Monothons and Professional Curation

My son and I. The selfie was his idea.

Yesterday my son and I participated in the 2014 Monothon at [Press] at Untitled in Oklahoma City.  It's a yearly event that happens throughout the summer, where people can create pairs of monoprints.  The participants get to keep one print from each pair, while the other one becomes part of the Monothon.  In September, [Artspace] at Untitled will have the 2014 Monothon Exhibition, displaying prints created by those who attended.  Most of the participants are locals, but people are coming from Tulsa, OK, and Dallas, TX, to participate in this year's event.

"Catherine" a monoprint by yours truly. 

While we worked on our prints, we listened to probably one of the most eclectic mix of music I have ever heard, provided by [Artspace] at Untitled founder, print-maker, and professional curator, Laura Warriner. But as varied as the music was, collection flowed well together even on random play.  A few months ago, I created myself an Americana music playlist and I had to rearrange the order of the songs on it to keep from having jolts to the consciousness, but I don't have Laura's decades of experience of putting together exhibitions that feel coherent, while being full of variety.  Most of us don't pay enough attention to the harmony or flow of our environment to realize that it effects us, but it does.  While I'm not into feng-shui, I recognize the mental and sometimes physical friction caused from a disruption in my environment.  And I am very impressed when someone can create that flow, while still engaging and challenging my perceptions.

Some people think that they can put together elements based on solely what appeals to them and come up with something good, but I promise you there is a deep and rich difference between what an average person puts together as a collection and what a professional curator does.  A difference that can as profound as the difference between the glass animals at a carnival and the art of a professional glass-blower.

Observations on the Art of Acting from a Non-Actor

Occasionally I break my promise not to read the comments on videos.  It wasn't a deliberate act. I was scrolling to find a link at the bottom of the page when I saw this comment under an interview with Jim Parsons of the Big Bang Theory on CBS.com:

"I find it weird when actors separate themselves from their characters."

My first thought was "Someone is very unclear about the concept of acting."  And I could be very correct about that.  But at the same time, not all actors approach the art of acting in the same way.  Jim Parsons couldn't play Sheldon Cooper if he was like Sheldon Cooper, because a personality like Sheldon could never be an actor. Parsons doesn't even have the same interests. In his own words:

I don’t feel like I’m bringing much of anything when it comes to personal experience with him. For one, he doesn’t talk about anything that I have second nature of. Not only do I not have my own language for science, but for comic books, graphic novels, most science fiction, after Star Wars. I think this has been to my benefit and allowed me to connect with him more on a humanistic level because I don’t really get what he’s talking about 90% of the time.

From http://techland.time.com/2010/09/23/big-bang-theory-the-jim-parsons-interview/2/


People like Sheldon aren't emotionally aware enough to portray a realistic and humanistic view of themselves.  You need someone like Jim Parsons, who can portray him in a way that the rest of us can understand and identify with, while still being able to recognize as someone who is quite different from ourselves.  The same thing goes for the Evil Version of Wil Wheaton on The Big Bang Theory:

When he first talked to me about working on the show, Bill Prady told me that I'd be playing a "delightfully evil version" of myself. This sounded like a lot of fun to me, but it was more difficult to find that character than you'd think. When I'm playing Fawkes on The Guild it's easy to slip into his kilt and be a jerk, but wearing my own clothes and essentially playing a stylized version of myself made it a real challenge to hit "delightfully evil" without veering into "not committed to being delightfully evil" or "just plain evil." Keeping that twinkle in my eye, and knowing that Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Version) is planning to scam Sheldon from the moment he sits down, was essential to this particular characterization working out, and I didn't completely find it until we'd run the episode a couple of times.

During one of the run throughs, when Jim did his Klingon bit, I turned to Kevin and asked him, "Did he just say 'revenge is a dish best served cold' in Klingon?" like I was trying to figure out if that's actually what happened, like maybe I misunderstood him. Chuck Lorre told me that it would be funnier if I was more exasperated. "You're just here to play this game, and now some guy is quoting Klingon at you. This happens everywhere you go," he said.

I sighed dramatically, and said, "Oh, it does." Everyone laughed, hard, and Chuck pointed his finger at me. "Yes. That is exactly the way to play that beat."

When Chuck gave me that note, I grokked how to play Evil Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Theory version), and I could see the comedy in every beat I played for the rest of the show. I totally grew a level in comedy acting, and learned something about letting go of who I really am, so I could embrace the Delightfully Evil version of myself (who I seriously hope will return in the future, because OMG was it fun to play him.)

From http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/10/the-creepy-candy-coating-corollary.html


I think the evil version of Wheaton works because in reality, he's so not that way and is able to play a jerk because he doesn't have to be in denial that what he is doing is obnoxious.  He doesn't have to defend it or minimize it because it's not really him - it's a warped-alternate-reality him.  Of course, this is comedy, so exaggeration in proper amounts is essential for success.  This may also be why people say comedic acting is actually harder than dramatic acting.  You almost have to step outside yourself to be able to deliver these lines without becoming self-conscious about the whole thing.

Now on the other end of things, you have Viggo Mortensen who played Aragon in The Lord of the Rings.  By all accounts, Mortensen practically became Aragon. He carried his sword with him even into town and actually spent his days off riding the horses he used and even bought them because he bonded with them.  Being a dramatic actor, he goes to great lengths to become the character he's playing.  For Everybody Has a Plan, he learned his character's hobby, beekeeping.  He explains how he prepares for a role:

I think part of it is just how you prepare roles. When I prepare, I ask a simple question: “What happened between the character’s birth and page one of the script?” And right there you can find most of the answers, even before you start shooting. I find that process really enjoyable. Just like a kid does when he pretends: It doesn’t matter how little they look like a princess or an Indian or a Viking or a sports star, whatever they’re pretending to be, they really believe it. They enjoy playing, basically. So the goal is always — in a very serious, methodical, detailed, much more layered way, I suppose, intellectually, than kids use for make-believe — to get to the same place where it’s just fun and play. But you have to do your homework first, and that’s what I try to do.

From http://www.vulture.com/2013/03/viggo-mortensen-everybody-has-a-plan-interview.html

He's not kidding about being more layered.  He's not just playing Agustín in the movie, he also plays Agustín's ailing twin brother Pedro, and then plays Agustín pretending to be Pedro.  I haven't seen the movie, but based on the trailers, I don't see much of Aragon in those characters.  And let's face it, outside of cult films, an actor who can only play one character isn't going to be that successful.

Helen Mirren, who does an awesome job in both dramatic and comedic roles, approaches her craft much differently than Mortensen:

A light bulb went on in my brain. I thought, ‘That’s it! Just play what’s on the page.’ I’ve followed that ever since. If it says, ‘Over-the-hill, angry woman with no makeup gets out of bed,’ that’s what I’ll play. I don’t mess it up with, ‘What’s her back story?’

From http://www.simplyhelen.net/category/interviews/

Obviously, there are many different ways to be an actor.  You can be like Robin Williams and ad-lib when the spirit hits you, leaving the director and editors decide what fits with the story content-wise. Or you can be like Ian McDiarmid and memorize the scripts so thoroughly that you can easily change the delivery of said lines to fit the mood of the story, without derailing anything later in the plot.  It all depends on what works for you and the role you're playing.

Back to the young lady who posted the comment that started all of this musing.  While it would be easy to dismiss her as just lacking in knowledge, it's very possible that perhaps she, herself, doesn't have the capacity to separate - to imagine herself as someone much different than she is - to get inside someone else's experience.  So, it would be extremely mystifying that people can do this; she may even think that they really aren't doing what they say the are.

I'm just as guilty about this.  For over 30 years, I could never understand why people would not only eat cilantro, but relish it. To me, cilantro tastes like liquid dish soap.  I had assumed that people must have deliberately cultivated their love for the taste of soap, for reasons I couldn't fathom.  The closest I came to a reasonable explanation was to think that maybe they had their mouths washed out with soap too often as children, but that wouldn't explain the wide-spread acceptance of cilantro as a culinary mainstay. Then one day my best friend took me to a Mexican restaurant for lunch because I needed to get out of the house.  Already in a grumpy mood, I complained about the salsa dish not being rinsed out properly. She was about to ask the waiter to bring me another bowl, but I told her not to worry, I would just take my salsa from the center.  Then I tasted soap again, only this time I paused a moment and detected the taste of leaf behind it.  "Oh, it's cilantro," I said in a disgusted tone.  I then launched into my I-can't-believe-people-like-this-stuff rant, when she interrupted me with "Cilantro tastes like soap to you?" I nodded and she excitedly explained how they were discussing on her foodie mailing list that about one third of the population has a genetic tendency to taste cilantro as soap. She was extremely stoked to find out that she knew someone in real life that had this condition.  And I realized after all those years that the rest of humanity wasn't actually insane when it came to this herb, they just weren't tasting it the same way I was.

So, in answer to the woman who commented - actors separate themselves from their characters because that really is how they experience it.  Even though Jim Parsons "becomes" Sheldon for short periods of time, he's not Sheldon.  He's not a comic book geek.  He's not an arrogant physicist, who looks down on others.  He's no where near as socially clueless as Sheldon.  He's not even heterosexual.  But he can portray a character who is all of those.

And it's okay that you don't have the ability to separate from yourself and an imagined self.  I have several friends like that.  I used to think that they were like that because they were afraid of losing themselves in some way, or of weakening their moral compass.  But as I've grown older and studied more, I've found out that for some people, that's just the way their consciousness works.  Sure it frustrates the hell out of me sometimes when you're not able to understand any view different from your own, because running separate mental simulations is how I explore concepts and achieve empathy to a level that I am not naturally gifted with.  But I realize that I can be just as frustrating to you too.


I'm not sure how to exactly transition in this story into this post, but I really have the impression that it belongs here as part of the discussion of being someone else other than yourself. Many years ago, I created a persona for an online group my kids initially wanted to be a part of.  She was brash, out-spoken, devious, and a born leader.  She was also a Slytherin head of house. Even though my daughter lost interest in the online group, she liked pretending to talk to Prof. Mysteria Ester Paracelsus, and we had fun pretending together.  Then one day she came up to me, looking glum, and asked if she could talk to Mysteria.  I assumed that she just wanted to be cheered up, so I played along.  To my shock, she began to tell me about something that happened at school that upset her.  Staying in character, I gave her Mysteria's solution to such a problem - a solution that I would never advocate as her real mother.  Then I dropped the character and reminded her that I was always there for her; and that I didn't approve of the solution my alter-ego just gave.  She said, "I know, Mom.  You would have suggested (...), but I really needed to talk to someone who has no problem kicking butt."  I realized then that what she needed was a way to stand up for herself, not a way to be diplomatic and civil.

Some days, I think I need to channel Mysteria more often...

Videos of the modern artist Henri Matisse

I never even considered the fact that there were videos of Henri Matisse to be seen.  Pretty wild when you think about it.  I wish these had been available to my art history prof.

" There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. " Henri Matisse

Tyler Green, editor of "Modern Art Notes," and art historian Serge Guilbaut, editor of the Getty Research Institute publication, "Chatting with Henri Matisse," discuss the significance of this book—the result of a series of unpublished conversations between Swiss art critic Pierre Courthion and Henri Matisse in 1941.

Modern Artist Spotlight – Rob Mulholland

(image via The Daily Mail - resized for display)

Rob Mulholland is a sculptor and installation artist based in the United Kingdom, who does some pretty awesome things with mirrored surfaces. Seriously, this guy’s work Vestige is gut-wrenching thought provoking. To quote the artist:

The six male and female figures represent a vestige, a faint trace of the past people and communities that once occupied and lived in this space. The figures absorb their environment, reflecting in their surface the daily changes of life in the forest. They create a visual notion of non – space. A void as if they are at one moment part of our world and then as they fade into the forest they become an intangible outline.

His most recent work Tide Flow – Time Flow invites us to consider the flow of evolution in a similar fashion. I personally think the use of mirrored surfaces makes the viewer more likely to examine themselves and their own part in the play we call existence.

Of course, Mr. Mulholland has works in other mediums that you would expect from an inventive modern sculptor, including more perishable materials and items from mundane life. You can see the theme of humans relating to their past and their environment through much of his works. But these stainless steel mirrored works are a stroke of pure genius.

Artist’s website - http://www.robmulholland.co.uk/

other examples of visual processing

Okay, previous attempt did not work. I may have to check a few settings in Google docs. Anyway, here's what I was trying to post.

Modern Artist Spotlight - Dave Devries

I haven't been feeling well this past week. I'm afraid my allergies triggered an episode of moderate dehydration and I spent my time off from work rehydrating. I do have a few science posts planned, as well as breaking my art survey into two smaller surveys. In the meanwhile, I will share an artist brought to my attention by a friend.

Dave Devries uses his skill to bring children's drawings into the realm of super-hero graphic style. He uses real images drawn by children, and with an opaque projector, uses acrylic, airbrush, and colored pencil to make them look realistic. This work became the Monster Engine book. Devries brings his work to the public, letting children participate and teaching college students how to do what he does in workshops and lectures. I love it when adults reach out to children and transgenerational communication occurs in a way that validates the imagination.

Modern Artist Spotlight - Marwin Begaye

Marwin Begaye is a critically acclaimed Navajo artist, currently living in Oklahoma. He teaches at both the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University. His passion is educating Native Americans and non-Native Americans alike on the dangers of the modern diet, particularly diabetes. His prints are full of pop-icon, corporate brands, and macabre imagery, all meant to drive home visually what we are doing to ourselves in regards to our dependence on over-processed foods.

On a more personal note, he's the guy who taught me lithography. And I can assure you that he's a real character, as the pictures in this blog post of another print artist will attest to. He teases people a lot. Especially painting students for not being careful enough with their images. You'd never know by listening to his teases that his first accolades were for his works as a painter. He often uses humor to get his point across. As long as you don't take any of it personally, you'll have a great time learning from him, because he really does want to make his students the best printmakers they can be. He also requires his students to personally relate to their own art, to actually create things representative of them. He's the reason that my American Mutt series focused on all of my ancestry, instead of just a juxaposition of Lenape and Pennsylvania Dutch images.

He doesn't really have a website gallery, so here's a slideshow of images from Flicker of his works, taken by other people. In the center of the show is a hummingbird print that I actually have on a t-shirt, from his class. Of course, having not been worn regularly, the print in the slideshow looks a lot crisper than my beloved t-shirt.

Modern Artist Spotlight - Julian Beever

Words really can't do Julian Beever's sidewalk art justice. I've seen him compared to Picasso, which is very misleading. Whereas Picasso went for flat abstractions, Beever goes for hyper-realism by making trompe l'oeil art that creates the illusion of three dimensions. Though I will give you that the works of both artists will challenge your preceptions.



Above is a video of him creating a sidewalk/pavement illusion for Aveeno. In addition to his official website, there is also a Flicker gallery of his works.

When do we consider someone an "artist"?

It is said that a writer is someone who writes.

When I consider "spotlighting" a modern artist, I usually select people who are primarily known as fine art artists. This has not been a conscious decision on my part and until today, I really didn't put much thought to the matter. In fact, I don't usually put much thought into it at all. I just come across an artist I find interesting and I post about him/her.

Well, I decided this week that I would do someone who is mostly known as a craftsman and a webcomic artist - "Doc" Nickel, creator of The White Board. By trade, he's an machinist who specializes in paintball guns/markers (otherwise known as an "airsmith"). By academic standards, this might not qualify him as an "artist".

However, let me present the follow piece of sculpture:





Rage by 'Doc' Nickel is a sculpture wrought entirely by hand, each piece of 22 gauge sheet steel was formed using only hammers, wood blocks and small handbuilt anvils. Each of the seventy-nine individual plates are welded to an internal steel frame, all of which is supported by a graceful steel spar over a handmade Red Oak base. - from the website.


Shall we compare it to the cluster qualities of high art?

1) Direct Pleasure - yep.
2) Skill and virtuosity - definitely.
3) Style - check.
4) Novelty and creativity - yes.
5) Critism (or "illicits a positive or negative judgment") - I believe so.
6) Representation - check.
7) Special focus - yes.
8) Expressed individuality - yes.
9) Emotional saturation - most definitely.
10) Intellectual challenge - putting 79 pieces together is definitely an intellectual challenge.
11) Art traditions or institutions - okay, you got me here, but I'm still not sold that this is a valid criterion.
12) Imaginative experience - yep.

Does someone have to make a living at high art to be an artist? No. Poet and painter William Blake made his living as an engraver, printer, and illustrator. Here is my favorite work of Blake's Ancient of Days:



Perhaps Doc will not end up in the art history textbooks, but I believe he is definitely worthy of the title of "modern artist".

Visual Processing

I am a very visual person. I was raised by an artist and a computer programmer. This gave me access to artistic and flow-charting techniques. My dad used give my siblings and I flow chart templates to make art when we were young. When I became older, he explained what some of the shapes meant and then made a game for me. He'd give me a simple task and I would diagram the steps to do it, using those shapes properly.

As a family, we made almost weekly trips to the public library, bringing home art and music in addition to a multitude of books. Our home library sometimes had better references than my school's library. Arguments between myself and the sister just younger than me were usually solved by encyclopedias at ten paces. My mother made sure we had art classes. My dad made sure we had science lab kits. As a family, we made candles, leather and other crafts. Dad would also print out wall-size mazes which we kids and my mother would solved together. When I learned how to process information, it was not only through the verbal and mathematical means, but also visual and kinetic means.

I'm right handed, left eyed, and I have no dominant foot preference. I have taken math courses up to and including partial differential equations and I have about the same amount of credit hours in studio art as I do math. It probably follows without saying that my favorite math class was analytical geometry. I feel that this makes me qualified to make the follow statement:

Calculations can be done visually as well as mathematically.

Anecdotal evidence: When I was in high school, my mother took one of my classmates and I to an UIL science competition. Between the tests, the contestant schools could work on brain teasers. One of them was a word problem about how much material a sculptor would need if they made a bust twice as large in every dimension. While my extremely intelligent classmate began to do the mathematical calculations, my mother read the problem and immediately gave the correct answer. After verifying it with math, my shocked classmate asked my mother how she did the calculation. She used pictures and hand gestures to explain her thought process. He was totally lost by her explanation, so I gave him an interpretation he could understand. For the rest of the problems, my classmate and mother answered them with their own methods, while I translated between the two of them. In every case, both methods gave the same answers.

Historical evidence: All those wonderful geometry and trignometry relationships started out as a function of the relationships between visual elements such as lines, points, angles, planes and solids. M. C. Escher discovered several crystallography relationships years before the mathematical models, through purely graphical means. While many mathematicians hold Escher in the highest regard and consider him to have had an exceptional mathematical mind, he actually did very poorly with math in school and struggled to understand the mathematical treatises sent to him when he was older.

So, having made put that pet peeve to rest, I will share with you a diagram I made a few months ago showing visual processing as part of the problem solving process. While I do not detail how to do math visually (perhaps I will do that in another post), the diagram does show some of the ways visual processing has brought about solutions -> http://cosmicsiren.blogspot.com/p/diagram-of-visual-processing.html



O’Connor, J. J. & Robertson, E. F. (2000). Maurits Cornelius Escher. MacTutor History of Mathematicians. Retrieved February 28, 2010, from http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Printonly/Escher.html

Modern Artist Spotlight - Baptiste Debombourg

I love it when my friends send me interesting artwork such as "AGGRAVURE" by artist Baptiste Debombourg, which took 35,000 staples to make.




Thanks, Viv!!

Modern Artist Spotlight - Mike Larsen

The art of portraiture is alive and well in Oklahoma. The Chickasaw Nation has artist Mike Larsen among its members.



This painting and two of its subjects was part of the Mike Larsen Elders Exhibit for the Chickasaw nation.



This painting with its subject is part of the Mike Larsen Series II Elders installation. I wish I could give you more links to these series. Currently, there is a television spot showing some of the other paintings and it never fails to move me.

Einstein Quotes

“If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art. Common to both is the devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary.”

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance."

Modern Artist Spotlight - Tom Shannon

Tom Shannon's visually perplexing sculptures and installations allude to unseen forces better known to physics -- and to Star Trek fans -- than to conventional art.
- Art in America



I appreciate Tom Shannon's sculptures because they are not only aethetically engaging, pleasing and inspiring, but they are also wonders of science and technology, which engage the analytical as well as the artistic mind. The Artist's Official Website and the following TED.com video give wonderful examples of his works.

Gravity-defying sculpture inspired by the sun, the earth, the moon.



As a student of the mind, I am touched by his paintings on a couple of levels. First, the marriage of order and chaos - of math and art. Second, on the level of a creative and artistic mind being clever and resourceful enough to find a way to create works of interest and beauty, even while suffering from Parkinson's Disease. Lastly, and most importantly, of the human spirit to strive in the face of difficulty.

The painter and the pendulum

Defining art

I've recently finished reading Denis Dutton's book The Art Instinct. While I have no problem with making "high art" restrictive, I do think that we are crippling ourselves as a society with the implied idea that any visual product that is not "high art" is defective or worthless. I see art more in terms of "stimulating art" and "relaxing art". It is my experience that if someone doesn't have enough stability in their life, they are more moved by relaxing images, while someone who need more stimulation in their life, whose life lacks any real challenges, goes for the stimulating images. Both needs are valid and both needs can cause great psychological and physical harm if they are not met in some fashion. If you doubt the need for relaxing art, just look at the statistics on stress-related diseases and disorders. If you doubt the need for stimulation, look at the people who turn to drugs, the extreme risk-takers, and the lines at horror movies.

Here is Dutton's list of the cluster qualities that define "art" (or what I am calling "stimulative art"):

1) Direct Pleasure
2) Skill and virtuosity
3) Style
4) Novelty and creativity
5) Critism (or "illicits a positive or negative judgment")
6) Representation
7) Special focus
8) Expressed individuality
9) Emotional saturation
10) Intellectual challenge
11) Art traditions or institutions
12) Imaginative experience

From an economic point of view, the values usually assigned to high art are justified. In fact, high art, as it currently exists, is probably the greatest example of consumerism there is. Even Dutton recognizes this when he writes, "The created work of art may be more impressive if it is remote from any possible use." According to his theories, art developed in humans as a means to signal that one has more than enough resources to spare for a suitable mate. With that in mind, it's not surprising that some people act like snobs about the stuff - they're trying to place themselves above their competition.

After discussing the evolutionary purposes for art and some of its historic importance, Dutton gives us four primary properties of (stimulative) art:

1) Complexity
2) Serious content
3) Purpose
4) Distance (not done to please others)

You might consider reading Dutton's book to get a better idea of what he means with each of these because not only don't I want to infringe on his copyright, but your interpretation of his explanation may be different than mine - especially since, as humans, we all read our own meanings into things. (Sort of contradictory there, aren't I?)

Before I go on to what I call "relaxation art", I am going to give a nod to Dutton's concept of self-affirming art (my term). This is art that helps a person re-inforce a view of themselves. At its best, it helps people to grow and enables a sense of stability of self. At its worst, which is what Dutton talks about when he talks about destructive kitsch (versus charming kitsch), it creates a shallow view of the self, rooted in appearence more than substance. The first type of self-affirming art is usually created by the person, themselves, as a means of self-exploration and integration. The second is often purchased and mass-made. Though, in my opinion, being mass-made is not enough to make the owner shallow. Some mass-made objects act as a means of social identification of shared values, as in reproduced religious works, or a means of group affiliation, such as sports related imagery. As to whether or not these means of group identification can be considered art if they meet other criteria, well, I have no definite opinion on that. Though I do reserve the right to giggle at someone who uses it as a means to declare their uniqueness.

Now, on to "relaxation art", which is as near as I can figure out a concept not fully conceived of in formal terms in our society. We skirt the edges of it, but because it often refers back to the natural world, we humans tend to neglect it as not being as creative as stimulation art. Here is my criteria for "relaxing art":

1) Evokes a sense of peace and well-being (lowers the blood pressure and encourages deep breathing).
2) Like stimulative art, it was done purposefully.
3) Holds the attention of the eye, without "shock tactics".
4) Like stimulative art, greater skill makes it more effective.

I realize that what I am describing exists in some form in many living rooms and offices, in the form of landscapes, cityscapes, portaits and still-lifes. I maintain that there is a good reason for it, especially in this day and age where people are becoming more and more divorced from traditional stabilizing factors in their lives, like working with nature, social traditions, and such. Some of these things needed to be changed, but that doesn't mean that we can ignore the loss of stability caused by the change. Luckily, there are ways of increasing stability and I believe that introducing more natural elements into urban areas is a necessary one. Relaxing art is an easier way for most folks to do the same. If I ever do become an art therapist, I have every intention of having high-quality relaxing art in my waiting area. I want the stimulation art in a session to come from the client, themselves.

While thinking on this topic, I had a vision of some future expert going, "According to our tests, Mr. Thomas, to achieve optimal emotional satifaction and cognitive functioning, the art around you needs to be 35% relaxing, 45% stimulating, and 10% self-affirming." I laughed at the thought, reminding myself that to some extent, we do this on our own - provided we are allowed to and are not shamed out of it. (I was very pleased that Dutton discussed the social pressure of aesthetic formalism in his book.)

Long story short, as long as it doesn't completely surround me to the point I can't find some visual relief, or deliberately offensive, I don't have a problem with most people's tastes in art. I usually carry enough internal images in my own mind to make me happy. What really annoys me is people complaining loudly and incessantly about having their delicate art senses abused. What can I say? I'm sorry that the world doesn't revolve around you. To quote Ramana Maharshi: "Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes."

Glassworks

It has occured to me with all the "heavy" stuff on this blog, I might want to introduce more of the art stuff, if only as a breather. I'm also considering posting more about the terms of art and design. But for now, I'm going to share with you one of my favorite places - the Wimberley Glassworks.



If you are ever in the Austin or San Antonio areas, you should visit. The glassblowers are currently working Wednesday through Saturday from approximately 10:30 to 12:30 and 1:30 to 4:30. When we went, the demonstration was as entertaining as it was fascinating.

Symmetry, Math, Life and Art

After watching this video a few times, I have decided that the Japanese had some good insight into the creative process with their Essays In Idleness:

"In everything . . . uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth..."

Following what was said in the video, I think this is another feature of art that engages the viewer in conversation.

I'm going to apologize here. I was going to go ahead and write up some of the things I read about humanity's need for balance and such, but I think I will save that for another post.

Something fun

Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma, California.

Gardens that are actually artwork. I found it through watching the Victory Garden on PBS today. Unfortunately, my browser doesn't like the site. So, if you also have problems, try this link instead.

Jerusalem and Stendhal Syndromes

Before we go any further, let me define the term syndrome as: A group of symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease, psychological disorder, or other abnormal condition. Or in other words, a syndrome is a reoccurring set of symptoms that suggest a disorder or disease. Whenever I see the term syndrome used, I usually keep in mind that it is a condition defined by symptomology and not a definite cause or overwhelming reaction. As far as I am concerned, a syndrome is what we used to define something until we can study it and get a better idea of what's going on.

So the whole notion of adding "some experts don't believe this actually exist" when discussing a syndrome, strikes me as unnecessary. If there was firmer data on it, then the condition usually gets renamed something else and the syndrome part dropped, because it is no longer being defined as "a group of symptoms". At the same time, vehemently denying a syndrome exists is luricrous. The groups of symptoms exist independently of what people believe, what is actually being debated is whether or not this grouping defines something specific or not. But that cannot be scientifically determined until we test it. And to do that, we need to identify the set of symptoms to be researched, thus the designation of a syndrome.

Yeah, I know. We can argue that this is just my interpretation of the matter, but since I am only going to throw out some extra ideas about these syndromes (after describing them) in this post, my interpretation works for the mental exercise ahead. I'll start by explaining that sometimes these syndromes are triggered in people with mental illnesses. However, there have been reports of people who didn't have a mental illness, who subcomed to the syndromes and then quickly recovered. Unfortunately, many of those refuse to talk about it after their recovery.

So what exactly are these syndromes and why are they connected?

These two syndromes are forms of culture shocks. The Jerusalem Syndrome centers around a religious or spiritual element. I bring it up because it actually has more case studies than the Stendhal (or Florence) Syndrome, while having many similarities. The major difference is that people with Stendhal Syndrome rarely begin to think that they are religious personages from the past. However, in the less severe stages of both syndromes, the sufferers feel the following symptoms: anxiety, agitation, nervousness and tension, plus other unspecified reactions. Both syndromes usually occur when the sufferer is separated from friends and family. They feel as is something had opened up inside them. Both groups of sufferers (if the syndrome is not occurring with other psychopathy) feel an extreme reluctance to discuss the experience. To quote Bar-El, in regards to the Jerusalem Syndrome: "Upon recovery, patients can usually recall every detail of their aberrant behaviour. They are inevitably ashamed of most of their actions, and feel that they have behaved foolishly or childishly."

