Synthetic Storm III - The Elephant In The Room - 2012

I should have posted this one first, because I started this one first. This is the 3rd, and most likely, the last in the series of Synthetic Storm images.

The Protagonist - 2012

This painting was a very spontaneous creation. I began by tracing my hand in the upper left portion of the canvas. I then just built the design from there. Very enjoyable experience. Spontaneous creations are definitely a positive experience. I have received some pretty positive feedback on this one.

Dora My Dora - 2012

This painting was inspired by Pablo's portrait of Dora Maar. At first, I had some trouble with this image. Not the figure, but the room in the background. So I did some adjustments, and felt pretty good with the fix.

Dancing In The Moonlight

This painting created itself. It is early August, and I am really anxious to start the Fall semester. I am excited to begin a new set of paintings. I am wanting to explore the non-representational abstract style.

This one is titled Dancing In The Moonlight - 2012

Fear Nymph

Here is my first effort for the summer 2012. I started with a plan to NOT plan the design, but rather to let the design create itself. I planned to do this by starting with a random mark on the canvas, and then just kind of build it out from there. As I finished the underpainting, I was not very confident that anything would come of this effort. However, I am pleasantly surprised to be rather happy with the finished painting.

Print 2/2

Here is a capture of print 2/2 of Turbines And Fog - 2010. This image will never be printed again in this size. 18 1/2 X 36. However, if you would like a print, I would be willing to start a new series, and round the measurements up to 20 X 40. I would be willing to print 25 of those. These prints will be framed differently however, but I think you will really enjoy them. I am going to print and frame them using a printing company out of Greeley, Colorado. They have a cool framing process, using what they call Alumiplaq. The name describes the materials. The frame is made entirely of aluminum, and there is no glass. The print is adhered to the aluminum, and then coated with a varnish, to protect the art.

When I am dead and gone, and I am considered an internationally renowned artist, these prints will be worth a billion, kagillion, schmedulakachilion .... dollars (evil grin). So be sure and get them while they last. Again, there will only be 25 of them. :)

Zag

This is the last painting from the Spring 2012 semester at Seward County Community College with Susan Copas. Zag is the alter ego that helps me define the vision behind my art.

Playful Partisans

It's an election year, so I thought I would paint something in honor of our great American political process.

Synthetic Storm II - Playful Partisans

Synthetic Storm

The purpose of my painting is not to match the couch. Rather, the purpose is to start a conversation. The length of the conversation is a yardstick to its significance. A good painting creates a long conversation. A great painting also creates a long conversation, well into the future.

Bob And Betty

I made a few last minute tweaks to my Bob And Betty. Here is the final iteration :)

New Kansas Images

Here are a few new Kansas images. :)

New Art

Some new art images. Bob & Betty is my new painting. :)

New Art Activities & Expressions

There has been a little bit of activity in the past several months since my last post.

First, I entered the following images for the 14th National Juried Art Exhibition at Baker Arts Center, in Liberal, Kansas.

 

Neither of them were chosen for display in the show. Being rejected was actually a good experience for me. Show me a successful artist, and I will show you a stack of rejection letters. Once you are able to truly comprehend the concept that art is a truly subjective effort, then you realize that rejection letters are just a part of the process. I personally think these two images would have printed and displayed quite nicely. The juror may have even agreed. However, she most likely thought the ones she chose will display even better.

It's ok with me, because I create my images for me first. If others like them, all the better. But the bottom line is, they have to be pleasing to me first.

2. I was honored to meet the great crop artist Stan Herd, when he installed, with the help of our great maintenance crew, one of his murals in Seward County's Administration Building. It was great to meet Stan. A very down to earth (no pun intended) man. A man who does not place himself above the others in the room. He is truly an inspirational artist, and fellow human being. Seward County will have the ribbon cutting ceremony for the mural install very soon.

3. I was recently given the opportunity to apply, and interview for the position of Member, on the Board of Directors, at Baker Arts Center. It was an honor to be presented with the opportunity. I enjoyed meeting the other board members, and the new Executive Director, Mike Brack, during the interview. They apparently liked me too, as they offered me the position, and I accepted. I am looking forward to learning the art world from the perspective of the art center, as opposed to artist or patron. It will be a great experience for me, and I am excited to begin the work.

