3-D Challenges Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

When painting, the difficult part is often creating a believable figure from one vantagepoint. When working from life, this can be frustrating since even the best models inevitably move. However, when I carve stone, I do not use a model. I suspect the two major reasons would be obvious - the time involved and the dangerous flying chips.

Working in the round means that as I move around the figure, the view and the line must flow in a way that fits. Anatomy may be “wrong,” but if the artist is either lucky or clever (or both), the viewer will never think of these things and simply admire the work.

As I have mentioned before in my art newsletters and in the descriptions on individual works presented on my Web site, often the view most helpful to me as the creator of the work, is the one least likely to be seen by the viewer. That is, the view from above. In this first image, I am standing behind the “Gymnast” marble carving and looking down her rib cage to see the shape of her hips.
Not entirely happy, am I. You may see that the bum sticks out behind the figure on the left more than on the right in an unflattering way. Perhaps you may see the brown crayon mark denoting the separation of the gluts. I have drawn a pencil line to the left of this where I will carve off extra stone to remedy the form problems. I must be careful not to get too “efficient” because not all of the cheek needs to come off. It is only from that ONE vantagepoint -- that one edge -- that needs removal of material.


The next two images show different views of the same area. The first is a profile from the left and the form looks very different! Just a side note: in my markings to myself as a direct carver, the back and forth squiggles indicate places I will remove stone, while the circle is an area I wish to keep. I mark the latter sometimes because it means that I am getting close to the final surface, in relation to the areas surrounding it.


The last image is taken at eye level with the hips. Can you see that this viewpoint gives me a completely different batch of information (while lacking others)?

What a first day of summer in the North, eh?

Saint Agatha Lorenzo Lippi Blanton Museum

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Here is another “Boobs on a Platter” painting. Not sure why I am fascinated by these, perhaps because the whole thing seems so bizarre to me. In this painting of Saint Agatha circa 1838-44, a woman holds a sharp scissors in her hands as she gazes out of the canvas. A platter with two nude breasts on it (perky, perfectly round, and looking up!) sits on a surface in front of her. She is lushly draped and beautifully rendered.

Long ago, paintings sometimes included a timeline of a story in the imagery. For example, the main large scene in a work might depict one specific moment in a couple’s life, while a background image of the same couple was intended to show either the past or the future. This technique of repetition of subjects was understood and read correctly by the art-viewing public.



In the case of this portrait painting by Lorenzo Lippi (Florence, Italy, 1606-1665), his subject Saint Agatha is a whole woman. However, the “platter of boobs” is a repetition that gives the viewer a clue as to the horrible future of torture that awaits her. How would you enjoy severed (or any) boobs being your identifying symbol?

This oil on canvas painting “Saint Agatha” is part of the Suida-Manning Collection in the collection of The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. It is a gorgeous painting and still in very good condition. Here is what they have posted next to this painting:

“Agatha was an early Christian martyr whose fate is here made vivid. The vividness owes not just to the cruel evidence of her torture: the picture’s scale, sharp illumination, and alluring psychology make the subject intensely present and engaging. Routine in portrayals of the kind, Agatha’s attributes and apparently unharmed physical condition here seem inconsistent and disturbing. The painting’s lovely design, rare hues and transparent layering of pigment in the draperies stand in further ironic contrast to the ostensible subject.

Half-length female figures of devotional or allegorical subject but incorporating such prurience were popular in mid-seventeenth-century Florence, partly as a conservative response to the extroverted, fully Baroque decoration of Pietro da Cortona in the Palazzo Pitti. Lippi cultivated is own idiom by returning to the precise description and sterling character of Santi di Tito’s paintings. Previously attributed to Orazio Riminaldi, and earlier Caravaggesque painter active in Pisa, this Saint Agatha has been recently been described as “one of Lippi’s most fascinating religious personalities.”

I was delighted to have been selected by artist Michael Guilmet to have one of my paintings (Songbird) featured in his video series “Feast Paintings” This is the Spring 2011 video.
http://www.feastpaintings.com/
Enjoy!

Art and Time Book Quotes

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have been going through my studio’s book collection this month and wanted to share some gems of art book quotes with you…

Today’s quote is from the book by William Fleming, titled “Arts & Ideas - Eighth Edition.”

From Page 518 under “Bergson’s Theory of Time”:
The thinker who came the closest to making a clear picture of this turbulent age was the French philosopher Henri Bergson. His point of departure was a remark made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who had said that one cannot step into the same river twice. Bergson cited Heraclitus in support of his theory that time was as more real than space, that the many were closer to experience than the one, and that becoming was closer to reality than being.

Bergson was critical of the intellect because it tended to reduce reality to immobility. He therefore ranked intuition as a higher faculty than reason, because through it the perception of the flow of duration was possible, and through it static, immobile quantitative facts were animated into the dynamic qualitative values of motion and change. . . .

. . . Art for Bergson is a force that frees the soul and through which one can grasp “certain rhythms of life and breath,” which compel the individual “to fall in with it, like passersby who join in a dance. Thus they compel us to set in motion, in the depth of our being, some secret chord which was only waiting to thrill.” …. The aesthetic experience is essentially an experience in time and involves an “anticipation of movement” that permits the spectator or auditor in various ways “to grasp the future in the present.” His theory of art is based on what he calls his “spiritualistic materialism,” by which finely perceived material activity awakens spiritual echoes. All is based on the “uniqueness of the moment”; and perception of the flow of time is the same as an awareness of the pulsation of life, something that is quite apart from the mechanical or lifeless matter.

Past, present, and future, in Bergson’s thought, are molded into an organic whole as “when we recall the notes of a tune melting, so to speak, into one another.” . . . But Bergson’s concept of time is not clock time with its divisions into seconds, minutes, and hours; nor is it concerned with the usual groupings of past, present, and future. These are just arbitrary conveniences, like the points on a clock past which the hands move. Time cannot be measured in such a quantitative way; it is a quality, not a substance.

The artwork pictured in this post is a carbon pencil I did from a live model while in Florence, Italy. "Joshua" is framed and available for $700.

Showcase of Sculpture New Braunfels Texas

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

You are INVITED! Going on this month (through the 28th anyway) is the special exhibition featuring 3-dimensional work from 38 sculptors from around Texas. I had three works selected - 2 bronzes and one stone sculpture.

The “meet the artists” (including myself) reception is Friday, June 10th, from 5 to 9 p.m.

New Braunfels Art League Gallery
239 W. San Antonio St.
New Braunfels, Texas 78155

Gallery Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sun: noon to 5 p.m.

New Braunfels is situated north of the city of San Antonio, but south of San Marcos and Austin. From IH-35, once in New Braunfels, take the Walnut Street exit, head west, and then take a right on San Antonio St. The gallery will be on your right in the charming town center.

I really enjoy these old Texas downtowns, with their long buildings, wood floors and often still the elegant tin ceilings. The NB Art League has done an amazing job of fundraising to renovate and purchase this building. More info. here:
www.newbraunfelsartleague.com

My writer and musician friend from college and New Braunfels native, Laurie Jasinski, took this snapshot of me after we set up my sculptures and pedestals with the aid of Scott, on of the gallery artists. They all seemed like a really kind group of people here and I think you will enjoy your visit.

PS Here is a little reminder about my upcoming Portrait Workshop in Pastels coming soon on Sunday, June 12, at the Vineyard at Florence (Texas). Workshop materials list and registration options are available here:
http://www.borsheimarts.com/art-workshops/Portrait-Workshop.htm

Portrait Exhibition Blanton Art Museum

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

My friend Margo and I went to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, about a week ago. We wanted to see their current exhibit: About Face: Portraiture as Subject . I believe they were trying to show just how many ways artists can interpret the idea of creating a portrait of an individual.