While Jerusalem Syndrome deals with religious cultural experiences, Stendahl deals with being overwhelmed by art. Listen to Digital Flotsam 59 – Stendhal Syndrome by P. W. Fenton, as he recounts his encounter with Stendhal Syndrome. Like those of Jerusalem Syndrome, Stendahl sufferers also feel this shame of being physically overwhelmed, only by art. Quoting Bar-El again:

The condition most closely resembling the Jerusalem syndrome is the Stendhal syndrome identified by Magherini (1992), which describes a particular acute psychotic reaction arising among art-loving tourists visiting Florence. The syndrome is named after the French writer Stendhal, who described feelings of déjà vu and disquiet after looking at works of art in Florence. Magherini in her book Sindrome di Stendhal (1992) presented the statistical, socio-demographical, clinical and travel-related variables of 106 tourists who were admitted to hospital in Florence between 1977 and 1986. She described cases in which a small detail in a famous painting or sculpture evoked an outburst of anxiety, reaching psychotic dimensions. According to her, such reactions are usually associated with a latent mental or psychiatric disturbance that manifests itself as a reaction to paintings of battles or other masterpieces and culminates in the full-blown Florence or Stendhal syndrome.

In more recent news, a Russian woman threw a terra-cotta mug at the Mona Lisa last August. Based on the news article, severe Stendahl sufferers can just as violent as their Jerusalem Syndrome counterparts. While most of them appear to have the transcendent overwhelming of the body, I can think of reasons why the woman may have had a violent reaction to the Mona Lisa.

First possibility: she have become frightened by the bodily sensations of Stendalh Syndrome and went into fight mode to take control of the situation. I've almost done something similar during a panic attack, but being aware of what was going on, I was able to remove myself from the situation before I did harm to anything.

Second possibility: she was shocked by the reality of the Mona Lisa versus her mental image of it, and reacted violently to this disruption of her world view, coupled with the Stendahl Syndrome (or maybe not). I have never seen the real Mona Lisa, but according my art history professor, most people are shocked to see it smaller than then they thought. Often when we see depictions of it in movies, cartoons, and comics, it is often made to look much bigger than its actual 77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in) size. This article on the attack actually gives you a better sense of its size. Another possible surprise for those who haven't taken art history, the Mona Lisa is painted on wood, not canvas. I'm not sure how obvious that part is, but it is something most people don't know.

Third possibility: she made some personal connection to the painting and acted on that. The Guardian article suggests that possibility itself. Apparently, she was denied French nationality, according to some sources. However, as the Guardian pointed out, she could have easily picked another, unprotected, painting to attack. For all we know, Mona Lisa may remind her of someone she felt rejected her in life.

Art and Thinking

When I read some of the theories about how art began with humanity, I can't help but compare them to how drawing develops in children. There is such a strong connection between drawing development and cognitive development, as well as manual development, in children that it is hard to believe that "art" began as some dream state as some might claim. I'm not saying that it doesn't create an altered mental state, because it does. I'm just saying that art's beginning is entwined with the process of thought and the communication thereof. The existence of pictographs before writing also strongly points to a hand and hand relationship between art and communication. There is research that shows a connection between language and cognitative ability:

Neural correlates of Early Stone Age toolmaking: technology, language and cognition in human evolution.
Does Language Shape What We Think?

So it really shouldn't be that hard of a leap to connect drawing to the cognition process. Recently, I watched an older TED talk which showed this connection in a interesting way. I'll let Gever Tulley explain...



His observation that the act of decoration is part of the creative problem solving process, a method for letting the mind wander freely for a while, presents an possible insight into how our minds work. Tulley takes things a step further, introducing how manual development helps us mentally in this next talk.



I like the idea of his tinkering school. I like it even better that he can back his views up with anthropology and other science.