Painting Four, Gallery Review, for Amy Metier:

Painting Four, Gallery Review

Spring Semester, 2010, Art 4261

Instructor: Amy Metier

By William Johnson

 ”Museo De Las Americas” , 861 Sante Fe Drive, Denver, Colorado.

We went to see the artists from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico who were having a showing of the paintings created in Mexico relating to the Mexican culture.

While there I saw the installation by Carlos, which was located at the entrance of a four room gallery. The gallery itself  is quite large.

Here are two of the artists and Maruca Salazar the Executive Director on the right.  The reception was a great success as the work which was hung on all the walls created an inviting and lively environment.

.  The art work was displayed both in high and low locations. Labels describing each piece were adjacent to the paintings and a booklet on one table was visible.  Only one artists statement was seen and the works were displayed in a “salon style” arrangement.

One of the artists we met was Sergio Martinez standing with his work. All the works were produced on cotton cloth and referred back to the Mexican Bingo game and bingo cards.  The works were all about 3 feet by 2 feet in different colors with some painting and some printed matter.  All the colors were grayed or pastel colors nothing too bright. The use of wording and lettering on the works was mostly in Spanish which gave the pieces a international flair.

The work was somewhat predictable, but the artists were fun to talk to and practice my Spanish on, although lacking in every way. Obviously this is a gallery for Mesoamerican Art, however if I did a piece about Latin American lifestyles or culture I may approach the gallery to see if they would show my “gringo” art.

Bryans Gallery, Taos New mexico

121 Kit Carson Road, Taos

Going down to Taos we visited two galleries, one was Bryans Gallery which was next to an ally and a small garden to the right of the entrance. This gave the one room gallery lots of great sun light from the East windows flooding the art work with gleaming rays of bright white-yellow color.

40″ x 40″ , $4,200.00

This painting by Gregory Lomayesua, a Hopi Indian artist in a way was similar to the paintings from Mexico in the use of iconography that relates to the culture and the use of verbiage and lettering in the art.  I was surprised to learn that the work is being collected by major patrons from back East, i.e. the New York area.

20″ x 20″, $900.00

The work was installed all over the gallery with only a few labels and one booklet with the artists statement and bio. The bio was quite short and written by a third party.  The actual gallery space was long and narrow with a variety of other art works displayed.  All the works were painted in acrylic on canvas with no formal frame attached.

I find the work interesting in that people are buying work which seems somewhat crude in appearance and workmanship.  It is interesting that this art seems to have such a high demand according to the owner of the gallery.  The gallery owner seemed pleasant but somewhat reserved and disinterested, commenting that most of his sales were on line and not from walk-in observers like us.  I could see me approaching this gallery to sell my work as the environment seemed business like, one of selling the art and nothing to do with the love of art, a bit cold hearted which seems to be an impersonal arrangement, one that I would like.

Mission Gallery

138 Kit Carson Road, Taos, New Mexico

The Mission Gallery was across the street from Bryans Gallery and was a home at one time. Consisting of about five small rooms the paintings were all framed and presented in a professional manner.  The paintings we looked at were by Stephen Quiller, who paints in acrylic and watercolor.  Although a landscape artist he actually has done some non-objective abstract works that were very interesting.

Most of the works are about 18″ x 24″ and sold in the $4,000.00 range.  Stephen has written a few books on painting and I have always admired his style. Each painting was labeled however we did not see an artist statement, I guess you could purchase a book if you were that interested.

The works have a western landscape look and pastel colors but with a western light. Painted in watercolor or acrylic I find the works exciting to look at due to the placement of the objects and the use of color.

Stephen’s use of shadows and highlights on a landscape hold the interest of the viewer through all his works.

This painting produced in acrylic was shown along with the rest of the landscapes. I would love to show in this gallery, perhaps on day when my skills as an artist are better honed.

 

SINGAPORE GALLERY REVIEW

Singapore’s “Alkaf Bridge” was painted by Pacita Abad, and is shaped like a traditional tongkang (wooden boat).  

MICA Building, 140 Hill Street, Singapore

 

The MICA Building

 

 The Entrance to the MICA Building

In Singapore this building is the “Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts” (MICA), located 140 Hill Street where there are six galleries on the first floor.  Most of the galleries will not let you take photos however I did find one that allowed me to take a few shots.

  

Inside the MICA there is an atrium which houses exhibits and the Galleries are situated around the atrium.

  

Inside the atrium is a space where they show off other aspects of Singapore like fashion and architecture along with origami.

S+Bin Art Plus Gallery, 140 Hill Street, Singapore

  

 

One Gallery that allowed me to take pictures was the “S+Bin Art Plus Gallery” that is located along the side of the atrium.  This gallery is rectangular in shape and is about 12 feet wide by about 20 feet long. They were very friendly and Nianci Leong was very hospitable however hard to understand as her English was not that good.  The figures of Mao are cast bronze with an acid wash to produce a greenish color and then covered in dirt that gives them the look of excavated solders from the tomb of Emperor Qin in China.  The artist is Zhu Wei and the work is entitled “Mao Zedong”.

The “Nude” by Lee Man Fong drawn in 1975 was priced at S$4,700.00.  This was in Singapore dollars which is 1.403 to the American doller, or about $3,350.00 US dollars.

The American Club, 10 Claymore Hill, Singapore:

This is the American Club , a private club with membership confined to the Americans living in Singapore (expats), they have a pool, tennis courts, bowling computer rooms etc.  Below is some of the art hanging in this club which is on sale. Should I move to Singapore I would see if they would hang some of my art.

 

     

         

    

These paintings at the “American Club” were painted by Brian Adams except the first works by an unknown artist.  Although the American Club is not a gallery the paintings were for sale ranging in the five to seven thousand Singapore dollars and were some of the most colorful eastern expressive paintings we viewed.

It appeared that there were not much in the way of art galleries in Singapore, and most of the art had an eastern flair.  This may be a place to open a gallery much like the type in Denver as Singapore’s population of over five million live on this small island, at least this would be something to look into.

Final Assignment

See my TUMBLR blog at (wjohns57@tumblr.com). Cell phone photos from art books of artists from the 15th century with silly comments.

This is Matt my teacher in Digital Art looking at the photos we copied from art books!

This is the photo Matt took, Hummm what was he looking at?????

Man, this guy is all over her!!!!!!

Was this 15th century Playboy?????

This is the way to take a bath!!!!!

Who’s flute is she playing?????

Here is the Photoshop of Matt showing off all his works of art.  Good job Matt!!!

Hiroshi Yoshida

Watermedia I, Fall 2009
Hiroshi Yoshida
Instructor: Veronica Herrera
Student: William Johnson

A Japanese landscape painter and printmaker, especially known for woodcuts, Hiroshi Yoshida was born in Kyusha or Kurema, Japan, and was much influenced by his adoptive father who was a painting teacher in the public schools.   At age 19, he began art study in Kyoto with Tamura Skoryu, who did western style painting, which was becoming increasingly accepted in Japan.  For three years Yoshida studied in Tokyo with Soyama Shotaro.

In 1899, he received his first recognition in America with an exhibition of his work at the Detroit Museum, later renamed the Detroit Institute of Art.  During that period he traveled on the East Coast of the USA and in Europe.   By the 1920s, in addition to oil and watercolor landscape painting, he was heavily involved in woodblock printmaking.

Referred to as Romantic Realism in western style, his artwork was heavily influenced by his travels in America.

“Two Grand Canyon scenes indicate Yoshida’s presence in Arizona about 1925″.

His work is exhibited at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and numerous other museums including the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

“Hiroshi Yoshida was a leading figure in the ‘shin hanga’ (or new print) movement.  He worked primarily as a painter until his late forties when he became fascinated with woodblock printing. After working with the Watanabe print shop for several years, Yoshida decided to fund his own workshop.  Unlike ukiyo-e artists, he was intimately involved in all parts of the printmaking process.  He designed the key blocks, chose the colors for the prints, and supervised the printers. In some cases, he even helped to carve the printing blocks. This was unusual, considering the traditional division of labor between designer, carver, and printer at that time.”

“The majority of Yoshida’s prints are richly detailed landscapes, featuring such diverse subjects as the Sphinx, the Taj Mahal, and Mount Rainier.

