S+ART

Open Studio Fridays at the National Portrait Gallery

Open Studio sign. Photograph by Jen Schiller.

One of the most relaxed, convenient, and fun ways to connect with art at the Smithsonian is the Open Studio Fridays at the National Portrait Gallery. The free event takes place every Friday from 1-4pm and gives museum goers the opportunity to make art without the pressures of registrations, deadlines, or supplies expense. The experimental, low-key environment enhances the public’s interaction with the museum and allows anyone to become an artist. Participants can create a lasting artwork with as little or as much instruction as they desire, while they relax and spend quality family time.

I sat in on this week’s session and was delighted with the enthusiasm of the participants and the popularity of the event. Multiple families participated, including children ages 3-12, and the easygoing and encouraging atmosphere persuaded even the kids and parents most hesitant about “becoming an artist” to pick up an oil pastel and try their hand at it. Understandably, it is easy to appreciate the work of great artists but nerve-racking to reverse the role and produce one’s own work, especially if you have grown up believing you are not an artist. One young boy proclaimed he was “not a very good artist,” and I watched as the instructor gently and successfully changed his mind: “Do you play a sport?” she asked him. “Drawing is not magic. It’s the same as practicing a sport. Some people just need a lot less practice, which makes it look like magic.” The boy relaxed, and eventually the tables quieted as the children – and parents – released their inhibitions and became absorbed by their work.

Dry media supplied for class. Photograph by Jen Schiller.

Because the artists rotate in leading the program each week, participants can expect different materials and teaching styles to ensure a new experience. Today artist Holly Solano, an NPG Weekend Gallery Educator, favored charcoal and oil pastel. The familiar medium’s pliability and sharp contrast was a hit with the children, who also learned about new tools like the tortillon or “blender,” a stick of rolled paper used to soften harsh lines. Even toddlers enjoyed the experience of line making with charcoal on “toothed” paper. 

“Kids and adults get shy about art,” said NPG Youth & Family Program Coordinator Geri Provost Lyons. “But this program is a great way for them to think outside the box and do things that they wouldn’t normally do.”

Open Studio Fridays at the National Portrait Gallery is not just about making portraits (while the plentiful hand mirrors allow for this).  I recommend everyone take a moment out of their busy schedules to relax, express themselves, and enjoy the many benefits of art offered by Open Studio Friday this upcoming week.

Open Studio Fridays repeats most Fridays through December 21^st at the Education Center, Room E151.

Check out more fun and free drop-in events like the Portrait Story Days on Saturday and Sunday.

-Jen Schiller

Be a part of the 2012 Folklife Festival

       

Demonstration of Peace Corps mud cloths, Photo from 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Themes in 2011 Festival included: Colombia, Peace Corps, and Rhythm and Blues.

 

Celebrating 46 years, the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival is bringing traditional performances, live music, authentic cuisine, crafts, story tellers and more from various communities and cultures to the National Mall (beginning on Wednesday, June 27- Sunday, July 1 and Wednesday, July 4 - Monday, July 8).  

What is this festival, you ask?

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is a national and international exhibition of living cultural heritage, treasured and celebrated annually on the National Mall, taking place for two weeks every summer. Nearly every festival has drawn more than one million visitors. One great perk of the festival, is the free admission! The festival is typically organized into three focuses, featuring a nation, region, state, or theme. This year’s programs include three diverse ranges of cultural experiences:

Citified: Arts and Creativity East of the Anacostia River:

Presented in partnership with the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum, the program celebrates the art and creativity of schools, churches, community organizations, business and other residential and local venues of the neighborhoods in Anacostia. Identity is expressed through an eclectic range of arts and cultural activities, such as African dancing and drumming, storytellers, hip-hop dancing, comedians, demonstrations of tattoo art and much more!

 

AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall

 

Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding the AIDS Memorial Quilt:

This year marks the 25^th anniversary of The AIDS Memorial Quilt and 30 years of life with AIDS. This year’s program features the unfolding of the 47,000 hand-sewn panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, craft demonstrations, dance and musical performances, interactive discussions, and other activities that bring together individual and communities to remember loved ones. The quilt will be on display on the National Mall and at more than 40 other locations from July 21-25.

Campus and Community:

This year’s Folklife Festival celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the founding of land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which partners with communities putting research into action in the areas of agriculture and food, health care, sustainable living, and education. The events featured include hands-on activities, demonstrations, and discussions.

For more general info on the festival and to learn about past festivals go to:

http://www.festival.si.edu/visitor/general.aspx

http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/FolklifeFest.htm

Enjoy!

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 ~Margaret McClung

Taking notes

 

Picture is Unrelated:  Kayakers on the Potomac River on a hot day.  Photo by Angela Kleis, 2009

 

I cleaned over the weekend and put away a few notebooks and pads of paper that were taking up space on my desk.  Last night, I spent over an hour looking for the one that contained data I needed to develop film.  I finally found it on a bookshelf, of all places (why didn't I look there first?).  But, I couldn't get started without it.

