Category Archives: art

The Happy Accident

Oil on canvas, 8″ x 8″.

Sufjan Stevens

“The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, ‘I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands!'”

 

Happy Independence Day.

Dialog:City Revisited

A while back I posted a video of  Mayor Hickenlooper’s soporific introduction to Dialog:City, a sort of arts festival coming to Denver to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. That video is not very inspiring, but it does look like the artists involved are coming up with interesting projects.

 

This one in particular, I find fascinating: artist Luke Dubois has taken all of the State of the Union speeches  from US history and tracked the word frequency of each. He used this data to make lightbox charts that look a bit like what you see in an optometrist’s office.

 

The results are very telling. Some of them read a bit like psychotic poetry. You can view low res pics of Dubois’ work, titled “Hindsight is Always 20/20,” here.

Gee’s Bend

The Denver Art Museum recently hosted an exhibition of some of these remarkable quilts. I had to come back and see the show twice. Living in poverty and isolation and using a visual language all their own, these women made bed coverings that rival the best examples of abstract painting. They are my heroes.

Arte y Pico Award

My thanks to the wonderful writer and fellow lefse aficionado Writing Grandma’s Book for giving me the Arte y Pico Blog Award. I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve it as I can’t even get the Phil Bender video from my last post to work right, but I appreciate it anyway. The rules of the award follow, swiped from WGB’s blog.

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributing to the blogger community, no matter in what language.

2. Each award should have the name of the author (or their site) with a link to their blog.

3. Award winners have to post the award with the name and link to the blog of the person who gave them the award.

4. Please include a link to the “Arte Y Pico” blog so that everyone will know where the award came from.

There are many likable blogs out there. It’s hard to choose just five. But here are five blogs in no particular order that give me aesthetic pleasure, and make me want to return for more.

Nicole Hyde’s Finders! Keepers? Art Project (Random Acts of Art in a Big Big World) documents her journey as she creates small paintings and leaves them in random locations to fend for themselves.

Claudio Parentella’s The Extra Finger features interviews with artists from all over the place as well as his own art. I like his taste, and look forward to each new entry.

Matthew Rose’s Store Front Windows is beautiful and thought provoking.

Poet Sarah Jane’s The Rain in My Purse is everything a good blog should be. Smart, funny, and habit forming to view.

Finally, Xupacabras is a blog of delicious photographic treatments of the human form. I don’t know who is responsible for this Portugese blog or if they are still around- it hasn’t been updated in quite some time- but it is so lovely that I had to include it. May not be safe for work.

Phil Bender eating a beignet : Related : The Rocky Mountain News

Denver artist Phil Bender gets messy.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Phil Bender eating a beignet : Relate…“, posted with vodpod

Joellyn Duesberry

Nice little video (apparently an excerpt from a longer movie) of this Denver artist working on site. I find it fascinating to watch plein air painters. The process is so immediate and so different from mine. Check out Joellyn’s palette. I’ve never seen paint piled so high nor squished together so closely.

Let’s Paint

The Creative Process. Multi-tasking. I’m speechless.

Tinfoil Hat Society

Member #1. Mixed-media rag doll.

Weird Old Denver Film

From caricature artist Sam Klemke.

1977 is the year my family moved to the Denver area. Denver has changed a lot in thirty years. I’m pretty sure my dad had the exact same hairstyle and jacket Sam is sporting here.