Bachofer's Indigo

Fran admired and collected other artist’s work for her home, but also as part of her trove of infinite objects that often made their way into her art. From the mad jumble of countless boxes and bags in her studio came often playful “bricolage” works of beauty, humor and imagination. She taught for many years at the New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, the Newark Museum and was actively teaching until just weeks before her death last year. An award-winning artist, she exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, Victoria and Albert Museum, and in galleries throughout New Jersey. She began her eight-decade career as a fashion designer before moving into painting, printmaking, found art sculpture, book and paper making, and other multi-media arts. Fran studied art at the American School of Fine Arts, Newark School of Fine Arts, and Fairleigh Dickinson University. The works in this exhibition were generously donated by Fran’s family to The 1978 Maplewood Arts Center. Proceeds from all sales will benefit the center as well as public art in the

On viewing her work, I am reminded of the traditional art of quilt making, an art once dismissed as “women’s work” but reevaluated by the Pattern and Decoration movement during the second wave of feminism during the 1970’s. Historically quilt makers have used its qualities to communicate political and social messages. For example, the Abolition quilts made during the US Civil war era were inscribed with messages decrying the evils of slavery. However, Gower uses the repetitions of the motifs and tessellations of quilt making practice to draw attention to the excesses of mass

I went to the Art Walk event in Newberg and stopped by the Art Elements Gallery. I wanted to find a work that calls to me. At first I didn’t find much. The art was nice, but I didn’t get any special feelings on them. Finally, I spotted an oil painting on a wrapped canvas. It was called Full Moon. The work was created by Oregon citizen, Marilyn Higginson. It’s still hard to express what I felt when I saw this painting, but I felt a sense of peace when I saw the tranquil setting of the painting. My aesthetic scanning will give a description of the work, analyze the craftsmanship, the art elements, the art principles, and give my interpretation on the work.

Jasper John’s 1983 artwork of Racing Thoughts and Byron Kim’s 1991 Synecdoche are both in the exhibited as part of the Whitney Museum’s: Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney Collection. Applying encaustic process, which is known as a hot wax painting, Jasper John created this screen-print with wax crayon on collaged cotton and linen. Jasper John describes this piece as a series of images that ran through his mind while he was lying in the bathtub. He included items he saw around the room and things he was thinking about. Some of the elements in this piece are his hanging khaki pants, the running faucet, a nail on the wall, a dirty window, a vase and a decorative piece on a piece of furniture. Until you read the artist’s description it is difficult to tell that the white smear of paint is, evoking a feeling of disorientation. His arrangement of his images is seemingly affixed to the faux-wood grain background with trompe l’oeil tape, thumbtacks, and a protruding nail. The scale of images in Jasper’s Racing Thoughts appears to be scaled to real life. The texture of the painting evokes feeling of an antique surrounding like a bathroom in a third world country. In addition, the colors and patterns in this painting, display how he is a person with many things going through his mind at the same time with unorganized thoughts. A panel of Byron Kim’s, 1991, Synecdoche is displayed in the Whitney Museum one section out of a four hundred panel ongoing project depicting the

At 1st glance this piece does look like a photograph, even a painting, but this series is a work of mixed-media layered one on top of the other in a box. Yet this assemblage of random found objects, with the artists

In this particular Artwork of Ann Hamilton, I notice that she constructs a fabricated environment that was labor intensive and it consist of humans with animals. Most of the Materials used drew my attention. According to Ann Hamilton's website, Hamilton and assistants laid 750,000 copper pennies on a honey-coated floor. Behind the pennies sat an isolated figure in plain clothes, wringing its hands over a honey filled felt hat. And behind the figure was an enclosure of grazing sheep. The pennies looked like the scales of a gigantic fish. Hamilton used a lot of materials in this installation that gives the viewer clues to the meaning of the work. For example, She used pennies; the pennies were laid by hand, by laying out the pennies it looks

Art is experienced best on an emotional level rather than just the beauty, pleasure or understanding of it. Artists will use their form of artwork to pass along their views and feelings. Teresa López’s and Wendy Ewald’s “The Phantom” is a piece of art that invokes many emotions. It simulates both the possibility of comfort or fear of the unknown and the anxious waiting of the known through its immaculate composition. This is done through its use of dense distortion and contrasting colors. Through distortion the artists get us to focus on the phantom that is the only source of light and the contrasting colors make us realize how contrasting our perceptions can be.

