#after viewing only a couple animations and a stack of artworks

[nefastidies]

he's lying, he's a bachelor

[bsawinart]

You Are My Cup Of Tea (Chip) 12″ x 12″ Metallic Acrylic on Canvas To purchase Artwork, please visit BSSart.com/ordering LINK Chip, the teacup from Disneys Beauty and the Beast was used for this version of the Teacup series.  Most of the image is metallic, reflective paint, but there is alot of matte colors to offset as well. All black is flat to define the image at all angles.

Chip Potts is a supporting character who was featured in Disney's 1991 animated film, Beauty and the Beast. He is the son of Mrs. Potts. As a human, Chip is a young boy who works with his mother in the castle kitchens. Like the other inhabitants of the castle, Chip was cursed by the Enchantress. When his mother was turned into a teapot, Chip was likewise turned into a teacup. At the end of the film, once Belle and the Beast fell in love, Chip was magically restored to his human form

Chip is adventurous and constantly curious about the world around him. Chip is a cheerful and active young boy and (like his mother and friends) is shown to have a great fear of the Beast's temper. He is also shown to be very brave and heroic shown in the first film, where he saved Belle and her father Maurice in order for them to rescue Beast from Gaston and the angry mob. He loves Belle very much and views her as his big sister and best friend. As is typical of curious boys his age, he apparently has an overactive imagination; when he comes rushing in to inform his mother that there is a girl (Belle) in the castle, she scolds him for making up such tall tales. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); 15 facts about Beauty and the Beast

1. WALT DISNEY CONSIDERED REMAKING THE FAIRY TALE AS FAR BACK AS THE 1930S.Walt Disney liked to take his time mulling things over, and while he was pondering Beauty and the Beast, a live-action version of the movie was released by French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Perhaps not wanting to release an animated version of a movie that had just been released, Disney tabled the idea

.2. A NON-MUSICAL VERSION WAS COMMISSIONED IN THE LATE 

1980S.In the late '80s, Disney hired British animator Roger Purdum to direct a non-musical version of Beauty and the Beast, with Linda Woolverton writing the script. But the company wasn't happy with the result of 10 weeks of storyboarding (which you can see here)—the story was too dark and depressing."In the middle of our process, The Little Mermaid premiered, and that changed everything," Woolverton told the Los Angeles Times. "[T]he concept of the musical, the Broadway musical brought to animation by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. So I was flown to Disney in Florida to meet with Howard. Howard and I just clicked. ... In a hotel room in Fishkill, New York, Howard and I pretty much conjured up this version of Beauty and the Beast. Howard and I never clashed. I was his student. He taught me everything I know about musicals."

3. JACKIE CHAN CONTRIBUTED TO AN INTERNATIONAL VERSION.Jackie Chan dubbed the Beast’s voice for the Chinese translation of the movie—including the singing. Here he is performing the title track in Mandarin with Sarah Chen:

4. "HUMAN AGAIN" WAS CUT FROM THE ORIGINAL MOVIE.

The song “Human Again” was cut from the original movie, in part because it added 11 minutes to the film, and partially because it created a problem with the passage of time. "[W]e kept asking, 'Well what? Is Maurice wondering around in the woods all this time? Is Gaston just sitting around in a tavern drinking beer after beer growing a long white beard?,'" co-director Kirk Wise said. "We couldn't quite figure out what to do with the other characters during this time that Belle's at the castle and keep the motor of the story running." In recent years, the whole sequence has been included on DVD and Blu-ray extras. In case you don’t have either of those sitting around your house, check out part of it here:

5. THREE OF ITS TUNES EARNED "BEST ORIGINAL SONG" OSCAR NOMINATIONS.

Many people remember that the title song from Beauty and the Beast took home the “Best Original Song” Oscar in 1992, but it was just one of three songs nominated from the movie. But “Belle,” the opening song, and “Be Our Guest” were also up for an Oscar. Must have been rough to be the writers of the other two songs in that category: “When You’re Alone” from Hook and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

.6. THE CO-DIRECTOR STARTED HIS CAREER DRAWING CARICATURES.

Co-director Kirk Wise started his career drawing caricatures for tourists—but not Disney tourists. While attending art school, Wise made extra money by working at Universal Studios

.7. THE BEAST IS A MASH-UP OF VARIOUS ANIMALS.

He’s got the mane of a lion, the beard and head of a buffalo, the brow of a gorilla, the eyes of a human, the tusks of a wild boar, the body of a bear, and the legs and tail of a wolf ... and a little something extra. Animator Glen Keane claims that “Beast actually has a rainbow bum, but nobody knows that but Belle.”

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8. ONE ANIMATOR WISHED THAT THE BEAST STAYED A BEAST.

Keane wished that the Beast had stayed a Beast instead of transforming into his princely human form. To help bridge the gap, he penned a funny line for Belle to say at the end: “I had them record Belle saying, ‘Do you think you could grow a beard?’ It was a good idea. It’s not in the movie. We should have put it in there.”

9. ANGELA LANSBURY SAID THE DEMO MUSIC WAS A LITTLE TOO ROCK 'N' ROLL.

When Angela Lansbury heard the demo of "Beauty and the Beast," it was "kind of a rock song," she told The Huffington Post. "I told them, 'This is a sweet message, but this really isn't my style. Are you sure you want me to do this?' They told me to sing the song the way I envisioned it, so that's what I did. I created it the way a little English teapot would sing the song." Producer Don Hahn said that Lansbury "went into the booth and sang 'Beauty and the Beast' from beginning to end and just nailed it. We picked up a couple of lines here and there, but essentially that one take is what we used for the movie."

10. THERE'S A SLY REFERENCE TO DISNEYLAND

.You have to squint to see it, but when Maurice gets lost in the woods toward the beginning of the movie, one of the road signs he finds points the way toward Anaheim—which is home to Disneyland.Walt Disney Studio

s11. THE POSTER WAS DESIGNED BY A MASTER OF THE ART.

John Alvin, the artist who created Beauty and the Beast's iconic movie poster, also designed the posters for some other films you might be familiar with, including E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Gremlins, The Lion King, The Color Purple, and Blazing Saddles.

12. BELLE MADE A CAMEO IN THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.

Fittingly, she has her nose in a book. You can also see brief appearances by Pumbaa from The Lion King and Magic Carpet from Aladdin. It’s hard to spot Pumbaa—and tragic, as he appears to have been slaughtered—but both directors have confirmed all three cameos.

13. BELLE ISN’T THE ONLY BEAUTY AND THE BEAST CHARACTER THAT POPS UP IN OTHER MOVIES.The Beast can momentarily be seen in Aladdin as one of the animal stacking toys the Sultan plays with

.14. THERE'S A NON-MUSICAL VERSION.

An earlier version of the movie contained no music. It also gave Belle a little sister named Clarice and a cat named Charley.

15. AUDIENCES WERE SUPPOSED TO SEE THE SEQUENCE WHERE THE YOUNG PRINCE IS TURNED INTO THE BEAST.

The sorceress would chase the prince through the castle hurling magic at him, hitting servants and accidentally turning them into objects instead. Eventually, she hits her target and turns him into an animalistic creature. She leaves, and we see the young Beast looking out from the castle windows, screaming for her to come back and fix him. Wise nixed the sequence. He later said, “The only thing that I could see in my head was this Eddie Munster kid in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit.”

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Blog at 40, Liza Lou at 40

This is the fourth blog post I’ve written on what (feminist and/or women) artists have done/created during their 40th year during my 40th year. First 3:

1) Judy Chicago

2) Carolee Schneemann

3) Wanda Ewing

I include artworks by myself inspired by and/or in tribute to the artists at end of each post as well.

Today I write about Liza Lou, (born 1969), American visual artist best known for her large scale sculptures using glass beads.  Though not currently an artist on the top of my inspiration list, as much of her work leans primarily on the more conceptual side of the spectrum--though not entirely, to be sure--I came across her work the other day as I was researching what contemporary artists are doing in response to the pandemic for an upcoming presentation, and found her Apartogether project.

Screenshot of an Instagram post by Liza Lou announcing the start of Apartogether in response to Covid-19, 2020.

Apartogether is a community art project founded by Liza Lou at the onset of the COVID19 pandemic to foster connection and creativity during a time of social distancing and isolation.  Lou encourages IG followers to make work from familiar materials around the house and to tag it with the Instagram handle @apartogether_art and she archives it on her website. What started as an exercise in combatting long-term isolation has grown into a global community of makers eager to share. She also hosts art talks, a “sew-in” and sessions on Zoom to facilitate conversation among the participants.  As an accessible, open art project, I completely love this - anyone can participate, and everyone can view and appreciate this project. It’s warm, intimate, personal while also being enormous, inspirational and broadly impactful. I can’t help compare to Judy Chicago’s Honor Quilt from The Dinner Party, a crowdsourced quilt made from patches from people worldwide dedicated to women past to present, famous to non, that traveled with the famous work throughout its international tour in the 1980s, but I digress.

Speaking of Chicago, while doing my current research, I found an Op-ed for the New York Times she wrote about the significance of work with content; she articulated everything about her and feminist art that I love now and always have:

Does art matter when we are facing a global crisis such as the current Covid-19 pandemic?

Obviously, there is a great deal of art that doesn’t matter. This includes the work issuing from those university art programs that every year pump out thousands of graduates, taught only to speak in tongues about formal, conceptual and theoretical issues few people care about or can comprehend. Then there is the art created for a global market that has convinced too many people that a piece’s selling price is more important than the content it conveys.

But when art is meaningful and substantive, viewers can become enlightened, inspired and empowered. And this can lead to change, which we urgently need. 

...One might ask what this has to do with the global pandemic afflicting us. The answer lies in art’s power to shed light on the problems we are confronted with at this difficult time.  

...Art that raises awareness of the state of our planet can be especially important in today’s world. One example of this is the work of the contemporary artist and illustrator Sue Coe, whose pieces on animal mistreatment have been ignored or, at best, marginalized by an art community that seems to privilege meaninglessness over consequential work...

(I can’t express how much I love Judy Chicago’s adamant voice. It is so assertively, unapologetically and refreshingly personal and feminist. I highlly recommend reading her books and autobiographies - a new combined edition is actually coming out next year. Also, I currently have her book, New Views, which I’m stoked about starting and reviewing...but I digress, again!)

The point in my bringing this quote up around Liza Lou is that her work created during her 40th year, 2009, Book of Days, leans conceptual.

Liza Lou. Book of Days, Paper and glass beads.

I say “leans,” because, to make an obvious (and unfair) comparison: viewing Book of Days, without context, versus viewing this Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, a monumental work with 39 place-settings dedicated to women in Western art history (which Chicago debuted her 40th year, read my blog post here), there is clear content beyond the media with the latter, where the former emphasizes the media. Of course, Dinner Party’s media is very important, and Book of Days does have content beyond the media; its just immediate objective response in comparison is content vs. media. Which, is what Chicago was referring to in her editorial.

