Blogging the Arts.

Make an Affirmation Altar

By sarajean on 3/24/10 7:40am
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Recently I ran across this site about affirmation altars and became instantly hooked. Just look at these amazingly beautiful, inspirational creations! Every one of them is unique, handmade, and features a quotation or affirmation based on a theme.

As awesome as they are (and affordable; they’re $20 each, which I think is fair considering the work that goes into them), they inspired me to create my own altar. While I already have a home altar set up in my bedroom, this sort of portable affirmation altar would be perfect in any room. In fact, I think each member of our household could have his or her own.

To make an altar, just gather up some art supplies, personal items of significance, and a piece of poster board. They do make poster board that already comes in three folded sections, but for a smaller altar you can fold your own.

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Giotto Frescos Re-Born Through Ultraviolet Light

By lisala on 3/13/10 9:38pm
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Italian master artist Giotto (Giotto di Bondone born 1266 and died 1337) is particularly famous for two series of frescos in honor of John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist in Peruzzi Chapel in Florence's Santa Croce church. The frescoes were completed in 1320. The most famous scenes include an image of St John the Evangelist ascending to heaven, and a Roman soldier presenting the severed head of St John the Baptist on a plate to King Herod. Recently, restorers mapping and measuring the frescos for future restoration discovered that under ultraviolet light, no longer visible colors and details could be seen once again. In the image of St. John the Evangelist below, the version on the left is photographed under normal light; the image on the right is taken under ultraviolet light.

Image credit: Discovery.comImage credit: Discovery.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hollis Sigler: Expect the Unexpected (Part 02)

By cobwebsandstrange on 3/13/10 9:23pm
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Highlighted by occasional pink clouds, the floating bed appears to be an hospitable place to recline. “To Kiss the Spirits: Now This is What it is Like,” from 1993, makes use of the same concept of ascension as “The Earth Grows Languid.” The earlier painting, though, substitutes a parade of women for floating furniture. As the procession climbs higher up the circular staircase, individuals sprout wings and take flight to reach whatever might await them in the ether. Either painting might count as a mediation on the impermanence of life. Sigler’s concerted effort to relate movement – and here it’s upwards – aptly displays the difference between her pre and post diagnosis work. Rapidity and uncertainty characterize these later works when examined alongside her earlier, comparatively empty canvases.

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Hollis Sigler: Expect the Unexpected (Part 01)

By cobwebsandstrange on 3/13/10 9:18pm
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Being able to amble through a selection of an artist’s work that spans several decades grants viewers insight into the trajectory of a life. The fact that Hollis Sigler perpetually relates her most intimate thoughts on life and human interaction through seemingly bland, daily occurrences captured in paint makes the collection amassed for Expect the Unexpected, on display at the Chicago Cultural Center, all the more revealing.

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March is Youth Art Month

By sarajean on 2/28/10 3:36pm
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Doesn’t it just break your heart every time you hear about another art program being killed at another school? And it’s usually before a sports program—particularly football—is cut, of course. Excuses abound about how sports are great for students—and they can be—but all in all, we all know that it comes down to money and what brings volunteers, donors, and publicity, doesn’t it?

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Worcester Art Museum, Worcester Massachusetts

By lisala on 2/25/10 10:45pm
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The Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts is a tiny gem. It's not a terribly well known museum, though it is well-respected. The Worcester Art museum's collection includes items from eras and cultures ranging from the pre-historic to the twentieth century, from Pre-Columbian art, to Babylonian, Classical, Medieval and European traditions. The Worcester Art Museum Web page describes the museum's holdings as a 35,000-piece collection of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photography, prints, drawings and new media that span 5,000 years of art and culture. The painters include European and American artists, like Cassatt, Gauguin, Goya, Monet, Sargent and Whistler. But mostly, it's the early works that interested me.

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Chicago in Buidlings: The Thompson Center

By cobwebsandstrange on 2/16/10 9:23am
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Approaching the Thompson Center from the south-east, the building conjures the image of an enormous birthday cake rendered in architectural terms during the ‘80s. At the same time that the structure is laughably ugly in that manner, it also seems to be reaching upwards. The fact that government is in place to uplift the common people, or at least that’s how some see it, could be the ideal related here.

What compounds the haughty feeling of achievement is the Jen Dubuffet sculpture that sits out front. This particular piece of public art compliments the building in that it points upwards, again, making its viewer feel that there is an ideal that Chicago is close to grasping.

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Chicago in Buidlings: the Daley Center

By cobwebsandstrange on 2/10/10 10:01pm
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Housing courtrooms and constructed in a simple manner, the Daley Center probably shouldn’t physically appear to be an inviting governmental building. The wide open space that serves as a place for employees, lawyers and those who are amidst some sort of litigation to smoke cigarettes allows any visitor to take various views of the structure making the building seem more approachable, even as it’s a far sight taller than the neighboring City-County Hall.

The untitled Picasso sculpture that sits in-front of the building and just to the right of the entrance and exit for the train adds to a surprisingly open and friendly feeling of the space. It’s all a bit confusing entering the Daley Center it’s darkly colored floors and high ceilings are complicated by a series of roped off areas and metal detectors.

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Chicago in Buidlings: City-County Hall

By cobwebsandstrange on 2/10/10 7:12pm
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From any of the four corners that Chicago’s City-County Hall takes up, it seems like a fortress.

The exterior of the building is able to make any passerby feel tiny and insignificant by comparison. What goes on behind closed doors in the one hundred year old building isn’t accessible to most common folks and certainly not any random pedestrian. That’s pretty clear.

Catching a glimpse of the lions’ heads that litter the façade of the building’s exterior sides is supposed to summon a heroic notion of what transpires inside. Or it might be a warning. By dint of the building’s imposing stature, though, it doesn’t make a difference: walking through any one of the City-County Hall’s entrances doesn’t seem hospitable.

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Modern Magic Realism

By msarko on 2/2/10 9:03pm
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"Tuesday's Child" by Michael Parkes"Tuesday's Child" by Michael Parkes

The best art of the 20th century reflected modernist and postmodernist ideas of mutable perception, playing with the way the eye attends to light and how the mind processes concepts with near-automatic preconception. Where surrealists like Salvador Dali pushed these quirks to the extreme, juxtaposing unrelated images and delving into the idiosyncrasies of their own dreams, a subsequent movement known as Magic Realism attempted to take the same sense of fancy and apply it to more recognizable themes. From painters to filmmakers, the idea of incorporating the unrealistic into the familiar without a knee-jerk shock reaction resonated then and continues to capture imaginations today.



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