THE SCREAM by EDVARD MUNCH

 

CONSCIENCE

 

AN ARTIST WHO REDESIGNS HISTORICAL ROMANCE BOOK COVERS TO FIT THE STORY and THE TIME PERIOD : BERNADETTE BANNER

I don't read romance novels but this genre is the best seller to women.  (Murder - fiction and nonfiction - sells best overall.)  The writer of a historical novel does their best to describe their characters authentically but then the cover is turned over to an artist who may not read the book or understand the fashion, hairstyles, and cosmetics of the era.  BERNADETTE BANNER does and with a much better understanding of what the writer wrote, attempts to redesign the covers.  Watched her videos and was just fascinated.

Because I have a rule that I do not embed videos that have commercials, I'll provide the links instead. 

REDESIGNING HISTORICAL ROMANCE BOOK COVERS TO BE ACTUALLY HISTORICAL PARR 2

I'VE GOTTA GIVE A HAND TO YOU

 

LIFE LIKE WIND DRIVEN CREATURES

MY DRAPERY FAILURE : THE MUNDANE and RIDICULOUS

The mundane and ridiculous!

A few weeks ago, in an effort to let the sun shine in, I removed thick draperies, broomed cobwebs, washed windows, and thought new draperies were in order.  I found a fabric that was miraculously unable to wrinkle, a small almost ditsy print that would flow and let the air through.  Ditsy is not like me but I felt that teeny rosebuds  from afar would appear to be an overall textural repeat pattern and,close up, the three colors would work for the rest of the room.

And then...

I spent an entire Saturday from morning to night hand sewing these draperies.

At least I was listening to an audiobook at the same time.

Audiobooks I increasingly embrace because I get to free my eyes and hands from reading while I Create!

This is the "mood" I've been in.

Back in teenage days I had a friend who was a naturally talented seamstress on top of many other talents and skills. While I sewed a zipper in the wrong way more than once on the same pair of summer shorts and didn't get it that corduroy is generally not a fabric to be worn in the heat and humidity, she fashioned a long wool grey coat with a fur collar and silky lining and impeccable buttons that fit her perfectly and kept her warm in the freezing weather. That coat looked like something on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue for a thousand bucks.  Wearing it made her sachay. 

It seemed that although I was a failure at sewing, most summers I would get a hankering for something new and sew something. It seemed the sewing machine my mom had always had problems with the tension and was in the shop repeatedly. When people saw me wearing one of my creations they would not say, "You look great!" or "How pretty that blouse is!"  They would say...

"Did you make that?"

To be fair to myself: I had another friend who never threw out a single item of clothing she ever bought. She had sweaters that looked new for years. She said this was due to a trick her mom taught her. Something like throwing in vinegar into the wash water.  If there was anyone on earth worse at sewing than me, it was her.  Because I knew when to give up. One day she walked into a store where I was working at the time, a store that sold 100% cotton clothes that included summer dresses with elaborate ruffly collars. She walked in wearing her version of one of these summer dresses which she might have even made in order to look like one of us girls on staff. There were visible, erratic. and large stitches - the kind one would use to baste - all over the ruffly area, which she had not attached to the body of the dress.  I was embarrassed for her. 

But back to the new draperies I hand stitched.

Around ten at night I finally had them finished and decided to hang them.  In the evening light it was clear to me that they looked terrible. 

The next day I watched the draperies as the day sun progressed through the windows. These draperies look great only when the full light of the sun is coming through them but terrible the rest of the day and look particularly bad in the evening.

Well, there they are... until I find some better fabric and more time.

Back in the day I got sewing out of my system with my most recent failure.

It's my hope that this latest fail will also work to get sewing out of my system.

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

MYSTERIOUS DOODLES IN ANCIENT BOOKS : BBC REPORTS

Excerpts:

Centuries old books, manuscripts and printing plates often contain invisible etchings, mysterious letters  - and even doodles.  A new technology that maps the surface of these objects is bringing them to light.  ...

