Month: April 2017

Ryan McGinness

Ryan McGinness, “Signs”, 2014, Fifty Vinyl on Aluminum Signs/ Dispalyed in Manhattan from July 28- August 30, 2014

Signs, a public art project by artist and designer Ryan McGinness, featured funky street signs fabricated and installed by the New York City Department of Transportation all around downtown NYC.

The project included fifty signs installed and displayed around the Manhattan area until the end of August in 2014. The signs were installed on traffic light posts and lamp posts along the route of the city’s Summer Streets program, a weekly event where about seven miles of NYC’s streets were closed off to allow people to freely and safely run, walk, bike and play.

The fifty signs were made of vinyl on aluminum and were manufactured and published by the DOT itself. The signs featured various contemporary designs in black, red, and white. The artist identified each sign as a number and he also included whimsical descriptions for each of the design on his website.

Sebastian Martorana

Marble Sculptures by Sebastian Martorana

Sebastian Martorana is an artist living and working in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA in illustration from Syracuse University, where he also studied sculpture, including a semester in Italy. After graduating he became a full-time apprentice in a stone shop outside Washington, D.C. Sebastian received his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Rinehart School of Sculpture.

His current studio is part of the stone shop at Hilgartner Natural Stone Company in downtown Baltimore where he undertakes and directs commissioned stone carving, restoration and design, as well as his own sculptural works. Many of his works involve incorporating salvaged marble architectural elements from the city and their re-incorporation into individual and site-specific sculptures. Sebastian is also an adjunct professor in the Illustration Department at MICA.

T. H. Lawrence: “All Men Dream But Not Equally”

Photographer Unknown, (Desert Dreams)

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph 

Bryon McClintock

Byron McClintock, “Homage to Charles Dean”

Born in Klamath Falls, Oregon,. Byron McClintock lived his life in Seattle, Washington, until he joined the Merchant Marine in 1946. Three years later, he settled in San Francisco, where he took art classes at the California School of Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Among his teachers were expressionist painters and printmakers Richard Diebenkorn, Edward Corbett and James Budd Dixon. He developed his skill as a printmaker working as Dixon’s assistant. At one point he shared a studio in the city with expressionist painter Ernst Briggs, a revolutionary in the genre of abstract painting..

Although he has made a number of paintings, McClintock is best known for his prints, which range from lithographs to drypoint etchings and mezzotints. Highly abstract, with an atmospheric use of color, they yet offer intimations of landscape. His work was included the Museum of Modern Art’s 1954 survey, “American Prints of the 20th Century,” at which time he was credited, along with Will Barnet and Ralston Crawford, with helping to bring color lithography in America to a par with work being done in Europe.

Willie and Lobo, “Fandango Nights”

Willie and Lobo, “Fandango Nights” from the Album “Fandango Nights”

Willie Royal was born in El Paso, Texas, the son of an Air Force lieutenant colonel. His father’s job took young Royal over the world including Turkey, Germany and France. At the age of eight he began classical violin lessons, quickly becoming proficient enough to become the concertmaster of his high school orchestra. Inspired by the music of jean-Luc Ponty and Stephane Grappelliand, as well as sitting in with Greg Allman and Dicky Betts, Willie traveled the world, absorbing numerous musical styles before moving to Mexico in the ‘80s.

Wolfgang “Lobo” Fink was born in the Bavarian town of Teisendorf. At 18, while in the German navy, he picked up his first guitar. Listening to an album by gypsy guitarist Manitas de Plata drew him to the music. Upon leaving the navy, he found de Plata in a gypsy camp in Southern France and spent a while with him and his people. Returning to Germany, Lobo formed a flamenco group named Lailo, touring Europe for three years and helping to popularize the modern gypsy sound. His searches led him to Granada, Spain, living with gypsies in the caves of Sacromonteand studying their ways. He traveled to Mexico in 1980 as a solo act.

The pair first met in San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico, where they were both working at Mama Mia’s restaurant. Willie on fiddle and Lobo on flamenco guitar jammed on occasion, searching for an individual sound. The owner of a local bar they were both playing at suggested they perform together.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Joseph Wright of Derby

Joseph Wright of Derby, “A Moonlight with a Lighthouse, Coast of Tuscany”, Oil on Canvas, Purchased in 1949 by the Tate Museum

When journeying to and from Rome, Wright had crossed much of mainland Italy but his acquaintance with districts beyond Rome would have been brief. Years later, this imagined scene gave Wright a context in which to compare the differing effects of natural and artifical light-sources that had so long fascinated him. Here, the luminosity of the moonlight in the night sky is contrasted with the hazy beam of the lighthouse and its reflection in the water. The looming dark mass of the cliff and portentous-looking rocks in the bottom left create a sense of melodrama.

Laurel and Hardy: Film History Series

Laurel and Hardy, Computer Graphics, Film Gifs

The humor of Laurel and Hardy was highly visual with slapstick used for emphasis. They often had physical arguments with each other (in character), which were quite complex and involved cartoon violence, and their characters preclude them from making any real progress in the simplest endeavors. Much of their comedy involves milking a joke, where a simple idea provides a basis from which to build multiple gags without following a defined narrative.

Stan Laurel was of average height and weight, but appeared small and slight next to Oliver Hardy, who was 6 ft 1 in (185 cm) tall and weighed about 280 lb (127 kg) in his prime. They used some details to enhance this natural contrast. Laurel kept his hair short on the sides and back, growing it long on top to create a natural “fright wig”. At times of shock, he would simultaneously cry while pulling up his hair. In contrast, Hardy’s thinning hair was pasted on his forehead in spit curls and he sported a toothbrush mustache.

To achieve a flat-footed walk, Laurel removed the heels from his shoes. Both wore bowler hats, with Laurel’s being narrower than Hardy’s, and with a flattened brim. The characters’ normal attire called for wing collar shirts, with Hardy wearing a neck tie which he would twiddle and Laurel a bow tie. Hardy’s sports jacket was a tad small and done up with one straining button, whereas Laurel’s double breasted jacket was loose fitting.

A great comedy team; to me, they were the best. The movie, The Music Box, 1932, which had them trying to deliver a piano to a house by pushing it up hundreds of concrete steps is indelibly etched in my mind. A comedic Sisyphean classic.

Michel de Montaigne: “The Natural Heat First Seats Itself in the Feet”

The Wooden Benches, A White Towel and Heat

“The natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet…; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress.”

― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays