A Narrow Escape in La Boca

Last weekend when my dear friend, Emily, was visiting me from the states, we hit up all the toursity stuff in the Montevideo and even made time to head over to Buenos Aires for 2 days. I think our favorite part of the city was La Boca despite our little "incident" in this neighborhood.


The houses are brightly colored and tourist shops, restaurants, and tango bars warm and welcoming. You can feel the spirit of Buenos Aires in the air of this neighborhood. The Museo de Bellas Artes de la Boca "Benito Quinquela Martín", was a great fine arts museum showcasing some excellent artwork of emerging Latin American artists and and of course the works of Quinquela Martín, one of Argentina's most beloved painters. His works are especially vibrant and expressive. I love his representation of color and water. His style is regonizable almost immediately. The museum is where he actually lived and worked overlooking the port. A must visit in my opinion.


However, as we were attempting to catch the bus back to the the city center (in broad daylight mind you), two boys popped out of nowhere and demanded that we give them our cameras. We didn't understand what was happening at first so they repeated their request to which I responded, we don't have cameras. What did they think we would do? Say, sure, just a minute, let me get out my camera so I can give it to you? I can't imagine what would have happened to us, if I didn't know any Spanish. They then started grabbing our purses and reaching in our pockets, but we resisted and ran across the street to where other individuals were walking. Fortunately, we escaped unscathed and with all of our belongings.

I have to admit that I am a little paranoid of shady-looking teenage boys now. Almost getting mugged in the streets of Buenos Aires can do that to a person.

Argentine Art

Here's a quick review a few more things I did in Argentina art related:

Visited Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA). A good traditional and modern art museum combined. I spent too long on the lower level and not enough on the upper one, but a good way to spend an afternoon. Famous European Artists below and Latin American artists above.

Visited Museo de Arte Latinoamercano de Buenos Aires (MALBA). A GREAT modern art museum. Loved it. Lots of funky pieces. Lots of fun.

Saw 2 live theater performances at the Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini for more or less $10 each (35 Argentine pesos). One very good, one very confusing. One I could follow, the other hopeless. One a story arc, the other crazy people on stage ranting about...well, I don't even know. El Tiempo y los Conway and Los Siete Locos

Saw a movie. Although a German film with Spanish subtitles, still very good. And Along Came Tourists

In review, if you plan on going to Buenos Aires you have to partake in the local art scene. Definitely go to a live performance and definitely pick a few of the art museums and visit the ones you think you'd like the most.

Apartment Hunt

We spent all day searching for apartments in Salto. It was next to impossible to find anywhere to stay!

We'd arrive at the places, tell them we want to rent a furnished apartment for three months and they'd give us an incredulous look that said, "You want what? and for how long?" Apparently month by month leases do not exist and furnished places are rare.

Several of the places we looked at would be struggle to stay there for 3 days let alone 3 months. One had a nice big dead roach to greet us behind the door. Another had a sink in the bedroom that doubled as the "kitchen" and bedroom. Hmmm. It's amazing how exhausting searching for a place to live can be. Goodness. At least we have one place that may work. There is a glimmer of hope.


Then this evening we went to the Museo de Bellas Artes, Museo Maria Irene Olarreaga Gallino. The architect who designed the building invited us there for a dedication of the garden outside. We met several important people from the city but actually didn't realize that is what we were going to beforehand, hence why I was wearing the same sweaty clothes I had worn all day to go apartment shopping. Nice. On the bright side I loved the art. There was a hominage to Leandro Silva Delgado whose oil paintings I enjoy very much. He was born in Salto, painted lots of natural scenes, designed a bunch of gardens, and then died in Spain. He was a great Uruguayan artist.

Framing Venice

I ordered frames from American Frames this summer for some of my artwork. I loved their classic metal frames because their look is so clean and elegant. I first bought merchandise from them per a recommendation from my drawing professor four years ago. As a bonus to cutting your frames to the perfect (sometimes unusual) measurements, they give you a free cut mat to fit your work as well.


My favorite part, by far though, is that you can snap a photo of your artwork, upload it into their website, and see what your painting is going to look like in the frame you want to order even before it arrives at your door. You can even paint the wall behind the makeshift digital image. Yep. That's nice. I'm sold.

I couldn't decide between pewter and brushed silver on the painting above, but in the end, brushed silver looked better. Alas, when it arrived at my door, brushed silver indeed did accent quite well. Thank goodness for easier framing; I hate ruining a good piece of artwork with shoddy frame-work.

Icy Red Berries

Have I ever mentioned that I like ice?


I like ice and pretty red berries that pop against a complementry green and white background.


Although, a little Christmasy, I prefer to think wintery instead. Somehow, I feel like there should be horses and sleigh bells lingering behind these holly bushes. I didn't see any though when I was out freezing to death in the sloshy rain. One must suffer for art.

I Heart Ice

I ♥ Icy Weather.


Not because it's slippery or slidey. Just because it is so beautiful.


And a great excuse to play with my new camera.


Yay, for icy cold pretty!

Tiny People In A Big World

Little People--a tiny street art project
Little handpainted people, left in London to fend for themselves.


First a close up. Then a long shot.



How can you not love this stuff? Beautiful art.


Insightful commentary on urban life and human interaction with our environment.

The blog here: Little People
Or check out the artist's website here: Slinkachu.

Oodles of Doodles

Oh my. Doodlers.
Presidents. Vice-presidential wanna be's. They all doodle, according to CNN.

Some guy bought an Obama doodle (of poorly drawn heads) last year for over 2,000 bucks on eBay. Now he's getting offers in the 6 figures, but he won't sell. I think he should. The doodle is hardly fit for hanging on the fridge, let alone over the fireplace.

Palin likes to make doodles too. Only hers prove that her mind must always be racing. Talk about a jumble of chicken scratch. Reminds me of middle school when I was deciding how to fashion my John Hancock.

I see why these two went into politics...because art school just wasn't for them.

Design the World a Coke

Oh so cool. Design the World a Coke.


Look at the Coca-Cola bottle I designed (For some reason it won't face the right way in the still shot. Click on the link to watch it rotate in all directions and at all angles, because it's in 3D! So fancy, I know). Seriously, you have to check out my beautiful Coke bottle. It's pretty awesome.

Now make your own; but be warned, this site is highly addictive. I thought I would spend 10 minutes playing around with the design tools and ended up burning 2 hours getting the color of splattered paint just right.

You can't say you haven't been warned; but really, this is just too cool. Even more exciting than the M&M website that lets you make crazy photographs. Wait. I'm noticing a trend. I think I'm a sucker for these sort of interactive marketing things. And now I'm advertising for them on my blog... I have in no way been paid to tell you how cool Coke is.

Don't drink Coke; just design their bottles. Good, now I don't feel like I have broken any moral codes.

Touchdowns=Toppings

The Terps won another football game again today. Cool stuff. I wasn't feeling so swell this morning when I woke up, so I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to go, but fortunately I bucked up and went.

Apparently, for every touchdown our team gets, every attendee can get a free pizza topping at Papa Johns. And if Maryland wins, they double that number. That means that this week we can get a large pizza with 12 toppings. Whoo. It's not so much that I would every want 12 different things on my pizza, but somehow game is more exciting when we can celebrate that we will have two more topppings to add to our Tuesday pizza. We got another touchdown? Oh, yay, more toppings! I think the people around us were cheering for other reasons.

My apartment building was having a resident appreciation party today, so we did our quote, unquote, tailgating, for free. We had hamburgers and then got our faces drawn by a sketch artist named Jerry. His technique is the giant face, little body style. I never much understood the concept, but hey, it's still kind of cool to have my "resemblance" on paper. Looks just like me, huh?

Picasso's Bullfighting Aquatints

A snapshot in time.


Most people don't realize that Pablo Picasso had a whole lifetime of art apart from the cubism movement that he pioneered.


He did tons of other works.

When I visited the Museo Picasso in Malaga (the birth place of our beloved cubist), I was SHOCKED at the breadth and depth of his early works. There was one (quite good) realist painting of a girl sitting in a chair that was not abstract in the least which he painted when he was only 15. There was pottery and my favorite, his aquatints. Entitled, La Tauromaquia ("The Bullfight" translated from Spanish to English), this series of 26 panels includes some of my favorite images of all time.


Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique which is a variant of etching. Created in 1957, Picasso's aquatints are exquisite in line and form. I love the black and white contrast. The movement of the drawings. The character of the images. The hurried expressiveness of the bullfighting scene.

This lesser known side of Picasso is powerful, exquisite, and by far, my favorite.

The Tomorrow Museum

The Tomorrow Museum is a good blog that explores a different element of art that affects us in unseen ways.

The Tomorrow Museum is a collection of images and speculative essays exploring how technology, science, and economics are affecting the fine arts. We believe, as William Gibson has said, that the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

Recent posts include:

Suburban Ruins and the Ethics of House Flipping ---Some people are holding on to their houses because they don't want to sell it to young whippersnappers who are going to 'flip' everything around. The article suggests a DC woman may not have any other choice, "gross remodeling may be its inevitable second life. For now, she’s still waiting for someone who will respect the design of the place." Her nostalgia is understandable, but really, can you stop modernization? And no matter how you answer that, you definitely can't control other people's decisions, house design-wise or not. At least buyers aren't pawing at her to rip her house down to make way for a shopping mall---that might just be a case for cardiac arrest.

Please don't leave a facebook comment on my birthday ---which I somewhat disagree with. Who doesn't like a little facebook love? Sure, a little one-on-one interaction would be nice, but it isn't always practical. I think a quick "happy b-day" is short and sweet.

A trip to the zoo Animals are smart. And (maybe?) nice to look at. Zoos are straying away from the museum mentality, you know the whole idea of looking at the creature with a "frame around it." Today they are going full out imitation. However, the question still remains the same, Is it wrong to keep Mr. Panda locked up in his pretend almost real natural habitat?

Sold Out (Literally)

Allmylifeforsale follows the project of one brave soul. A guy who sold everything he owned (in the most literal sense) on Ebay. He listed every item he owned on the popular auction site with a starting bid of 99 cents. I think he must've been slightly crazy or extremely sensible. It's hard to tell which of the two. The website says:

John Freyer catalogued and sold nearly everything that he owned, from his kitchen cutlery to his personal hygiene products, his Star Wars sheets and finally even the domain name Allmylifeforsale.com itself....

To date he has sold more than 600 items including his false teeth, a full size office copier, personal photographs, and his winter coat (in the middle of the winter).

Soon his belongings were sold all over the world, with a bag of Porky's BBQ Pork Skins making its way to Japan, and a chair ending up in the Museum of Modern Art. With almost all the objects in his life now gone, he started the second phase of his journey: to visit his onetime possessions in their new homes.

Ummm? Crazy. I bet he didn't sell the $$$ in his bank account though. He had to make a killing off the revenue from his project. He got loads of publicity, and he has made a book about his misadventures too.

I still have lingering questions about his project. Like did he sell his sentimental possessions? Where did he live? What did he wear? How did he survive without, you know, stuff?

I guess that's the point though. His idea was inspired; not only as an art form, but also as a sociology study about the relationship between possessions and the self. Note my post on Pack Ratism as well as an excellent blog, The Unclutterer, for an exploration of these topics. I'm guessing Mr. Freyer is the proud owner of lots of new shiny THINGS now. I don't think it possible to not accumulate things in modern society...

BEADS

I realized that I have never blogged about my beading obsession. What a shame.

It's about time you knew, blogosphere. My name is Jenn and I have a beading problem. "Hi, Jenn," you say (Ironically beading is a lot more like alcholism than you could imagine. It takes a lot of money, a lot of time, sometimes makes you happy, sometimes angry, and is highly addictive).

I have three very large, very full plastic containers filled with nothing other than beads and beading supplies. I love designing, creating, picking out beads for, and of course, wearing my jewelry. My particular 'kick' at this point is for the earrings. They are the quickest and classiest. Nice sterling silver finding and glass beads make a nice combo.

I suppose I envision myself selling all the stuff that I make, but I find that to be the worst part of being an artist/artisian. You want to focus on creation, not on business managment. Or in other words I want to make stuff and somehow magically be able to self-support my work. I want to create create create. Unfortunately that also means spend spend spending.