My preference typically leans towards feminist art with immediate content impact; as evidenced in my posts on Carolee Schneemann and Wanda Ewing. I haven’t thought about Liza Lou in years; in fact, Ewing was the one to introduce me to her work when I made a series of self portraits using beads (see below). Notably Lou is known for this work, which I love, Kitchen:

Liza Lou: Kitchen, 1994 (c) Liza Lou

Kitchen is a full-scaled kitchen Lou covered, over a five year period, with glistening beads. Lou created this piece after researching the lives of 19th women and kitchen design; the made plans, crafted objects out of paper mâché, painted them, and applied the beads in a mosaic of surface pattern. This work, in Lou’s words, “argues for the dignity of labor”—a labor that here manifests as process and subject, and is linked to gender, since crafts and kitchen work are traditionally female domains.  Some of the popular branded kitchen products depicted also might  comment on American life. Of course I can make a comparison to Chicago’s The Dinner Party, too, using the dinner table/traditional feminine media (ceramics/quilting) to honor these typically deemed inferior media. Or pop art, of course. Lou’s stands on its own--less reverential --more playful, inviting, fun and even personal (Lou did it all herself whereas Chicago had 400+ volunteers; Lou dedicates this to the all-encompassing woman; Chicago to specific though broad reaching women); both with extremely detailed thought, research and planning. 

I didn’t mean for this to be a comparison of Chicago to Lou - but, it is how I’ve been thinking these last couple days--because, to bring it back to Lou’s Book of Days, this work can be viewed as more akin to minimalist work--one can guess what it means--a tall, stack of beaded forms depicting paper--beautiful, white, simple--maybe you think of other such minimalist works that make you aware of your environment such as Mary Corse’ White Inner Bands (2000) made of glass microspheres inside acrylic canvas. I imagine as you move around Lou’s stack of beaded objects, the beads sparkler or shimmer, femininizing the perhaps stale environment. Or perhaps think of the intense linework of Edwina Leapman. Like the laborous line-making of Leapman, so is the intricate beadwork of Lou.

As such, Book of Days, like Kitchen, points to labor, containment, and womanhood in a beautiful, perhaps more subtle way. To be sure, Book of Days includes 365 beaded sheets - the days in a year, completed her 40th year. Making literal cognitive and/or physical aging, perhaps? Perhaps....

Back to viewing it as an object - no context on the wall, no intent known. Is such work, sans clear feminist intent, feminist? Or would it just be meaningless work such as that Chicago points to in her article, lacking educational value?  It is, in fact, feminist regardless. A woman making work, taking up space, is, in itself, political and a feminist statement. As women have been left off the walls, books and pages of history the majority of time and still are underrepresented (minorities even more), anything a woman (broadly defined) makes and is on view, is feminist in itself, clearly evoking social justice intent, or not.

To be sure - I don’t know, but I think Chicago would agree. To note as well, much of her work has minimalist aesthetics, as her training was such.

Here are a few of my older works, made with beads, inspired by Liza Lou:

Sally Brown Deskins: Babylove, beads and yarn on silk, 2007

Sally Brown Deskins: Self portrait with beads, pastel on black paper, 2008

Sally Brown Deskins: Heidi Clock - beads and yarn on a clock (I wish I had a better photo of this - it was donated and sold at an auction at the Bemis Center in 2008 or 2009; the purchaser told me she thought it was the “most authentic clock in the room” (all of the art was clocks)

-Sally Brown Deskins

IG @sallery_art

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Brown Deskins.  LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.

Submissions always open!

https://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/callforart-writing

[3dsrendercom]

MAAT's video offers a sneak peek of the Currents - Temporary Architectures by SO-IL exhibition

The final instalment of VDF's collaboration with MAAT features a video overview of the Currents - Temporary Architectures by SO-IL exhibition that was due to open at the Lisbon museum, plus a text written for the show by Beatrice Galilee. The video, by Rita Nunes, offers a sneak peek of the exhibition about SO-IL's temporary projects as well snippets of text by New York curator Galilee. Her full text is published below. "This video animation is a sneak peek into the exhibition revealing a selected series of projects in a montage of images, videos and texts that are part of the show," says Beatrice Leanza, executive director at the Museum of Architecture, Art and Technology. "Here we learn of past and present references through projects, books, and inspirations that have informed the ideation of these interventions and their final outcomes."

The exhibition includes many of SO-IL's projects including Blueprint SO-IL is a Brooklyn-based architecture studio founded by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu. The projects featured in the video are SO-IL's 2015 Blueprint at Storefront project at New York City's Storefront for Art and Architecture; Poledance (2010) at MoMA PS1; L'Air Pour l'Air (2017) for Chicago Architecture Biennial; Into the Hedge (2019) at Columbus, Indiana; In Bloom (2010 - unrealised) for Amsterdam; a project for Frieze Art Fair in New York in 2012-2013; and Transhistoria at Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City for the Guggenheim Museum.

A model for SO-IL's In Bloom project is included in the exhibition Both the exhibition and SO-IL's temporary Beeline installation remain shuttered until further notice due to coronavirus, so MAAT executive director Beatrice Leanza has instead teamed up with VDF for a virtual launch. SO-IL's collaboration with MAAT was created with the support of Portuguese cultural organisation Artworks. Below is the exhibition text by Galilee: Currents – Temporary Architectures by SO-IL During a conversation concerning the temporary projects of SO-IL, the New York-based architecture office, its founders and directors Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg start laughing, a lot. "Wait a minute, isn't all architecture inherently temporary?" asked Liu. "Are we not - and isn't everything - eventually going to cease to exist?" continues Idenburg, with a smile. After ten years of running a firm, it is vital to be able to see the long view. Today though, this exhibition is addressing the specifically durational and temporal practice of SO-IL. The architectural works that are confined to a few days, weeks or months, reflecting as they do a multiplicity of meanings into the atmosphere, attitude, and philosophy of their architectural practice.

The air-filtering costumes created for the Chicago Biennial are one of the 12 designs within the exhibition Currents presents twelve fleeting designs, from pavilions to performances, competitions, and sound pieces, each exploring persistent leitmotifs in the studio's work. In this small, focused display, you will encounter pairs of projects, each touching on multiple dimensions of a single motif. The voice of the architects will appear throughout, sharing in their own words with each other and us, the relevance of these very temporary projects. We will hear the origins of signature styles, meet references, homages, and books, and identify where else these ideas have appeared in later works. Through six different currents, An Open Work, Rethink the System, World Building, Kinetics and Canopies, A New Skin and Unraveling a Threat, we meet the dynamic forces and soft transitions that ebb and flow in the life of one of the most exciting international architecture studios today. An Open Work SO-IL's nascent office took root in New York City in 2008, just as the global financial crash was unfolding. The effects of this massive destabilization were felt across all cultural and social systems, and the young studio took this condition as the premise for their winning competition entry to the annual MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program pavilion. Poledance comprised a spatial system of a grid of flexible poles and nets that were at once interconnected and co-dependent as untethered and encouraging of dance, movement, and spontaneity. This open-ended outlook counted on the public's engagement to 'complete' the experience of the installation and was influenced by philosopher Umberto Eco's book The Open Work (1962). In the commission for the iconic non-profit space Storefront for Art and Architecture, the architects explore a different notion of openness: by shrink wrapping an arts space famous for opening its doors to the street in white plastic, the project forced its performative facade into stasis while generating a radical new space both on the street and inside the exhibition space. The approach of wrapping and veiling creates ambiguous forms and spaces that require interpretation, and as such, invite the audience in. Other "Open Works" in SO-IL's oeuvre included in this section are the proposal for an art gallery in Brooklyn (Maujer Art Space) and open, unprogrammed public spaces of The Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis in California. Rethink the System This couplet of projects explores bespoke short-term projects that skillfully use repetition and innovation to hack standardized systems to fundamentally alter the visitor's spatial experience. On one hand, a pedestrian ramp at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennale is transformed through a sequence of made of standard metal structural studs, creating portals and frames that change in height and proportion. On the other, the first New York edition of the commercial Frieze Art Fair that through a simple gesture of a repeated triangular wedge turned a necessarily boxy, cartesian plan into a playful, snaking system, opening up the visitor's experience of the fair to include the river that surrounded them.

The Breathe installation in Milan is also included The assignment for both projects demanded the bringing of life and imagination to a large, new and culturally engaged public to an otherwise generic and stale space. While all architecture projects – temporary or otherwise – seek to transform space, these elegant solutions twist and turn, referencing ideas and readings of the philosopher Paul Virilio and theorist and architect Claude Parent who advocated for a holistic bodily experience of architecture that centered around the body moving through space, not only about its material qualities SO-IL's intervention in the Chicago Cultural Center makes Parent's notions an experience. World Building The professional trajectory of SO-IL has also followed the path of their family life in Brooklyn, New York. As first-generation immigrants, Idenburg from Netherlands and Liu from China, the couple chose to build their architectural practice along with the project of raising their two daughters, an experience that brought matters of adaptability and learning to the foreground. In this current, we meet the architectural ideas and actions of the studio that rely on the immaterial forms of building: in Transhistoria the architects commissioned and recorded a series of 13 stories that were spoken out loud to migrant communities in one of New York's most diverse neighborhoods. 50 volunteers participated in the installation and each story, written by a poet, writer or priest, was asked to speak to the idea of belonging, relationships and emotional bonds that are created through fictional, fantastical, emotional tactics. The studio also explores World Building in a guerilla project for a biennale in Chengdu, China, that sought to generate random life and growth of green life in the rapidly urbanizing city. The studio's scope for masterplanning projects and working with entire cities extends to recent projects in Miami, upstate New York and Hangzhou, and a hypothetical project The End of Fictionalism. Kinetics and canopies While temporary projects can be vehicles to experiment with complex thoughts and ideas, they can also be a place to perfect the simple things. In this pairing, SO - IL's intentions are distilled to the basics: how to inhabit a space. The project Spiky exhibits both of these inclinations; it is a project that generates volume, light, shelter from a single sheet of stainless steel. When the cuts are extruded they form a series of delicate conical shades, playfully mediating its environment, challenging its appearance as either shade or shelter. The unrealized pavilion In Bloom was in collaboration with an artist, Ben Kinmont which was intended to form the center of a neighborhood for a period of one year. Its canopy was designed to change its appearance - from a petal-like shade to a crown or John Hejduk-influenced castle-like character, during the seasons; offering a lesson in semiotics and symbolism. A certain fascination for meshes, metals and canopies and their kinetic capacity to generate ambiguous, open-ended and complex spaces is a current that extends through their practice, appearing at the Manetti Shrem Museum, the Long Island House, and Kukje Gallery in Seoul. A New Skin An important quality of impermanent architecture is its capacity to offer both architect and user space to fantasize and fabulate. In A New Skin, SO-IL invites us to reimagine the ways in which the exterior material of architecture – its skin – can experiment with forms and operate in playful and thoughtful tandem with its environments. For Breathe, a speculative 'home of the future', the studio stretched intelligent pollution-filtering fabric across the entire structure, creating a porous light-filled spatial experience for its imagined occupants. Each room was stacked upon the next, offering the potential for the skin itself to change with different conditions and to radically question individual tolerances and capacity for physical and emotional transparency.

