“My art centers on the exploration of various artistic mediums and methods”
The Original Photo,
A sketch for a themed drawing exercise
Digital Collage
Tag: Photomanipulation
A Balancing Act
I love journals and writing in them, so naturally they are a favorite thing for me to make as gift. I love selecting the paper, the cover and putting the book together. It makes me smile that binding these journals is a perfect use for the warp ends that would otherwise be waste when you are weaving with linen.
At the art gallery, we have had a number of requests for journals with art work on the cover, so I made a small one. Like many other handmade things, the materials are not the expensive part, it is the time that goes into them that is valuable. As a result the cost of this journal is more than I would want to pay for a journal. I did some research and my price was on par with most of the handmade journals.
The feedback so far is that lots of people pick it up, look at the price and then set it back down, and then ask if we have any other journals. I have been playing with the idea of having a local printer do the labor for me. They can print out the image and bind it in several different formats, all at a price that I would pay for a journal, but it no longer has the beauty of the hand bound binding and instead of a piece of original art on the cover, it is a print. It is a balancing act, the balance between commercial and art. Today’s art creative effort is for the test journal, to see if I can achieve a balance that I am happy with. I may have them bound with the background paper as the cover and then either cut the cover into a mat for a print, or attach a matted print.
I will be adding these seamless background textures to my flickr photo stream under a creative commons licence.
Jumping the Gun
This morning I realized that yesterday I jumped the gun. I had sat down yesterday evening with the intention of getting a jump start on today’s post. It was then that I realized that I had not finished the post from that day. I finished it, added in the new pictures and posted it. This morning it dawned on me that I had put today’s photos on yesterday’s post.
I was looking at Degas’ ballerinas. So many people think they are of the romantic ideal of the ballet, beautiful and graceful. So pure and inoccent in thier lovely tutus. This is sort of jumping the gun in another way, the truth and historical context is a little less pretty than that. The girls in those paintings were my daughters age, and they were professional working girls.
So often we look at Art without a context, because we bring our own meaning to the work. For me when I see dancers, I see the strong lines thier bodies form, the contrast between the hard work and appearance of effortless grace that is the goal. I can see were others were pulling in the inocent and pure as compared to many modern dance costumes they are quite modest. Due to my modern sensibilities, I can only imagine the shock of the bare arms and the tantalising view of the legs.
There are some that is wrong to look at the painting in any other context than the historical one in which it was painted. I believe that knowing the whole story adds depth to the painting, but does not make any other vision of the painting less valid.
My daughter looked at this shot and said, it is picture of my ugly foot. I said, no, it is a picture that highlights the transformation of the plain foot to the graceful slippered foot. My pictures draws on the historical perspective of dancers in art, that contrast between the appearance and the reality. It makes me think, how many peices of art have I jumped the gun and gone only with my first impression without making any attemtp to understand what the artist was trying to convey.
At the Ballet
Today at my daughter’s school I saw a sign that said I am an Artist. I live life out loud. It was a poster for MICA. I loved the comment. I thought about how true it is in many ways, When you create you put a bit of yourself up on display. I add another dimension to that by blogging about the process. When I do simple mom things like attending Ballet observation night, I bring my camera like all the other proud moms. The difference is that I take 300 shots and I move around the studio in order to get better angles, and I am just as likely to take pictures when they are not dancing as when they were. I found myself thinking of all the Degas ballet pictures of the dancers at work, not at the performance, but the actual in the studio work.
I think that in many things there is a beauty to the work and the journey to a final product that is important. I see so many would be artists discouraged that they are not creating masterpieces from the start. I think for me an important part of living out loud is to share the learning process, not just my final fished pieces, but those I struggle with. My daughters sometime are a little less excited about it, because they prefer to be the models in the pretty final performance pictures, rather than those photos that are the journey.
The Owen House Series
Today is a day I had set aside for writing, Yesterday was a day I had set aside for working on a new series. I may come back later and add more of a write up, but for now I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Rennata Tropeano 