The artwork that left me a memorable experience as a viewer and deeply connected to my story is an artwork by Faith Ringgold entitled “Tar beach 2“. This artwork is being display in the SCAD Museum of Art. The Medium of the artwork is silkscreen on cotton, in a form of a quilt. Ringgold herself is a very influential black female artist that addresses racial issue in her artworks. The tar beach is a story quilt that tells a story of an 8 years old girl name Cassie that live in the city of Harlem, New York City.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, an American artist, and designer, was born in New York City in 1843. Tiffany, the son of Charles, who was the founder of the jewelry firm “Tiffany and Co.,” began his career as a painter and then expanded to design and direct his studios in order to “produce lead-glass windows, mosaics, lighting, glass, pottery, metalwork, enamels, glass, pottery, jewelry, and interiors” (“Louis Comfort Tiffany Stained Glass Art”; Frelinghuysen and Obniski). Beginning in the late 1870’s the decorative arts and interiors caught Tiffany’s eyes and he began exploring and trialing with stained glass (Frelinghuysen and Obniski). As years passed he introduced blown-glass vases and bowls called “Favrile.” The

The artist I received is Agnes Martin. When I first looked at her work I found it boring. Most of her art was just colors on the page; like her painting Night Sea (1963). Night Sea is a dark blue on a canvas that if you look closely may appear to be a lighter shade of blue in the bottom right corner. I thought “Is that all? It’s just the color blue. I could look at a colored pencil and see that.” I wrote her off as boring an uninspired without even looking at any of her other paintings. I also assumed she painted for money, not enjoyment.

Another example artist is Kristy Whitlock; a textile artist based in Hampshire, UK who produces limited edition and one-off textile artworks. Her tactile, graphic, and powerful embroidery has become her signature along with upeycling discarded household items for her canvases. While using traditional techniques of stitching, her work brings into question our modern day hunger for mixing imagery and message, akin to Internet memes and Creative Commons remixing. Kristy uses her experimental embroidery to explore how textiles can be concerned with and comment on contemporary issues and affairs. In a world that is increasingly filled with altered and derivative works, Kristy makes topical statements with her visual mash-ups of current affairs, embroidery, and the paper ephemera of modern consumer life. Holmes (2015) wrote and interviewed Kristy Whitlock in ‘Stitch Stories book’; in Kristy Whitlock statement, she has said that your work “ pushes the boundaries of embroidery

She further analyzed many artworks based on the process of toning. Though some artists paint with one layer, those that paint with multiple layers enhances the objects in the painting. The color that appears on the surface underwent multiple shades in order to obtain the desirable color. After analyzing Ship Carpenter at His Hobby, 1872, Helena’s second group approached the artwork Women Embroidering, 1904. Two differences I distinguished from the comparison of these two artworks are the time period as well as the visual context. I had paid less attention to the story behind this portrait because there was less detail. Women Embroidery, though looked unique because of its lack of details (which could have been intentional), did not have much space. Helena described it as “flat.” She infers that as time period increases, artists were becoming more focused on flatness, painting on the surface and ignoring the layers of tone and landscape space. Another artwork that we analyzed was the Back Surgery. Dating back to the 1600s, this portrait was created with underpaintings and a few touch ups. It could be inferred that the artist intended to leave the underpainting in order to bring out the procedure. On the surface lies a realistic, colored curtain that seemed to have been drawn by the audience, and staring straight at the artist/audience was the patient. With these observations, I

In front of the SCAD Museum of Art it represents “A Poem in the form of flowers”. The exhibition is by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt. Each of the four jewel boxes represents the word poem with artificial flowers spelling the word “poem”. They both also did something similar in Miami airport using peace and love. The color scheme they used is analogous colors which means different colors sit next to each other on the color wheel. Behar and Marquardt used colors such as red, red-orange, orange and red-violet. For the background they used the color of the sky in savannah so that they will pop out. I noticed how there was one flower that was blue which was a good idea to make it stand out it contrast with the blue background. Since the

The art world has been host to a vast menagerie of talent, intellect, and creativity for about as long as human culture has existed. It has grown, developed, and changed just as humanity has. Naturally, with such an impressively expansive history, various avenues of art are visited time and time again by new artists. Artists seek not only to bring their own personal flavor and meaning to timeless concepts, but to find new ways to approach them. While not every single creator and craftsman can make such a great impact on art or the world, their efforts have given birth to some truly magnificent and unique works. In an effort to create a more meaningful understanding, as well a deeper appreciation, of the nuances, techniques, and design choices employed in these attempts, a comparison will be made between Edouard Vuillard’s Interior With a Screen (1909-1910) and Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) (1907). In this essay, each artist’s approach to the subject of the female nude will be closely analyzed, compared, and contrasted, as will their styles of painting, handling of visual elements, and their use of the principles of design. An interpretation of each work and what the artist intended when creating it will also be provided.

Art is all around us. There are many different forms of art. It can be something created, captured, or it can be already existent. Not a single person is to say what makes something art because there is a different definition for everyone. However, there are a couple factors that come into mind whenever someone decides to declare something as art. In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting four different pieces of art. I will be discussing each art piece’s form, time period of creation, intention or purpose, and value. These four pieces of art are Michelangelo’s Pieta, Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko’s No.61, and the “Oyster Dress” by Alexander McQueen. These works of art come in all different shapes and sizes but they are valued