The studio's Poledance installation at MoMA is including in the exhibition The architects also sought to question the relationship between body, self and the environment we breathe through the intimacy of the home In a performance, L'Air Pour l'air in collaboration with artist Ana Prvački, a related skin, and familiar geometry is seen at a human scale. An ensemble of four musicians wore a mesh fabric suit that was intended to purify the air for an unearthly performance in Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory, as the performers moved through space, conjuring imagery of the extremities of our search for purity, privacy and survival. Unraveling a Thread Throughout this exhibition, many formative influences of the studio have been revisited, from the recurring presence of Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer to contemporary authors and philosophers. In these final projects, both commissioners and designers pull further at the threads of history, using installations as ways to examine and recontextualize important historical figures and ideas. For Tricollonade, at the Shenzhen Biennale, the project was part of a historical reenactment of Strada Novisimma, an iconic exhibition organized by Paolo Portoghesi for the first Venice Architecture Biennale. For their installation, SO-IL took as their starting point the idea of a facade itself, presenting a colonnade reinvented as a marble and mirror prism. In Columbus Indiana, a city famed for its support of modernist architects, SO-IL worked with a paragon of modernism in the US, the Eero Saarinen-designed Miller House and Garden. The installation Into the Hedge diverted 130 Arbor Vitae trees that were destined to be planted in the garden of the Miller House itself and temporarily relocated them on the lawn of the city's courthouse, creating a maze-like installation interweaved with brightly colored nylon webbing that uses the color palette from the house's interiors, all chosen by Saarinen's favored graphic designer Alexander Girard. Photography is by Iwan Baan (Blueprint), Laurian Ghinitoiu (Breathe) and SO-IL (In Bloom and Breathe.) Project credits: Exhibition design: SO-IL Graphic design: Geoff Han Text: Beatrice Galilee Video: Corinne van der Borch and Tom Piper The post MAAT's video offers a sneak peek of the Currents - Temporary Architectures by SO-IL exhibition appeared first on Dezeen. Source link Read the full article

[legendary]

Making a Comic Into (Virtual) Reality

A conversation with the creative team of Schell Games, who brought Grant Morrison’s Eisner-nominated series Annihilator to life as an immersive virtual reality experience.

Legendary VR was established to extend the worlds of our films in exciting new ways - as seen with Kong: Skull Island, Warcraft, and Pacific Rim. At the same time, the VR team has been at work on dozens of experimental projects pushing the boundaries of storytelling within virtual reality. When Legendary Comics published the psychedelic Annihilator series by Grant Morrison, we saw a fun opportunity to expand and experiment with a new medium: comic books. Annihilator had its initial run as a 6-issue series in 2014, following the character of washed-up screenwriter, Ray Spass, as he begins to lose his grip on reality, leading him on a mind-bending sci-fi adventure alongside of his own fictional characters. Hailed for its zany creativity and Frazier Irving's stunning artwork, Annihilator earned a Best Writer nomination at the prestigious Eisner Awards for Grant Morrison.

When deciding how best to tackle this ambitious experiment, Legendary VR partnered with Pittsburgh-based Schell Games to help them bring the comic to life. "I wanted to see how we could translate the uniqtue panel-by-panel experience of reading a comic into Virtual Reality without just creating an animated short. It was important to maintain the pacing of a comic book," said Ethan Stearns, Vice President of Legendary VR. "After we saw how Schell Games approached their title, I Expect You to Die, we became excited to work with them to merge these mediums. Grant Morrison's source material is so cerebral and has such wonderful character dualities. This allows you, as the viewer, to project your character into the scene and maintain the continuity of the narrative." Legendary Backstory had the chance to talk to Art Director Ben Greene and Project Director Tim Sweeney from Schell Games about the process of adapting Morrison’s surreal subject matter, what it was like to literally lift a comic straight from the pages, and the future of VR as a medium. See what they had to say and take a look at exclusive concept art and stills from the experience below.

Q: For starters, talk about what the concept of the Annihilator VR experience is for those who haven’t tried it and discuss how it relates to the source material.

TS: We took the first issue of the series and we isolated a few key moments inside that, putting you into the perspective of Ray Spass, the narrator inside the comic book. You get to experience his apartment, his meetings with his agents, his mental conceptions of the work he is working on from inside his point of view. Those are things he is working on inside the comic book but the environment and interactions are unique to the VR experience. It’s those things unwitnessed, implied, or obvious in hindsight that foreshadow things deeper into the series. BG: What was initially engaging and worked really well was the fact that it was comic material and especially since we were targeting the Gear VR, we knew what our limitations were. Because of that, we could say “Hey, it would be neat if we just kind of placed you in the center of all of this crazy activity.” What’s cool about the Annihilator universe is that it’s this kind of this constant head-trip and you’re never quite sure what’s going on. So, that was immediately inspiring to be in the middle of being able to play with transitions and elements within the environment that would morph and change and surprise you in a first-person way. You are there, you are present, these elements are there with you and this isn’t something you would get from an amusement park attraction or even a funhouse. We’re able to manipulate the space around you so organically, the material in Annihilator gave us a lot of room to play with for the experience.

Schell Games’ 360° concept art mock-up of the cafe scene, mapping out the full visual experience for the user.

Q: Can you take us through the process of how this came to be from inception to the final experience?

BG: It’s been almost a year and half now since we first had that meeting and there was a lot of great material being thrown around during that brainstorming session at Schell. Somebody pulled the Annihilator book out of the box and said “Hey, this is something new that Legendary has on its shelves that they’re really excited about.” So, right from the beginning it was sort of highlighted amongst the materials we had to look at. I think that Jonas Quantum was sitting there and maybe some Pacific Rim, all of which are neat, but Annihilator pushed the possibilities of the experience a bit farther and more immediately. There was just more to play with, more to daydream about and brainstorm over. There were many connections and we decided to attempt to pursue it in a roundabout way and let the guests organically experience it from the main character’s space and point of view. His sort of descent into madness and what that is like. TS: Ben put together an animatic of the experience that gave everyone a clear impression of how we were going to approach doing this. It was shot-by-shot thinking about how the visuals stack up and with the medium being so new and the headsets being limited in technical capabilities, You always are thinking about if this is going to be something that can actually be accomplished. There were several things that drew us to this property, one of which being that, at its core, it’s playing with perception and crossover between realities, like what VR does as a medium. The medium is all about virtual reality and playing with stories about virtual reality. The other thing is that most of the environments and scenes we are seeing are very familiar to people coming in off the streets. So even if the virtual reality is new and terrifying, you get a gentler introduction than if you were to just dropped right into a roller-coaster. BG: I think that for me, VR represents a doorway into providing experiences that you might read about in a comic or might watch somebody experience in a film. Yet, it’s in a way that puts you in a scenario that you would never have any other way of experiencing.

Q: If this is any indication, VR seems to be an interesting medium for comics to continue experimenting in that’s not at all like “adapting” the comic to film or TV. The Annihilator experience shows you can create a fully immersive comic book to step inside of. What do you think about the unique blending of these two mediums and are you working on anything else in this realm?

BG: We’ve kicked around several ideas and ways of approaching a combination of literature and the environment you experience that literature in. Different ways of breaking out of the sequential way of telling a story in this new space. Currently, we aren’t working on anything but it’s always in our back pocket. We like to show off Annihilator when we have guests that’ll come through and be curious about what is possible with VR. TS: I think there is something unique about VR being a newish medium and there are fewer expectations placed on it. There are certain things we can get away with because we can create things like an immersive 2-D environment and what it looks like. We don’t have to modify the original artistic vision of the comics to make it work with animation or live-action or to make it work with 3-D. There is a purer interpretation of the art at a basic level and that isn’t something that can be done immersively, sequentially, interactively outside of VR. I think people are more accepting of the novelty of it all because the medium itself is so new. BG: We try to be aware of what else is going on in entertainment production, especially in games. When we started to wrap our heads around this, we researched if others were doing something like this. We jumped on the internet, asked our friends and we found a couple things encroaching in the same direction, but nobody had really jumped into it and we felt that we had something special by how we approached it. The VR experience is another way of more deeply understanding the universe of Annihilator. Ultimately, I hope that other developers interested in VR and comics can look at Annihilator VR and be inspired by it to create the next step in that direction.

Q: One of my favorite parts of the experience is how interactive it is, utilizing the gaze function to not only advance the narrative but also to add some unexpected and strange details that really flesh out the world it takes place in. How difficult is it creating such an interactive story world as opposed to a more straightforward “on tracks” approach and how did you go about deciding what details to include in the environments?

TS: When we do an experience like this, we need to make sure the critical path is obvious. People shouldn’t feel like they are going to get stuck at any point. Once that happens, we say “what else makes sense to add interest to this?” A lot of what happens then is figuring out other things to put in. Some of those decisions are very late in the game, but every piece of the environment is sort of a blank page for us to brainstorm what in the property could fit there. BS: There’s no mobility, just 360 degrees of world. We didn’t want to beat you over the head with all the details. We took basically the first issue and brought in elements to each of the scenes that expanded the story in a more organic and discovery-oriented way. If you just went through the main path, you’d get the gist of the experience, but if you go through a few more times there are new things you have the opportunity to find. Typically, people find three interactions per scene, but in reality, each scene has five plus things to discover. Each one tells a bit more about the story, or at least builds on the character. Even details like when you are sitting in the office, like on the table is his license and business card that tells you a bit about who he is and what he does. We have this piece of paper from the hospital that says “brain tumor”, which sort of highlights the information available throughout the experience. The more you go through it, the more you begin to explore. We were finding people would discover more about what was going on, but it still maintains the mystery a bit. TS: It doesn’t need to stand on its own. This really is an introduction companion piece to the comic. All the questions that people raise, we expect them to be answered by picking up the book.From the standpoint of what is going on in the experience, you want to immerse yourself in the graphic novel and we tried to get that out through the VR experience.

Q: It seems like every time someone tries the experience, there are new details and easter eggs to find. What are your favorite easter eggs that might go unnoticed the first time through it?

BG: I have a favorite that is hidden in the environment. It’s more for your subconscious to pick up on. Annihilator has an unsettling theme throughout the book, and we wanted to make sure that there was a not-everything-is-right feel. If you are in Ray’s study and you look around, there is a bookshelf off to the left of the desk. You’ll see it a few times throughout, but something throughout the experience that I added is that behind the books are all the dead haunted faces from the space station. There are all of these cursed victims on that station with him and I put their faces in the shelf peering out between the books. If you ever catch it, it is unsettling. TS: (Production Manager) Jeff Outlaw’s favorite is in the Annihilator scene, if you poke around the left desk drawers, one of the little cute andcreepy creatures will emerge and warn you about the danger. That’s something few people get. Only a handful of people will see it. My subtle touch to realism is that the chair will rotate to catch up with you and squeak even though you can’t see your body in VR. BG: When we were building the scenes, audio was super important. It builds presence in VR which is cool because it takes you into these spaces. It can totally help anchor you in the scene.

