Museums and Other Cultural Changes

When is the last time you visited a museum or any other community cultural center, or read an actual newspaper? We're online (alone) garnering our cultural snippets of art, literature, games, music and movies, and community news. We don't go to museums or to libraries unless we're in search of blockbuster entertainment.

A comprehensive discussion of the American museum historical perspective in today's changing needs can be found at this link. It's a long article, about our society, too, and well worth the read if you love art and museums. What's a Museum?

Picnic Island Prickly Pear

Thinking about our digital focus this week I spent lots of time at the beach, my cultural center. Google vs. Facebook; how we socialize and interact with one another, it's changing. I enjoy nature with other nature lovers at the beach where outdoor activities don't compete with computer time. We need both.

I found this ancient prickly pear in some mangroves. I've never seen cacti taller than I am, so had to read about it online. My digital library completed the picture by warning me to stay far away to shoot.

Picnic Island Restoration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This photo of fresh plantings at Picnic Island beach appears to be random growth of tropical plants. We know otherwise if we read local newspaper blogs. The whole story is: we've lost beach during storms and new sand was brought in, newly planted with sea oats, sea grapes and flowers and grasses, so sand won't wash away so badly during storms. Not at all nature's randomness in placement.

Gray Morning at Picnic Island

 For visual artists, the web is our life's blood. We must have an online presence to grow and survive in what can be a prickly environment. We are not in museums.

This is my only new finished painting for the week. All those that I've had on the drawing board are complete and just need to be photographed and uploaded.

Is there a museum masterpiece on this post?

Most probably no masterpieces. But until and unless Google decides to shutdown this blog, which they own, these images are captured for all the world to see and I've happily expressed a little of our Tampa Bay culture along with my images. I was able to do so only because life is changing and anyone can share almost anything digitally if they take the time to develop the skills.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

New SEO Best Friends

I gave in today to 100 or so e-mails from my new SEO best friends at the search engine submitter site I looked at when I purchased my own domain. I'll link if performance is what they claim. Their marketing e-mails, in the tone of old-time used car salesman or snake oil salesman, are sometimes off-putting as rude, aggressive, and get-rich-quick in the subject line because I'm of a different marketing mindset. I believe they are offering a quality service though.

Coming Ashore?

This beautiful fish swam along the water's edge with me as I walked the Picnic Island shore this morning to collect my Google thoughts.

No longer seeing my blog posts in searches, and my profile & Plus photos showing with Windows but not Firefox (which I use, and is current). Having spent hours and hours trying to resolve these issues, I'm burned out on Plus and really angry that my beautiful blogs go nowhere. No sales, no comments if the posts aren't out there!

When I upload into my blog, I don't actually see the photo until it's in the blog. No Google service person to address these troubles; no help found online. I don't know if my new SEO best friends will pull my past Blogger posts to show in searches based on my post-specific labels, or just the few search words they allowed. Perhaps that's another small fee. I should read the 75-page service (ad) e-mailed today.

Big City Life in Tampa Bay Today

My new domain site, Gail Kent Studio is still inactive as of this post. I wanted the dust to settle on Google and Facebook transitions in the Master of the Universe race and coordinate with Blogger. As these guys would say, fish or cut bait!

I chose ipage with Wordpress for my new gallery site. The love affair with Google being over, I'm eager & excited to  tackle the new site again in a week or two (that's Tampa time).

Uploading a few photos to my prints site tonight.  Fishing Buddies is one of this genre that works well in any of the print choices or as cards. It's particularly popular globally.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Hilton Kramer is Gone, Reimagine Modernism

Hilton Kramer, most influential art critic of his day, and of my early adult years, has died. He was a champion of modernism and I read him in most publications in which his articles on many topics appeared, until he began to lean way far to the right. Hilton Kramer Obit

Adom

Modernism rejected traditional realism of the past and enlightened thinking of the future as industrialization changed our lives. A more creative divergent expression in art was afoot. Poet Ezra Pound's approach to modernism was summarized as "make it new," but new in a different way: take the obsolete and re-express it. Perhaps we would say re-imagine it. Though I never created in the genre, I appreciate so many of the artists of this movement. This work from my Five Books series is the closest I ever came to modernism.

