Art and Photography Blog

Great Soviet Poster Collection - Flickr

Here is a great collection of Soviet posters from 1917 – 1991 on Flickr. They include both propaganda and advertisements. What are your favorites? I find many of them surprising even the context such as kultura 43, 48, and 53.

Jackson Pollock.Org - Good Dribbling Site

The second time I logged into StumbleUpon the site first sent we to Jackson Pollock.org. It is a site that lets you paint like Jackson POollock, spilling paint with your cursor. if you click the color changes. It is an interesting toy to play with. It appears that there is no way to save what you do except if you have a color printer.

Scott Wade’s Dirty Car Art Gallery

Scott draws great images in the dirt on car rear windows and then documents how the image degrades over time. I found this through StumbleUpon. I also found "Awesome Pictures" a forum/community where people post unique images and art pad where you can paint online.

Scotch Tape Art from Mark Jenkins

Here is some wonderful street art by Mark Jenkins made with scotch tape as seen in the blog, Powder Blue Orbit. I have been moving and getting tangled up in tape that gives me an enhanced appreciation of the effort here. It is seen in locations around the world including LA and Milan.

Women in Art on YouTube

Here is a wonderful video, Women in Art, that shows the changing face of women in painting over the years. Someone spent a good bit of time working on these transitions. What do you think?

Your Gallery – Charles Saatchi Provides Web 2.0 Art Site

Here is an online gallery where you can list your art for no charge. It has a number of web 2.0 features such as the ability to send your profile or others to friends. There is also Showdown. It is for “all registered Your Gallery and Stuart artists to enter their works for visitors to score. The winner of the final head-to-head vote will receive £1000 and the runner up will receive £750. The winning work will go on display at the new Saatchi gallery.”

Apparently Charles Saatchi created this while he was waiting for his next physical gallery to be finished. Other features include a daily mag-blog with views. Stuart is for student artists, and the ability to submit your art for others to provide feedback. Street art shows photos and videos of murals and performance works. You can also chat online with others interested in art. There are country specific galleries. It look slike they keep adding new features.

Painters Painting on YouTube

I think YouTube is wonderful and I have written about it several times on my other blog (e.g., Bob Dylan on You Tube, Digital versus Traditional Media, and The Reach of YouTube. Here is a discussion in the NYT, The Many Tribes of YouTube, of its video-response feature, “which essentially allows users to converse through video, has managed to convene partisans of almost every field of human endeavor, creating video clusters that begin with an opening video, and snowball as fans and detractors are moved to respond with videos of their own.” This is a great way to start a community and gain commitment to You Tube.

For communities, I especially like the painters on YouTube that have added drama by creating time-lapse films of themselves at their easels. I have started to take a series of still pictures of my paintings that I plan to post on this blog. This goes way beyond that. I did not see a lot of great art in my brief review but the concept is wonderful. Another great use of You Tube.

Live Painting in Toronto via Art Blog

Each evening from June 1 to 10, Carlito Dalceggio will work on a large outdoor 20 x 60 foot canvas, mounted on the side of Hôtel Le Germain in Toronto, into a work of art. You can see daily video updates of the canvas's transformation at an art blog dedicated to engaging viewers in a dialogue about beauty (the theme of his art project).  At the blog you can share your thoughts on art and beauty, and send any related material. You can also see what others have to say, and watch as this community responds to Carlito. There is also a You Tube video that records Carilito’s ideas on art and beauty. It is too early to tell if the art is good (at least in my opinion) but the idea is a good use of the web to augment the experience. It is sponsored by several beauty products firms, thus the theme.

Visualization Challenge – NSF and Science Magazine

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, invite you to participate in the fifth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The competition recognizes scientists, engineers, visualization specialists and artists for producing or commissioning innovative work in visual communication. The entry deadline is May 31. Winners in each category will be published in the September 28, 2007 issue of Science and Science Online, and will be displayed on the NSF Web site.

The Gates of Somerville are Restored

The Gates of Somerville made a big impact on the Web with millions of visits when they first appeared in early 2005. They were a take off on Christo's Gates of New York. This site was not meant for the massive visiors it attracted and soon was taken down. Last May I went to the Somerville MA Open Studios and was pleased to see the actual Gates of Somerville on display and meet the creator, Geoff Hargadon or simply Hargo. Hargo has a studio in Somerville that was open as part of the Open Studio event. As I mentioned above, in February 2005 he displayed photos of his cat looking at the gates he created from lost cost matierals in honor of Christo’s Gates of New York. The mayor of Somerville declared a Hargo day for the positive attention brought to the city. The mayor’s proclamation was also on display at Hargo’s studio. Hargo has put the gates back up on his Not-Rocket-Science site. There is also a nice comparision with Christo’s Gates of New York. Christo’s gates which cost $21,000,000 and Hargo’s gates which cost $3.50. Christo’s work was on CNN 204 times while the Somerville Gates were on twice. The cost ratio was over $100,000 per CNN visit for the New York Gates and $1.75 per CNN visit for the Somerville gates. The Boston area wins over New York again on another important measure.