Yoshida travelled frequently, and made sketching and painting trips all around the world.  He was an avid mountain climber, and is noted for his depiction of alpine scenes.  He also was remarkably skilled at depicting water, with its intricate reflections and complex flow patterns.

Yoshida’s prints were very popular with Western collectors, and he was one of the only shin hanga artists to sign and title his prints in English.”

One 14 Second Video Called “War Air One”

One 14 second Vido Called “Jump”

Fall 2009, Project #4 Research Paper and Presentation

Introduction to Digital Art and Design

Fall 2009, Project #4 Research Paper and Presentation

The Theme That Runs Through the Art Works of Jim Campbell

Instructor: Matthew Jenkins

By: William Johnson

Jim Campbell has been called an artist that uses “light-emitting diodes, liquid crystal displays, custom electronics, personal imagery, and grid  grid systems to investigate time, memory, the thresholds of visual communication and human-centered computing.”[1] Jim Campbell is an artist that works with electricity and algorithms based on the Nyquist-Shannon Interpolation Formula.  He does not paint on canvas or chisel into stone, but uses electrical circuits and homemade computer chips to produce his art.  “The electrical system connects us all.”[2] If there isa “theme” that runs through Jim Campbell’s work it is “Electricity” with corresponding themes of time, memory, surveillance and monitoring.

When asked, Jim Campbell stated…” I might say that my work is about our psychological relationship to time and loss through memory”.[3] Born in Chicago, Illinois back in 1956, Jim now (at the age of fifty six) lives and works in San Francisco, California as an artist.   During his high school years Jim dabbled in filmmaking and even attended some filmmaking classes during his college days.  Graduating from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1978 Jim started his professional life with duel Bachelor of Science degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and the other in Mathematics.  After graduation, Jim earned a living by repairing electronic equipment, which seems to be a lugubrious situation but one that helped with his art.   “After I graduated from college, I repaired TV equipment for three years: TVs, VCRs, etc.  Actually I think this experience helps the engineering more than the art.  It gave me a different perspective, seeing products from the opposite side.”[4]

A work entitled “Hallucination” (1988-1990) is an interactive piece that uses a fifty inch monitor and a video camera to record the person viewing the screen. As the person viewing the screen approaches the screen they see themselves on the screen in the gallery.  Suddenly, their bodies burst into flame while the sound of burning flesh adds to the experience.  Campbell has also added another person to the screen, but when the viewer looks around the room there is no one there.

“Digital Watch” (1991) this work is also an interactive piece in that Campbell records the face of a real clock in real time while the viewer sees themselves on the screen.  However the image on the screen of the viewer is approximately five seconds earlier.

From (1994 through 1998) Campbell created a body of work entitled “Memory Works”. All eleven works deal with memory and memory storage.  In one of the works “I have Never Read the Bible” Campbell records himself reciting each letter of the alphabet and then he creates a computer program that transforms each letter of the alphabet to every letter in the Bible.  Starting with Geneses the computer reads every letter and creates an auditory whisper of every letter as it goes through every page of the King James Bible.  In a sense the viewer hears the complete Bible word for word and by letter by letter.

“Shadow (For Heisenberg) (1993-1994) and “Untitled (for Heisenberg) (1994 – 1995) investigates the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal which states that nothing can be accurately measured because the object will always be altered by whoever is measuring it. “Shadow” consists of a Buddha sculpture within a glass case.  As the viewer approaches the case to obtain a better look the case starts to fogup in a direct relationship as to how close you come to the Buddha.  By the time you are standing by the case the view of the Buddha is obscured leaving the viewer frustrated and unable to see the object.

In “Untitled” the viewer enters a dark room where a video of a naked man and woman are making love on a life-size bed of white salt.  As the viewer draws nearer to the figures they become larger and distorted to the point of non recognition.

“Color Works “(1998 – 1999) is another series like “Memory Works” that deals with associating a color to an event or an image.  In “Color by Number” Campbell uses two images, one of a lotus flower and the other of a Vietnamese monk.  He takes one pixel from each image and enlarges it so that it becomes one color. The color and the images are projected on screens in the gallery for the viewer to contemplate.

”Last Day in the Beginning of March”, (2003) is an installation that is about the last days of Campbell’s brother before he passed away.  It is a computer system of lights projected on to the floor which brightens and dims based on the rhythm of a computer program based on a memory from smoking a cigarette to hearing voices.  As you walk your shadow is cast on to the floor from the light above you, and then the light goes black leaving an afterimage on the floor.  There is text on an aluminum box that hangs on the wall near each circle of light which describes that specific memory rhythm like rain or swallowing medication.

“Ambiguous Icon #5 (Running, Falling)”, (2000) is a matrix of 32 x 24 (768) pixels made out of red LEDs showing a figure running and falling. Each LED is capable of displaying 256 possible light values.

“Dynamism Of A Cyclist” ( 2001) (after Umberto Boccioni), 2003 Digital inkjet print on paper, 24″ x 30″, Edition of 50. Duratrans prints over a two minuet period.

“Ambiguous Icon #0, A Fire, A Freeway And A Walk”, (1999-2000) Custom electronics 48 pixels around the perimeter of a frame facing the wall create just the edge of an image. This work uses Red-Green-Blue LEDs.

“Library”, (2004), L.E.D. continuous-motion image with attached Plexiglas and photogravure, 26-1/4″ x 31-1/2″ x 3″, Edition of 6.  Library is composed of a high-resolution photogravure of the New York Public Library, printed on rice paper and placed in a Plexiglas frame suspended in front of an L.E.D. surface containing a 25-minute video chip loop of low-resolution moving images. Indistinct images of birds and people appear to move in and out of the library and across the facade. Library is first in a new series of works in which the artist is exploring photogravure prints combined with low-resolution moving images.

To show the size of some of his works the following pictures give some as to scale and size.

For more on Jim Campbell visit his website at (http://www.jimcampbell.tv/).

 

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[1] Laura Richard Janku, “Jim Campbell’s Motherboard and Father Time,” ArtUS, no 24/25 (2008):18-23.

 

[2] Heather Sealy Lineberry, Jim Campbell: Transforming Time Electronic Works 1990-1999 (Temple: Arizona State University Art Museum, 1999), 67.

[3] Sarah S. King and Joseph Guglietti. Quantizing Effects: The Liminal Art of Jim Campbell (Santa Fe: SITE Santa Fe, 2005), 45.

[4] Heather Sealy Lineberry, Jim Campbell: Transforming Time Electronic Works 199- -1999 (Temple: Arizona State University Art Museum, 1999), 64.

Bibliography Jim Campbell

Raymond Introduction to Digital Art and Design

 Fall 2009, Project #4 Research Paper and Presentation

 The Theme That Runs Through the Art Works of Jim Campbell

 Instructor: Matthew Jenkins

By: William Johnson

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Janku, Laura Richard. “Jim Campbell’s Motherboard and Father Time.” ArtUS no. 24/25 (2008): 18-23. http://0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.skyline.cudenver.edu/hww/results/results_single_ftPES.jhtml. 15 September 2009.

• King, Sarah S. and Joseph Guglietti. Ed. Quantizing Effects: The Liminal Art of Jim Campbell. Santa Fe: Site Santa Fe, 2005. Exhibition catalog.

• Lineberry, Heather Sealy, ed. Jim Campbell: Transforming Time Electronic Works 1990-1999. Tempe: Arizona State University, 1999. Exhibition catalog.

 • Melkisethian, Angela. “Commissions.” Sculpture 21 no. 6 (2002): 26-27. http://0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.skyline.cudenver.edu/hww/results/results_single_ftPES.jhtml. 15 September 2009

• Raymond, David. “Twilight: Landscapes of the Mind.” Art New England 30 no. 3 (2009): 9. http://0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.skyline.cudenver.edu/hww/results/results_single_ftPES.jhtml. 15 September 2009.

• Sturken, Marita. “ Electronic Time: The Memory Machines of Jim Campbell.” Afterimage 25 (1997): 8-10. http://0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.skyline.cudenver.edu/hww/results/results_single_ftPES.jhtml. 15 September 2009

• Willia, Holly. “Jim Campbell at the Art Center College of Design.” Artweek 28 (1997): 26. http://0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.skyline.cudenver.edu/hww/results/results_single_ftPES.jhtml. 15 September 2009