Two Words from a Greek Painter

Yanna Brouzou is a talented Greek painter. She is also a member of my Yahoo Group. She said me: I am a classical painter (I do sculpture as well) and I am in search of a manager. There is no such thing over here! But that is all I need, you see artists usually are terrible sales people.

How many times I heard similar words… it is the typical condition of the artist, between two worlds, sometimes unable to reach completely one of them.

I paint as they used to paint. I do not use electronic tools, it is just me and my painting.

Yanna is a traditional painter, she sent me a portrait and an ink sketch (high resolution images, download to your desktop and notice the details). Beautiful samples! We have to help her! Send her a message to congratulate and to tell her your ideas about how we could promote her. You can leave also a comment here.

And now, read her words, her two words… about painting, Art and being artists.

Two Words from a Greek Painter

All I am attempting by these few words is to give you a true picture … of classical art, something almost obsolete and misinterpreted, but the little existing today is truly magical.

So let’s start from the beginning of time, when the artist in the caveman society was something like a magus. In those days, the dawn of men, instincts were unspoiled and true. These primitive people were in touch with the Universal Order of Things and they approved of any link that would uplift them. This uplifting is the reason of our evolution after all.

We should analyze what exactly is done by a classical painter/artist. We should analyze what it means to have inspiration, or to be vague of the environment while working, or why we think that it is quite normal for a classical painter/artist to be a little strange, hard to comprehend, but liked…

Well, it is quite simple really, you see these people live standing upon two worlds at the same time, one foot on one and the other on the other. I know this sounds ridicules, but follow me for a little longer, and think of your reaction when you visit an Art Museum. If you have not then do it, because if taken as it should it is a priceless experience.

Now let yourself free, and fall into the pictures. It may be a sunset, a clear day near the water, or the most moving of all a person feeling and transferring to you these feelings through time, always inspiring you to see something you may never have felt before, or to join you with something you are feeling.

This world of feelings is exclusive and by invitation only, invitation by the artist, and exclusive to the ones who are able to feel. You see this world belongs to higher frequencies and the artist is the link, the vehicle that can take you there, where the Universal Status of Things exist, where there is all we call transcendental, where you are inspired, uplifted and able to contact all and everyone you want.

That is all really, the artist is only a link in the chain, connecting transcendental with what you see around you. That is all… but, when you can see the transcendental then perhaps you can comprehend your world a little better.

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Artwork Displayed in Unusual Places

Joyce Boncal wrote this exclusive article for us.

Artwork Displayed in Unusual Places

If you’re young, budding artist, hoping to be discovered, where can you display your artwork? There is always your own web page but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you can afford to advertise that web page. This very web environment, ManuelMarino.com, is a good starting place. You might try your local library. Some libraries show works of art by local artists but are sure to ask if they also sell artwork on commission.

Also consider entering your work at a country fair or displaying your work in offices and restaurants. Contact your area art league for their ideas about local opportunities. If you’re a student at a college, most have yearly art shows. Then there are craft consignment shops selling everything from jewelry to framed photographs.

How about a local laundromat? Wait, before you laugh, think of the high volume of traffic a laundromat gets. I’m thinking of a local laundromat that is a cafe, laundry center, and entertainment hub called Spin Cycle Cafe Laundromat in Newington, CT. In addition to people coming in to do laundry, you have people coming in to eat, people coming in to watch a movie, etc. all the while your painting, photograph, or sketch is hanging on the wall for all the world to see.

At Spin Cycle, on the wall, are several paintings and pieces of art. One captivating piece of work was created by an artist named Lindsey Behrens. It’s a silkscreen piece of artwork where she used two different woodcuts to get the desired effect. The background is the earth as seen from outerspace and the foreground is a caveman in a flying saucer flying over the earth. There is something mesmerizing about this piece of artwork so I wasn’t surprised when I learned that it sold for $210.00.

I called Lindsey to learn about her art education. She studied art in college and gets her art inspiration from her young son and the outdoor environment around her. She heard about displaying artwork at Spin Cyle simply by word of mouth. She recommends young artists try to display their work at art shows, frame shops, galleries, art events, and, of course laundromats.

You just never know where your art talent might be discovered.

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Art, Communication, Connectivity

Michael Marcus (also known as “Jacques Treatment”) is a published author, poet, artist, and game designer; with George McVey, he has been publishing comics as “The Hamtramck Idea Men” on the very sensible grounds that they live in Hamtramck, have many ideas, and they are men. Joint work can be found at http://idea-men.us while his earlier work sits at http://www.treatmentlabs.com.

Art, Communication, Connectivity

When first approached by Manuel Marino to write an article, I found myself excited in the extreme — first, because I had been noticed in the vast sea of high-noise/low-signal called the Internet as someone worth approaching, and second, because it would be an opportunity to promote the work that George McVey and I were doing with our comic books, games, t-shirts, and other fine arts, and third, because it would give me an opportunity to vent about the apparent lack of creativity in the comics biz and why we are producing the finest comic books in the field. Then, when I sat down to write, I thought I would write about my own particular love of game design and how it mixes the art (and in some cases, storytelling) with what is essentially a mathematical process to produce something attractive and entertaining without giving one player or another an inherent advantage. In the end, however, as passionate as I am about both subjects, attempts at writing the articles proved dry to any but the most familiar of audiences, and the last thing I wanted to do is bore people. Instead, the subject that came to mind is the one behind everything I do: communication.

Communication is inherent, even if it is nearly forgotten, in almost every work of art. Whether it is the artist communicating an idea to the canvas or, eventually, to an audience by means of the canvas, the interaction spawned by the processes of a good game, the telling of stories by a good book or comic book, or the conveyance of mood and message by a good song or other musical piece, it is the very fact THAT there is signal being transferred and translated that often gets lost. Whereas Marshall McLuhan may have said, “The medium is the message,” I would hold instead that it provides a context wherein meaning is derived — while a book may describe an experience, for example, a comic book or film may share the same experience more clearly, but the same message carries differently with the immediacy of dramatic theater, wherein the wall of the participants and the audience can find itself weakened or even torn down by force.

What, then, of surrealist work, or work done by surrealist means, wherein chance plays the greater part in creating the artifice than does a preconceived message? That depends on the type of work being attempted, whether it is to provoke a sense of whimsy or provide an initiation into an otherworldly space, whether it challenges the audience to “fill in the blanks” through a sense of mystery or negative space, or whether it encourages the reader to follow along with the author’s thought processes and achieve a similar critical or rational context along the same lines as the author. Where automatic writing encourages the latter, for example, Gysin’s “cut-ups” (wherein the pages of a written piece are quartered and refitted before publication) invite the reader to “connect the dots” and reassemble meaning, providing a disorienting challenge to the mind in the process. It is in this way that the surrealist confronts his or her audience with a work of art that engages the human tendency to attempt to make order from chaos, when the primary meaning is in the confrontation itself (and the secondary meaning is in the absurdity, whimsicality, or atonal nature of the process).

This, then, illuminates why I design games, write prose, paint, and create other things the way I do: They provide a context by which I might share an experience, or, more likely, the effect that something that I have experienced has had upon me. This is why I find that the most successful works that I have done are not necessarily those which I have created in a state of inspiration as much as those where I have had more of a dialog with the medium of the communication itself–that is to say, the pieces that seem to communicate best to the people who experience them, whether by being viewed (in the case of visual arts) or being played (in the case of a game), are the ones where I studied the piece itself as it proceeded, even if the result has less craftsmanship or less of my personal interest in the piece itself. For example, in my portion of the Hamtramck Idea Men art gallery the piece that has the most meaning for me is “Augmentation of Chaos,” which is gives chaos a “face” based on its connotations to me. The one, however, that seems to garner the most favorable interest is “Frustrated Joy,” which came to that title based both on the color scheme (the “Joy” in question) and how much it failed, at every step of creation, to become anything like my visualization and plan for the piece. It is as if the piece radiates my energy through the process of creation despite the fact that it has the least meaning for me.

If there is one thing that I have noticed with the advent of technology, it is that more and more experience come without the direct interaction of two people; the computer becomes an intermediary in most communication; this is true even in chat-rooms, where the users’ ability to edit what they say (at the very least, since some adopt alternate personae that they role-play) changes the nature of the exchange. Similarly, analog photographs lose some of their resolution (and with the advent of PhotoShop, still more of their original content), brush strokes lose some of the wondrous elements of their textures, and even digital sampling loses some of the fidelity of sound quality (even the best sample fails to be perfect). This is why, when I designed Gamer’s Dozen, I desperately wanted to create a set of games that anyone could play, face-to-face, at any skill level, with nigh-infinite replayability. I wanted something that facilitated communication and interaction between people without computer interfaces in the way. That, then, would have to be the source of my desire to create–to make a connection with the outside world, something that tends to be rather difficult these days.

