I will be posting art for sale on the gallery page. Stay tuned!
"The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements." Robert Hughes
The Sunday Comics- then and now
In 1925, a comic page in the Palm Beach Post was a whopping 16.5 wide by 21 inches deep and carried a single cartoon per page. Today the page is still 21 inches ldeep but just 11 inches wide and carries up to SIX comics per page! I superimposed today's Mutts (one of the best comics out there, imho) on a Little Nemo comic published 87 years ago.
In most cases there is more skill, imagination, humor and wonder in a single panel of Little Nemo than in a whole section of the Sunday Comics.
Somehow the newspaper business has overlooked the popularity of comics and cartooning (something Hollywood seems to have noticed.)
And the cartoonists themselves are for responsible for the dull, unimaginative, formulaic crap they push on the newspapers and readers.
Any single panel in a Little Nemo comic proves that size doesn't matter.
Note the sound effects of the bagpipes- "peep, pup, pip" and Imp's Irish Flute- "peelee, weelee, peep."
Check back at The Hunt Club for more "Little Nemo" comics.
Palettes
One of my favorite sites, Retronaut, recently featured a series of palettes belonging to famous painters. I once thought about collecting palettes from my artist friends but never got around to actually doing it. I have one palette that was last used ca. 1900, hanging on my studio wall. The artist cleaned it - leaving barely a trace of paint. But its graceful shape and patina makes it a work of art in its own right. It never fails to catch my eye.
Most painters probably have dried up old palettes lying around. Palettes offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the artists' lives - their work habits; how they mixed their paints, organized colors, their training and even their lifestyles. The palettes below LOOK like the painters' paintings right down to the paint strokes.
Vincent Van Gogh (top)
Eugene Delacroix (bottom)
Vincent Van Gogh (top)
Eugene Delacroix (bottom)
Below: A fragment of a palette I used while taking a class in classical painting.
Each color is broken down to ten shades. This is an example of a flesh palette based on Ingres.
The palette itself is glass mounted over a canvas board primed in a mid-tone gray.
Mixing is done at the bottom. I still prefer the old-style wooden ones.
Grande Odalisque
Ingres
Bronze Pour at the Montoya Sculpture Studio
This was the second bronze pour of the day- just five pieces of about 25 total,
at the Montoya Sculpture Studio. Leslie Ortiz is working
at the left, Pat Crowley in the center and Luis Montoya on the right.
The pour is roughly the middle step in the long process of
producing a bronze sculpture.
producing a bronze sculpture.
Above - After the pieces cool down, the ceramic shells are broken. The fragments are then welded together and seams removed using pneumatic tools.
Finally, textures are added to areas lost during the process.
Below: The finished work- "Shellboat." Leslie created the patina (colors)
using various chemicals and a blowtorch.
Below: Two views of another piece from a recent pour - "Dinner for Two,"
a stunning creation measuring 42" from end to end. Photos by Scott Wiseman.
Below: The opening...
Sculptor, Luis Montoya and Jo Mett, top and Leslie Ortiz, bottom, pose
with "Dinner for Two" at their opening at the
John H. Surovek Gallery on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida.
Below: The scene in the courtyard outside of the Surovek Gallery
Bottom: Leslie and friends in the courtyard.
The John H. Surovek Gallery has an excellent presentation of the Montoya/Ortiz pieces here.
Test Print
I'm awaiting delivery of a 24"x 26" test print for a new series of satirical pieces. The point of the work will become a little clearer as the series unfolds.
Parody and Homage
My latest effort for the My Handsome Life project. Eventually most of the entries posted on the blog will be compiled into a parody of the J. Peterman Catalog . Note: "Put out your hand and touch the face of God" was adapted from the last line of the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922-1941)
The Year the Comics Died
Calvin and Hobbes creator, Bill Watterson to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/1/10.
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| Watterson and I exchanged letters just before his new strip was launched in 1985. After previewing samples of his strip sent to the Palm Beach Post by Bill's syndicate, I sent him a fan letter predicting a hit. This letter is dated the day after Christmas, 1985 and reads like Calvin himself wrote it (a few lines are edited out.) It features an original drawing of Hobbes done in brush and india ink. |
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| One of the funniest captions ever written- (or was it "Look who just walked in- 'God's Gift to Warthogs." |
The syndicates made half-hearted attempts to fill the massive void left by the loss of their highest rated features ( notably The Argyle Sweater, Red and Rover) but the "fresher, livelier talent" never materialized. Today, newspapers (and most of the cartoonists themselves) are content to let the whole business die a miserable, slow death. Internet fans of these two great talents will see to it that Watterson and Larson never suffer the same fate.
Art School Ad
I built the matchbook from scratch in Photoshop. I can't resist doing a good lampoon- my favorite form of humor. I'm teaching art classes at a local school in the Fall and thought that a humorous approach would set the proper tone.
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