Well, it's almost embarrassing how much I love Alabama now that I've left it. I can't deny the fact that I spent most of my thirteen years there victimizing myself as some poor, liberal arts minded individual. I was pretty skeptical of the art scene down there, but I have to admit that I never really gave it a welcome eye (of course, is this any surprise given my worship of French Realists and Modernist fiction? I mean come on). It's only now that I live on the other side of the continent that I realize what an amazingly raw artistry Alabama, and actually all of the South, actually has. Now, most of these examples here are self-taught, post-fauvist/post-primitive painters. There is an enormous variety in South aesthetics, especially if you start looking at antebellum architecture and interiors. But as the title presents, this is folk art. This is a completely different realm.
There is such a new-found resurgence in the interest in art like this. I'm sure everyone has their own theories, but I personally believe that it is birthed from a natural, cultural hesitancy to be swept up into the internet age of grey and blue computer interface, and mindless binary code. The new worship of the organic and the vintage (hello, hipsters) is cultural phenomenon that is rooted in our own self-questioning and instability. Unsure of who we are in the 21st century, wondering how to work the seven hundredth update of iTunes, and wondering what happened to the ideas of lying cars and intergalactic vacation homes. But I digress. Along with this anti-techno aesthetic movement, there is also the aspect of New Internationalism, or as I would say, Global Nationalism, where the world, however divided as it may be, has connected and merged to a new, all-encompassing breed. I'm sure you've heard the saying of the American man who drives a Japanese car, wears Italian patent leather shoes, drinks a French coffee, and has Korean take-out for lunch. Or at least something along those lines. I am huge advocate for this new omni-culturalism, however, this also causes a bit of a backlash. A new global mono-identity prompts to question, if not who we are, at least who we were. At that we turn to the cultural backbones of our roots: in my case, Alabama folk art.
Recent design favorites--also, I'm not sure how long I'll go with putting Roman numerals on these image dumps. I have a feeling it'll be getting to pretty high numbers eventually, and I have absolutely no desire to start filling my post titles with those X's, L's, and M's.
Also, Beirut is all I've been listening today. I thought I'd grown beyond them by senior year in high school, but gosh, that brass. It gets me every time. Also, I sing pretty much exactly like the vocalist, so my karaoke is killer.
On a side note, personal reflection has brought me to the possibility that maybe having two google chrome windows open (with about twelve tabs open on each), as well four word documents, an image editing program, and itunes, all running at the same is the reason why my computer keeps freaking out. Hmm..
Less than a month into my graphic design classes and I'm already in love with them. In a computer software class, we're learning about the power of the Adobe Creative Suite (namely Illustrator), and we've been working a lot in it. The pictures on this post are all various results.
Our latest assignment was to create fill patterns (repeating patterns within a shape) and path patterns (basically just borders). My design à la gauche ->
I'm incredibly drawn to textiles as well as vintage things, folksy things, and foreign things. What better inspiration then than traditional Russian embroidery? Their patterning is breathtakingly detailed and gorgeous. I took various cross-stitch patterns, mixed and matched, and made them into vector patterns: Each cross stitch of the original pattern (which is so conveniently a square) is represented by a single, computer vector square. Every single one. Once I got the hang of it, it just became a lot of double-checking and aligning, and it wasn't too difficult.
Definitely time consuming, but what amazing results. I've now got great patterns to use as stationary, borders, letters, wrapping paper, or cloth.
Starting school at George Washington University with a baseball scholarship, Robert Liberace had his eyes set on pursing athletics. As it happened, a figure-drawing class taken on a whim ended up completely altering his life: He was fascinated by human anatomy and by Renaissance art. Teachers encouraged him to pursue studies in that area, and he ended up staying at George Washington University to obtain both his BFA and MFA. Throughout the years, he has garnered much acclaim for his classical, figurative drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Currently, he is represented by a number of galleries and his prices range from $4,000 to $11,000. He currently teaches figure drawing and anatomy at The Art League of Virginia.
His technique is fairly conservative: watercolor-toned papers, red chalk under-drawings, conté block-ins, etc; as well as his subject matter: nude studies, portrait work, biblical and mythological interpretations, and so on. His work has the blatant presence of Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and DaVinci, as well as the expected influence of the French Academics, such as Gêrome. His portrait work (in particular the studies) are constructed in a manner similar to Nikolai Fechin and perhaps even John Singer Sargent (although Sargent’s methods are generally unknown), —however, unfortunately, finished portraits for clients tend to look a bit overdone. Liberace’s style strength is intense and loose, and it’s best kept that way. Trying to give the viewer too much, or trying to tame things down, and his whole aesthetic seems to stiffen and break. That in mind, his strongest pieces are those set to motion, especially his motion studies featuring multiple stages of a figure (think Bargue meets Muybridge).
Liberace is, perhaps at his worst, a bit of an era-chaser: meticulously painting Italian plazas in a monochrome watercolor, spending hours making nearly invisible hatch marks on a from-life figure sketch, etc. His work seeks to attain the forever lost, nostalgic triumph of an art era long extinct. Luckily though, his slight deviations to the poetry of motion (something not explored by the academics), is a trait that properly contextualizes Liberace into the contemporary art sphere.
For as I am guilty of the "Golden-Age" fallacy (especially in regards to music and painting), I have to admit that the 21st century has a number of amazing contemporary aesthetes. As a painter, I am especially critical of the conceptual mumbo-jumbo that has proliferated many art galleries, and actually, most of the art community. However, I have to realize that there are many stellar painters who still work and study today. Granted, it's an uphill battle for us, and we nearly deify people like Rembrandt, Velasquez, and --ohmygosh-- Sargent. Despite the sometimes nullifying sense of artistic freedom given to contemporary artists, that same sense of freedom does give us (the living) something more than what the dead ancients had: freedom. And just that. Our paintings won't be burned if the figures have disproportional fingers. We won't be laughed out of the city if our colors aren't completely real. Looking back, we can not only draw from the technical genius of the painting masters, but also pick up the color theory of the Impressionists, the compositions of the Modernists, the brush quality of the Russian Social Realists, etc. We can really make anything that we want. I'm aware that this post just screams 'postmodernism," but whatever. It is what it is. For a painting class I had to do some digging around on a few art gallery websites and here are some of my new favorites:
Well, it's almost embarrassing how much I love Alabama now that I've left it. I can't deny the fact that I spent most of my thirteen years there victimizing myself as some poor, liberal arts minded individual. I was pretty skeptical of the art scene down there, but I have to admit that I never really gave it a welcome eye (of course, is this any surprise given my worship of French Realists and Modernist fiction? I mean come on). It's only now that I live on the other side of the continent that I realize what an amazingly raw artistry Alabama, and actually all of the South, actually has. Now, most of these examples here are self-taught, post-fauvist/post-primitive painters. There is an enormous variety in South aesthetics, especially if you start looking at antebellum architecture and interiors. But as the title presents, this is folk art. This is a completely different realm. 