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The Elegance of the Art

Doug Stahnke is a sculptor. And this is a wonderful exclusive article he wrote for us.

The Elegance of the Art

Let me begin by first defining some terms as I apply them:

talent – I think there is a simple truth here. You were either born with it or you weren’t. But talent comes in many varieties and categories. Many people have talents they haven’t discovered; or they have discovered them but choose not to pursue them. I believe everybody has some sort of talent. It could be painting, drawing, or sculpting. It could be singing, playing musical instruments, or having a special sense of rhythm. It could be cooking, designing fashions or in architecture. It could be in writing, film making, dramatic acting, comedy or magic. It could be one’s business acumen in financial management, marketing, design engineering or in leading a workforce. It could be very clearly in your dreams. This list could go on ad nausea.

passion – The drive to start, pursue and complete your next creation. An Artist without passion is a hacker.

hacker – One who is experimenting or exploring in an attempt to discover and develop one’s talents. If one’s initial experiment is critiqued as having even a modicum of beauty by even one reviewer, passion may start to grow. The downside is hackers can be very critical of their own work, which can kill their passion. This, in turn, may cause the hacker to bury his talents. Some hackers may create a work and then trash it, showing it to no one.

beauty – Is in the eye of the beholder? Many creations, even though the Artist has completed his work, start out ugly. The work can be transformed into one of beauty when just one person openly opines and says, “Now isn’t that a work of beauty!” If those folks who sloughed it off overheard this comment, they will likely take a second look, another taste, or even ask to hear it again. Then, hopefully a second person will soon chime, “I like it!”, with others hearing the appreciative praise. Then three, four, and five, etc., will follow in the appreciative. A work of Art can be transformed from ugly to beautiful starting with one simple, favorable opinion.

ugly – The reciprocal or opposite of beauty. One unfavorable opinion, openly stated, can negatively influence the acceptance of one’s work in a larger group. This can happen and carry many other opinions down with it.

Artist – One who creates something, with at least a modicum of passion, and asks someone else, “Well, what do you think?”

critical acclaim – The one person who stated your work had beauty, influenced another to pay money for your creation, while you were still alive. How frequently can you repeat such action? I don’t ever recall meeting an Artist who wished to reach critical acclaim only after they were dead.

media – Whatever stuff the Artist decides to use to create his work.

The Elegance of My Art

I am basically a sculptor. The roots of my talent go back to my childhood. I always liked to make something or build something. If someone else made something, I liked to take it apart to see how he did it. My current work is to sculpt crafts and pieces of furniture; write about what I’ve sculpted, illustrate it, make it into a “Set of Plans”, then sell the Plans through my Website. I call them ePlanSets. I want to have many people, all over the world, build, or sculpt my projects for their own enjoyment, just like I do.

Do I have any passion? It’s either that, or I am just plain nuts. My media is Plastic Pipe and Plastic Pipe Fittings. You know like PVC or ABS Plastic. It’s actually quite an easy media with which to work… for instance it’s much easier than working with wood. All of my designs are totally elegant. You can clearly see the elegance in my Table CenterPiece, my Candle Holders, the furniture in my Master Bedroom Suite, as well as many others.

One of my favorite, critically acclaimed sculptors is Michelangelo. I know, he was also a painter, an engineer and an architect, too. He would often consider himself a hacker because he was so dissatisfied with his work. I remember hearing a Michelangelo quote about his Angel sculpture, “I could see the Angel in the stone. All I had to do was chip away what didn’t belong to her!” Of course, Michelangelo works have all reached quite an enviable level of critical acclaim… even before he died.

Following the magic of Michelangelo, I frequently go to the plastic pipe fittings section, of the plumbing department, in my favorite home improvement store. There, I hold up some fittings, starting with like maybe a toilet flange, and very quietly say to myself, “I can see a lamp!” Or maybe, “I can see a Candle Holder!”

I am still waiting for my own Critical Acclaim to grow. So, what do you think?

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