painting

Discovering The Vision & Arts Project Exhibit

Posted by kbs

An exhibit of artist with macular degeneration just happened to be on view when I returned to Gotham to visit friends and museums in April.

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In March, a university student contacted me for an interview. She was writing her thesis on artists with Stargardts disease and was looking for subjects to talk about their experience.  In the course of our communications, she asked if, during my upcoming trip to NYC, I would be viewing the Vision and Arts Project exhibit What Was Once Familiar?

“Who?” I had never heard of the Vision and Arts Project.

She explained that The Vision & Art Project gives greater visibility to the overlooked influence of macular degeneration on historical and contemporary artists. Founded in 2013, VAP is an initiative of The American Macular Degeneration Foundation. This would be their tenth annual exhibit.

“What?! These are my people! And I have never heard of them!?” Amazing. The exhibit at the National Arts club in Gramercy Park was my first stop on my first day.

All the artists were of great interest to me, but I am going to focus on just two. 

The Morning of September 11th, 2001 8:45 SM pre macular

Robert Birmelin‘s paintings were the first I encountered. The Morning of September 11th, 2001 8:45 AM pre-macular demonstrates Birmelin’s talent for photo realism that becomes haunting after reading the title. Painted in 2002, it is a powerful expression of time, place and mood. By employing photo realistic accuracy, he contrasts droll everyday routine with the impact of historical tragedy.

The Red Room 2004 post macular

His complex post macular Two in One and The Red Room both 2020 are expressionistic images that also captures time, place and feeling with inventive distortion and color that becomes immersive as I unravel their compositions.

Both his pre and post macular paintings were very accomplished, but knowing that he had to adapt his technique due to the limits of his visual impairment deeply affected me. It is a reaction I might not understand if I was not also post macular. 

A short video of some Robert Andrew Parker paintings pre and post macular degeneration.

The video shows some small landscapes but it was the monkeys the “spoke” to me. Having made some Flora with Simians in 2011 (see on page 2), I was intrigued by his subject matter. It appears that he resolved his impairment by working large.

I now know that the landscapes were post macular disease. Their size might be because they were done in situ. I will investigate further. See VAP page with video

Viewing the paintings was meaningful to me in a visceral way. Now, researching and writing about the artists has only deepened that experience. I highly recommend Alice Madttison’s insightful overview Freedom from Specificity, written for the exhibit catalog. It explores in greater depth what I have only touched on here. On view March 20 to April 22, 2024.

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Help Is on the Way

Posted by kbs
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Are you speculating about the creative power of Artificial intelligence (AI). Me too.  

In a previous blog post about Chat GPT titled I Need Help, I casually used Adobe FireFly to generate an illustration about Art as a Form of Self Stimulation. I wrote just one prompt: “An artist painting on a canvas in a studio.” I posted the result and said, “One and done.” 

Later, I thought, “I can improve on that. What if: on a canvas, an artist paints their self-image on Mount Rushmore. That would reinforce the theme of artists being self-absorbed. Is FireFly capable?”

on a canvas, an artist paints their self-image on Mount Rushmore.

Interesting? No. AMAZING! With just three text edits, in just 20 minutes.

This opens up endless questions about Art, creativity and authenticity.

In a later conversation with an artist, I compared AI to photography. How did mid nineteenth century painters react to the arrival of the camera? They pivoted, creating Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, etc. and changed painting forever.

And how long did it take for photography to be an accepted art form? I would say some sixty years. (Thank you, Alfred Stieglitz.) Someday AI will be a tool in creating art too. What will it look like? Hold that thought. Go ask Bing.

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NYC Art Scene, Newsweek & TDB

Posted by kbs

TDB Art BeastSince early last year, I have subscribed to The Daily Beast (TDB) newsletter, but with the glut of emails and web reading waiting in my queues,  I have not paid close attention. Until today. Today I saw a TDB headline about the 2011 Armory Show: “A Sam’s Club for Art?” It did not have the review I was hoping for (that’s why I did not add a link) but in searching for that link I did find two that I want to share and am posting here. ART BEAST: The Best of Art, Photography and Design looks like a great place to go for reviews and to stay informed of the New York art scene. In my analog life,  I looked at print versions of The New Yorker, the Gallery Guide, and The New York Times.  This may well be my internet equivalent. #Bookmark

Blake Gopnik on artIt seems Blake Gopnik does much of their reporting. His website  Blake Gopnik on art looks just as promising and his Archive is a great stop to scan the images, looking for what might interest me. Looking is so much faster than reading.

What about apps? MoMA has one that I use. And Flavorpill too. If you have any recommendations, please leave a note in the comments.

Having worked at Time magazine for more than twenty years, I have observed with great interest the demise of Newsweek and its merger with The Daily Beast. This past week I become aware that some of my Time colleagues have “gone over.” Once I would have considered this disgraceful, but since the disastrous downturn in publishing these past five years, I am more forgiving. It’s a jungle out there. As a designer and lay cultural anthropologist, I am very interested in seeing what this marriage looks and reads like. I will be giving updates to this blogpost as the roll-out takes place.

Apture, Mobify and Flowers

Posted by kbs

25-tulips450Recently I discovered two website features that could be of interest to my clients: Apture and Mobify.
First Apture. Apture gives a web page reader hyperlinks without having to leave the page. You can see it at work in the text on this page of drawings I recently did on my iPod Touch. (Or see it now by clicking on the iPod Touch link.) I think it is a great advantage to not leave the page to see maps, video or Wikipedia snippets, but you will be the judge of that. Another great feature of Apture is that it can be added by the client without special software. After I add some code to the selected  pages, he/she can edit the Apture links from within his/her browser (Firefox, Safari, IE). There are some quirks to it. Or maybe it is me, but the more I use it, the more I expect I will master it and the developers at Apture will improve their code. See the Apture website for more details. It is not as simple as drag and drop, but for certain sites, the payoff is well worth it.

Now Mofiby. I sent the Flower Series page to a friend to beta test and got back the reply, “Sorry, Flash is not iPhone friendly.” Damn! That’s right, I use Flash to show the time lapse drawings. I also know that Apture can demand a lot from the iPhone Safari browser. Though it is much improved on the OS 3 upgrade, it should still be thought of as Safar Lite.

I love my iPod Touch and believe that smartphones are definately the future of digital data. My web sites need to designed to account for this. If you are viewing this on a smartphone now, the Flower Series page is a good test for adapting rich media pages to the small screen. I had heard of Mobify from web guru Chris Coyier but had not had a chance to explore it. Mobify is also a bit glitchy. But like Apture, I am in the process of mastering it and believe it can be a good solution for this web development issue.

Galleries, NextGen Solution

Posted by kbs

I have been working on a new site for Margaret Roach that will be known as The Sister Project. It has greatly expanded my belief in blogging as the new publishing and WordPress as the leading software. I will be writing more about The Sister Project (TSP) after we launch in late November.

One of the five TSP blogs is Galleries where we will display curated submissions of poetry, prose, photography and art. The Galleries need software to organize and present the art and photography. There are many WP gallery plugins available but our research led us to NextGen Gallery. It offers a variety of options and seems to be well maintained–many plugins are not. As with many Open Source programs, the instructions and tutorials could be more thorough. After spending many hours “under the hood,” I think I know how NextGen runs but some things are still not clear. That is why I am doing this test post using paintings I made almost twenty years ago. I want my clients to be aware of this solution and it gives me a chance to post some paintings from one of my favorite series.

Below and in the sidebar are thumbnails of my Field Report art. Almost all of the drawings and paintings are based on one avocado plant that I grew in my apartment. Other works based on the direct observation of nature are also included as part of this series. This last week I went to the Morandi exhibit at the Met. I suppose Field Report is my “Morandi” statement.

(This is the navigation for the NextGen Gallery.)