Hans Hofmann  modernism work

Hofmann work from Cincinnati Art Museum is a true image of modernism as a comparison to my Adom painting. The difference is obvious, but my first home away from home being Chicago, modernism is an influence in my work.
I learned early that only my traditional works would be appreciated. As a high-school art student, I submitted my original work to the Hallmark Competition only to have it rejected. Reason: too stylized to be original. Carried that baggage for years and painted traditional.

Yesterday I learned a new application of the chemistry term hysteresis. As used in a MarketWatch broadcast on employment (unemployment), it meant that the past can affect present, and present can affect future. In other words, something is path-dependent. I don't believe that. We may be on a trajectory, but I believe we can change direction when we choose. 

Hysteresis is now the course of modern art, modernism in general. We seem not to know what to make of our new digitized, monetized, recognized world in the creative realms. Visual artists across the web mislabel their genres of art from modernism movements or go for trendy works. We need to incorporate our modern tools of today, I think, and move beyond the modernism Hilton Kramer knew so well. It's time to re-imagine modernism imagery. And long past time for me to pick up the pace toward my abstract works. Thank you Hilton Kramer.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Artist at Work on Picnic Island

Visual artists who work in outdoor public spots, and plein air painters, often face challenges:


-  weather (for me it's the beach) can be too wet, too humid, or too windy
-  wildlife when in the natural habitat inland or on the shore can be territorial
-  visitors can be either a distraction or a welcome diversion
-  safety can be a concern in isolated locations
-  medium can be problematic - acrylics dry quickly even with gel medium mixtures
-  electronics don't perform well if you continually drop them in water or hard surfaces! 

Low tide & gentle sailing breeze today

Having worked outdoors a little over six months, (eager to get into my new space indoors), I've enjoyed many hours on our white sand beaches at Picnic Island watching sail boats, kayakers, commercial ships in the channel and an endless stream of  locals and visitors who stop to look at my art. I've even gotten to know a few of the regulars who hike or walk daily.

Parking Lot Picnic Island Style

Mornings are often quiet when I arrive at deserted scenes like this area near the island entrance. Park staff stop by sometimes to be sure everything is okay when I'm painting alone on the shoreline. Owners of vehicles in the parking lots have usually already gone out in kayaks or small fishing boats.

Umm, umm good crabs- only shells left

I walk on the beach with my camera before painting to get lots of reference images for future use. Unfortunately, I drop my camera all too often, and now can't upload to my Fine Art America print site until I get a new one. Present Kodak lasted only three months. A great article link from another artist about getting a new camera  Need a New Camera  I'll review her results and reader input before making my own choice.

Outdoor painting challenges aren't insurmountable.
I've adapted very well by changing my medium, changing from finished works to small studies, and learning to deal with distractions. The bugs: can't say I've adapted to no-see-ums! I'll continue to visit this beautiful estuary from time to time after moving into new space and again painting larger oil works.

My outdoor visitors seldom see my finished works, but I give them my card to look at the "good stuff" online. I stop painting to chat, unless I'm at a critical focus and don't want my paint to dry. In which case I explain that the paint is drying quickly, but to please stay and chat. Got to get that good stuff online for them. Blog and Facebook uploads are often incomplete or cropped differently than works offered as prints, so the camera is now critical--don't want people to only see snapshot uploads.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

 

Why the Sky is Blue

Picnic Island Blue Skies

Blue is the most popular color in paintings, with lavender a close second. Next favorite is the tint of either color that matches fabric and paint swatches for any new decor project in the works.

Painters may use half a dozen other colors in rendering blue (or lavender) skies. In this little study of a beautiful island day, I used three blue hues, magenta, sienna, and white to capture the sunny day sky.

Facebook Cover Picnic Island

This stormy day sky required more intensity and movement to capture the storm. Two blues, magenta, and white were used to keep focus on rapid movement.

Lantana Study unfinished

These butterfly attracting wild flowers grow around mangrove habitat areas on Picnic Island. This very rough study will become a painting with a soft Blue Sky painted in ultramarine blue, magenta and white. This keeps the focus on the flowers. Having grown these in my own butterfly garden, I'm resisting the idea of a butterfly on the flower nearest the center flower - too sweet for my taste, I think.

In Olive Tree, one of my most popular Fine Art America listings, I used all colors, achieving exactly the dramatic effect I wanted in depicting the Great Flood story. Olive Tree This sky is not blue, but full-spectrum conveying a sense of wholeness, completeness, within the drama.

I read an interesting article in The Guardian about the ten best skies in art. Best Skies in Art in Pictures The great artist JMW Turner's listing didn't include the photo, but does have a link. I find his skies to be very interesting and certainly would have given one of his images front page placement. More often than not, his skies go for dramatic movement with many colors, but he's also guilty of sweet blue skies using multiple colors.

So why is the sky blue?

We expect the sky to be blue on clear days and so we see it as blue (unless we're painters!). Light waves of blue filtered through our atmosphere give us blue skies, but all the colors are there radiating from the sun.  We see all the colors after a storm when we are gifted with a rainbow. Skies beyond our atmosphere, deep space, are black.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

 

PR Art Shaking it Up

PR can create any image you desire. Well, sometimes.  PR can make you famous or infamous.
If you're running for the highest office in the land, you probably need the best PR you can buy. Spin is an art when creating an image. Our current Republican roster may or may not agree that shaking it up with words is a good thing.

Etch a Sketch Seascape Art

I'm a painter who doesn't use art to make political statements. I'm no Picasso and not very good with my Etch a Sketch as a tool. But I do admire strong art in the political realm such as the awesome Etch a Sketch artists I was able to surface when running a Google search for that genre. Obama Portrait   I have a pocket-size sketcher which is probably a knock-off, but that thought brings up another political thought about original ideas.

Etch a Sketch Portrait

I found links to both Santorum and Gingrich enjoying photo ops with their Etch a Sketch toys. I'm pretty sure President Obama didn't have his photo made with one but probably got the most enjoyment of all. Etch-a-Sketch Moment

Other than President Obama, who came out the winner in this PR art? Why, the makers of Etch a Sketch, of course. Ohio Art Company Stock price tripled! Wonder who they're supporting in this race.

Big topic--not at all funny how spin has become the tool of choice that can dupe the American voter. And that's the only political statement I have. I'm registered independent; never follow party line, always vote. And, occasionally, I buy a little stock. Sorry to say that I missed out on this unanticipated uptick.

My art speaks for itself with no PR help, so it's back to the studio for now.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Symmetry, Harmony, A Beautiful Life

Symmetry and harmony through size, shape, color, and placement find their way into most of our compositions with just a little planning. Those of us who share a mathematical bent, may even find fractal and circular elements to be a focus in choosing subjects. Symmetry is a main reason we find visual art aesthetically pleasing and beautiful. This artistic harmonious balance extends to the beauty in nature, architecture, and the beings who populate our worlds and create for us a beautiful life.

I read a brief article about Leonardo's symmetry study Leonardo's Vitruvian Man earlier this week and it clarified why I'm having difficulty putting finishing touches on five small beach studies. I digressed from my typical palette knife minimalist beach color studies to more realistic works and lost my symmetry.

Picnic Island Tampa  Sea Grapes

Yesterday, I packed up my worthless camera and headed to an inland spot away from beaches in search of signs of Spring in my eternal Summer paradise. This sea grape from my Picnic Island beach site is the  most drastic color change in my Florida Spring landscape and is worthy of a painting. Look at all that symmetry on many levels!