If that was indeed their goal, then I suppose they succeeded. I was a bit disappointed in the collection since it felt to me as if they just threw together as many different types of art as they could without going in depth into much of anything. Or as Margo put it, “Who hangs a Warhol next to a Sargent?” To the right of the Andy Warhol work of actress Farrah Fawcett, there was a bronze sculpture of Farrah created by Austin’s own famous sculptor Charles Umlauf. Both artworks were a gift to the museum from the estate of the former UT student, Farrah Fawcett.

The John Singer Sargent portrait is “Madame Belleroche” 1884.


Here is the Blanton’s write-up of their name-dropping exhibition:

Recently featured in the Wall Street Journal, About Face presents 35 portraits in diverse mediums from antiquity to today. Drawn mostly from The Blanton’s notable collection, along with several choice loaned objects, the exhibition includes works by artists known for their probing investigations of the genre, such as Albrecht Dűrer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, John Singer Sargent, Diego Rivera, Sir Jacob Epstein, Antonio Berni, Alice Neel, Chuck Close, Robert Henri, Andy Warhol, Yasumasa Morimura, Charles Umlauf, Oscar Muñoz, and Kehinde Wiley.

Visit our multimedia page with videos and audio clips about the exhibition.

There are quite a few really strong works in this collection; however, I found myself bored for some reason. Besides the Warhol, maybe it was the riveting collection of small wooden panels, each sporting a different solid tone of someone’s averaged flesh color. I am not sure if the point was to show how little difference there really is between people or if it was to show off how individual even seemingly similar skin colors could be. Ok, so it was one idea presented. But flesh patches on a wall hardly strikes me as portrait material. But then, I would like to believe that we are all just a little more complicated than this idea wanted to tackle. (My apologies for not recording the name of the artist or the artwork.)

I did enjoy the sculpture “Patrick” by Oliver Herring that is composed of a mosaic of photos of a figure in a crunched over sitting pose. The pose was intriguing and the technique probably new when it was first released. The life-sized figure was enclosed in an acrylic box. I hate it when the protection detracts so much from the art.

I really just had the impression that the Blanton was rearranging its collection to expose more of it in a new way to museum visitors. Who could blame them for that? Even gallery owners know that if they re-hang their art in different ways, the same visitor will invariably remark, “Oh, I never noticed this one before!” even when that work had been in the front window during that visitor’s last visit.

Anyway, I could have just been in a grumpy or impatient mood while I was there, so do not take my opinion for more than it is worth. Try to see the exhibit for yourself and make your own decisions. It is going on now through September 4, 2011.

I leave you with a detail shot of Austin-based contemporary artist Graydon Parrish’s oil painting on wood “Arrangement in Subtle Tones: Elsie, 2009”

Happy Birthday, Cousin Chris!

Art Critic Photography

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

It must have been the fall of 1983 that I was told by a counselor that I had to take an elective at my school (then called “Southwest Texas State University” but now “Texas State University”). I visited this counselor when I decided that I did not know what I would do with my impending math major and also I was having trouble understanding the thick Chilean accent of my math professor. I changed to become an English major (with equally confusing future plans) and signed up for Black and White Photography course as my elective.

It changed my life. That moment in the darkroom when chemistry changed a seemingly blank piece of paper into an image hooked me forever onto the magic. My teacher for Photography 1450.2 was Mr. Roger Nuhn and he was really a great teacher. After this one class, I never took another photography course (other than restoration almost a decade later). Instead, I decided to “get a job in a photo lab to pay for college,” which I did in the spring of 1984. This was not the most financially brilliant plan I have ever come up with, but it did start me on my artistic career path.

Lately I have been doing a kind of spring cleaning – going through decades-old letters and art materials in order to lighten my load a bit. I am also rediscovering images that I took in my early adult years and could possibly use for future work. The reason that I write today, though, is because I also found a bunch of self-critiques that I wrote for this photography class.

