Happy Holidays and Have a good Break.

Enjoy the snow, your travels, and see you in the Spring!  

Meanwhile...enjoyt Kish student Andy Hongisto's animation he made for one of Carol-lynn's classes.

The synopsis: 

A bored patron of the desert is tired of everyday life. He soon finds out his desert homeland isn't what he assumed it was...

Systemic abstractors vs. pubic hair drawing

Big Hairy Bush, by Don Reylea (click to enlarge)

I really enjoyed finding out about the work of digital artist Don Reylea.  At first glance, my assumption was that he was drawing images by using pubic hair.  They were beautiful yet mysterious.  When I read about his process, it turns out that he uses a custom computer software application that is coded in Adobe Director and C++ to build an algorithm that goes through the process of making the drawing for him.  I appreciate the concept of Reylea to design a system that goes through many of the same visual thought-processes of an artist making a drawing.  The concept of deciding what to emphasize, what to subtract, hide, subdue...how to be reconcile control and tight rendering skills with improvisation, and gestural mark making.  Below Reylea discusses his creative and technical process on how he designs and achieves his results.

Part of Don Reylea's Artist Statement:

With programmatic art it is difficult or at least non-intuitive to capture the essence of struggle in a work. It is easy and often desirable to create optimized accurate algorithms that do exactly what you want them to do. If the programming is accurate there is never a need to erase. The obvious programmatic erasure is total deletion leaving no trace of what was there before. This project experiments with what happens when we try the non-obvious. We create algorithms that loosely render an image and then try to self correct the errors by erasing with a loosely accurate eraser. The hair particles are an ideal choice for a drawing tool. Because the hair grows erratically it will always grow out of bounds requiring an erasure. The eraser leaves remnants of what was there before, evidence of a struggle.

"Systemic Abstractors vs. Pubic Realists" is an exploration of conflict within a generative art work.

Technical Brief:

"Systemic Abstractors vs. Pubic Realists" is a custom software application that is coded in Adobe Director and C++.

In "Systemic Abstractors vs. Pubic Realists" there are several classes of program objects that battle on the image area for dominance and control of space. The systemic abstractors abstract what has already been drawn. They plot out a rectangle of space and create a concentric pattern based on pixel values surrounding them. The pubic realists are autonomous particles that grow hair and attempt to loosely render an image with a configurable degree of realism. The third class of objects are the erasers. There are two types of erasers, block erasers and hair particles that mutate into gray hairs. This class of objects evaluate the lighter areas of the source image and loosely determine whether the are is too dark. If so, the erasers erase.

Be sure to check out Don Relea's shockwave animation demonstrating the development of his images by clicking HERE.

To create your own Pubic Hair Images using Reylea's system, click HERE.

Video Art Saturday!

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. (It should not however be confused with television or experimental cinema). Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations.

Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger

Primary, A video by Gary Hill. Made in 1978

Emerge, by William Lamson

Monty Python: Art Gallery Sketch (not video art, but fun)

Peter Campus: Three Transitions (1970's)

Rope @ De Service Garage Open Studio. Zoro Feigl, amsterdam 2007.

What an art restorator does

Kenneth S. Moser, an art conservator, in his studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he has been restoring many of the historical portraits that hang at City Hall. Behind him is one of them, a Francis Carpenter portrait of Myron Holley Clark, who was a governor of New York in the 1850s.

Mr. Moser employs a vast collection of brushes to do his work. He uses them, among other things, to fill in gaps of missing paint, to glue in flaking pieces of paint, to apply varnish to the canvas and to clear off dust.

Mr. Moser uses magnifying glasses to work on the portrait behind him, of George Washington by M. M. Swett.

A moist cotton swab enables Mr. Moser to remove some of the yellowing varnish from Washington's portrait.

Detail of the portrait of Washington before and after Mr. Moser worked on it

Mr. Moser's studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard includes paintings in various stages of restoration.

The interior of the Governors Room in City Hall, where some of the many portraits that will be restored hang. Forty-three of the 108 portraits in City Hall have been refurbished so far, and the goal is to restore 10 more by next fall.

Artists Reception at Kish for Juried Student Show in Gallery!

The Opening Artist Reception of the Juried Kish Student Art Show is this Wednesday, December 10th from 2-4pm with the award announcement at 3pm.

This exhibition will be on display December 8, 2008 - January 28, 2009.  A closing reception is scheduled for January 28, 2009 from 2-4 pm. 

The student work is excellent, and is a must see.  So go see the show, and join the artists at the reception to appreaciate the fine work and congratulate them on being at accepted.  There are 40 pieces in total in medias including: animation, ceramic, digital imaging, jewelry, sculpture, drawing, and painting.  Gallery hours for December 8 - 17, 2008: Monday 1-7 pm, Tuesday 12-7pm, and Wednesday 2-9 pm.

-Ronna and Michelle

Monster by the Sea by Andy Hongisto  

Concept Art

Just wanted to share with everyone a pretty amazing site which is called concept art.com It's almost hard to describe how many interesting pictures are. A lot of it is focused on the concept art that goes into video games, movies, cars, and pretty much anything. Their forums are huge, and you can browse through posts focusing on finished products or check on the an artists drawings or sketches that are currently in the process of being finished. I couldn't find a website backing up my five star rating but hopefully you all can trust me, seriously its worth a minute to check out.

Mudslingers Holiday Sale! One Day Only!

MUDSLINGERS HOLIDAY SALE!!

Dec. 11, 2008

Time: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

Location: In front of the Library at Kishwaukee College

* Come do your Holiday shopping, one stop shop!

H.S.L.B.

The Heart Shaped Light Bulb (HSLB) is, "a metaphor for having a new idea of love, or a lovely new idea", according to Coast, founder of this idea. Now days with the media being so influential, you can't help but hear the same song on the radio playing over and over again all day, that is untill a "new" hit comes up and replaces that song in doing the same process all over again.

The HSLB is an idea for artists to pursue and work passionately on what they love to do, rather than feeling persuaded into trends that have been set by society. Even tho the HSLB is focused on music, it isn't limited to other arts; it's encouraged for artists to pursue and discover their full potential in whatever it is that they love to do. The HSLB is a community of artists, mostly musicians, who share the same idea of doing what you love to do without any limitations from society or the media's censorship.

Soo.... with that in mind, feel free to peep at the links below and take a look at this idea of the Heart Shaped Light Bulb.

 

Coast, musician and founder of the Heart Shaped Light Bulb.

Sketch done by C. Gunnz