About a week ago, a couple of architects came and visited Maggie Walker for a lunchtime lecture. At least one of them was an alum. His name was Doug Becker, I think. He was with two women whose first names were Nicole and Shannon. I missed their last names. They delivered an interesting presentation about their profession and how it relates to the artistic process. I enjoyed their presentation particularly because I've recently been giving architecture some thought as a potential career and because I hadn't thought about it in terms of its relevance to art. The architects also mentioned several firms which I recognized, two of which (SMBW; Glavé and Holmes) my dad once worked with. After the lecture, I mentioned Watershed Architects (my dad's current firm) to Nicole, and she said that she was familiar with it. So that was pretty cool.
Vero Beach Marina, James Newman, watercolor
I made an emotional connection with this painting when I saw it; the view reminds me strongly of the marina on the point at Colonial Beach, VA, where I visit my friends at their river house every summer. It also reminds me of Winslow Homer's watercolor paintings of everyday American life. What's really cool about this painting is that it was done in plein air, and I think that Newman did a pretty good job of capturing the light and conveying the mood of the scene. Take Pity, by Mitchell Syrop, part of an exhibition titled The Same Mistake, at Croy Nielsen, in Berlin
I interpret this piece to be an environmental statement, and when viewed among other similar pieces in the exhibit, this seems very plausible. The artist urges the viewer to "take pity" on the environment while using contrasting positive and negative spaces to support his message. It's curious that the word "take" appears in negative space within the image in the upper half of the piece; humans continually take from their environment, often without helping nature to regenerate itself, as the blankness of the word attests. In the lower half of the piece, the word "pity," written in disembodied fragments of the above image within a white space, seems to symbolize the isolation of small remnants of nature within the blankness that is the developed world which we humans have created. While the concept behind the piece is a little cliché, the piece itself contains unexpected and potentially unintentional symbolism. http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/ |
Ian FraserArt III student at Maggie Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies Archives
June 2015
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