Oh the perils of being an artist.

Where the Hell is Matt?

Where the Hell is Matt?
When culture, art, community, and traveling (my most favorite things) collide this is what you get. It's fun. It's humanity. And it's beautiful. I'm loving it all the way! Gotta watch this video.


As he describes himself:

Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is.

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do that dance. I'll record it." He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It's actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as "That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny."

The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.

Well, yeah. That was a good idea.

I wish some company would pay me to travel the world for free and dance with locals. That'd be about the best thing ever.

PS. Also Check out his first video and the outtakes. Ahhh. Just so amazing.

Kaleidoscope

Remember putting your eyes up to the end of Kaleidoscope and rotating it around to have a magical burst of colors dance in front of you? In case you do (or don't) try playing with this fancy virtual tool by zefrank. It's not quite the same as the real deal, but this way you get to build your own Kaleidoscope with nothing more than a black circle, basic geometric forms, and a rotating blue wedge. My final result was way cool, and I used all the pieces.

Warning: Don't stare at the rapidly moving colors too long. You may start to feel sleepy, very sleepy.

Kid's Drawings Reversed

I love the concept of taking children's drawings and turning them into real life photographs like Yeondoo Jung does in the collection "Wonderland". Not only are the photos surreal and fun, the idea is so rich. We have an artist's interpretation of a child's interpretation of nature.
The layers of reality, imagery, and artistry are thick. The photographs are striking, innocent, and beautiful. With the original kid's drawing side-by-side, I love the idea and final product. They beg the question what is posed? what is natural? what is based on reality? and what is based only on the notion of reality? Yeondoo Jung is my new favorite Korean artist.

Works in the post:
1st: Cinderella
2nd: Fox's Magic Trick

Ceramics

Today was my ceramics final. We went through the class and critiqued everyone's work sprawled out over the room.

I basically lived in the ceramics studio this semester. I might as well have set up a tent and slept in there too. At times I questioned my sanity, but now looking over my work, I am pleased. I feel like have a few very strong pieces that I might actually want to set out instead of wrapping up in newspaper, never to see the light of day again.

The thing about ceramics is this: There are so many opportunities to screw up. There are so many stages, steps, considerations, mishaps, unknowns, uncontrollable factors, that when you get something good that makes it through the final glaze firing, you'd better hold onto it for dear life (and not drop it on the way over to your shelf).

Now I can make tea in my teapot, dinner in my casserole dish, hot chocolate in my mugs, cereal in my bowls, and lemonade in my pitcher. I can stick flowers in my vases, candy in my jars, and paperclips in everything else...except for the sculptures...they can, um, sit on the mantel and look pretty. What fun.

The 3 Best Things

In times of hardship, in times of pain, in times struggle, I find there to be three things that mean the most to me.

1. God
2. Friends
3. Art

They are life.

For now the noonday quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass:
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead.
The purple flower droops: the golden bee
Is lily-cradled: I alone awake.
My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love,
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim,
And I am all aweary of my life.

-Lord Alfred Tennyson, Oenone

Andy Warhol

While in Pittsburgh for the NCECA conference, we visited the Andy Warhol Museum. I was impressed with it. Even recognizing his work is rather 'easy' to do, you have to admit it's cool.

Pop art is cool.

There I said it. I like Andy's work. He may have been a strange strange man (even gross at times ie. peeing on his canvases for an oxide reaction), but I respect his artwork--or at least his prints.

Also there were works by Jasper Johns and Neke Carson. You know him. He painted Andy Warhol with his butt, termed 'Rectal Realism.' Gross. The painting sucks, but it (or rather his method) caused a big stir.

I loved the Silver Clouds installation that was just a room with 20 or so shiny silver balloons inside. A plaque by the door even read that the balloons were "refurbished." Gee, to think that the original balloons didn't last.

Ron Mueck also had a special exhibit in the Warhol Museum. He creates the most ultra-real human forms I have ever seen. He captures red marks on the skin, hair follicles, dimples, blemishes, and form perfectly. His works are larger than life or tinier than it. They almost strike me as creepy. Yeah, that giant baby you see is creepy, right?

I can't resist but to leave you with my favorite quote by Warhol:

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.