Lowe suggests that, through this new approach, there could be thousands of new discoveries waiting to be made, hidden in plain sight in libraries and art collections.  "People are starting to realize that 'relief information' is transforming our knowledge.  There must be objects in libraries all over the world that could benefit for this technology... It's about treating material objects as evidence, " he says.  "There's a lot that's known, but there's a lot more that can be, and I think that's an incredibly inspiring and exciting thought."

BBC - FUTURE - DOODLES IN OLD BOOKS

Using new technology, previously unseen doodles - as well as notes and good art - are being discovered impressed upon the pages of old books and manuscripts.  Were children having their way with their parent's precious books?  Were some of these images deliberate?

HE USES OLD FACE MASKS AND GARBAGE TO MAKE ART

https://youtu.be/r0GnwY-v-qw  Have not embedded this video because of the commercial... one of the most annoying commercials too. Have a look at the link,

QUINCY JONES ON CREATIVE PROCESS

From his book 12 Notes On Life and Creativity

Excerpt pages 94-95

As I learned from my two mentors, Victor Young and Alfred Newman, it's important to "just write and turn the page. Never look back." This proved to be an important aspect of creating  in the alpha state, because it's important not to block what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you. Sometimes it's difficult to get started, but you've got to stop overthinking and just begin, even if it's just a single word or shape. Before I pursued music, I explored various art forms such as drawing and painting, and I would always start with a charcoal sketch.  Even if I didn't know what I wanted the end product to look like, I just put down a basic structure or contour.  Then from there, I'd add watercolors and finally oil. When I started producing music, I used a similar process.  That is, I tried not to get locked in right away with an expectation of a final product.  Instead, I followed my instincts and translated them into a basic shape or sound.  The, I built on top of it by defining dynamics, colors, density, and so on.  Start with an image or melody, and let it out.  And as the sketch or song takes shape, you can lay on the watercolors.

Creativity is informed by what you feel, not what you think, and learning to tune into those feelings is what is ultimately going to carry you through when distractions come. I've 100 percent relied on my instincts throughout my career; without doing so, I know I wouldn't have been able to create art that has stood the test of time,  I recognize that it's easier said than done, but the next method I'm going to share with you is without a doubt the best way to do it.

And that method is "the Goosebump Test."

If the music I'm creating gives me goosebumps, odds are it'll do the same for at least one other person on this planet. But if it doesn't move me at all, and I'm trying to do it for the sake of getting a reaction out of someone else, I'll get stuck in a never-ending cycle of mediocrity.  It doesn't work....."

EIGHT OF TEN ARTS AND CULTURAL EMPLOYEES SELF CENSOR CONSERVATIVE VALUES

DAILY MAIL - STUDY 8 out of 10 in Arts and Cultural Affairs STAY SILENT on CONSERVATIVE VALUES 

Excerpt: ArtsProfessional Editor Amanda Parker said the findings show 'deep division between public perception and the reality of working in the arts and cultural sector.'

'Our survey shines a damning light on the coercion, bullying, intimidation, and intolerance that is active among a community that thinks of itself as liberal, open minded, and equitable.'

ART SPACE MAGAZINE - BRUCE NAUMAN

CHOICE WORDS FROM THE ARTICLE:

"MIXING ART WITH POLITICS," a wag once said,"IS LIKE MIXING GIN WITH SNOT: IT RUINS THE FORMER AND FAILS TO IMPROVE THE LATTER."

PAINTED OVER - A MEMORY OF BEING AN ARTIST

I was known as "the artist" when I was a teenager, maybe the best artist in my small high school at the time. I became part of the art world early.

One time we had a substitute teacher in the art room.  She took herself seriously as an artist - beatnik. She showed up wearing a black felt tammy over her hair and a long white shirt.  She took her brush out and started painting over my painting of an imaginary landscape. Apparently my face fell.  Though she probably meant to show me a technique, with one of her own brushes, rather than the ratty old brushes my football obsessed high school managed to budget for, when my face fell other students noticed. They corralled me to tell me they saw my face and that it fell and commiserated.  How I must have felt.