Gadsden Park Tampa

Just two miles from Picnic Island, I found Gadsden Park next to MacDill Air Force Base. Nothing more than a large pond, beautiful old oaks draped in moss, and multiple red clay ball fields, I found it lacking in symmetry. Cattails and manipulated scenery in the trees surrounding the water definitely were announcing Spring, though they hardly compare with the natural beauty of Picnic Island estuary.

Gadsden Flowering Shrub

One isolated shrub along a concrete walkway was the only flower I found yesterday. I'm guessing that with no drinking water fountains there is no water for flowers. A great sign of Spring, but not worthy of a painting. Although I do see possibilities for an abstract color study.

Gadsden Park Trail

This serene setting along the trail was incredibly beautiful with an almost Japanese garden appeal. Texture played against texture, light against dark, and vertical against horizontal--awesome symmetry! Maybe some day I will capture it in a lovely painting that will be very pleasing.

Today, I put aside the five beach paintings to work on "Spring" flowers--again on the beach in a wonderful breeze, surrounded by water and sail boats and native flowers. My next blog should have some painterly pictures for viewing.

One can learn a lot reading about symmetry in practically any field. I encourage you to explore. Recently I picked up a bag of board games at a tag sale to use the pieces in handcrafts. Inside I discovered a bag of Runes. In reading the enclosed text I found that Runes are basically about finding symmetry and harmony in life.

The runes research brought to mind a story from a literature book from my college German classes a hundred years ago. The story was about a sad woman who had sad geraniums, and no man, but at least her two pots of geraniums were symmetrically placed, on the window sill I think. The Sad Geraniums  You can link and translate to read. As with all things German, it's way deeper than a story of two flower pots. After all these years, I've not forgotten the importance of Symmetry.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

 

Rock of Los Angeles

Heading for  Los Angeles

The L A Rock 

 A 340-ton rock, Michael Heizer’s Levitated/Slot Mass, an internationally anticipated installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Rock Price:  ~ $120,000
Transport Price: ~ $1.5-million
Installation Costs: Who Knows?
Tom Wolf's The Painted Word: PRICELESS!






I have to say, this leaves me speechless. 
Los Angeles is in a deep, really deep, recession, isn't it?

I've visited countless museums with only Israel's Yad Vashem having a rock installation--not in any way a comparison with LA's new boulder. A wiki link if you're interested a photo from Yad Vashem

I'll have to revisit this art installation and the artist's bio when my head clears.

On the Trail in North Carolina

No stranger to rocks and boulders, but never a sculptor, perhaps I'm just missing something with The Rock installation in Los Angeles. A nature lover since my forays into trails and pathways and my own cave as a grade school girl, I certainly appreciate rocks and cliffs and boulders and even pebbles. I even wear stone creations that I hand craft, admiring their natural colors, ancient striations and the feel of the materials.

Maybe I'll write a post update later about how wonderful and wise an idea this decision was for Los Angeles County during dire economic conditions. For now, I just don't get it.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Silence Sounds

Silence, being still and listening to silence, is overpowering on a deserted seashore. The senses are filled with rhythms of the wind and water and seabirds. Gordon Hempton, Audio Ecologist, knows all about this silence and the sounds which fill it. Today  On Being  tweeted from an interview about his "sound tracking" which I'm hoping to hear Sunday morning. He said in this interview "Silence is the think tank of the soul." I'm looking forward to getting to know his work on his website Soundtracker

Picnic Island Low Tide

Yesterday was a day to listen and to gather, figuratively and literally. During high winds and very low tides, I was able to explore the floor of the bay while gathering a variety shells--some to keep, and others to leave in place for their occupants. The deserted beach was closed to swimmers because of high bacteria counts from heavy rains and winds over the weekend. I heard the silence call and took my chances, walking far from shore, absorbing the quiet.

