Triptych

For my typography assignment I created the above piece. I hopefully will be able to develop an entire series surrounding this type of design. The word is confidential however the original font is Jellyka Western Princess which has been a favorite of mine for some time. The above triptych  was designed to split in the middle of the second and third objects.

 

Yasuaki Onishi

Loved the presentation on Jerry Uelsmann! One of his pieces (which unfortunately I can't find now) reminded me a lot of Yasuaki Onishi's work, he's an installation artist who explores negative space and gravity in his series: Reverse of Volume.

The above is one of his pieces from this series that was on display at the Rice Art Gallery in Houston.

Don Relyea

I was looking for glitch art and came across Don Relyea. He is an Awesome artist! As an artist he taglines: "I write software to make art." According to his blog he uses C++ and Open GL to "write" his art, a technique he learned originally while working with game development. He also does a lot with slitscan photography. A process in which the a video is analyzed in frames with a small portion of each frame taken and montaged with the other segments to create an entirely new image than any of the frames of the video. Below are examples of both Don Relyea's glitch art and slitscan photography.

Rantings on Glitch Art (Forshadowing of What is to Come)

I struggled with glitch art a lot because it often seems to be art without explanation and without intent. It sometimes bothers me when art is just for hanging on a wall without either a concept or an explanation of what the artist saw. Some artist, me included, struggle to take concepts and turn them into visuals, but other artists have amazing visuals with no communicated intent or observations. Art is such an amazing tool for communication and drawing attention so I want to understand what my attention is being drawn towards and then compare that to my own thoughts and perceptions.

The top piece is a anonymous "glitch" of the bottom. I don't like the original at all but I really like the recreation because it gives off a feeling of submersion. It almost seems like, more than anything related to nuclear explosions, an exploration of being submerged or forced under by a force of unmatchable and near-surreal strength. A sense of loss of control. To me this is created by the bars that seem to recede from front to back instead of changing vertically.  I'm glad the original artist decided on creating it with a more oblique 3d-ish perspective from the contour of the city rapping around the explosion than designing it with a normal side or aerial view.

Digital Nature Montage

One of my friends had this set as his background on his Macbook. I thought it was pretty cool since we just worked on montages that showed the passage of time. I really liked the way it was split into panels, I would love to do a piece similar to this of my own someday. I am however curious as to how much time passed in between these photos, is it a lot or are they just not in chronological order?

The vertical frames also reminded me of a piece by Joshua Patnaude pictured below. Notice how, even though they both deal with the passage of time, they are both organized by color change inflicted by changing light not exclusively by time. This really appeals to me because it's very natural and there is a lot of color coherency.

Are We Humans, or are We Dancer?

I don't understand why I love art revolving around dancers so much, but I do. My very first design, which was done just over a year ago now as part of an interview process, incorporated a significantly modified version of the picture below. I was hooked.

 

 

 

I have fallen in love with artwork related to dancers. So when, in Mary Stewart's Launching the Imagination, the author begins discussing shapes - instantly I thought of an art exhibit opening my friend and I went to in Seattle. I wish I could remember the name of the photographer because his work was great but unfortunately I only remember the work. In the series he was working on he used different dancers and had them posing one at a time in different natural settings from around the world. By utilizing different natural features in their poses, as the motion in the pictures (created by their various stances) got more and more intense the dancers became less and less distinguished from their environments and more and more connected with the natural features in their surroundings (which also seemed to bring some of the features themselves into motion). The picture may be considered representational but the poses the dancers held were abstract, even to the point of seeming "pure form".

The painting below (an actual abstract by Pat Carroll) captures a similar quality and also incorporates some awesome texture.

Fascinated by Lines

So lately I have been fascinated by different artists use of lines. Mary Stewart, Director of Art Foundations at Florida State University, discusses in her book Launching the Imagination, the use of lines in cross-hatching and cross-contours to create intricate pseudo three-dimensional images. Albert Seveso uses both these techniques phenomenally in his work "David Lynch + Ice Cube".

The continuous curves on the left and right really draw your attention and give contrast to the face and background making the red and browns pop. Compared to Michelangelo's Head of Satyr in Launching the Imagination, the picture above demonstrates how a technique used 400 years ago can be translated into use in a modern medium to create something awesome. Michelangelo my have used cross-contours for hair but in my opinion Seveso takes it to a whole new level in the photo above in using it to create the eye-cuff and various other facial features.

In my personal work as a marketing consultant I have been experimenting with some other uses of lines. I recently finished designing the below business card w/ a client who already had a concept in mind.

He wanted his name and the text "owner" where it is located, his wife had a great idea of adding the line to the left of the text. While a horizontal line, like those placed below and above the letterhead, would have added the most stability. I think a vertical line was better than floating text not tethered to any stable object (Adam is also a very qualified accountant if you are looking for someone to do your taxes. My return this year should be more than I ever thought possible, just an fyi :) .