360° concept art from Schell Games, laying out the experience’s space sequence.

Q: Where do you think VR is headed as a medium and where would you like to see it go?

TS: We are very future-facing as a studio, and there is a lot of on-the-horizon talk. I hope that the technology catches up with the intentions of the creatives behind it. I would hope that even if something were small, that we wouldn’t have to agonize over it. There is a lot of constraint working in VR right now, especially in mobile content. Between that and the adoption of it, I think that I just want to see all of that stuff thrive and grow and expand. I want it to drive the numbers and I don’t want people to worry about the constraints. BG: Even just general budget constraints and all of those concerns should ease up as players/guests start to increase and more people are using VR. There are a couple cool things recently where 7 hour long immersive games are used in VR and consoles. I’m interested to see the numbers from that and how that inspires next year’s VR development in similar platforms. There are lots of cool things happening, but I’m holding my breath trying to see what people jump on. TS: One of the things we try to do here is figure out the best strengths of the medium and leverage those to help. That’s an area where there is still uncertainty. What are people going to get into? What will they take from it? It’s the best period for experimentation because it is an open field right now. I think that it should continue that way for as long as possible to avoid things getting trapped. If you take a look at some areas of technology, we enter a cul-de-sac where the evolution has metastasized. I just would like to see mediums reach their full potential before they become very solid.

After all the hard work, the experiment between Schell Games and Legendary VR has paid off as the Annihilator VR experience is now available for download for Oculus and on Google Play. Grant Morrison’s Annihilator is available as a complete collection on Amazon.

[rockmiyabideusexmachina]

2017 Megaman Valentine’s Day Contest: Talent Category Winners and Art (*Image Overload!*)

Sorry for the delay on this again, but you guys definitely made judging this a challenge, with all the awesome entries! And my internet connection cut out last night, so I had a little retyping to do today. ^^;

There were so many Talent submissions, 25, that it alone was pretty much bigger than any amount of total entries I’ve ever received for a whole year’s contest! Thanks for overwhelming me!! ;D

For this category, entitled “Step into this Capsule X...And Receive This Fashionable Formalwear!”, entrants were required to draw at least one couple in their best formal attire, enjoying time together for an anniversary/party/date.

So both for simplicity, and the fact that it wouldn’t be fair or even remotely easy to rank each one, I will just be listing the Top 3 prize winning entries, and follow that with the remaining entries in alphabetical order. Even if you did not place, I am humbled and wowed by the effort you all put into your artwork. Believe me, I enjoyed them all, and so many were deserving of placing! But unfortunately, even with all I’m giving away this year, I can’t give you all something in return, other than my sincere appreciation. And I’m sure you all will love them, too!

This year, judging was done by @annamariacoppi and myself. With her experience as an illustrator/package designer, AnnaMaria brings some  different insight from my own, as I always try to have some added perspective, besides just mine. Commentary from at least one of us on your art will also be seen below.

Each artist’s name will link to a (hopefully) larger version I’ve uploaded, that will work until you guys upload your art on your own pages, followed by their tumblr handle or deviantArt page, if applicable. If a link is broken or I screwed up somewhere, let me know. This was a lot to verify!

Without further ado, here are your winners (who I will contact soon) and the rest of spectacular, snazzily-dressed contest entries:

1.) Kaitlin.EXE (@kaitlinexe) - Zero x Iris, X x Alia, Axl x Pallette:

AnnaMaria said: Love all the outfits you designed! So much detail went into this! I like how "classic" looking everyone is dressed. It's so different compared to the other entries. Even their hair styles look great. I like how their hair is more shiny than their clothes. You can tell it's a different material quality. Would have liked to see a proper background. Right now I can't really tell where they are.

Miyabi said: In many ways, this piece feels like an X meets Disney sort-of-tale, with the elegant Victorian-era fashion flair. Both the overall intricacies of their clothing, like Zero’s braided booblight tassels (I don’t care if you disagree, that’s what they are!! LOL), to their glammed-up hair, I felt your piece overall had the strongest detail and creativity concerning the theme, which involved formalwear and the celebration of love. And still a touch of humor involved, with Pallette’s clumsiness, most likely as she’s getting used to dancing in heels.

2.) Tabby (@digitallyfanged) - Maverick Party Limo:

AnnaMaria said: I like the lighting you have going on. Feels very glowy, and I can tell it's in the evening. Their outfits are nice. Very elegant looking! I like the movement in the champagne glass in the back a lot! Helps make the scene feel alive. I would have liked to see more detail in the clothing. Since this is a very shadow heavy scene, textures should show up more. That being said, the pattern texture on Sigma's outfit is really nice looking. The other outfits look a bit plain in comparison. Would have loved to see that feather boa fleshed out more. A softer edge around it will help make it look "fluffier". Some more color would help. It's very heavy in the purple and black as it is.

Miyabi said: Those Maverick bosses always have to glow in the dark, don’t they? The fancy digital limo ceiling is fitting for evil robots, while the deep pinks and purples fit the common color theme that links most of them together, besides their penchant for inflicting pain on those Maverick Hunters. The gentlemen look dapper, although paperboy Lumine seems just as uncomfortable in his clothing as he is partying with the squad. I liked how you still kept Ferham and Berkana’s armor motif tied into their dresses. As funny as the bonus Vile image is, I have to imagine he’d rather be popping out the sunroof, with shoulder cannon ready, in his fancy new stretch ride armor! ;p

3.) Iris-Sempi (@iris-sempi) - Zero x Iris, X x Layer, Axl x Marino:

AnnaMaria said: I really like how this looks it could be strait out of an animation scene. It's got all the right framing for it! The emotion with the colors are really nice. The outfits are nicely done, and I like the perspective in Iris dress. It feel like it's moving! I can clearly tell what's going on, and the story is very strait forward. I think if there was a spotlight above Zero and Iris, that would help put the focus even more on them. I would also move them over a tad more to the left. It would make for a even better composition.

Miyabi said: With all the warm colors towards the upper half of this pic, my eye was definitely drawn to the cooler hues of Iris’ dress. Her shocked look, along with the way it flows, definitely gives me the feeling that Zero has some pretty outstanding SA-class Foxtrot Paso Doble skills. I love the looks of excitement and pride on the faces of the other couples, as the lovebirds hit center stage. Truly, a wonderful scene!

And to keep this from extending too long on your dash, the remaining 22 entries for this category are after the cut...

Continuing with the rest of these fantastic pieces, alphabetically by alias:

 - Archer-Poyochu (@archer-poyochu) - Subaru x Misora:

Miyabi said: While the bright city lights would probably cancel out viewing of the beautiful shooting stars in the sky, it looks like Subaru is showing Misora the more earthly light show on that romantic balcony overlook. Nice touch with her clef hair clip.

- Artistic Sunny (Artistic Sunny) - Enzan x Meiru:

Miyabi said: Cute details on Meiru’s dress, tying in the floral hair clip and pearls with it. Going with the nighttime scene, obviously it should be darker, but the heavier shading on Enzan makes it a little harder to see the details in his outfit. But with arms intertwined, it’s obvious they are both enjoying the night out on the town.

- Bassrocks (@bassrocks) - Prom Dance:

AnnaMaria said: Really cute! I like the feel of this one! Color choices are nice. The pinks and purples feel very "Valentines". The punch bowl and cup stack are a nice touch. I like the effort that was put into the background, but it could use some perspective work. Anatomy is bit off in some places, but if you work on the perspective a bit, that would help correct it a bit. Would have liked to see more detail in their outfits. I like the accessories you added, but the girl's dresses seem a bit plain. Some clothing construction seams could help.

- Borockman (@borockman​) - Zero x Iris (w/ Sigma x Nana):

Miyabi said: What’s this? Why aren’t Sigma and Nana the stars of this red carpet gala?! It’s probably because of that Willy Wonka outfit. Didn’t rate high with the fashion police. Love trying to make out faces in the crowd, and how they are all enjoying their eyecandy. Both couples look quite elegant!

- Chocoorchid (@chocoorchid​) - Zero x Layer:

Miyabi said: A cute closeup, and with the border design, almost reminiscent of a camera’s frame. Pinstripes are a sharp look for Zero, and in fact, I think you’re the only one to try that design in this contest. Just would have liked to see a little more of them in the image!

- CptRedder (cptredder) - Aeolus, Thetis, Atlas and Siarnaq:

Miyabi said: Aeolus isn’t sure if he needs to blow out Atlas’ flame with that rose offering! At the very least, he’s getting a little hot under the collar. I really like the sketchy, splotchy white border around them, it’s a different look. And keeping the pink hues to the shading bounces off the background pretty good.

Creator of Worlds (@thecreatorofworlds) - Anniversary Dance, Complete With Rock and Roll Clothing Changing Capsule .gifs, and Instagram party post:

AnnaMaria said: I appreciate the fake Instagram comments! They were fantastic! I like how the outfits feel, like I could actually go out and sew these myself if I wanted. Shows you know how clothing construction works. The outfit designs are very nice. Not too upper classy, but a good fit for them. The slight glow in the eyes is a nice touch. Would have loved to see a proper background. Right now the characters feel a bit disconnected from the background you have right now. Either the character tones/color should be a bit darker, or the background a bit lighter, so they feel more apart of that world.

Miyabi said: I think it’s awesome that you took the time to create the animated .gifs that had both Rock and Roll changing in the capsule, perfectly echoing the title of this category! Creatively, one of my faves, due to all the little extras that come with your submission. Clean lines and colors, where simple is better and still stands strong. Skull Man is adorable in his bowtie!

- Cuddlesnowy (@cuddlesnowy) - X x Zero:

Miyabi said: Blushin’ buds captured in a moment frozen in time. Cute innocent pic, and the photo frame helps show it was a special pic for both of them. Or that there’s still a Sears portrait studio near Maverick Hunter HQ...LOL

- DarlinHope (@darlinhope​) - X x Merti:

Miyabi said: I really dig your painterly style, as it creates a really unique look that stands out. The starry sky seen through the large window behind them is gorgeous! The grey vest/pants combo is a nice muted contrast on the dapper X, compared to the bright yellows and gold of Merti.

- DreamingandGaming (@dreamingandgaming​) - Ice Man x Roll, Kalinka x Rock, + Blues:

AnnaMaria said: Very cute. I like how the outfits are simplified to match the very cartoony style. Would have liked to see some center pieces on the tables, or other decorations to make it feel more like a party.

Miyabi said: Blues is too cool for your dances! I really thought Roll’s heart-shaped dress and all of Kalinka’s frills were unique touches to their dresses. Kalinka’s reminds me of a delicious multi-tier cake with black frosting trim, actually. LOL The Valentine’s fireworks cap off a fun, adorable scene.