Cockle Shell

I walked ankle deep into the quiet water, hearing only palms beating in the winds, and the sound of my own thoughts. An island hiker acquaintance came by and showed me a coconut he'd retrieved from the bay--one-upped me! I did find this huge cockle resting in the sand, many other shells, and all the thoughts and memories I collected in the sounds of silence.

Carolina Trail

Today I spent an hour in a lifeguard stand listening to myself  sing Cockles and Muscles, an Irish folk song I learned as a child, accompanied by high tide waves, fish jumping from the water, and hungry seagulls sailing on the winds. That song carried me back to the North Carolina mountains of my childhood where hiking on a trail like this offered completely different sounds in the silence. These hills are definitely a think tank of the soul.

Forsythia Gone Wild

I've been working on a number of  North Carolina Spring studies in traditional style for several weeks. Our recent bay high winds certainly flooded me with memories of March winds whipping through tall pines and lawns covered in wild flowering shrubs. I'm so very fortunate to have both mountains and seashore to soak up sounds and vistas for inspiration in my art.

Mountain Stream

I always listen to my surroundings, to the nuances of nature's songs. A stream runs though this horse farm just outside Asheville city limits. It's marvelous to walk and listen to the land just minutes from city life. The babble of this little brook, the gentle waterfall tumbling over jagged rocks, and sounds of waves in ebb and flow are integral to my painting. These studies will be uploaded to my FAA site and painted in oils as larger works for my gallery.
 
Value of the "soundtracker" outing: priceless!
Value of my new Cockle shell: one new pair of New Balance walkers and another camera (dropped it again)!


I hope you, too, will enjoy Gordon Hempton's On Being interview and his movie, as tools to enrich your creative inspiration processes.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Richard Diebenkorn Ocean View Series

http://www.sfmoma.org/images/
artwork/medium/72.59_01_b02.jpg

Richard Diebenkorn's art is indescribably beautiful and simple, especially his Ocean View series currently on exhibition at OCMA Diebenkorn Exhibition

Ocean Park #54 is one of my new favorites for the colors and because Diebenkorn left the trail of his thought processes as he scraped away layers to add new paint for a different effect. Pride doesn't allow most of us don't leave that trail.

I'd love to line up all the images from this series for you - just google Richard Diebenkorn Ocean View Series images for a visual treat.

How often we see feeble attempts of imitation in these representational bands of color. They are mesmerizing to me as I live on the coast, daily painting my own bands of color, and could easily step right into one of his images. Everyday, I work in my own seaside environment of angular industrial lines, bright interior angles, and open expanses of blue sky meets green water or green sky meets blue water.

Though meeting with criticism, Diebenkorn stayed the course with his thoughts, with his application of colors to convey his surroundings. In this brief video you hear his response to early criticism. Diebenkorn on his Method

I'm off to the beach now to create new works after spending a little time with Diebenkorn's paintings. Hopefully, I'll work under inspiration, not influence. A few of my own images will show my affinity for the sea's translucent linear colors. If you arrive on the shoreline on a foggy morning, you will be greeted, on rare occasion, by a low tide horizon similar to this Morning Low Tide
This print is currently included in Fine Art America's Sales Favorites







 A rainy seaside morning will greet you with brilliant colors as storm clouds dissipate and you begin a new painting to capture the moment from shoreline. Living on the Central Florida Gulf Coast, I get an extra long season of these images during our six-months-long hurricane season.  Skies are Clearing
(I'm right there with the wind and waves when we experience the melodrama of a good storm.)

And then we have Winter on the coast in the Tampa Bay area. This cold windy day of crisp clear blues was captured while trying to hold everything down. It was an awesome blue bay on that frigid day.Winter Morning. This print is currently getting a lot of FAA activity. I've seen several somewhat similar images pop up recently on other sites. Some never learn that if you weren't there, you probably can't capture the essence--we're going to see a lot of Diebenkorn influence coming.




Enjoy your visit to Diebenkorn online you won't be able to catch the exhibit. I did.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios