Daily Art Fixx

visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!

Shea Hembrey: How I Became 100 Artists – Ted Talks

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(Worth the 16:48 watch time)

How do you stage an international art show with work from 100 different artists? If you’re Shea Hembrey, you invent all of the artists and artwork yourself and hold your own biennial called “Seek” From large-scale outdoor installations to tiny paintings drawn with a single-haired brush, watch this funny, mind-bending talk to see the explosion of creativity and diversity of skills a single artist is capable of.

Shea Hembrey was born in 1974. He grew up on a dirt road in rural Hickory Grove, Arkansas in a family of farmers, factory workers, hunters, trappers, musicians, and cockfighters. He makes art by concentrating on a singular, defined conceptual project where the ideas direct what methods and media he uses. Research is key to all of his creative endeavors while he remains a prolific maker of things.

Though always focused on developing skills on his own, he has a varied formal art education. His nine years of studying art at university include a year spent studying Maori art in New Zealand and an MFA from Cornell University. His studio is currently based in a sleepy town on the Delaware River in New Jersey.

To see more, visit SheaHembry.com and TED.com.

E-Learning: MoMA

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Most art fans know that the Museum of Modern Art in New York City has one of the richest collections of modern art in the world.  Sometimes, I actually wish that I lived in New York City so that I could visit MoMA on a weekly basis. But did you know that the MoMA also has a fantastic online learning section via its website?  Their “Online Activities” section under the LEARN category directs you to a vast number of audio, video, and interactive resources.  There really is something for everyone – from young children to adults of all ages.  Find out about the MoMA’s special exhibitions, watch artist interviews, learn about specific artists or art techniques with their dedicated mini-sites, and much more.

Check out this wonderful resource yourself at MoMA.org.

Dale Chihuly: Through The Looking Glass

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Incredible glass sculptor Dale Chihuly has a new exhibition on now at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Through The Looking Glass includes installations such as Lime Green Icicle Tower, installed in the Shapiro Courtyard; a Persian Wall; a Chandelier room with six examples, including the Chiostro di Sant’Apollonia Chandelier; and a room containing a magnificent Mille Fiori installation that is nearly sixty feet long.

Over the course of his career, Dale Chihuly has revolutionized the art of blown glass, moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture and establishing the use of glass—inherently a fragile but also magical material—as a vehicle for installation and environmental art. This exhibition of new and archival works represents the breadth and scope of the artist’s creative vision over the last four decades.

Although his work ranges from the single vessel to indoor and outdoor site-specific installations, Chihuly is best known for his multi-part blown compositions. Based in Seattle, Washington, Chihuly works with a team of glassblowers, a process that allows him to work on a grand scale and to explore and experiment with color, design, and assemblage. The exhibition provides an opportunity to see and explore the full range of his artistic achievements by immersing visitors in the beautiful and enchanting environments created through his extraordinary vision.

Through The Looking Glass runs through August 7, 2011.  To see more of Dale Chihuly’s work, visit Chihuly.com.

TED Prize 2011: JR – Use Art to Turn the World Inside Out

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2011 TED Prize Winner JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not the museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.

After he found a camera in the Paris subway, JR did a tour of European Street Art, tracking the people who communicate messages via the walls. Then, he started to work on the vertical limits, watching the people and the passage of life from the forbidden undergrounds and roofs of the capital.

In 2006, he achieved Portrait of a generation, portraits of the suburban “thugs” that he posted, in huge formats, in the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became “official” when the Paris City Hall wrapped its building with JR’s photos.

In 2007, with Marco, he did Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on the both sides of the Security fence / Separation wall.   In 2008, JR embarked for a long international trip for “Women”, a project in which he underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts.

JR creates “Pervasive Art” that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil. People who often live with the bare minimum discover something absolutely unnecessary. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Some elderly women become models for a day; some kids turn artists for a week. In that Art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

After these local exhibitions, the images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience.

At TED 2011, JR made his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. Learn more about his work and learn how you can join in at InsideOutProject.net. To see more of JR’s work, visit JR-art.net. The TED video below (after the photos) is 24 minutes but truly inspiring to watch, so if you have the time, I check it out.


Google Art Project: E-Learning

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Introducing Google Art Project – unique collaboration between Google and some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.  Using Google Street View technology, visitors can move around the museum’s galleries, selecting works of art that are of interest and navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum.

Features include:

Artwork View: discover featured artworks at high resolution and use the custom viewer to zoom into paintings. Expanding the info panel allows you to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.

Create your own collection: the ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature allows you to save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

Museums are included in the project:

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin – Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC – USA
The Frick Collection, NYC – USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin – Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC – USA
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC – USA
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid – Spain
Museo Thyssen – Bornemisza, Madrid – Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague – Czech Republic
National Gallery, London – UK
Palace of Versailles – France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam – The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg – Russia
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow – Russia
Tate Britain, London – UK
Uffizi Gallery, Florence – Italy
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam – The Netherlands

Some of the paintings and features captured with Street View were required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.

To see Google Art Project in action, visit GoogleArtProject.com.

E-Learning: smARThistory.org

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For anyone that is continually searching for new and interesting ways to learn about art, the smARThistory  website is for you. smARThistory.org is a free, award-winning, multi-media web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement for the traditional art history textbook.

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker began smARThistory in 2005  by creating a blog featuring free audio guides in the form of podcasts for use in The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Soon after, they embedded the audio files in their online survey courses.

Their aim is to create reliable content and a delivery model that is entertaining and occasionally even playful. The podcasts and screen-casts are spontaneous conversations about works of art where they don’t hesitate to disagree with each other or art history orthodoxy.

For me, this website is a great way to introduce myself to an artist and then decide if I want to do further research based on my level on interest.  The organization of the site makes it easy to find what you’re looking for and the videos are informal, yet informed and thoughtful. To begin your own e-Learning, visit smARThistory.org.

Kinetic Sculpture: BMW Museum – Munich

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The BMW Museum opened in June 2008. Featured in the Museum is the Kinetic Sculpture you see in the video below. “The sculpture is a metaphorical translation of the process of form-finding in art and design. 714 metal spheres, hanging from thin steel wires attached to individually-controlled stepper motors and covering the area of six square meters, animate a seven minute long mechatronic narrative. In the beginning, moving chaotically, then evolving to several competing forms that eventually resolve to the finished object, the Kinetic Sculpture creates an artistic visualisation of the process of form-finding in  different variations.”

To see pictures and more video of the Kinetic Sculpture, visit ART.com.

 


Ryan Larkin: Art and Animation

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I was reminded by a friend on facebook today about Canadian artist and animator Ryan Larkin and I thought I would share it with you.

Larkin, the son of an airline mechanic, was born in Montreal on July 31,1943. He grew up in Dorval, Quebec and studied with painter Arthur Lismer at the Ecole des beaux-arts de Montreal. The death of his brother in the 1950s affected Larkin, and he began drinking heavily in his teens.

Larkin began working at the National Film Board in 1961 where he was tutored by master animator Norman McLaren. Using new film techniques, he created the short “Syrinx” in 1965. In 1968 Larkin received an Academy Award nomination for his animated short “Walking”. In 1972 he created “Street Musique“ which was considered a masterpiece of animated movement.  Larkin won dozens of awards during his 14 years with the film board.

In 1977, Larkin suffered from a combination of creative block and alcohol and cocaine addiction.  He eventually left the NFB and began living on the streets of Montreal and panhandling. “I had difficulty handling my ego when I was famous. I’ve made a fool of myself.” Larkin once told an interviewer. “It was a psychological problem I had to deal with, and my first choice was to use drugs. “I had sexual proclivities, too – I was doing coke and getting hard-ons instead of what I should have been doing, which was making interesting, comical, beautiful animation films.”

Larkin was brought back into the spotlight as the subject of the film “Ryan“, a digitally animated tribute by  Chris Landreth that won the Academy Award for best animated short in 2005.  The film rejuvenated his career and he returned to animation by creating three short animated bumpers for MTV in December 2006.

Larkin died on February 14, 2007 of lung cancer in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec.  At the time of his death, he had been working on  “Spare Change”, a film about his experiences on the streets of Montreal.

To see more of Larkin’s animations, visit the National Film Board online.

 

Sources: CBC, Canada.com

World Origami Days 2009: Oct 24 – Nov 11

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Today marks the beginning of World Origami Days in the United States, the UK, and other parts of the world. October 24 to November 11 is a two and a half week celebration of the international community of origami.

The goal of World Origami days is to make origami as visible as possible.  The organizers encourage you to “teach a class, fold on the bus, give your friends origami, exhibit your model”, or do whatever you can to bring origami to the attention of others.

Why these dates? October 24 is the birthday of Lillian Oppenheimer (1898-1992), who founded the first origami group in America. She was also one of the founders of the British Origami Society and Origami USA. A dynamic woman, she was delighted in the magic to be found in a piece of paper and wanted to share it with the world. The final day, November 11,  is Origami Day in Japan and is recognized as the country that most fully developed the traditional art of origami.

For more information about World Origami Days, visit Origami-USA.org.

Why not try making an origami crane yourself.  The video below has very detailed instructions for making an origami crane. Enjoy!