Thursday, February 24, 2022

Geometric/Organic tile.

Acrylic tile. 4" X 4" canvas boards and Posca Pens

What is geometric and organic design?

ORGANIC: shapes, often curvilinear in appearance, that are similar to those found in nature, such as plants, animals, and rocks. GEOMETRIC: any shapes and based on math principles, such as a square, circle, and triangle.

POSCA 8-Color Paint Marker Set, PC-5M Medium

Todays thoughts

The Benedictine. Digital image 2020

Hidden gems within the human mine.

“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit there from.” ― Bahá'u'lláh

Symmetrical proportions the cycle life.

The drawing and painting of people and animals, an activity of artists since primitive times, is clearly associated with symmetry, and geometry, since the human form and the forms of living creatures in general are obviously highly symmetrical in shape. Indeed the beauty of the human form, and also of an animal such as the horse, is firmly based on their symmetrical proportions. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer were deeply concerned with the proportions of the human form from a truly geometrical point of view.

Subjective impulses and perceptions

What is the process in the production of the artist’s work of art? James Engel describes the process as the unifying action of man’s self-conscious and free intelligence:

Part of this philosophy, philosophy of art, tries to bind together the

philosophies of nature and of the mind by seeing in works of art, in their

highest and best sense, a unity of man’s self-conscious and free intelligence

with nature’s material and objective reality. Through creative imagination the

mind affirms its own existence by joining its subjective impulses and

perceptions with the particulars of nature. The resulting work of art, or

kunstprodukt, is itself real and objective, a token and a promise to man, it

symbolizes the union of the mind’s free willful consciousness with the

independence and given nature of the cosmos (Engell, 301-302)."

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Solace of inspiration

The Benedictine. Digital photography

Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion.

Lorraine Anderson (1952 - ) - Quoted in The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, Gail McMeekin, Conari Press, 2000, p27.

Swirled around me like snowflakes. Ink drawing. 11" X 14".

“Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes-each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.”

― Sharon M. Draper, Out of My Mind

Mankind and nature connection

Mankind searches obsessively for pleasure, materialistic goals and abundance. To obtain this we and our ancestors have exploited nature without any moral control to such an extent that nature has been rendered almost powerless in the process of sustaining a healthy life.

Axis Mundi

Axis mundi symbolism may be seen in much of the romance surrounding space travel. A rocket on the pad takes on all the symbolism of a tower and the astronaut enacts a mythic story. Each embarks on a perilous journey into the heavens and, if successful, returns with a boon for dissemination.

Ingredients of the physical world

The five mahābhūtas are the ingredients of the physical world. They represent the final point of manifestation, where light (Prakāśa) is condensed into matter, yet, at the same time, the mahābhūtas remain identical with Śiva.

Voyage over the abyss

“rare for the rare”

Ink drawing 11”X14”

“In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Teaching

“the endless immensity of the sea”

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Scala naturae - structure of matter and life.

The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder/stair-way of nature"), is a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus; further developed during the Middle Ages, it reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism. It details a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by God. The chain starts from God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, moon, kings, princes, nobles, men, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, precious metals, and other minerals.

Monday, February 21, 2022

Emergence from the quantum world

Quantum Darwinism is a theory explaining the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian natural selection; where the many possible quantum states are selected against in favor of a stable pointer state. It is proposed by Wojciech Zurek and a group of collaborators including Ollivier, Poulin, Paz and Blume-Kohout. The development of the theory is due to the integration of a number of Zurek’s research topics pursued over the course of twenty-five years including: pointer states, einselection and decoherence.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Darwinism

Sympathy with the seasons

Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon; of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) - The Journals of Bronson Alcott, January, p. 187, Little Brown & Co., Boston MA, 1938.

Sunday, February 20, 2022

Why Do Abstract Artists Paint or draw Abstractly?

The paradoxical question…Can an abstract artist actually create a pictorial painting?

We’ve all heard the criticisms: “People paint abstracts because they can’t draw,” and “My four year old could have done that.” I have fielded that questions many times over the last sixty years, my explanation always seems to generate more questions. I often resorted to cryptic answers in order to end the circular argument. My favorite response is “art is and I am”. Art is defined as: “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting, drawing or sculpture.” Art is not limited to a particular style or subject matter..Most individuals cannot deal with such a broad statement and they do not see art as a process but as a product. In a process oriented activity we use materials and our own thinking and problem solving skills to create something that is uniquely ours . What we are learning while doing is more important than what it looks like at the end.

Like the history of art, the process of art is linear. As our knowledge and technology grow our perception of the world changes. Artists explore new ways of seeing and explaining the ever changing environment. In my own work, I explore the world using symbols.It is study of the heart,soul and mind, creating esoteric connections to the universe. Without symbols our lives would be as spiritually impoverished as sleep without dreams. Our waking life is full of symbolism operating on an unconscious level. A symbol is a sign which opens up or makes transparent insights and truths that were previously hidden.

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.

• The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols (1964)

Isom 2.0 new media art.

Isom 2.0 new media art:

I will post more explanatory information as I develop Isom 2.0. My plan is not to abandon traditional visual art forms, tools and methods for creating art work. (i.e.painting sculpture, drawing , etc.) However, I will gradually replace the traditional method but I will continue with my purpose of integrating mind, hand an internet. It is in some ways it is a natural progression for me. As I age, traditional methods require more physical labor. The scanner, printer, computer and simple marking and cutting tools require very little studio space but provide a universe of options for creating art. My friends and followers who like my more decorative and traditional methods of art, may find it challenging to understand some of my new work.

Evolve grow think.

Evolve grow think

“cultural transmission”

Digital photograph

Cultural diversity inevitably develops in the course of cultural transmission. Individuals are constantly misremembering and thus varying some piece of culture, as well as making more deliberate variations. Learners will often put their own personal twist on what they have been taught. Once such a new “cultural variant” exists, there will be a tendency for it to be preserved.

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Island of consciousness.

Island of consciousness

"dreams and fantasies”

“At the very apex of the psyche is the ego, which is at the center of consciousness. Jung likes to think of consciousness as an island, and surrounding this island is a very large ocean that represents the unconscious. Stretching away from this island toward the deep is a shadow land Jung calls the personal unconscious. It belongs to the individual and holds countless forgotten experiences; it is formed from impulses, wishes, and subliminal perceptions. Memories can be recalled from this area either through dreams, fantasies, chance associations, or even direct recall.” http://www.soultrek.com/12%20psych%20jung.html

Free passage for the soul

“a place of transition “

11”X14”photograph

In The Book of Symbols, the door is described as a place of transition. In ancient Egyptian tombs, doorways were built to allow free passage for the soul. In ancient Roman cities, the deity Janus protected doorways into the city. The door also protects a house from the elements and whatever else is outside. In the Christian tradition, people often hang crosses over the doorway to keep out evil spirits. In some Eastern traditions, it is recommended to keep a Buddha statue facing the door, so when people enter he is the first thing they see.

(Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. The book of Symbols. Germany, 2010.)

Glitch Art...reuse and remix of existing elements into something new is fundamental.

Just a Glitch. Poured acrylic painting on canvas

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Bodies and machines are defined by function: as long as they operate correctly, they remain imperceptible; they become a part of the process of perception, as the extension of the action that engages the Self with the world.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, New York: Routledge, 2005 (1945), p.239. - See more at: http://interartive.org/2014/01/glitch-art/#_ftn1

The true nature of the machine –and the wilderness hidden underneath the orderly surface- suddenly makes itself evident through a glitch.[2] - See more at: http://interartive.org/2014/01/glitch-art/#_ftn1

[2] Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin, “Notes on Glitch”, http://worldpicturejournal.com/WP_6/Manon.html - See more at: http://interartive.org/2014/01/glitch-art/#_ftn1

The notion of glitch is also present in other realms of contemporary culture, where the reuse and remix of existing elements into something new is fundamental. From John Cage’s prepared piano to Grand Wizard Theodore’s scratching and the latest releases in electronic music, scratching and sampling, as well as incorporating intentional or accidental noises have become mainstream practices.

In short, the aesthetics of error have been a driving force in modernist and contemporary culture. Glitch artists employ diverse approaches to the questions of randomness and error: they look for errors within systems and project them, they hack systems and transform them so as to produce distortions or create the frame where random deviations will take place.

See more at: http://interartive.org/2014/01/glitch-art/#_ftn1

http://interartive.org/2014/01/glitch-art/#_ftn1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_art

Glitch Art is often aestheticized and fetishized technological [human] errors or anticipated accidents that can produce unintended [desired] results.

http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_6/Manon.html

Almost invariably, digital imagery greets its beholder in the guise of analog—as a smooth and seamless flow, rather than as discrete digital chunks. A glitch disrupts the data behind a digital representation in such a way that its simulation of analog can no longer remain covert. What otherwise would have been passively received—for instance a video feed, online photograph, or musical recording—now unexpectedly coughs up a tumorous blob of digital distortion. Whether its cause is intentional or accidental, a glitch flamboyantly undoes the communications platforms that we, as subjects of digital culture, both rely on and take for granted.

2. The existence of glitch-based representation depends upon the inability of software to treat a wrong bit of data in anything other than the right way. The word “glitch” in this sense does not solely represent the cause that initiates some failure, but also the output that results when improper data is decoded properly. An isolated problem is encountered and, rather than shutting down, the software prattles on. Stated differently, it is a given program’s failure to fully fail upon encountering bad data that allows a glitch to appear. The instigation of such defect-driven churning is the crux of the practice known as Glitch Art.

3. Standard dictionaries fail to define the word “glitch” except in relation to analog technology. The first documented usage in English belongs to John Glenn, in reference to voltage modulations encountered during an early manned space flight.1 Despite being rooted in analog culture, however, there is one aspect of the dictionary definition that both endures in digital glitching and in a strong sense defines it: the momentary or punctiform nature of the initiating impulse. A glitch is a “surge,” “a sudden short-lived irregularity in behavior” (OED), whose aftereffects are at once shocking and effusive. The garish appearance and obstreperous sound of glitch art betokens its origination in this way: a tiny variance has triggered major damage.

4. Although in some cases the production of glitch art may require a great deal of effort, its basic premise is opposite. Glitch art aims at drastic results, derived from seemingly insignificant alterations. One does next-to-nothing and voilà!

Friday, February 18, 2022

My first teaching job was at Niles Township West High School in Skokie, Illinois. I taught art there from 1962-66. In 1966 I moved to Belleville East High School in Belleville, Illinois

Plays at Belleville East.

I began my twenty-eight year teaching career at Belleville East High School in 1966. It was a new school and several of the campus style buildings were still unfinished and the art room was not equipped and ready for use. Art classes were held in a regular classroom without art tables or supplies. We were told that everything should be ready in a few months; t was about three months before we move to the new art building. Those three months help form my teaching philosophy at Belleville East. My mantra became manipulation of materials at hand and creative problems solving. We made projects out of building scraps and and found objects. We used copy paper and number two pencils to created our art work on typical school desks. Those early exploration into creativity continued even after all the equipment and supplies arrived.

In addition to teaching art I began to work on school plays. I was the faculty technical director for over fifty productions. My skills manipulating materials was really challenged. The beautiful new school did not have an auditorium or theater. There was a building used as a lecture hall that could be divided into three separate areas and it was used primarily for study halls and meetings. It had a few theater type seats and a raised lecture are made of concrete. The space was about twenty by thirty feet with no wing space, curtain or back stage areas. It also had to wall on each side that narrowed the space even more. This remained as the only performance are until after I retired when a new theater was built. A few plays were put on in the gym until the principle asked me if I could use the lecture space for productions. That first play was a challenge. No lights, no curtains, no dressing rooms, no tools just a bare concrete area. I purchase a portable light dimmer and had it wires to a small utility room. The dimmer had to sit in isle and was operated without a booth. We bought a few lights and the custodian attached a pipe to the ceiling and we had minimal lighting. We also bought a follow spot and positioned in the back of the room. I built flats in the hallway and made a few sandbags to support them. It was lucky that the first play was “A midsummer nights dream” and we got by with a few flats and some platforms. The student bathrooms in the hallway served as dressing rooms. I owe a lot to that first play and it taught me the value of creative problem solving. For the next thirty years I technical directed over fifty plays. Each play added more creative additions to that lecture center. The wall were removed a wood floor was added a light booth was build. I watch a small unusable space become an intimate proformance area. My only regret is that I did not get the opportunity to use a real theater.

Working for my uncle.

During my teenage years I spent a lot of time taking care of my brother Lowell. I also helped my dad build several houses and had little time for a “real Job” It my late teens I worked for a while refurbishing Electrolux vacuum cleaners in a small store front on west main street in Belleville. My 1second job, before I left Belleville for college, was at my uncle's baker shop, Beyers’ Bakery. I started out cleaning pans and stocking supplies and I graduated to donut frying after a few months. I also delivered bakery goods to a second Belleville store and a store in New Athens, Illinois about twenty miles from Belleville. I started work at five in the morning My uncle arrived about an hour earlier and had the donuts, bread and other pastries rising in the steam cabinet and I fried donuts for several hours. My uncle would feed the bread pans and coffee cake pans into the oven. The raised donuts were put on a wire rack and gently lowered into the hot grease. I iced and filled filled the jelly donuts and put the regular donuts on a long dowel rod glazed them, set them upright on a sheet pan and put them on rack. I helped my uncle remove the pans from the oven. We use long wooden paddles to bring the pans to the edge of the over and grabbed them with heavy gloves and put the hot bakery of cooling racks. I loaded the panel truck and delivered the donuts to Belleville High School and the other stores. I returned and washed pans until about t three in the afternoon. Some mornings I had to carry the bags of flour and mix from the basement storage. He was a dark and dank cellar with a stone foundation. When you turned on the light you would often see rats scurry away. I would quickly hoist the floor sack on my shoulder and climb the small rickety stairs. I could hear my uncle say, “what a baby...scared of few harmless rats”. The days were usually ten hours long six days a week. My pay was fifty cents and hour. My uncle did offer me dollar an hour if I would forgo college and help him with the business. I am sure glad I decided to walk away.

My uncle, like my dad was a stern taskmaster. He criticized me a lot and made fun of my size and quiet demeanor. I did not complain much but the abuse was intolerable most of the time. I eventually walked off the job and was severely berated by my father for being a “quitter”. Fortunately, I left for college shortly after quitting. I did no see my uncle for many years. We did reconnect when I returned to Belleville to teach. At that time his Bakery business was going bankrupt and he owed a lot of money. He left in the middle of the night with his family and purloined baking equipment and headed for Florida.

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Outsider artist

Artists generally feel the societal obligation to sell their work or somehow share it with others. Many artists judge their success by the number of exhibitions, sales or gallery affiliations. Outsider artists do not feel this obligation and for the most part their work goes unnoticed until someone finds it hidden away in a cluttered studio. The traditional way to sell your work or make it available to the public is the gallery system, juried exhibitions, and art fairs. To some extent I have eschewed these methods and found less traditional methods to distribute my work. Over the last fifty-years my main distribution method has been simply giving my work away. No need for marketing or “one man shows”. Like the undiscovered outsider artist, I earn a very small portion of my income from art sales. During my teaching years, I was very cautious not to profit from the art I created in the classroom and I made a point of giving my pieces to students or charity. Recently, the internet has served as an easy way to disseminate my artistic endeavors. I have posted hundreds of high resolution pieces with no watermarks and I check Google often to see were my work has traveled. Using the internet does not get rid of the physical products of creation and storage is problematic in an apartment settings. My latest method of dispersal involves the I Pad. My images can be easily stored on thumb drives and a small space can accommodate thousands of pieces of art.

Am I a success? If you go my the numbers my success is questionable. If you consider where some of my work has ended up, I may have a shot at the success label. Recently, one of my students from the 1970s confessed, in a email, that he or she had taken one of my drawings from a stack of work in the art room and never told me. He/she wanted to know if I would like to have it back. The person had kept the work for thirty-four years! I told the individual to keep the work and I was happy it had a home for so many years. Most of the work I did in college has also disappeared over the years with moves from house to house. On my way to my wedding, I strapped several large canvases to the top of my new Corvair and somewhere on route 66, north of Bloomington, Illinois, they were blown off the roof of the car and sailed into a field of winter wheat. I will never know if the farmer saved them or baled them. When I unceremoniously abandoned my studio at Governor French Academy in Belleville, I left behind several hundred pieces of work that I created when I was artist in residence. Some of them are still on the walls and many have been left to fade in the sun. On Facebook many of my former students have told me stories about a piece of work I gave them. Some kept props from one of my set designs and one student still has a tie that I cut in half in class as a motivational device. He also has the hand painted coat I made for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I still can’t figure out who took The Wizard of Oz mask or the bloody leg from Little Shop of Horrors. The list goes on: a painted cloths pin, a sculpture made out of a deck of cards, a building made of scrap wood, several had drawn books, countless pieces of pottery, a dozen hand painted ceramic eggs and of course, many students learned to make a bunny out of a handkerchief. And finally the “pièce de résistance," someone found a piece of my work at a garage sale.

Someday in the distant future my work may be found by a collector or “garage sale buyer” in a dusty cluttered apartment studio crammed with useless scrapes of paper covered with felt tip markers, decorated plastic cups, paper boxes and of course those little USB flash drives filled with puzzling images.

Painting experiment.

Painting experiment circa 1990's. Acrylic/enamel paint, found objects, old brushes. Sheet of masonite 4'X4'. Governor French Academy Studio.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

From the Google image catalog. Digital images

Monday, February 14, 2022

I sing the Poppy!

In Flander's fields, written by Colonel John McCrae, of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

-Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

I sing the Poppy! The frail snowy weed! The flower of Mercy! that within its heart Doth keep "a drop serene" for human need, A drowsy balm for every bitter smart. For happy hours the Rose will idly blow-- The Poppy hath a charm for pain and woe.

Mary A. Barr Quotes ,

Leonard Cohen recites “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae | Legion Magazine

Pittura metafisica.

Mysterious movement. Digital image. Ink drawing scanned and altered with Mac apps.

Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica) was a style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality, 'painting that which cannot be seen'.^[1] De Chirico, his younger brother Alberto Savinio, and Carrà formally established the school and its principles in 1917. The Metaphysical school proved short-lived; it came to an end about 1920 because of dissension between de Chirico and Carrà over who had founded the group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_art

Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic.

Hans Hofmann

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/metaphysical.html#QishcvsouAHE0mYC.99

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Computer parasitism.

Parasitism is a non-mutual symbiotic relationship between man and computer, where one, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host.

From the expanse of space to the microscopic view of structures.

The primary influence on my work is the natural world, from the expanse of space to the microscopic view of structures. I am not interested in reproducing what I see. Instead I am seeking a way to go beyond the world of nature and into the place between what we can see and what we cannot.

My interest, at either end of this spectrum of this reality, continues to feed my imagination.