Mike's appointment was published in the local newspaper, and I was very happy to read about all of the exciting new ideas he has in an effort to re-energize interest in the art center within the community. I too agree, that perceptions need to be updated to get the community more involved in the local art scene. I will be very supportive of his efforts as we move forward.

http://www.bakerartscenter.org/

4. Mary and I recently made a trip to Denver. We wanted to visit our daughter Amanda and her fiance Jen. It was a wonderful visit. We also had a nice lunch with my Dad, and Step-Mom. During our weekend visit, we took a trip downtown to take in the Clyfford Still museum. Clyfford Still is one of the pioneers of the Abstract Expressionist movement in painting. His work was one of the biggest influences in that movement.

http://clyffordstillmuseum.org

The museum is very nice, spacious, well organized, and the work and life of the artist is covered very comprehensively, with interactive digital displays on the history of the artist. The paintings were absolutely breathtaking. They were displayed very nicely, with no, or very little framing. In fact, it was really nice to be able to walk up close to the painting, and be able to see the raw canvas behind the paint. Wow. I did notice the security folks were keeping a close watch on me, as I was very close to the paintings, but was careful not to touch.

http://blogs.findlaw.com/legally_weird/2012/01/woman-rubs-butt-tries-to-urinate-on-30m-museum-painting.html

As you can see, the security is definitely watching out for weirdos like this one.

5. Also during our visit to Denver, I took some time to capture the downtown Denver skyline. Here are a few examples.

One of the great things I love about digital art, is that no one image is ever static. I can do and re-do these images any way I see fit. I absolutely love that. When you shoot in camera raw, your original image is always there, for you to start over with another creation in mind. These examples show one twisted image, one straight color, and one straight black and white. Well, actually, the color was manipulated a little. I changed the color of the sky. I absolutely love how the colors just pop though.

6. One last thing to share. I have recently taken up painting with oil on canvas. I enrolled in the Oil Painting I class at the community college in Liberal, and am very glad I did. Susan Copas is the art professor, and I am very happy with her instruction. She is very good, not only with her art, but also in how she approaches the art student. Teaching an art class is difficult, because as I mentioned before, art is a very subjective thing, and one must be very mindful of that when teaching. I have learned so much from Susan just in one half of a semester. Form, line, color, composition, color, color, and more color. I am looking forward to learning more. When I think about painting, I kick myself for not discovering this very therapeutic activity sooner. But I am also reminded, that I have plenty of time left to enjoy the process of learning that craft. Here is an image of the still life project in our class. Ha ha ... not bad for a first effort. Also, not bad, considering my interests in painting lean more toward the abstract. Surprised?

Kansas

Recently I took the camera for a stroll, and came back with some nice imagery of the Kansas landscape. I have been doing a lot of reading of late, and viewing photographs from the masters of still photography. Specifically Edward Weston, and Bill Brandt. I have been a big fan of Edward's work for many years, dating back to when I first learned of Ansel Adams. Ansel and Edward were probably the most influential photographers of their time. Ansel's work was much more in the main stream, however Edward's work excited me even more. Adams and Weston were the two A list names of the f/64 group. Bill Brandt is a name I have only recently become aware of. I purchased John Zarkowski's book entitled, "The Photographer's Eye," and noticed some of Bill's work there.

I started looking on the Internet for more about Bill, and came across the following quote, which I very much relate to in my work -

"I am not interested in rules and conventions ... photography is not a sport. If I think a picture will look better brilliantly lit, I use lights, or even flash. It is the result that counts, no matter how it was achieved. I find the darkroom work most important, as I can finish the composition of a picture only under the enlarger. I do not understand why this is supposed to interfere with the truth. Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others."

One thing I have noticed about these masters, is the fact that they are able to cover multiple genres. Edward Weston went from landscapes, to still life, to nudes, without skipping a beat. Bill Brandt also mentions this in his interviews. I do like the idea of dabbling in a wider array of subjects. These Kansas images are a pretty stark contrast to the twisted turbines of the past few years.

Wendy

I am doing a little mental gymnastics this morning. Yesterday afternoon, I attended the opening reception of the 13th National Juried Art Exhibition at Baker Arts Center, here in Liberal, Kansas. I had submitted two of my Digital Art images for consideration, and one of them was accepted. Windmill Monster.

