How to Post to the blog

Ok, so now we find out why no one is posting, because it won't let you. please email me from whatever email account you want to use so I can list you as an author. please include your real name so I have a clue who you are. I will then give you authorship rights. Gmail accounts are the favorite of blogger, so use one of those if you have one.

On the Self Portrait

The toughest job I ever had:

When I taught at West Texas A&M, I had an older student in a handful of classes, both Printmaking and Computer Art. Her 15 year old son had cancer. They were selected by the "Make a Wish" foundation and over time her son Josh declined and eventually died. Shortly before he died, she came to me to ask me for a favor. "Could you please design a headstone for my son Josh"? I immediately knew that her respect for me as an artist was WAY to high. I made some pretty neat stuff, but I considered it all to be fluff. I couldn't imagine creating something that would be the enduring symbol for someone for the rest of time. or another 4 or 500 years if you have seen any old cemeteries lately. I said yes, and of course immediately started to panic. I met with Josh a couple of times before he died. Talk about a surreal experience. Trying to figure out what image to put on a 15 year olds gravestone and talking to him about it as casually as what are we going to have for dinner. Well he may have sounded casual but I thought I was going to throw up or start crying at any moment. 

For any self portrait or portrait you embark on, think of that, and try and figure how would you want the world to see me when I am gone. What can I tell them across the ages in a picture.

On my resume, I list all the museum collections and exhibitions that I am in or have been a part of, but I think maybe the most significant work I have ever done stands in a field in Canyon Texas. Maybe I'll add it to the list.

Paint on

Still Life

Here is an example of a Still Life by Bailey, it's complicated but simple. How does your composition compare?

On being an Artist

As I prepare for another Semester, endlessly tweaking syllabi and trying to make “the perfect course”, setting up the website (yes it’s there and you can check out your course sites now). I find myself thinking, “How can I get them excited. How can I get them inspired. In all of the Art courses I took, I never even thought about “finishing enough work for an A, I usually had far more done by the mid semester than any teacher would have ever required. This semester, I have scaled back some of my aspirations for student projects by dropping a couple of projects from each course, but I still want to give a challenge to the student who wants more. It amazes me when I hear students talking about “not having enough time”. There is absolutely no time in your life when you will have as much time as when you are in college. It all depends on how you use it. I prefer to use the example of my signature file that says. Remember, there are 24 hours in the day, and then there is the night too. But enough of this jibber jabber. I tried to figure out what it was that inspired me when I was an undergraduate student. It didn’t take long actually, So here is how it happened to me.

 

As many of you know, I was an egghead as a child, the only problem was that I had no real desire to do anything that society told me I should do with it. I didn’t want to be a scientist, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to do either. Through a series of random events I ended up playing volleyball for a Junior College in Long Beach, California. I absolutely loved it. I went from being a wallflower, afraid of my own shadow, to being a world class athlete in just a short period of time. When I was a sophomore in High School I was 6’4” and 118 Lbs. That sets a new definition for skinny. A couple years later I was 6’5” and 172 Lbs. Volleyball led me to the University of Hawaii where I was totally immersed in the volleyball team and culture. I was a good student but the classes were a distant second when it came to my attention. They had me in business classes and then communications classes, all of which I excelled in, but decided I would have to shoot myself it I was going to do any of those things for a living. That is when I discovered the Art department. I changed my major and have never looked back since. I think one of the main reasons I was so inspired and worked so hard was because for the first time in my life I knew what it was that I wanted to do. Not exactly all the details but I knew it involved art. From then on, nothing else mattered, I lived in the studio all day and most the night. All my old friends thought that I had left the planet because I was never seen anymore.

 

I understand that many of you have not yet figured out what direction you are going in your life and you don’t have to do it now either. But when you do, I hope you will go after it with all the passion and energy you have. It is the thing that will sustain you when you are my age.

 

Now, Speaking of Age, here is where I was heading with all of this. When I was at U.H., I had a mentor, his name was and still is, Lee Chesney. Today he is 89 years old and he continues to work in the studio for a full days work and usually that is 6 days a week. Most of us would have a very difficult time keeping up with him. He has as much energy now as anyone I know. The reason for this energy I’m sure is his passion for what he does. I have included two things here. One is a painting of his called Passion Roost, and the other is a copy of an essay I wrote for the catalog of an exhibition by Lee, last year. Lee inspired me then, and still does today, I hope you can find a source of inspiration. I know I have gone on for ages here, and I truly appreciate those of you that made it this far, thanks for your patience. I hope you will do great things this semester.

 

Sven

 

Lee Chesney

 

In 1979, fate landed me at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Little did I know at the time that it would have such a profound influence on my life. It began strictly as rumors when I was in my foundations classes in the Art Department. There seemed to be a professor there that was by all accounts, larger than life. He was away on sabbatical at first so I never got to meet or even see him until I was a Junior. Once he returned it was still difficult to actually meet him because there was always a crowd around him wherever he went. He tended to walk while turning circles from place to place surrounded by a group of 7 to 10 students. He would answer each ones questions in turn and then turn towards the next student in the direction he was eventually heading. The only difference between this scene and a star in Hollywood is that there were no cameras and the subject of all the attention actually took the time to answer everyone’s questions and cared about the people asking them. The professor was Lee Chesney. After meeting him, I understood why he always had a crowd. He has an intense personality and is absolutely driven in what he does. He leaves you with the impression that he can see straight through to your inner soul yet has a twinkle in his eye that tells you he likes what he sees.

 

On his home turf of intaglio, Lee Chesney is a technical god. I have never been able to find a question regarding etching or engraving that he could not fully answer. In fact he often answered questions I never thought of asking. I also learned that you don’t casually ask a question unless you have properly prepared yourself by eating a full meal and visiting the restroom because a proper answer usually takes a good afternoon. If you have time on your hands, you might ask him about the differences between a scraped or burnished plate. After the explanation explores the subtle tonality changes in the ink film related to the different retention of oil and therefore the different technique necessary for wiping said plate, the conversation turns technical.

 

He has the respect of the most significant printmakers of our time, including Stanley William Hayter, who told me and a group of printmakers at Atelier 17 in 1984, that Lee Chesney was the best printmaker he had ever met. Very high praise considering the long list of artists that have walked through those studio doors.

 

If the plate is the symphony and the print the performance, Lee Chesney is both a gifted composer and a masterful performer. His compositions are often extremely complex and filled with such subtle nuance and detail that one can spend hours examining an image and always find new treasures waiting to be discovered. His process includes both an additive and subtractive process, where he buries bones for later resurrection. Working in intaglio is working in two different directions at the same time. On one side is the plate and on the other is the resulting print. Although the public usually only gets to see the print, the plate is where the bulk of the work is involved. There are countless trips to the acid bath along with many  hours of handwork including engraving, scraping and burnishing, each process used to inflect a particular tone or quality to the surface that will be reflected in the finished print. It is in this painstaking attention to detail that the idea is transformed into image. To be a printmaker, one must love the process or they will never have the patience and stamina to master the necessary skills and techniques. Lee’s love of the process is clearly evident in each and every print, from the subtlety of a softground texture to the bold raised white carved by a scorper. Although the plates are truly masterpieces of their own, to see them without looking at the final prints would be as senseless as driving to Niagara and not getting out of the car to see the falls. The consummate skill continues in the inking and wiping of the plate, until all comes together in a perfect print. His prints are easy to pick out in a room, they have an incredible range of value from the whitest whites to the blackest blacks. Upon close inspection, you will find the blacks will have textures in them that suddenly change your original conception of space. His imagery seems to change with the viewing distance. Like a Kandinsky Improvisation, his imagery dances across the page, leading the eye to new discoveries each subsequent time it is viewed. It is as if the print changes a little each time it is seen.

 

Recently, Lee has been mostly painting. His paintings display the same range of value expressed in dazzling hues of brilliant color as his sumptuous black and white etchings and engravings. Like the constant variation of blacks in his prints, the colors in his paintings are never left to flat shapes but are more reminiscent of a lithographic touche wash. The ever changing color works to intensify the harmonies and contrast while playing with our sense of space.

 

Like Bonnard, I’m afraid Lee would not have been happy with the 64 color box of Crayons, just as he would not be happy without the incredible range of value afforded by the intaglio process. No other artist shows the breadth and virtuosity of the intaglio print. We look to artists to inspire us, when I view Lee’s prints I get the sudden desire to mix up a batch of Dutch Mordant and sharpen my burin.

 

Professional Practices at College Camp

I will be offering a free workshop called "Professional Practices" at the College Camp. It will take place on 4 nights, all Fridays, with the first one being January 30th. The other dates are February 6th, February 13th and the last one is March 6th. Here is the blurb about it:

Professional Practices, or how to survive and make a living in the field of art.

Come sit around the toasty fire and roast things on sticks like the earliest cave painters.

I taught this as a course in Texas and I think it was one of the most important courses we taught. What will you learn? 

How to:

• get into graduate school
• get into galleries
• get a job in the arts
• get an internship
• commercial applications
• get your act together
• be ready to graduate and move on to something other than "would you like fries with your order"?
• Write a resume
• Build a resume
• Make contacts
• Network
• Grants
• Grant writing
• Taxes
• Copyright
• Targeting
• Set up a studio
• Oh, and of course, the all important shmoozing.

Who should attend?

Anyone who has not graduated, OR does not have an art job, OR has no clue what they are going to do after they graduate, OR what they should be doing now, OR does not plan on living with their parents for the rest of their lives, OR anyone that wants to go somewhere in the arts, Or anyone that does not want to settle for just any job. In other words, all of you.

Open to all students

What will you get out of this? Lots of useful information that I wish someone had taught me in school.

What will you not get? college credit, goodie points or extra credit. But you may find a few new friends.

What to bring? Your own edibles. We will have a fire to roast things on so bring your tofu dogs or cats and anything else you want to eat or drink (College Camp is a No-No- for alcohol).

Something to write with and on, for taking any notes.

I hope you can come, please RSVP via email to sven.anderson@gmail.com so I have some idea how many people to expect. If you don't RSVP you can still come.

If you don't know where the camp is or need transportation, let me know and we can work something out.

A quick contest

If you wanted to see the painting below, by Kandinsky, what museum or collection is it in, and to what city and country would you have to go, to see it?

another fine extra credit op.

My favorite painting

Here is my favorite Painting. It is "Improvisation 31, Sea Battle" by Vasily Kandinsky.

I love it because every time I see it, I see something new. What are your favorites?

If they only had Photoshop

What artists do you think would have embraced digital technology and why?

René Magritte, a famous surrealist, I think would have loved Photoshop. Here is an example called "The Blank Check"

Who do you think would have loved to have gone digital?

A quick contest

So where does the term Voxel come from?

first person with the correct answer to me gets extra credit.

Welcome

Welcome all,

This blog will serve as a portal for information and dialog about Digital Art and the courses I am teaching this Semester. Some topics will be universal to the Digital Arts and Art in general and some will be specific to an individual course or course project. Please jump in and participate and if you have time, join in on the topics from my other classes. Yes outsiders are welcome to become insiders. Just join in. Please use appropriate labels for your posts to keep some semblance of order ie. Paint, Print, Photo, Video, or General