- Gingler (gingler) - Swanky Couple Anniversary Dinner Party:

AnnaMaria said: I like how many characters are in this piece. You've managed to make it look not too cluttered, and I can easily tell what's going on. Each table and dancing couple is telling a different story, and I love that! Some constructive criticism would be to add some proper lighting. There's a light coming from above, yet there aren't any shadows. It makes it feel a little off. However, this is great example of storytelling!

Miyabi said: I really hope a bolo tie impresses Akane...a ninja wearing a western tie, what is this?! ;p I love the doctors just soaking in the evening while their humanized robo-children all intermingle. Enjoy having a few waiters and musical entertainment in the scene, too. You have a unique take on all the RMs, yet they are all pretty recognizable. Also, pimp Wily is pimpin’!

- IrisClou (@iris-clou) - Storm Eagle x Axl:

Miyabi said: Eagle looks so casual suave with his open-buttoned shirt and martini. Both he and Axl can leave the penguin suits for...well, Chill Penguin! Your rainbow hues for the warm background and cool couch are an awesome looking contrast. The colors on this are pretty unique.

- Jewel Maiden (@jewelmaiden​) - Dynamo x Layer (w/Zero x Iris):

Miyabi said: Dat Iris grin! Seems like she had a plan to keep Layer away from Zero. LOL The floral lace pattern of Layer’s dress is gorgeous, and ties in to the mechanical forest background. Dynamo’s space-y tie is pretty neat, too!

- LightLabs (@lightlabs) - Sigma x Sigma’s Reflection (w/Zero x Iris):

AnnaMaria said: Very funny, but still serious... Nice! This has a nice feel to it. I like your choice of colors a lot. The background looks nice. Would have loved to see more detail in the outfits. I can see a lot in the mirror, but a good chunk is hiding behind the rose.

Miyabi said: I like the dimly lit restaurant scene, and the little details like the heart-shaped chair and Green Biker Dude host. Hilarious giving Sigma those narcissistic qualities, loving himself more than anything else in the world.

- Metakit (@metakit) - Freeze Man x Star Man:

Miyabi said: The background pattern here is pretty unique, and I like how you were able to tie their main colors into it, while still not blending in too much that it takes away from the duo. Freeze in particular gives me a James Bond character vibe in his fancy getup. LOL

- Myan - Gemini Man x Gemini (Wo?)Man:

Miyabi said: Love the movement of Gemini Man taking a dip back! The bottom trim of his shirt coming out also sort of ties into looking like his crystal headpiece, too! Never one to shy from the spotlight, his twin proves that a Gemini can look good in a dress as well.

- Nat-Grim (Nat-grim) - Atlas x Aeolus:

Miyabi said: Rolling out the red carpet, Atlas rocks the V-Day red pantsuit well, while I like the extended tail on Aeolus’ suit, along with his heart-shaped tie. Definitely feels like a gala event photo op!

- Paranoid King Cepheus (@paranoidkingcepheus​) - The largest entry ever known to mankind that I can’t even begin to thumbnail on tumblr...so I’ll just crop out this image of Akane dancing with Shadowman.EXE while Top Man spins to the beat:

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

Miyabi said: You are insane for once again adding in all the characters that you have! And I love the massive effort! An adorable tale of Jack getting to the dance and so many hijinks and easter eggs in-between, with a very cute ending.

- Prosaic Wonder (@vava-fett​) - Anniversary Dance:

AnnaMaria said: I really like all the characters packed into here! Each one is telling a different story, and a lot of them are actually pretty funny. I especially love the random leg with the high heel sticking out. I also appreciate you trying to match the original art style somewhat. The cell shading is really nice here! Ok, I'm gonna get super picky here. If those are Roll's hands holding up the cellphone taking a picture... They look more like adult hands. Child hands should be a bit more dainty and rounder looking. The style of her nail polish is also a bit "adult/older looking", even a bit out of fashion in style. I would have expected her to wear some glitter polish, perhaps even some fake rhinestones. Yes, this is silly comment, but since this category is focusing on the attires, I felt I had to address it. That being said, I really wish I could see more of their outfits. You did a great job designing so many of them, but all we really see are their heads a bit of their torso.

Miyabi said: I don’t know which I’ll be able get out of my head first: Gemini Man in a feather boa and thong or Top Man’s sexy stocking leg... A lot of fun and amusing interactions between the characters/couples here; I agree that it’s a little unfortunate for most that we can only see their heads, but there is so much to enjoy about your style and all that’s going on in the scene! It’d work as an awesome cover image, for sure!

Soulivium (@su5anlee​) - Dark Kirisaki x Iris.EXE:

AnnaMaria said: I really like the costume design. It's very formal and modern looking! I especially like the lace around the dress, and how they are both wearing purple and red to match each other. Would have loved to see a background.

Miyabi said: Very fancy attire on both. I love the dueling abstract lacy sides to both Iris’ dress and necklace. It’s really gorgeous. The heart-shaped Killer Eye with scythes on top of Kirisaki’s top hat is fun and unique for a character like him to wear.

- Wimzik (@wimzik​) - Netto x Food (and also Meiru + Jasmine) + Laika x Pride:

Miyabi said: Typical oblivious Netto, stuffing his face rather than mingling with the ladies! Great job telling a story, showing Meiru’s jealousy over Jasmine’s flirtation, and Laika’s nerves keeping him from leaving Netto’s side. The girls’ dresses are all unique and tailored to their personalities, and I’m amused that Netto felt like a striped tie would double as a fancy headband to make him feel dressed up!

- Wintesm (@wintesm​) - Prom Photo Memories Bulletin Board:

Miyabi said: I love the continuity from last year’s prom entry continuing here, with a photo memory board. And there are still Search Snakes running amok! A lot of cute scenes, although I think I lean heavily towards the 3 on the far right as my favorite ones.

Thanks to all once again! Be proud of what you submitted!

Still working on typing the Humor Category results. They are coming soon, too! *faints from organizing this*

[hawaiiirl]

Pixar Animation Studios’ tour and its minor Hawaii connection

The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Inside Out, Coco, and many more hit films are all generated by the masterminds at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville. I was lucky to meet director of animation James Ford Murphy and executive producer Andrea Warren, and be invited for a look at where the magic is made.

We pull in on a sunny October day, pass through the security gate, and walk towards the main building, named after founder Steve Jobs. The campus is incredibly creative, with airy buildings, green lawns, and recreational spaces to recharge.

Squirrels scamper up manicured trees, and a flock of plump Canadian geese graze at the outdoor amphitheater. A large plastic seagull – Nigel, from Finding Nemo – keeps watch over the small soccer field (rumor: the grass is FIFA-approved). It gives off the feel of a college.

An immense lamp and ball sit outside the main building- well-known logo Luxo the lamp, which actually illuminates after dark. We would later learn on the tour that Australia’s Museum of Modern Art constructed the piece for a Pixar exhibit, and shipped it to California when the show was over.

We checked in and waited for our tour guide, Xanadu, at the Steve Jobs Building, a huge, bright, glass-enclosed warehouse with concept art from the latest movie to greet folks; the Parr family stands poised to fend off questionable visitors, because Pixar’s next movie is Incredibles 2.

Characters from Cars and Inside Out lounge near the ping-pong tables and the glass case full of Oscar awards. As you look further into the Atrium, you’ll see a gift shop with items only available there (not in Disney stores), a USPS post office, an employee lunch room, and a bustling cafeteria.

Xanadu explained that Steve Jobs oversaw the design, and he wanted a building made by hand, like the films Pixar produces. He was so meticulous; he searched for the perfect shade of brick color, ultimately settling on a dark brown mix inspired by the Hills Bros. Coffee House in San Francisco.

Jobs also laid out the floor plan for the departments in accordance with the brain’s hemispheres: the creative sides are on the right side of the building. The technical sides are on the left. The level of thought Jobs put into each detail is mind-blowing.

This is a two-story building, but the second story is like a loft, with offices only along two sides. From the ground, you can still look up – and slightly into the rooms where people are meeting.

In the Steve Jobs Building, the patio floor extends into the building, separating the inside and outside only by a wall of glass. That’s to create a seamless transition, and an “Alice in Wonderland” effect, as Xanadu told us.

Xanadu said Jobs believed strongly that face-to-face contact resulted in the best ideas, so his initial plans called for only one restroom in the entire building. This mother cringes.

After pushback from the rest of the team, Jobs capitulated and made it two, but they’re at the front of the building, still forcing people to leave their desks and interact with others.

She says he also advocated healthy practices, so there are two large staircases to encourage walking in the Atrium, subsidized health classes in the “Breathing Room” (fitness studio), a salt-water lap pool heated to 74 degrees, basketball and sand volleyball courts, a BBQ area (“Palm Grove”), large herb gardens the chefs use in their cooking, the aforementioned soccer field, and monthly visits from a team of therapy dogs for stress relief.

It’s near lunch now, and droves of staffers are coming out to Café Luxo for their subsidized lunch. There’s a table of today’s specials to choose from, in addition to other cafeteria staples. Beverages are free, and lunch is cheap.

If employees want to bring their own food, there’s a beautiful, wood paneled break room. Jobs, we’re told, didn’t want workers to go hungry, so there’s always free cereal and milk, PB&J materials, and fruits.

As we near the end of the Atrium, we see a door in the wall leading to the Steve Jobs Theater. The 235-seat arena is used for the final review of movies.

Sometimes, Pixar uses the space for educational talks for staff development, organized by the so-called Pixar University committee. Monday nights, it’s dedicated for recreation when theater manager John Hazelton shows old movies on 35 mm film.

Then we duck past a Closed Set sign, into the hallway where the voice actors lay down their tracks. We are not allowed to take photos for the next couple sections.

The hall leading into the recording studio is painted brick red, and autographed with many names like Owen Wilson, Jeff Pidgeon, Amber Kroner, Patton Oswald, Dame Edna, Alexander Gold, and Elle Docter.

“Who are some famous people you’ve seen?” we ask Xanadu excitedly.

“We have a no gawking policy,” she says, “so we aren’t allowed to take photos or go up to famous people.” Also, there aren’t celebrities walking around all the time. Xanadu says if an actor is working with Pixar for the first time, they’re invited to come to the headquarters to get a feel for the company’s culture. After that, Pixar travels to the voice actors.

She adds that sometimes, celebrities visit just for a tour, and the biggest star she’s seen in her five years there is actor Keanu Reeves. Xanadu permits me to blog about that.

From the audio booth area, we walk upstairs past rows of colorful offices on the second floor. The wide hallway is lined with art from 2017’s Coco. Xanadu says every piece of art connected to a movie is saved – even concept sketches on napkins – and archived in the art gallery for future exhibits in places around the world.

It took seven years to research Coco, which won an Oscar. Pixar has two full time sculptors, Jerome Ranft and Greg Dextra, whose job is it to create a 3-D sculpture of the main characters. This gives the 2-D artists a better feel for who the character is and how they should animate it.

