Free Art - Art All Night Trenton 2010

I gotta do this before I to go to bed because tomorrow is class.

Art All Night is a 24 hour event from 3pm on Saturday, June 19 to 3pm on Sunday, June 20, 2010. Trust your gut on this one and just go.

You can submit one piece of art, no fee, and Art All Night will put it up and you can sell the art if you want and you don't have to give them a commission if you don't want to.

I know, I know it sounds to good to be true. Art is sold, you keep the $ and it's run by volunteers. What more can I say? I know artist who sell their work there and it's growing and people come from out of state.

I love it. Parents bring in their kid's art and artists submit works with price tags of $1,000s of dollars on them. There's all kind of art and artists there. There's performance art, videos, graffiti art, food and a general good time is had by all at this community event. You don't have to know anybody there, just go and have a wonderful experience.....which is free to attend with free parking.

It started a few years ago at Trenton Artworks with about 300 artists. The event had to move to a bigger venue in a giant warehouse. When I put in a piece 2 years ago, there were at least 700 artists, cause my # was 650. I didn't exhibit last year because I didn't have anything framed. Guess what, you don't need a frame. They will hang it with clips if that works. Remember people are submitting their kid's refrigerator art. I saw work by an artist as young as 5 years old, so you know families love it. This year I hope to have to be a volunteer.

http://www.artworkstrenton.org/artallnight/

doodle4google

Hey, where was this kind of stuff when I was a kid? Google sponsors a contest that taps into young artists' leanings to doodle. All school age students can enter and I think it's great.



All we had when I was young was a Levi's national contest to alter your Levi jeans. I went to their exhibit in San Francisco, CA. It had every kind of design you could think of. There were some designs that completely covered the basic jeans and it was difficult to find any evidence of the source jeans under it all.



I hope you know of a budding artist that would love to enter this contest. I am going to put this information at the Arts4Teens exhibit so teachers can get their students involved next year.



www.google.com/doodle4google

Untangling puppet strings

I make puppets, and I'm sure it has to do with the fact that my father was a
creative person. He didn't work as an artist, but he shared us his love for art, invention and adventure.

As children we all got puppets one Christmas. I was the who was always able to untangle the strings. The knots in the strings never stopped me, I just patiently traced the strings and threaded my way thru till the puppet hung right once again.

Today I enjoy figuring out how new kinds of puppets work. I make puppets for a group and have conducted puppetry workshops. This confidence and interest has provided a path in life that I love.

Now I wish to apply those same skills to computer graphics. I want to figure out how to get my work done with the same curiosity and patience I applied to puppets. Figuring things out for myself or troubleshooting is invaluable and will put me on a successful path, I hope.

euromaxx

euromaxx is one of my favorite shows. Its a TV magazine about the current European art scene. The show is in English and I learn something new every time.

http://www.dw-world.de/euromaxx

The design sense is different from the US. I've always liked German magazines and poster designs, and have used them as inspiration. It's a refreshing to see what other artist are doing with their work and their unique use of materials. Recycling in Style: Scrap metal instruments; Shoes from kimono silk; Art made out of trash.

There's the Art Cologne is the world’s longest-running fair for contemporary, modern and post-war art. The 2010 director Daniel Hug says, "...it's probably the most comprehensive look at the avant-garde from the last hundred years, or the last 110 years, in one place. The Art Cologne is really two fairs. On the ground level we have a more conservative, blue chip, secondary dealer fair of galleries that present modern art, post-war art. And then upstairs we have the second fair which is really a contemporary art fair. Very few of the collectors from either fair cross over. But a few do, so the crossover is kind of nice."

It's nice to know that Daniel Hug also wants, "to focus not only on the classical modern and the post-war... but also to work and support a new generation, the young generation that's maybe shifting away from Berlin, that wants to have its own identity, that's not necessarily getting into the other fairs.

A visitor to Art Cologne passes an artwork by artist Katrin Mayer.

Do homework vs having fun

Well here I go again. There was a program I wanted to attend today...but I wouldn't go till I caught up on some homework. Boy, am I glad I made that contract with myself. It motivated me to work on a complicated family history piece which then freed up my afternoon.

The program was an awards ceremony for middle and high school poets. The main speaker was the person I really wanted to go and hear. The program was nice and the poetry was great. I even got a chance to talk with the main speaker.