After attending the reception, I wanted to take stock in a few of the things I have learned from this experience. As I was preparing some thoughts for this blog post, I was thinking that being accepted into a national juried show is a sort of milestone for me. But I was forgetting that I had previously had a couple photographs accepted into the 5 State Juried show a few years ago. The 5 State show is hosted by the Hays Arts Council in Hays, Kansas. I have always been a little innocent and naive about the whole process of entering art works into shows like this. So many things to learn. For me, at the end of the day, it has always been, it is now, and I think it will always be about my passion for creating interesting works, and presenting them in a way that allows other people to view them, and critique them. It has never been, it isn't now, and I don't think it will ever be about competing and/or making money, though at times the framework of these shows appear to cater to those visions. I think most of the artists who participate in these shows understand that selling your work in this venue is not the goal. At first, I thought I had under-priced my print. When I filled out the form, and listed the price, I wanted to price it low enough so that it was not presumptuous, but high enough to at least make back the money I spent on the print, frame, and commission to the art center. The price that I settled on was $200. It wasn't until a week or so after, that I did the math again, and concluded that if I sell this piece, I will actually lose a little money on the deal. But as I viewed the other pieces in the show, I noticed that many of the other artists had their works priced very similarly, and some were even a little lower, considering the size of their work, and my guess at how much they had invested in it. I'm actually hoping the piece does not sell, because I want to keep it for my own wall.

I was doing some thinking about how this image came to be. Mental gymnastics. Any artist needs to be able to communicate their vision when asked. Thus the reason for my mental gymnastics. I have shared this image with my friends on Facebook, and received a few comments comparing it to the work of Salvador Dali. It's not the level of art they were pointing out, but rather, I think, the style or genre, that this piece would fit into.

Salvador is the top of the mountain in the Surrealism genre, and so I started reading a little about this movement.

The first thing I took note of as I was reading about Surrealism, is that it was spawned from the Dada movement. Dada was a sort of protest of the societal norms of the day. Anti-art is another way of describing Dada. I'm not sure I agree with that. The point I think is important is the fact that it was born of rebelliousness. I feel a bit of that rebelliousness in my art expressions.

One of the most important aspects of the art I create is the response I get from the viewer. Additionally in the response I DON'T get. The response I want is, "Wow, that is cool. What I see is...." The response I don't want is, "Wow, that looks so real." Or , "Wow, that looks EXACTLY like the scene you were attempting to depict."

I learned a few things about Surrealism in my reading this morning. I found a dictionary definition of the word. It reads, "Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation."

Automatism is the idea that you put your pencil to the paper, and just start drawing. Sort of a visual form of stream of conscious. I can see how this image would fit with this definition. When I think about the day that I created Wendy, the process went something like this.

I started with a digital photograph of a windmill. I opened the image up in Photoshop. Not having any formal training in Photoshop, I set out to teach myself. So I just started turning and twisting the knobs with this image. In the process of twisting the knobs, I serendipitously stumbled upon Wendy. I twisted it with the "Twirl" filter, and then I flipped the image, creating a second layer. When the two layers were stitched together, Wendy was created. Actually I'm not sure if Wendy was created or discovered. Probably a little of both. But I guess the point is, I think this is similar to what they talk about in the use of the word "Automatism." 

Update - About 5 hours after this was first posted. I got to thinking about this definition of Surrealism, and I'm beginning to have a problem with it. This definition attempts to describe the process of an artistic expression. This process could be employed in the creation of expressions in many different genres. Also, after thinking about it a bit longer, I don't really think that Wendy was really a result of "Automatism" or "Stream of Conscious." As I described the process, there is an element of that, but there was also an element of purpose as well. Mental gymnastics, schmental schmempackschticks. I think at the end of the day, an artist creates what he or she creates. I think I need to leave the defining to someone else. The way I define surrealism is something that is outside of what you would find in conscious reality. This is what I try to do.

Dreamer

For those that don't really know me, I'm a dreamer. I have always been a dreamer, for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I can remember times when I would just love to lay in the sun, staring at the clouds. I would look for odd shapes in the clouds, and try to figure out what the shapes most resembled. I'm sure most of us have had those warm summer days.

I think my propensity to dream, however, gets me into trouble. I know I drive my wife Mary nuts. She is constantly reminding me to watch the road when we're driving together. My mind is constantly moving. I'm forever dreaming up new ideas. Mary loves to tell the story about how I have endeavored to take on new projects that never actually get started. Once I was going to take up the piano again. We even hauled a piano up from Ashland once for that very purpose. But it just never happened. She also brings up the time I had decided to take up painting. She bought me a starter kit, complete with a small canvas, a few tubes of paint, and a few different sized brushes. It collected dust. Then there was the time I was going to take up model building. I bought a model (one of those aircraft carriers), and I did actually work on it. But it was never finished, and to this day, I do not know where that model is. It's likely taking up landfill space somewhere now.

One dream I always return to, however, is my dream of making cool images with a camera. Photography was the one dream that actually fit into my creative flow. I never could draw with a pencil. But for some reason, I took to drawing with light.

Making cool images. Those three words seem to be where I have always landed. When I enlisted in the Navy, photography was the goal. The Navy's photography schools were the best, according to the recruiters. I took them at their word, and enlisted in the Navy. They were right. I gained a great deal of knowledge and experience as a Photographer's Mate in the United States Navy. The only problem was, I was still a dreamer. Now this is not to say that dreaming is a bad thing. You just want to balance it with the other important things in life. This is partly why I didn't fit into the lifestyle of the military. Dreamers are not in high demand. Uncle Sam wants doers.

Here is an image of August Sigur and I, where the purpose of the image is, again, best described with those three words. Making cool images.

The idea was to make it appear as though the rolls of film were flying out of the cameras. We used a thin string thread through the film spool, and strung up to the false ceiling above. Then we photographed the scene a bit darker than normal, in an effort to help hide the string from the final image. If only we had the clone stamp tool back then. But the dark background, and the low light on the scene in the final print, seemed to do a pretty good job of hiding the string. If you look closely though, you can see the string on the film cannister on the right.

That photograph was captured in 1990. Here we are now, in the year 2010. Twenty years later, and I'm still stringing up objects in my effort to make cool images. Ever the dreamer.

Recently, I was driving over to one of the county buildings I provide computer network services for. I was troubleshooting a DSL circuit. Anyway, the parking lot for this building is not paved, and in the middle of this field of dirt, lay this old wrench. I can't imagine how it got there. The tool is likely an antique. But it must have dropped out of someone's old pickup and there it lay for who knows how long, until it caught my eye. The shape of the tool reminded me of some of the images I had been working on that year. Twisted is the word that best describes the images. Like this one ...

So, I picked up the wrench, dropped it in the floor of the back seat of my car, and carried on with my day. That wrench sat in the back seat of my car for about a year before I actually took it out, and photographed it. Again, I just had one thing in mind, which is described with those three words. Making cool images.

Remembering what Sigur and I did with the film cannisters, I took some thin thread, and attempted to string this wrench up. Originally my intent was to string it in such a way so that I had a fully frontal lit wrench in the foreground, and nothing but blue sky in the background. This didn't work well, though for a couple reasons. The first reason was time. I shot this during my lunch hour, and so I didn't really have a lot of time to be fooling around with it. Also I noticed that stringing this wrench up was going to be harder than it looked. 

However, I did manage to string it up in the front yard of my rental house in Liberal. Here is how it turned out with no digital manipulation (other than the removal of the string with the clone stamp tool in Photoshop).

Then I endeavored to make a cool image even cooler, by doing some additional manipulation. This second image was achieved by isolating the wrench from the sidewalk and lawn in the background, and applying a black and white filter. I then used the clone stamp tool to remove the small chunk of concrete inside the turn below the wrench. I then used the liquefy filter to further twist the wrench handle. Have a look...

I thought this looked pretty cool, but I wanted to do something a little different with it. In my original intent, I had the wrench against a blue sky. Well, that didn't work out, but I thought I could put the wrench against a black background as an alternative. So I did that. Also, I have been noticing that when I use the liquefy filter, and twist the imagery, I notice the degradation and/or distortion of the pixels in the area that is twisted. So, to counter this, I decided to use the clone stamp tool in an effort to restore some of that distortion. Here is the result.

All three images have a completely different look and feel, but they all come from the same original image. And, they come from the original intent of Making Cool Images. My favorite dream.

Straight Photography?

I wanted to share a couple of new images, and sort of continue the discussion from my last post. The first image is from Cuchara Colorado. My parents own a cabin out there, and we were there for a short visit. I was taking the dog for a walk, the evening before the drive back home. When I started walking, I noticed the multiple shades of red and blue in the clouds. This sparked a scramble for the camera. The final image, however, is technically not a straight photograph. I enhanced the color saturation just a bit, in order to make the colors richer. But the straw that breaks it away from a straight shot, is the use of the clone stamp tool. There were a few hot spots in the clouds that were just washed out in the final image. I used the clone stamp tool to remove those hot spots.

The second image I would like to share is from two nights ago. I went to the Seward County Fair with one purpose in mind. To capture the light trails from the carnival hardware. I was only able to get a couple workable images. This one I believe is the best. Is it a straight shot? In other words, did I take the image straight out of the camera? No. Again, using my new favorite Photoshop tool, the clone stamp tool, I removed the evergreen tree that was cluttering up the negative space on the left side. It looks much better now.

Camera as tool, not religion

There seems to be a lot of controversy in the manipulation of still photographs here lately. Digital photography has passed the critical mass point, and is now pervasive in the industry. The hand wringing comes in with all of the old school photographers from the film days. My photography roots began there as well. I remember my first camera, back in the mid 70s. I had a lot of fun just trying to create interesting photographs by using odd angles, or unique cropping, etc. In high school, I took a photography class. We went through the basics of exposure, and processing, printing, etc., but I wasn't satisfied with the basics.

I remember one photograph in particular. I took a picture of a coin. Then I took a second picture of a black piece of construction paper, with a hole cut in the middle, and someone's eye in the hole. I then sandwiched the two negatives into the enlarger, and made a print with the two images to form one print. The black paper turned clear in the negative, thus making it transparent in the final image. So the final print showed the coin, and the eye. The idea was that the eye was part of the coin. It sounds a little silly, but I was young, and eager to learn. Experimentation has always been a big part of my learning process. The reason I mention this, is to make the point that even then, I was altering my photographs. If Ansel Adams were with us today, I think he would readily admit the manipulations he made to his images. I don't understand the argument that digital is taking the "pure" out of photography. Even if you take a straight shot, do absolutely no manipulation outside of the camera, and print your photograph. You still have a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional scene you photographed. You can't NOT interpret and re-create under those circumstances.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as pure photography. By the way, for those of you who are upset at the use of the designation "photograph," you can rest easy with me. I no longer refer to them as photographs. I refer to them as images. I am an artist who creates images. I have a background in photography, and I use the camera as a paint brush to create my images. To cry fowl, and whine because a photograph is not pure is dogmatic. As the saying goes, my karma ran over your dogma.

The image I have included in this post is a great example. It started with a straight shot of a windmill. I have included the original image as well. Recently I opened the image in Photoshop, and just started experimenting. By the time I had finished, I was amazed at the final image I had discovered. If there is anything pure in this image, it's serendipity. There are so many aspects to this image, I don't even know where to begin. This image, to me, is a perfect example of why I love the art of still visual imagery.

From this, I have begun thinking of taking it to the next level of still digital imagery, and I have begun experimenting in open source vector graphics manipulation. Right now I am seeking to discover if there is a marriage of the two that would work in one image. As you may or may not know, Photoshop is an image editor in the bitmap technology. Illustrator would be it's vector cousin. Open source is a free way to learn the vector side. Right now I am working with the application "Inkscape."

Scientific Experiment Proves Theory

I became an accomplished scientist this morning. Several days ago, I had a theory. Even though, at the time, I did not know I had a theory. The theory was stated thusly -

A thumb drive will survive a trip through the washer and dryer, and still function properly.

So I put the theory to the test. But again, at the time, I did not know that I had a theory, or that I was putting the theory to the test.

This morning, I opened my dryer, and began putting my clothes away. I heard a rattle of something as I was pulling out an article of clothing. Upon further investigation, I discovered the thumb drive. I immediately dismissed the mishap, and tossed the drive in the trash.

It was then that I remembered the theory. So I pulled the thumb drive out of the trash, and popped it into a USB port in my laptop. Plink ... light ... data. My theory was proven. So here is the fact, proven by the scientific experiment of the Accidental Geek.

You can indeed send your thumb drive through the washer and dryer, and still have a functioning thumb drive.

Oh, by the way, here is a new image I created. What does this image have to do with my proven theory? Absolutely nothing. But it made it past the editor (that's me) :-)

Pancake Day 2010

 

  

  

  

 

I wanted to share some images from the 2010 Pancake Race in Liberal, Kansas. This is the second event I have been able to attend, and I am so glad to have been a part of the festivities. This is an event that has been a tradition for more than 60 years. It's a friendly competition of women running a race with a pancake on a pan. I think they have to flip the pancake one time, and they have to have a piece of the pancake with them when they cross the finish line. The friendly competition is between the women runners in Liberal, Kansas, and Olney, England. I was able to capture this year's winner, Cheri Bevis, as she crossed the finish line here in Liberal. As you can see, the event is very popular, and brings out all of the local and regional leaders. Sam Brownback is pictured here mingling with the crowd. It truly is a great opportunity to have the spotlight on a small community in Southwest Kansas.