We see clay molds, sketches, and digital paintings of the Coco characters, and a short informative movie about the challenges for this film: how to create the world of the dead, and how to light, color, and animate such a fantasy world?

We were fascinated to learn there are animation artists dedicated to extremely specific jobs. For every movie, there is an art team dedicated to just creating crowds of people.

There is an exquisite guitar inlaid with pearl and gold on one of the walls. Xanadu shares that it’s one of only 11 created in conjunction with Coco, and that the director and producer of that movie each have one. She’s not sure where the other nine are, but informs us the Consumer Products team commissioned a limited run of the instruments.

At the end of this art gallery, we come to a sitting area with what looks like a storyboard on the wall. It’s a color script, Xanadu clarifies, whose purpose is to show the mood, color, lighting, and tone of each movie.

There are quaint, brown leather chairs here that belonged to Walt Disney. The Walt Disney!

We’ve concluded the viewing of the first art gallery, and it’s time to walk across a bridge to the other side of the Atrium. The bridge is slightly arched, and Xanadu says it’s because Jobs didn’t want a straight line to cut the view when looking up from the ground floor.

This art gallery is Incredibles-themed, and the color script is more retro. Incredibles 2 is due in summer 2019.

The film after that is an untitled piece by Dan Scanlon, the creator of Monsters University. When that movie comes out, Xanadu tells us, the Coco art will make way for the new movie’s pieces. That includes repainting the walls to match the feel of the new movie.

We stop to watch a deleted scene from Incredibles. It’s a runway show in which Edna features her retro designs, which are actually the creations of staffer Deanna Marsigliere.

Scratch actors voiced over the rough cut; those are Pixar employees who want to do it just for fun. Every other year, they can audition for an unpaid role.

Voice actors’ unions make it hard to hire non-union talent, though they weren’t as prevalent when director/writer Brad Bird worked on the original Incredibles 14 years ago. As Xanadu tells it, Bird was seeking a specific voice for Edna, and nobody could match what he envisioned, so he ended up playing the part himself.

Lastly, Xanadu directs our attention to a raised 2-D cityscape hanging on a wall. Some of the lights in the buildings are on. It’s a timeline, she says- as each part of Incredibles 2 is completed, another light comes on.

When the entire city is lit, the movie is done. “It’s a way to track the movie’s progress and to build excitement,” she pronounces.

Tracking timelines are themed for each movie. Cars, for instance, measured progress with a racetrack that had moveable cars.

We leave the Steve Jobs Building and head towards a building called Brooklyn. The other buildings are named West Village, Uptown, SoHo, and Ellis Island (the archives building). The big, grassy area out front is called Central Park.

What’s the Manhattan connection? Xanadu says it’s a riff on their address, Park Avenue- the famous New York City street.

Brooklyn is a quieter, more secretive building where new concepts are developed. Like the Steve Jobs Building, it’s open, with a second and third story added only along the sides of the building, giving this a very high ceiling. A five-foot-tall Day of the Dead skull sits in the reception area, across an employee café.

The Presto Theater takes up a corner of Brooklyn. At 135 seats, it’s the second biggest of the five film venues on campus.

There are “Easter eggs” in the metal artwork above the theater doors; look closely, and you’ll see the triangular design is Luxo lamps stacked on each other. Embedded in the floor, little movie characters are scattered about, waiting to be found.

We cruise down the middle of Brooklyn, pausing to look at dozens of artwork on the wall, or 3-D art in cases. They’re all for sale at a silent auction fundraiser for one of the charities Pixar supports.

The artists are staffers, and they were allowed to use any medium. No close-up photos were allowed of the art.

In the center of Brooklyn’s massive foyer is where we find a slight Hawaii tie-in. It’s a three-story tall brick chimney. Dole Food Company used to own this property, and this building was previously a cannery. In a nod to this history, Pixar turned the chimney into a fireplace and seating area.

Before Dole, the Oakland Oaks minor league baseball team owned the land, which explains why there’s a glass case with old-fashioned baseball equipment and memorabilia on display. Nearby, staffers are using the billiards tables.

We don’t ascend the stairways here, but Xanadu says the third floor has a terrace with a sweeping view of the East Bay.

Two-and-a-half hours later, we finish the day with lunch back at Steve Jobs Building, and shortly thereafter, we drive away from Pixar- amazed at what we learned, and with a deeper appreciation for how much thought goes into each movie. One might say it’s incredible.

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[consumingidentities-blog]

Look Closer: Reexamining the Visual Primary Sources of San Francisco

I'm coming back to my home state of California to give a free book talk, open to the public, in the Skylight Gallery on the top (6th) floor of the Main Branch of the SF Public Library: Thurs. 8/23 from 6:30-8pm. It's right across from the Civic Center BART station. This event is co-sponsored by the San Francisco History Center, the SF Mechanics' Institute, and the CA Historical Society. I hope you can make it! Here is my blog post for the SFHC to accompany my talk:

Think about your office. Your home. Your phone. What do all three have in common? Aside from the fact that they are where Americans spend most of their time, I’m willing to bet that they are also all adorned with pictures that carry some import for you. Above all, those spaces—whether virtual or literal—are filled with pictures of your loved ones, and probably also yourself. The centrality of images in our daily lives has become the stuff of cliché—the ubiquitous advertising, the pop-up ads, the magazine stands by the grocery checkout counter. Pictures can carry real import, as evinced by the most frequently polled response to the question: what would you rescue if your house was burning down? As too many fire-ravaged Californians have demonstrated in recent weeks, the answer usually has to do with old photo albums and cherished family snapshots or portraits. 

This state of affairs may be changing in the digital age, but that’s also interesting from a historical perspective. We may be among the last generations to have physical photograph albums—or at least printed albums that are irreplaceable, as opposed to being stored on photo websites or in the nebulous Cloud.
 People nevertheless continue to adorn their walls with pictures of family and friends, not to mention ourselves. If you haven’t gotten around to scanning every old photograph, as I suspect most of us have failed to do, then those images become all the more irreplaceable and valuable. 
This sense of pricelessness evokes elements of nostalgia and a deeply individualized sense of worth that is based on personal identity and family ties. Yet its value also yields tangible profit in our capitalist economy: in April 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for one billion dollars, evincing the power of images and their centrality to both companies’ platforms (it is, after all, called *Face*book).

How did this cultural fascination with images and identity begin? Some might argue that it evolved along with humans themselves. Berkeley historian Martin Jay has noted that sight became particularly important to homo erectus once we began standing on our hind legs. The sense of sight enabled us “to differentiate and assimilate most external stimuli in a way superior to the other four senses.” Smell, which is so vital to animals on all fours like dogs, was reduced in importance for humans during this fateful transition—indeed, Freud conjectured that this shift was “the very foundation of human civilization.” Vision was “the last of the human senses to develop fully,” and is still “the last of the senses to develop in the fetus.” The eye also possesses far more nerve endings and operates at a much greater speed than any other sense organ, and at the fastest rate of assimilation among the entire sensorium. For all this unparalleled speed, vision entails more than the simple recording and assimilation of sensory data; neurobiologists note that it requires considerable brain function to understand or interpret what we see. A disproportionate amount of the human brain is devoted to visual processing; research indicates that the neurons responsible for sight “number in the hundreds of millions and take up about 30 percent of the cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing.” Only within the last few generations have scholars in the humanities and social sciences begun grappling with the implications of such an influential and yet subjective framework for human experience and perception.

My first book, Consuming Identities, examines a particular chapter in this much larger story: the growth of a commodified image industry in nineteenth-century San Francisco, one of the most diverse and dynamic cities in the United States. I argue that visual images shaped the way that Americans presented themselves, portrayed and related to one another, and framed their world view; thus wielding considerable cultural power in nineteenth-century society. This cultural phenomenon was not simply a matter of perception but of practice and policy: it shaped popular ideas about race and identity, censorship and immigration laws, criminal justice policies, and entire industries such as the transatlantic market for celebrities and fiercely competitive photography and printing businesses in San Francisco, among many other cities around the world. 

San Francisco was at the forefront of these changes, and it has gone largely overlooked as an epicenter of modern spectacle and visual culture—a culture that was only expanding in a rapidly urbanizing and diversifying country. The most popular genre within the visual medium was the portrait photograph, which played a pivotal role in mediating intimacy, facilitating new modes of identity formation, and creating a public culture of spectatorship amidst the capitalist crucible of the gold rush metropolis. Few places could more dramatically evince these characteristics than San Francisco, a place largely defined by its distance from every other non-indigenous point of origin for its tens of thousands of polyglot nineteenth-century inhabitants.

In my San Francisco Library talk, I will showcase examples from the seven thematically organized chapters of Consuming Identities—particularly those I uncovered at the San Francisco History Center and the California Historical Society, with some references to the importance of the Mechanics Institute in the cultural and professional dimensions of San Francisco history. For now, I want to focus on one of the many versions of roughly letter-sized illustrated gold rush stationery—known as letter sheets—that did not make it into my book: “Miners at Work with Long Toms.” This lithograph from San Francisco firm Justh & Quirot (active in San Francisco from 1851-53) was likely published by Cooke and Le Count, and dates to about 1851. It illustrates the posters advertising my upcoming book talk. (A lithograph is a design drawn and inked on stone, and printed with that stone—the technology was developed at the turn of the nineteenth century and proved much more efficient and durable than previous methods of wood or metal engraving.) 

In the main image spanning the upper third of the sheet, ten miners work at unearthing their fortunes in a creek, using several iconic implements of the gold rush: shovels, long toms (expanded rockers, with troughs measuring 10-20 feet), and gold pans. Their cabins are visible in the distance, interspersed with the jagged rocks and the conifers of the Sierras. Beneath this vignette is an open space for the correspondent—usually a homesick miner—to pen his letter. The space is framed by two trees on the left and right margins, another long wooden span separating the upper illustration from the lower portion of the sheet (and adorned with serene naturalistic details like two birds perched on one end and a couple of squirrels on the other), and along the bottom there appears to be a Native American spear. Stacked vertically on the left-hand margin are two illustrations: an archetypal miner above an Indian, whose quiver of arrows and shield seem to be hung up above him on the leafy bough that demarcates the left margin. I will have more to say about these figures below, but first I want to contextualize this uniquely Californian version of a much larger visual genre.

Letter sheets communicated various perspectives, but they were usually informational, humorous, nostalgic, or moralizing. Several varieties of letter sheets were destroyed in a series of catastrophic San Francisco fires in the 1840s and 1850s and the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, but scholars have estimated that between 340 and 750 varieties of sheets were produced—primarily by firms operating in San Francisco and a few smaller ones in Sacramento and the surrounding area. Eastern firms supplemented these sheets, often acquiring their artwork from associates in the Sierra foothills. But as lithograph collector and researcher Harry T. Peters noted in his book on the subject back in 1935, most eastern letter sheets differed in content, quality, and quantity from their western counterparts: few of them were mass produced, most were printed on low-quality paper, and tellingly, the overwhelming majority depicted serene views rather than caricatures, comics, or historic events. The California letter sheets, as “Miners at Work” exemplifies, evoked exceptional artistic quality, balanced representation of detail, and California artists strove for a distinctive linear perspective that created a three-dimensional effect. They centered on gold rush themes—particularly the archetypal miner—until the mid-to-late 1850s, long after the placer gold deposits had dried up around 1852-53. The sheets nonetheless continued to command a market for decades after the end of the Civil War, by documenting new themes that reflected public interest. German festivals and street scenes from Chinatown highlighted the diversity of the city’s inhabitants while providing viewers on both coasts and beyond with a rare glimpse at the exotic, the spectacular, and the unknown. 

The contemporary popularity of these precursors-to-the-postcard is evinced by the fact that they were often pirated, or reproduced with subtle variations. U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library has two other versions of this same letter sheet, with the same illustrations and title. One of those versions lacks the subtitle: “Copied from a Daguerreotyp [sic] sketch by Justh & Quirot Lithographers” (the other includes the subtitle but adds the address of the lithographers, at 28 Jackson St.). The daguerreotype was the first version of the photograph, simultaneously developed by a number of inventors in different countries, but formally introduced to the world in 1839 as the eponymous creation of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. The fact that the term itself is missing the last “e” may have been a simple abbreviation of a widely known term by the gold rush era, or one of the chronic American misspellings of the French word. As I explain in Consuming Identities, this “from a daguerreotype” annotation was a commonly invoked claim, and whether accurate or not (too many original daguerreotypes have been lost to say with any certainty), publishers intended it to enhance the authenticity of their artist-rendered views for audiences wary of inaccurate depictions from the many artists who never actually ventured to California or the gold fields. In an age of false claims known as “humbug” and confidence schemes, daguerreotypes were widely considered beyond reproach as unaltered, frozen moments in time—though I also detail in my book the ambivalence that many nineteenth-century San Franciscans expressed about the extent to which photography could or could not convey deeper, underlying truths. 

The main image of “Miners at Work” certainly looks as though it was copied from a daguerreotype: most of its figures appear to be looking directly at the viewer, who would have been in the same position as the photographer, and they are paused in their work. This conscious posing would have been necessary on the part of the photographic subject, because the longer exposure times of early photography did not allow for action shots without considerable blurring. In other words: nineteenth-century subjects knew that they had to hold still if they wanted the camera to capture them for posterity. Thus the man on the far left hunches over his shovel, his arms crossed above the handle, and six men at the center of the image appear to be posing with their shovels in a gesture of the digging that they performed with such frequency that their camps soon acquired the nickname of “diggings.” Two men are in seated or crouched positions, and the one in the right foreground appears to be the only one not looking towards the camera as he carefully studies his pan for gold deposits—or pretends to be doing that work, demonstrating the labor but also the implicitly performative dimensions of the miner archetype. 

The miner was inherently performative, as contemporaries well knew and documented by referring to his—and their own—appearance as his (or their) “costume.” Historians like Brian Roberts have estimated that most of the young men who journeyed to California in the late 1840s and 50s were in fact part of the burgeoning middle class, as few proletarians could afford the steep fees for passage, let alone equipment and supplies, that such a long journey entailed. These self-dubbed “Argonauts” (in reference to the Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece) were not necessarily accustomed to hard manual labor, and even those who did arduous work like farming would hardly have been as well prepared for mining as many of their experienced Chilean and Sonoran competitors in the gold fields. They nonetheless reveled in their chance to look and act the part of the phenomenon that the whole world was talking about—and viewing, in the form of the widely distributed illustrations on letter sheets and in a host of publications such as books and magazines, not only across the United States, but in Paris, London, Havana, and many other places. 

The “Miners at Work” letter sheet illustrates the archetypal miner—along the left margin of the lower portion—and in its main image, a collection of men who evoke that archetype’s power in their attempts to look and act the part. They all don wrinkled shirts, pants, and several pairs of (doubtless mud-spattered) boots, just like the archetype. Most of them are wearing floppy hats, though one miner at the center of the upper image appears to have retained his top hat in a seemingly comic juxtaposition with his decidedly informal surroundings. At least two of them boast “whiskers,” as the long and unkempt facial hair was often dubbed in boastful letters back home, in which thousands of formerly clean-shaven and perhaps white-collar Americans reveled in their conformity to the decidedly racialized and masculinized miner archetype.

That the miner was racialized as an epitome of white masculinity is literally illustrated on this sheet, with the juxtaposition of the upper and lower figures on the left-hand margin. The Native American man is visibly and spatially separated from the identity and the work of gold rush mining. The difference isn’t just sartorial; he does not carry the iconic implements of the trade, such as the pickaxe, gold pan, or shovel of the miner standing above him. Instead, he reclines on the ground, apparently lost in a moment of contemplation, passive and even relegating his own tools—the arrows and shield—to a place hanging above his head on the tree trunk. There may be a tomahawk or club beside him, but his right hand has relinquished it on the ground. He seems resigned to literally sit out this internationally famous rush for riches, along with all the conquest, industrialization, and modernization (or “civilization”) that Americans proclaimed it would entail. A visual rendering of the then-popular “vanishing savage” myth, he could easily be interpreted as passively receding into the background, temporally and figuratively. He signifies the past, while the archetypal miner stands poised for action, his eyes focused on the horizon. Such seemingly naturalistic depictions masked the real violence and dispossession that lay behind the conquest, as historians of California Indians like Benjamin Madley have amply documented. There is no evident indication of this indigenous man’s tribe, if he was in fact based on a specific individual, but his moccasins, fringed shirt (likely of deerskin) and feather headdress may be reminiscent of the Maidu people of northern California. The larger point here is that most potential customers who purchased this sheet, or the viewers who received it, would not have known or much cared about the particular tribal affiliation and identity of this token representative of California’s indigenous population—a people who were associated with the region’s past.

Every letter that correspondents penned on the letter sheets was unique; yet every letter-sheet illustration was, by definition, mass-produced and identical to hundreds or thousands of others circulating throughout San Francisco and the postal system. Photographic technology did not allow for mass-reproducible portraits in the peak years of the gold rush, but advancements in steam printing and lithography (as detailed in the introduction to Consuming Identities) enabled artist-rendered illustrations to be created in very large numbers. The most popular gold rush letter sheets were printed in runs that stretched well into the tens of thousands, and may have approached one hundred thousand, according to some accounts. They were also extremely affordable, just like their counterparts in the East, and usually sold for mere cents per sheet (one California letter writer noted that he paid five cents for his, though they could easily be between ten and twenty cents). Engravers, printers, and stationers sold them individually or in bulk to resellers such as hotels, for anywhere from $10 to $15 per hundred in the mid-1850s. The genres of lithography and photography captured the period’s tension between uniqueness and homogeneity. For all the individuality that Argonauts expressed through their commissioned photographic portraits and their personal perspectives in letters, their appearances, experiences, and identities were bound up in the mass movement that was the gold rush. Neither of the Bancroft Library versions of this “Miners at Work” sheet contain any visible annotations, but the San Francisco History Center specimen does: along the bottom of the page, in the faded brown ink familiar to any historian of nineteenth-century manuscript correspondence, someone has written “On the other or inside will be found something—.” This tantalizing reference appears to beckon the reader to open up the letter sheet (they were often folded to allow more space for writing inside), or flip it over to the verso side. The Society of California Pioneers possesses an annotated version of this letter sheet, in which someone has penned a letter dated August 26, 1851 (though that dateline has been crossed out, whether by the correspondent or someone else, we don’t know). 

Though historians have often utilized the handwritten correspondence of these letter sheets in their chronicles of gold rush life and culture, they have not paid sufficient attention to the distinctive visual medium that the California sheets represented. The correspondents themselves often reacted to the images printed on those pages, whether to reinforce their accuracy or undermine their message with contrary accounts. Some purposefully reserved their remarks for the verso side or for enclosed pages, so as to allow their recipients the chance to display the letter sheets as household decorations. Other purchasers may have adorned their makeshift cabins and tents with the sheets, just as they displayed the photographic portraits of their distant kin on their walls and at their bedside tables. Of all the myriad changes in daily life and culture between our own time and the gold rush, the ubiquity and talismanic power of human images remains as true as it ever was. Pictures still adorn our walls, and they still channel deep emotions. This history has something to tell us about where we came from and how our society came to be, but it also has plenty to teach us about ourselves. 

Those interested in conducting their own close readings of these wonderful primary sources, and mining them for their rich details (pun intended), are welcome to do so by clicking on the hyperlinks to the different versions of the sheet provided below. We are all indebted to the hard work that went into scanning and digitizing high-resolution versions of these letter sheets, through fantastic archival websites like the Online Archive of California and Calisphere.

“Miners at Work with Long Toms” [c. 1851]. California Pictorial Lettersheet Collection, San Francisco History Center version: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8b85dww/

Bancroft Library version with subtitle and address: 

https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/tf2x0nb4s4/ 

Bancroft Library version without subtitle:

https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/tf2g5007vp/ 

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco version, courtesy of the Achenbach Foundation:

https://art.famsf.org/anonymous/miners-work-long-toms-3899740 

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Russell Maltz’s Hard-Hat Formalism

Russell Maltz, “S.P. / BK #113” (2013), enamel on plywood plates, steel post bracket, 67 x 67 x 7 inches (all photos courtesy Minus Space)

At least since late-1960s Process Art (and probably earlier), we’ve been aware of the aesthetics of the construction site as a kind of ephemeral sculpture garden or inadvertent installation piece, featuring provisional structures made of non-traditional materials (bricks, boards, cinderblocks, coils of rope) in site-responsive arrangements. Staged for utility, such environments merge art and life.

But the relationship of the medium of painting to the building trades has been less obvious, or at least less public, in part because pigmented industrial coatings usually appear on the commercial job site behind closed doors, gates, or fences, out of the view of passersby.

The New York painter Russell Maltz has considered this dynamic for decades, producing a body of work widely admired in Europe but underknown in the US. Maltz’s architectural-scale site interventions don’t often migrate intact to the “white cube,” but his current exhibition at Minus Space, Painted / Stacked / Suspended (on view through October 28), demonstrates the artist’s insistence on facticity over illusion: “It is clear to me that paint is a material that is applied to another material.”

The oldest work in this beautiful, invigorating show is “STACK-Safety Yellow” (1985/1992), which consists of six hefty sheets of plywood painted (but for a slim margin at the edges) with yellow traffic enamel and horizontally arranged, with a misleading appearance of effortlessness, against the wall to a length of nine feet.

Russell Maltz, “STACK-Safety Yellow” (1985/1992), traffic enamel on plywood, 48 x 109 x 18 inches

Refurbished seven years after its original fabrication, the piece pushes hard at the boundaries of what a painting is even as it observes that medium’s most basic conventions: pigment suspended in a fluid binder applied to one side of a flat substrate, allowed to dry undisturbed, and placed face-out from the supporting wall.

“STACK-Safety Yellow” is a reminder of (or an introduction to) the provisionality inherent in much of Maltz’s outdoor work, such as his numerous projects in which he selectively paints orderly stacks of lumber or pallets loaded with concrete masonry units (CMUs), usually in florescent red-orange or yellow (a color that tends toward greenish in photographs). Following this often brief (and photo-documented) “assembled phase,” the materials are utilized in a construction project in the manner in which they were originally intended, their status as an art object thenceforth eliminated or — an ontological question — merely obscured.

Maltz thus complicates the quandary posed by Robert Morris regarding the status of his “scatter” pieces while they are in storage. If, as Morris claims, his materials constitute an artwork any time they are arranged in a manner that is responsive to their architectural setting, then by that definition they must be an artwork even when packed in crates and stuffed into a closet.

Not only does Maltz ask us to recognize a load of CMUs as a legitimate painting substrate on par with a length of canvas or linen, he insists further that it remains so after being broken down and mortared together as the wall of an office building or shopping center.

Installation view of “Painted/Stacked/Suspended” (2017), Minus Space, Brooklyn

“S.P./BK #113” (2013) harnesses the force of gravity as a compositional device. It consists of three squarish plywood plates suspended from a steel post bracket protruding from the wall. The bracket is inserted through holes drilled into the sheets of plywood, and owing to the varied placement of the holes relative to the panels’ center of gravity, the wood splays as it sags, forming an irregular 12-pointed star.

A large, hard-edged section of the front-most plate is painted with black enamel with slivers of edges left untouched; we gather that the other two plates are similarly addressed, though the works’ installation (in the gallery’s display window on Water Street) makes it hard to be sure. In any case, the simple graphic treatment of the partially painted panels becomes exponentially more complex as, having found their balance on the bracket, they interact visually.

The work made me think of whitewater kayakers who surrender to the unrelenting force of the river, channeling that power to execute precise maneuvers as they are swept downstream.

A second, more recent example from this series, “S.P./BK #117” (2017), is similarly constructed and of exactly the same dimensions. Its front-most panel is predominantly unpainted plywood, which brings into play another of painting’s defining fundamentals, the figure/ground relationship.

Maltz shares some concerns with the “Radical Painting” group of the 1970s and ’80s, who examined their medium at the root level, probing the nature of the support, the properties of paint, the painting’s attachment to the wall, its relationship to the viewer, and so on. But his work has little of the rarified austerity characteristic of the work of Marcia Hafif, Eric Saxon, Phil Sims, and others of that cohort.

Russell Maltz, installation view of the “Needles” series

For sheer elegance it is not lacking, however. The four remaining works in the show are from the Needle series, dated 2017. Beautifully installed in the space, these are tall, extremely slender variations on the paradigm of panels hung via drilled holes from a post bracket. (Two smaller Needles, not on the exhibition checklist, are installed in the gallery’s office.)

The Needles are made with various combinations of enamel, acrylic paint, and polyurethane on thin strips of wood, plywood, and/or pegboard. They become noticeably narrower toward the bottom end, which is perhaps two inches from the floor. The length of the bracket (and thus the third dimension of these works) is seven inches.

Measuring more than 10 feet high, the tallest of the Needles is “S.P./Blue+Blue #117,” which consists of two plywood components painted a stately blue, and a couple of slightly battered 1x2s that are spliced together on the recto side with a raw wood slat and a few screws. Sections at the top and bottom are painted white.

Russell Maltz, installation view of the “Needles” series

A significant variable within each of the Needles is the placement of the drilled holes relative to the top of these suspended components. That distance ranges from half an inch to maybe two feet, and the difference subtly complicates the hierarchy implied by the components’ relative size, placement, chroma, and physical condition. The dynamic of parts to the whole seems restless, unsettled; the works may be suspended, but they are animated nevertheless. So while the Needles might seem, at first, a far cry from Maltz’s environmental work, they also carry the weight of painting as a speculative response to a shifting set of circumstances.

Russell Maltz: Painted / Stacked / Suspended continues at Minus Space (16 Main Street, Suite A, Dumbo, Brooklyn) through October 28.

The post Russell Maltz’s Hard-Hat Formalism appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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Summoners War Hack No Survey

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Everything that a concept! Summoners War Cydia Hack is often a effectively-manufactured and polished rpg with many different premium perform provided and lots of healthy develop actions. " pocketgameruk mentioned the sport as "an detailed, but attainable, credit card-built strategy premium that combines facets of magical: the product range with potential risk and stratego." Eurogamer published "you may easily genuinely feel summoner battles is an excellent premium, verging on great, that's kept back once again that has a greatly polished but functionally narrow application form. Collects specifics about sex and years. At the way, registered users should buy solutions and products and enhancements with honest cash in your in-premium retailer. The might seem develop is expertly undertaken, plus the energy-built item is large and enables for extensive perform visits with no need to invest in almost everything. In spite of this, we are able to also view a continuous movement of middle-to-dreadful evaluations showing up day-to-day. The topic “useless because” looks like the right spot to begin with: this participant delights in the sport, but he looks like he is not trying to get anywhere you want to. advancement--before they need to pay on their own? You may think that presenting uncommon monsters more frequently will be solution, though that will also reduced gains. |Learn to make athletes wish to pay back, not might need to. for more regional community elements. The gamer make sure you symptoms, enemy monsters are governed through your ai. The perfect and most rare are environmentally friendly 5 stars, but you will find enough nominal and farmable options to experience a healthy lineup. Actually, 5-10 failures regularly (=forgotten or wasted fights) are simply just frustrating for all the substantial participant in grind method, which is the comparable really even with 2 moments without the be aware. Tons of degree, with many different figures to see and look for. Overall, i have been together a couple of days now, participating not less than 30 min regularly (in some circumstances a lot longer, even so am multi-tasking at folks circumstances). Liquids, the wind, fireplace, perspective, and dimly lit. |I'm ready to promote this for everybody who enjoys these types of premiums. The summoner battles master define is made up of six assorted and new thorough factions out there: • perform Name your pushes forth and transmit these important questions surging wave immediately after your enemy. There are actually six factions in this define understanding that everyone loves the actual facts that you’ll hardly ever purchase a identical faction the majority of the other puts, as well. Designers are often exceedingly worried with including content they disregard that easy is frequently incredibly best. Party credit cards permit you to operate an motion within their specified part given that the requirements is fulfilled. The two athletes contribute a 6-line, 8-row board (divided by half for every single participant) which includes locations underneath just for the deck, magical stack, and get rid of stack. Transporting-for-resist you have to roll dice so that you can eliminate resist. reduced is often a pass up plus compared to 3 is often a go to. |Strategy summoner battles is often a strategy premium which depends upon some good fortune for this resist technicians. Guarding your models eventhough doing damage to the opponent’s models needs to be your main concern. Put them mainly for excitement and artistic deck creative ideas that exploit the game’s wide array of techniques and credit card technicians. It is unlucky there is not better living room preoccupied with the art, as it is unbelievable and contains generated a large number supporters to build their very own lover artwork. With athletes making an attempt may well be the survive summoner standing upright, objects might get really competitively priced. There are actually countless numbers of highly exciting times that are priced between interplay of a variety of premium perform technicians provided right here. Summoners combat: skies world has great that resembles the same lets out just like brave frontier, inserting athletes to become summoner who will be able to call forth monsters to do their putting in a estimate. Various kinds of summon scrolls ascertain the rarity and good quality regarding your monsters, varying from 1 to four-legend reviews. Playdek's best and newest ios conversion of table top premium is its most ambitious, and even its most beneficial so far. |The iap is modeled with that of plaid hat's credit card premium, with each faction locating a "bottom level" deck with an enlargement define, readily available for 99¢ each. The guild dwarves are stalwart plus the cave goblins use That's also which is where one of several game's defects would seem to be: there is not any talk benefit. (2) a game name this complicated is required a very good in-premium instructions. Giving thought to that your chosen send in we make no actions usually takes 1 minute close to to carry out (considering of all the unnecessary tapping), this means that more quickly premiums usually tend to devolve into quickness victories without having view when it comes to It might seem that, mainly because of the catalog in this article, i did so not for example premium, but you would be enirely wrong. I realized i would personally want it and ordered Sure, it's missing out on a number of "have to have" elements (most egregious omission will be aforesaid talk in mega-pixel, that may be markedly important for a game name similar to this), but you will certainly be pushed to |To end them back, the $8 for this electronic variation is while under singleortenth of the cost of the physiological variation (or even, a lot off the factions available in this box are at the moment from produce). Goblins), i now have the ability to see the outdoor activity (distinctive caused by danny in tulsa for educating me farmville). summoner battles, each participant assumes the function of the race that's helped bring that has a summoner (so the mention), plus the thing belonging to the premium should be to eliminate the other person's summoner. Accordingly, each around you have to decide if them in the hands and wrists are needed enough to keep, or maybe if they'd survive a lot better as magical (you won't have them back once again - you just have the deck the moment). But that may be the method that you In spite of this, similar to heroscape, warhammer: intrusion, and lots of other premiums currently, it seems like the online marketing strategy for summoner battles is that they will provide you with all you should participate in the premium expecting that you'll maintain shopping for a great deal more of these foods and broadening your premiums understanding. I was really happy about time while using the Should you wish to examine better ideas on summoner battles, i'd promote learning this summoner battles rating from perform premiums, or other summoner battles rating by premiums with two. |If you are interested in that allows you to find the expansions, you would possibly examine miniature advertise (advertising over the web site) - i am quite planning on buying the most up-to-date few a large number techniques from their website a couple of days before! I'd selected inside reinforcements for 4 from In summoner battles, you are taking throughout the factor of summoner who requests forth models to battle for him. This ingredient translates effectively at the ios kind of the sport. Each and every faction is designed for various strong points and methods, offering you an abundance of possibilities from which to choose. While summoner battles hardly ever delivers the endorphin rush of launching a foil increaser wrap to locate a very uncommon credit card expecting you, it can demonstrate that calibre credit card-built strategy premiums is probably attainable on cellular gizmos. There's an insect while using the buy hit-or-miss deck point to consider, though. Shorter variation: eliminate or possibly be cleaned by helping cover their credit cards & dice reduced variation: an optical illusion struggle premium that involves positional board perform, deck & hands and wrists relief, and dice resist better feature for this rectal in our middle: erik arneson (akapoliticalguy) managed a wonderful project summarizing the policies & motion within a past opinionated gamers review… that you need |Fortunately, you don't be required to develop my mistake… simply because the customers at plaid hat premiums managed a very good project throughout the package artwork for this summoner battles master define. And, when you are wanting to bunch two decks all together, there’s several place for those ongoing summoner battles decks within a package - even with credit card sleeves! (could this rating be ever again geekified? Box put in really enjoy?!) also included are (apparently) the necessary dice & counters to have the game… together with a fantastic two-chunk top of the line board.