who does not to very much multimedia work, I think I could learn a great deal about using it to create your own artistic identity from Sharon Louden.

1 Part Technical, 10 Parts Silly

Here is my Photoshop Painting from last week's class. Before this semester, my skills at illustrating with a computer were limited to Windows Paint. In less than two months, through my Computer Imaging, Graphic Design, Computers for Design, and this class, my hands have been on a keyboard and mouse far more often than a pencil and paper. It's been a welcome challenge, because I feel that my skills in traditional art have been tested and realized already as impressive, though of course there is always room for improvement. In this exercise , I couldn't help but feel the connection to traditional oil painting. I savored the familiarity of laying down layer after layer of color; starting with the general, ending with the precise. The difference, I believe, shines through in the playfulness of this piece. While handling a real wet medium, I feel more a part of my work, but I am much more reserved in my experimentation with color, as the finiteness of my material rears its head. Here I could lay down colors, and easily remove them a moment later. I think making a mock up of my future traditional paintings, whether oils, watercolors, or acrylics, or some other tangible source of color, could greatly enhance my ability to explore and master the hues that I could possibly create.

Pairing Project 3!

Shapes, shapes, shapes! Both of these photos break the mold of what one envisions when provoked to visualize each subject. The angle skews the perception of the building, and the real life desecration of the bird breaks away from the generic "bird" image. This bird could not be more grounded. Likewise, in the building image, the viewer could not be more grounded. Perhaps, had the bird still eyes, this building is what it would see.

Pairing Project 2!

These two photos are very different according to composition and color palette, but I put them through the same color and contrast filters. I think they remained dissimilar, but feel more as though they exist on the same Earth.

Pairing Project!

I chose to include two sketches with these images because they are both photos taken so intimately close to their respective subjects that they become patterns. In my city sketches, I emphasized pattern as well. Also I think the dirty palette in in both photos compliments the pristine white of the sketch paper.

Bradley N. Litwin: Renaissance Man

Have you ever met someone who has accomplished so much in their life that you simultaneously envy, hate, worship, and admire them?

I have only known of Brad Litwin for this one day so far in my life, and he has already become an inspiration. I was thoroughly impressed by his lecture; his humor, his displayed work, his resume', even his formidable guitar skills... but I didn't feel the weight of his impact, until I experienced his kinetic sculptures face to face in the lobby this afternoon.

I once stared at a Dali painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art for five minutes... Five minutes! I took much longer today finding my way out of the piece I featured here by Litwin. His work is like a dream and yet so factual and tangible, that the viewer can't help but feel they've slipped into an extra-dimensional coma that they have no desire to wake up from. Litwin makes corporeal and animated the kinds of dreamworlds that the undeniable genius Dr. Seuss could only paint or draw. The exhibit reminded me that mechanical spectacles like these occur on the smallest scale inside of machines as massive as cruise-liners and as small as an iPod Shuffle. The real world can often seem too crude to catch up to our imaginations. In the rare cases of artists like Bradley N. Litwin, Jim Henson, Henry Sellick, and Leonardo DaVinci, a razor sharp mind can command the material world to look and feel like something... imaginary.

Restoration and Preservation

Last week's lecture was about the kind of work that people do in the field of restoring and preserving art. The anecdotes about the German artist who left the fat to rot in a box and the American artist whose sculpture broke due to unstable metal, illustrate the range of ways artists respond to age and decay. In the first case, decay was the desired effect, and when a team of restorers tried to change the acrid, and moistened box years later, the artist was displeased. The second case also involves an artist's disappointment. Had he known when he made the sculpture that his material would decades later canyon and break, he would have alerted those charged with the upkeep of the work to be mindful of what they must do to keep that from happening. The subject reminds me of the discourse that surrounded to restoration of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling by Michaelangelo between the years 1980 and 1994, where technology had advanced to the point that the original vibrance and saturation of the frescoes was fully realized after four centuries of fading. Michaelangelo was of course not around to defend his work, and it is assumed he would prefer the frescoes to look just how he painted them, but many people were very upset with the new(old, actually) look. Many felt it was not somber enough for religious purposes. They forget Michaelangelo was a Renaissance painter, a humanist. It was no longer the middle ages and he was painting for art, not God. Still, it begs the question for every artist. Four hundred years from now, do you want your work to look as good as new, or do you want it to look four hundred years old. A restoration and preservation expert would be the one to call.

It's Me! On a scanner!

Here's my face scan painting for tomorrow. I stopped here because it is due but as with all paintings, I think that I will continue working on this whenever I get the chance.