So this was a small canvas that I was working on. The school budget was so dishonoring of artists that teachers had to go to thrift stores and buy used canvases they thought could be reused.

I was dating someone who had a car.  Maybe one of the few who had a car of his own and an allowance to put gas in it.  Apparently a lot of people called him for transportation.  One woman in particular.  When she heard he was dating me, she wasn't pleased. He wasn't on call for rides anymore. So one day she went into the art room and gessoed over my almost complete landscape.  I got there just in time to identify this canvas as mine and to wash the gesso off before it dried.  Painting saved.

So the painting was then exhibited in one of those glassed-in cases down the hall from the art room.  A student one year ahead of me apparently felt competitive.  He went in there and without permission took my painting down and put his up.  He was caught.

A teacher took his down and put mine back up.  (He would also compete with me to design his senior class play set. Actually his set was much better because the play he was working on was far more interesting than my senior class play.  He went on to be the set designer for a city theater.  He managed to give me a dirty look or act haughty when we passed each other in the halls for a year. Rarely was anyone so jealous of me.

My landscape I gifted to my boyfriend with the car.  His mother was proud of the painting or maybe even me. I watched as she got a nail and hammered it into the plaster.  She hung the painting up above the entrance to his bedroom door.  This was a very big deal.  His father had designed the house to have perfect thick plaster.

We broke up. I don't know what happened to the painting after that.  I have a vague memory of the size and composition of the landscape. I recall that I put a sun in it.  There were long grasses.
I suspect that one day my painting was thrown in the trash or maybe donated.  But you never know. It might still hang on a wall somewhere with my painterly name in the corner using a very fine brush.

C Christine Trzyna  2018

FUR (AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS THE PHOTOGRAPHER) : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Robert Downey Junior as the hairy guy.  Nicole Kidman as the photographer Diane Arbus, 1950's housewife from a rich family, who likes things that scare her.  Based on a biography, and suggesting a love story.  Lonely wife subplot to her husband, lonely wife from a family rich in the furrier or fashion business, her husband photographer of still maniken - style models.  New Line Cinema.

So, I like Robert Downey Junior so much that I will see any film he's in and I did want to see what the make up artists did with him to make him the hairy guy.  Now that I was into the film, I found it all so - curious.  I was left with more curiosity, because of the last scene in which Diane goes to a nudist camp and must strip down herself to have a conversation with another camper.  More skin or fur, you see.

So the theme here is the title "Fur."
And I like the jest of "Portrait" of the "Photographer" and I wondered what was IMAGINARY about the film, or her life, or her work.

I know some poets who have resorted to photography.

HENRY DARGER : IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL :CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

This is a peculiar film because the subject, Henry Darger, was a peculiar person and a complete unknown in his lifetime.  He died in 1977 as an old man and then his landlady (who must have really known how to mind her own business) find his art - a treasure!

If Henry had been a child in our times rather than his (he died in 1977 as an old man), he would probably have never been a child slave as an orphan on a farm where he was institutionalized.  He probably would have been diagnosed with some disorder or psychological problem, which there is far too much of going on these days, and medicated, maybe out of his creativity.

Fortunately none of these things happened.  Instead he lead a simple and isolated life and became a secret writer and artist.

Henry Darger worked as a hospital janitor but when he was at home he was writing and painting.  When he died in Chicago his landlady discovered 300 paintings, some over 10 feet long, and 15,000 page illustrated novel called THE REALMS of the UNREAL. 

Clearly his childhood experience of being in an asylum for the "feeble - minded" had deeply effected him, as the story is about slave children.  Seven angelic sisters lead a rebellion against child-enslaving godless men. 

Henry went to church every Sunday of his life, though he struggled with religion.  Interestingly his paintings illustrate this world which we could argue, he lived in, and invented.

Linking to more information from PBS  DARGER - FILM - PBS

C 2013  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved