Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Keep Those Kids Colorin'


Today I was looking at this artist whose work is interesting but really raw looking. Check out this drawing of feet made using crayons. Yep, I said crayons. The artist is Nathan Bond.
I also liked this portrait because he used such a closed value range (all darks) even the white looks dark.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Tia Ana


This weekend my friend Ana (top picture) came to visit us and we had a great time , got her sick, and we're sending her home now. She is a landscape architect that I'm hoping to relocate to Greenville. We went downtown and she was impressed with the landscape by the waterfall . It is really beautifully designed. I'm hoping it was enough to entice her to live near us.

We also went to the NC Arboretum which was really nifty. The Bonsai were super cool. They also had beds of pansies laid out as a quilt pattern. I was thinking it would be fun to design paintings with flowers and such like Arcrimboldo (left picture), but not so grotesque.

We also went to downtown Ashville and got to see some of the paintings (right picture) that I recently blogged about. They were really nice and really small.

This is sounding really rambly and sleepy so I'm going to bed now.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

You're The Best

Today my daughter said to her brother, " Joffre, you're the best brother ever."
Joffre: "Thank you, Na Na."
(They continue coloring for a while.)
Renata: "And I'm the best sister ever too, right Joffre." (It was not a question.)
Joffre: "You're welcome, Na Na."

I Love My Husband



Joffre is the Elephant; I'm the hedgehog. It is not a great slide but I really like this picture. I did it the first year we were married. I used max oils and it is probably 6'x 13' when all three panels are together. The title is , I Love My Husband. I am going to try to figure out how to put up more of my work and link it here soon.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

27 Stitches

I've been officially initiated as the mother of a boy. My son fell off the top of a slide and cut his lower lip/upper chin open quite badly. I was relieved he was concious and crying. We went to the doctor who immediately said he would have to go to get plastic surgery. Next thing I know my son is being put under and getting 27 stitches on his chin. Man, it all happened so fast.

Joffre and I woke up the next day incredibly sore from being so tense. Man it was rough seeing someone so little go through that. My baby, George, is much more active and mischevious than Joffre ever was. I don't think I'm going to like what he puts me through. I want more girls from now on.

Joffre Jr. is doing really well. He has a very fat lip. His new favorite word is delicious which looks and sounds really funny with a big fat lip.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Cheers

Renata doing the "Patty Cake Polka" with Daddy.


We just got back from a family conference at our mother church in Cary, NC. We stayed with the Renches and got to see Kat and Uriah Gunn and Abra and Ben Carnahan. We had a really great time. Renata danced with River Sumpter and Daddy at her first ball. I found out George does not sleep well away from home. Joffre Jr. charmed all the Rench girls and got hugs hourly. He also decided to draw with a crayon on one of the church pews at the exact moment Matt Whitling (the speaker) was speaking about discipline and much to everyone's delight could be heard crying in the back as he got a spanking. We learned some great things at the conference.

As we sat at the table at home eating dinner and drinking beer Joffre held up his glass and had Renata say "cheers" and clink glasses with him. So Joffre Jr. turned to me and said, "Cheer me, Mom. Cheer me." So dang cute.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Mosaics


I am painting a table on my porch and wanted to try painting a fake mosaic on the top. I'm not sure if it is going to work, but I'm trying. I was looking at mosaics online and found this mosaic by Irina Charny.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

A Painting A Day





I was checking out a website of 15 artist who paint a painting a day. I was very jealous that they can do this and have the discipline to do it. I found an artist with some amazing work. She paints mostly people looking at artworks but her still lives are fantastic too. I've posted one but here is her blog too. She only started painting in 2004. She is incredibly prolific. The pieces of people in galleries are from photographs. (This surprised me because the look very fresh.) She sells a lot of her stuff on ebay. Feel free to buy me one.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Jen's Famous Brownies

My sister-in-law made me brownies with peppermint patties and walnuts in them. They are so super delicious. She wrapped them in wax paper very prettily and put them in a nice box. Totally made my day. In our family I have a dish with a title, "Kim's Potato Salad". I am officially naming Jen's brownies: "Jen's Famous Brownies." Is that original enough for you, Jen? Maybe "Jen's Brownilious Brownies"? Anyway, Thanks Jen.