I had always thought that my first 10 years or so of taking photos produced rather ordinary beginning images, but that it may have been necessary for me to do this in order to shape my own voice. These critiques are mostly typed and double-spaced on one side of the page, obvious homework, including the responses by Mr. Nuhn. What interests me is not only how specific and knowing my comments are, but also how negative I was with myself. I wonder if there was some sort of checklist that we were told to address in every critical analysis that we submitted. On a few, I would add a positive note at the bottom, more like a personal conversation with my teacher, but probably near the end of the semester.

Here is one example (with the teacher’s comments in the square brackets):

Kelly Seiler
Exercise V -- Selective Focus
Journalism 1450 Section 2
Lab Section 6

Critical Analysis

I’ll start with my shooting. I focused better this time. On Roll A, I forgot to check the ASA speed on the light meter. After Bracket 2 I realized I should’ve had the meter set on 400 (using Tri-X film). The same problem on Roll B -- only the reverse. I used Vericrome Pan and should have set the light meter for 125. [check]

Then on Roll B, I totally messed up Brackets 2 and 3. I don’t know what I was thinking when I set my shutter speeds. [check] The negatives are just too dark; the film was exposed too long. No excuse for it, especially since you told us in class to not shoot this exercise outdoors in direct sunlight! [check]

On the unmounted extra print “y” I think the depth of field may be too deep; [no - it’s shallow enough] but more importantly, the subject (the black camel) is not big enough. [check] Someone looking at this picture would probably not realize I was trying to emphasize the subject. [Right] The picture also needs to be burned in on the left side. [check]

Extra print “z” is too dark everywhere, except aroudn the candles’ flames. I chose not to use this picture as my mounted one because I don’t think it is clear (or even consistent) that that is a scale in front of the vase. [Right]

On my mounted print, I should’ve burned in the bottom area some more. [check] I had trouble with dust on my negatives, especially the prints from Roll B. It seemed the more I brushed the negatives off, the more dust they collected. My mounted picture is almost impossible to spot well, although I tried. [check]

P.S. I don’t like the glossy paper at all. It is too easy to get scratches and finger prints all over the picture. [Agree - but it is very good for find detail, high contrast subject matter.]

I also think it is funny that I apparently cannot follow instructions even when I understand them, although I also had no trouble pointing it out myself. Ha.

This image is of one of my test prints (probably not from the assignment in the critique above). You may notice the vertical lines as I moved the safety paper back to allow different amounts of light to expose the paper.

Stone Carving Assistant

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

People occasionally ask me if I accept apprentices or assistants when I carve stone. Thus far, no. However, sometimes I get volunteers, as I have for the “Gymnast” marble project. Today was the first time “Tony” stuck around long enough for me to capture him on camera. Maybe it was the overcast and muggy day created by last night’s grand storm or maybe he is becoming less shy as the marble sculpture gets smaller.



Tony is not as helpful as the assistant I had for over 15 years. But doubtful anyone could compare to Zac, even if he was a dog. Zac was more into accounting, I think. He always let me know when it was time to take a break to go for a walk or just do some belly rubbing.



Tony has moved in closer than Zac ever got to my tools, though. He even stood still as I showered him with marble dust! He has some subtle spikes on his body and more busy patterns on him and an overall darker color than anoles. If you know what kind of lizard he is, I would love to know it.




When I pulled out my 1-inch pneumatic hammer and some of Vasily’s chisels to try out as I began to shape the section under the gymnast, Tony bailed on me and ran to another block of marble nearby. I am not sure if it was the noise or the vibration that made him uneasy. However, the vibration was more than I remembered, even with my anti-vibration gloves.

And Vasily always said, “It’s not in the tools. It’s in the technology…” as he pointed to his noggin. Good point, always. However, a tool that feels good in your hand and works for you cannot be all bad.