The best part happened after the program because I saw old friends and caught up on their news. I was able to talk with people who could help with some family history research. Then I was introduced to a person who may be a relative. Plus she's a member of a geniology organization in Philadelphia. All of this helped with my own project research.

I'm glad I decided to have some fun today because it also helped me with my homework.

Obama Goes with Head decision-making, not Gut

When describing his executive style, President Obama goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."

This is deffinitely a person who makes decisions with his head and not his gut. I don't know of a better example. Reading this article was the reason I named my blog "headvsgut". Read on.

Stephen Wayne, Georgetown University, said: "He's not an instinctive decision-maker as Bush was. He doesn't go with his gut, he thinks with his head, which I think is desirable" Referring to the Afghanistan decision, Wayne said, "I don't think he is an indecisive person, I just think this is a tough one."

According to Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 11/25/09, states of his critics, "Obama's prolonged Afghanistan review suggests weakness rather than wisdom....Liberal have zinged him as being too cautious, too much of a compromiser. Some of his supporters would like to see him show more fire in the belly and recapture the energy that propelled him to victory."

Obama told Chip Reid of CBS news, "I think the American people understand that my job here is to get it right, and I'm less concerned about the perceptions, about process, than I am at making sure that once a decision is made everybody understands it,,,and we're able to move forward..."

I still am torn between head and gut decisions. Friends say follow your bliss, I say serve your passion. I'm also glad that I don't have to make Obama's decisions, but I like the fact that he thinks about everything before he decides.

Procrastination vs Doing what we love

I admit it, I'm a procrastinator. I need a deadline to get things done, like making dentists appointments or paying bills. That's what I like about Graphic Design, it's all about the deadlines.

I also delay doing things I like to do, waiting for the perfect time or opportunity.

Now I read in the New York Times Weekly, January 4-10,2010, delaying gratification is another form of procrastination.
"Once you start procrastinating pleasure...you fixate on some imagined nirvana. The longer you wait to open that prize bottle of wine, the more special the occasion has to be."

Dr. Suzanne B. Shu, who conducted marketing research at the University of Chicago, said,
"People can become overly focused on an ideal. Even if they know it's unlikely, they get so focused on the perfect scenario that they block everything else."

Here's an example of procrastinating 'till I missed the fun I'd been waiting for. I saw Whoopie Goldberg in her debut one-woman-show on Broadway, before I even knew who this 'Whoopie' person was.(You do the math, it was sometime in the 1980's) When she revived the show 20 years later in Philadelphia, I was wanted to go because now she's one of my favorite persons. I delayed getting the tickets thinking I was being responsible and taking care of more pressing matters.

I missed her show. In fact I missed a lot of things that year that I reeeeely wanted to see trying to be the more responsible person. Well not anymore. Now I just go to the event I want and don't wait for the perfect time or money.

I'll still procrastinate when it come to doing little things like the dishes, but I work hard to ignore "the strange impulse to put off until tomorrow what could be enjoyed today" (N.Y.T. 1/4-10/10)

Crusader Rabbit

Crusader Rabbit was the first cartoon show I can remember. As it turns out it was the first TV cartoon show. Alex Anderson had the idea of taking cartoons out of the movie theaters and putting 'limited animation' on this new-fangled thing called television. Jay Ward (who went on to produce other shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle) produced 5 minute black and white shorts. Anderson wrote the scripts and each show ended in a cliff hanger As the studio grew other talented artists were added, gifted animators, wonderful voices and talented writers, which really made the cartoon what is was.

I won't go into the legal battles over the control of the 'toon'. But the two men responsible for the creation of Crusader Rabbit lost control of their property. They were the pioneers of TV cartoons and somebody else with head not heart bought them out.

The version I watched was produced by 'TV Spot' later in1957. I still remember Crusader Rabbit ever since I was little. When someone finally gave me a copy of the cartoon, I was shocked how little motion was actually in the animation. There was a lot of zooming in on still shots. But my little 6 year old eyes must have filled in what wasn't there and changed the memory into this marvelous animation. I love that cartoon, the music, the story and the animation.

Talking about YouTube - Crusader Rabbit Crusade 2 Episode 20