If You Painted A Mural What Would You Paint?

Please comment . I'm curious.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Sew Mama Sew


So I'm probably behind the times, but I just found a great website for fabric, Sew Mama Sew.
I was looking for oilcloth to make a tablecloth and found this sock monkey vinyl coated cotton. pretty cool. The blogs from this site are very fun to browse also. They are not all purely sewing. I don't like sewing much but this is a fun site.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Daffodils




It has been fun to see what pops out of the ground at our new house. The people before us liked gardening. We have plum trees and a fig tree, iris and daylilly beds and amyrillis. My front walk is a surprise . We had a bunch of daffodils come out already and I think tulips are coming up now. Fun times. I picked a couple of daffodils last time we were out and let Joffre and Renata pick one each for our neighbor, but the next time we went out I blinked for a second and Renata had picked all the other flowers. So our front walk is bare now but we have a nice bunch on our table.

Applesauce


George had his first taste of applesauce.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Andy Goldsworthy

These are leaves held together with thorns.

I just watched a documentary on the artist Andy Goldsworthy. I really enjoyed it. One of my favorite parts was watching the stone wall builders work. They place stones "just so" and break them to fit in place all very rapidly. It is pretty awesome. They must have incredible eyes for measuring and shapes.

Goldsworthy's work is all from nature and about nature. Its beauty comes both from creation itself, and from Goldsworthy's skill as an artist. He knows shape, line, color, and he carefully constructed these pieces to repeat line, shapes, and colors in nature using nature. For example, he'll place white colored stones between ochre stones then burgundy and back to white underwater in a stream to look like the movement of the water and the stones being under water make the color of the stones possible.

Did you get all that?

While in Idaho a few friends and I went to a small show of his photographs and I was challenged by someone as to whether his work should be called Art with a capital A. This person didn't believe that abstracted work should be considered Art at all. I can't agree with that point of view at all. Abstracted work is simplifed representational work, i.e. it still represents something.

It can be beautiful and godly in its intent and communication. It can still communicate. The problem is that Modern art simplified representational art by abstraction, wanted to get to the "essence" of the artwork, and eventually got to the point where it did not want to communicate. (Mark Rothko supposedly did get to the essence and he killed himself. Hmmm.) This is foolish because the artwork is still paint and a canvas not a magical portal to..."it" whatever "it" is.

Andy Goldsworthy is a Modern artist. In the documentary he spoke a lot about the "essence" of everything. One of my professors in college hated me because I refused to get to the "essence" of my work. (The fact that my weakness as an artist is to overwork my paintings made our relationship almost comical.) Anyway, just because Modernists got it wrong and their work was abstract doesn't mean all abstracted work is bad. If someone is trying to not represent anything then you could argue that there work is merely decoration, but abstract and non-representational artwork are not the same. (Rothko's paintings are often sold as decor.)

So, should Goldsworthy be considered an artist? I would argue, yes, because he is so skilled asthetically and conveys a knowledge and appreciation of creation so innovatively. He glorifies God whether he wants to or not through his medium. He would be dissatisfied with my validation of him, but so be it. Why must the most simplifed artwork have the most complicated write-ups? Why do artists who are trying to get to the "essence" and simplify not know how to explain their work? They just don't want to get to the realization that the work is simple i.e. foolish.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Drawing Matthew Clark

These are some illustrations from the Chronicles of Narnia done by Matt Clark . He has some great stuff. Check out his web site, www.drawingmatthewclark.com. He was in grad school at UF while I was an undergrad. For his senior thesis he did some drawings on 2 large walls in the UF gallery on Romans.Very cool guy. He teaches art at Veritas academy now and wrote this great article on nudity in art for the ACCS (Association of Classical Christian Schools) a while back. Great article.