 

Maybe it's my ingrained thanks to my science background, but I tend to take notes and keep a pretty meticulous notebook on all the types of film and developer combinations I've processed.  It helps me understand which types of films can be combined in one tank with the same developer, which ones should never, ever be put together, and if a particular developer is not a good match for a specific film.  Sometimes there are temperature issues and those are logged, too, as well small details I may notice and think will be helpful in the future (some if it is also online). 

 

I have a second notebook for printing that catalogs the negative number, type of paper, which filters I tried (and, which one worked best), time, aperture, and any dodging and burning that was performed.  Though printing is not an automatic process and may vary based on paper and chemical lots and other things I can't necessarily control, it provides a starting point that saves time and materials (and, frustration).  I like consistency and standardizing my methods helps me make sure that the results will be as close as possible to those I have obtained in the past, even with all of the inherent variables throughout the processes.  

 

There are notebooks or pads of paper in each of my camera bags that are useful for logging the film number (there is also a Sharpie in every bag) so when I am looking at an overwhelming pile of film canisters that need processing and want to develop a specific one, I can easily find it.  I have found this process very useful when travelling to note the date, city, places visited, if pushed or pulled the ISO.  These details not only help me locate a roll of undeveloped film, but also to remind me of the places I went.  After all, how many piazzas and fountains are there in Rome?  It's impossible to know.

 

It may seem like information overload or tedious details that most people are able to remember, but I feel it's better to be prepared and save time later by taking a few minutes to write it down, now.  What kinds of methods do you use to document photographic information?  Please let us know in the comments!!

                                                         -Angela

The American History Museum’s The American Presidency Exhibit from an Artists Point of View

Photo by Griffin Baker

I recently made my way to the American History Museum to check out The American Presidency exhibition. Many people, including myself, who have visited Washington DC, have seen this section in the American History Museum but every time I have gone I have noticed something that I had not before. On my recent visit, I decided to concentrate on the propaganda surrounding the presidency such as cartoons and campaign collateral.

I found the exhibition through this specific lens to be quite interesting. There was a showcase with collateral used during the Ronald Reagan campaign including such memorabilia as bumper stickers that said “I love Ronnie.” I found this campaign strategy to be interesting because it displayed that he wanted to be portrayed as someone you would have a nickname for, like a friend. I also noticed that many pictures used in the collateral surrounding the various presidents tended to be taken from the viewpoint that you are looking upwards at them. This is most likely to create feelings of admiration towards the potential president.  Another section within the exhibition displayed posters intended to rally citizens to vote. These posters used a combination of text and images to bring citizen into voting booths but what I found to be interesting were the ways they went about doing it. Some posters inspired voting while others scorned you for even thinking about not voting. One poster said “If you don’t vote you don’t count.” This poster did not have an image to go along with it but it was unnecessary due to the fact that those strong words really tend to stick with you by implying that non-voters are somehow unimportant. The posters and memorabilia within the exhibition were really interesting to see, especially when viewing it with a critical eye.

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~Griffin Baker

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Art: Sculpture Garden Style!

 

What If all building types were the same design, all sidewalks were identical and all transitional spaces barren with simple landscape? If there was life “without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable;” (George Bernard Shaw) daily interaction with the surrounding world would be repetitive and dull. 

Sculpture is one form of art that dispels repetitiveness and adds shapes to open space. Furthermore, it is created by direct hands-on interaction in a perspective seen in the space it will consume. Sculpture can be categorized as any three-dimensional object with a message in real space. Sculpture is processed in real time and real spaces through multiple views and perspectives; all of these views are in-sync with each other to create a unified composition.

Public art, specifically public sculpture is art uniquely set in a commissioned public outdoor space. Its shape and direct accessibility to its audience in an open forum enable the art forms to come to life while its dimensionality makes it a medium of functionality. A piece of sculpture’s function is unfolded once placed in agreement to the surrounding site, space and place while a symbiotic relationship is formed with the surrounding space (accentuating the piece) while the piece highlights the space of a site. Sculpture is brought to life when unified with its design while being integrated with the surrounding architecture and landscape. In addition, the interaction with the viewer enhances the piece and is incorporated in its conceptual design. Check out some public sculpture near you!

Wish Tree, Photo by Brandon Springer
 

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Smithsonian’s own sculpture garden is situated in between the Washington Monument and the Capital Building on the National Mall. This urban park is a bi-level recessed garden including more than 60 sculptured works including Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree. The emphasis is centered on the pieces of art. The aggregate walls and floor converge into divisions of minimal natural landscape creating separate focal points that accentuate each piece as a spectator moves in and out of spaces.

Other Sculpture Gardens in Washington, D.C.:

National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden

Kreeger Museum Sculpture Garden

 

~Matt Weiler

Double Exposure: Collaboration Project

My intention was to continue last week's discussion in this week's post, but I got stuck and couldn't get my words to make sense.  Sometimes this happens.  I'll continue to work on it and post in the near future.

In the meantime, I wanted to give you film-shooters a cool idea to try out.  You may be familiar with multiple-exposure shots using some of the manual, low-tech cameras that are pretty popular right now.  A  friend took this step a little further a few years ago and see what happens when two different people combine their own images.  His idea was to shoot a roll of film, rewind it leaving the leader outside the canister, and trade off with another photographer who would expose that same same film with their own photos.  The results are very random and very cool multiple exposures.  It started with a small group of local photo-friends and expanded world-wide.

 
Some of my own favorite collaborative photos include this one traded locally with Jennifer Wade, this one mailed from Eric Petersen in Minnesota, and this one sent all the way from Spain by Jessica L.  As you can see, the photos are multiple-exposed and completely random combinations of shots taken by two different people.  For more examples of this process, check out the Flickr group that Scott started: Collaborative Film Society of DC.

  Attached Photo:  Photo by Jennifer Wade and Angela Kleis, Verizon Center and Thomas Jefferson/Library of Congress

  If this is something you'd like to try, find a photographer-friend and each shoot a roll of film.  Rewind the film so the leader edge remains outside of the canister so it can be reloaded into a camera.  You may need to use a manual camera to control the rewind process unless you can figure out how to rewind your film by hand in an automatic camera (I wasn't able to do that).  Alternatively, if you roll your own film and have reusable canisters, just transfer the exposed film to the new canister inside of a changing bag.  If you run into issues with this, post in the pool's discussion board and someone will be able to provide some helpful suggestions.  Once you've both shot your film, TRADE!  Shoot it up and see what you get. 

 

-Angela

Turn On the Action: How to Create Part II

 

Sometimes the hardest obstacle to overcome is our own mind and thoughts. Disbelief before action is way too common. Stop thinking, be proactive and “just create.”

"The important thing is to keep producing. All artists have that quality. You have to be tenacious."- Mary Frank

After my last post, “You Mean They Forget?” How to Create Again, I wanted to prove that a creative image or concept could be formed based on the system I described using simple one-word descriptions. I ended the piece with the words “just create.” The line was more inspirational to me than I could have anticipated; I felt compelled to expand on the words from the list. The descriptive words rattled around a bit before I put pen to paper. Words flowed and an idea and image emerged- some poetic verses were written first and a digital collage was its product! Typically I would transform the collage into a painting or drawing to further enhance its authenticity, but this step helps in the conceptual stage of creation.  

Digital Collage by Matt Weiler

Week of Beach

Shades of yellow merge to gray, then to blue.

In the reflection of multicolored eyes,

shapes wash off grains of names and meaning

while moisture disappears leaving a briny taste,

mostly dreaming in the sky, alive.

 

Repeating cycles hold smiles in accelerated motion.

Perpetual white dew drops screen the skin

and melt together under rays of positivity.

Timeless laughs and happiness roll like liquid waves upon all hearts

under dusk’s falling gaze,

Today is the day, I live to create.

 

~Matt Weiler

Survey Results: So Far

Photograph by Pat Padua using Instagram on his iPhone

 

We're going to keep the Mobile Phone Camera Survey open for a few more days.  So far, iPhone users prefer Hipstamatic while Android owners turn to Vignette as their camera apps.  iPhone also beats out Android by nearly 2:1 and an overwhelming majority of poll-takers share scenes of their lives with others using the camera straight-up without any downloaded photo-editing application.

If you haven't already taken the survey, please take a little break and answer a few questions - it won't take more than a couple of minutes, promise!  Feel free to go into more detail using the comments box in the last question. 

We'll crunch the data and have some graphs and a more in-depth look at the top camera apps for you next week.

 

-Angela

“You Mean They Forget?” How to Create Again

 

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work.  I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw.  She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"  ~Howard Ikemoto

 

Are we quick to forget our first pieces of art? In sudden outbursts of crayon, marker and pencil, art flew to paper. Children’s emotional abstract pieces of multicolored lines in combination with the occasional finger-painted piece are hung up on refrigerators and walls in households worldwide.

Everyone was once a child- free and wild with feelings and emotions. Words were almost meaningless and hardly existed in terms of communication.  Everyone conveyed their individual expression by drawing in images of thoughts and feelings; whatever came to mind was put on paper.

As we age, emotion, inspiration and feelings become harder to transmit. Physically transmitting an inspirational thought into a physical representation is the most difficult aspect for those who continue pursuing art in any form of media.  

 

In this segment, practice creating a composition through a list of compiled descriptive words. These words can be any combination of emotion, feeling, thought, or image in relation to the topic(s). No matter which media is used, the process can be the same.

For example: I wish to write and draw about the “ocean.”

Words that come to mind immediately when the topic “ocean” is to be described or illustrated:

“Shades of blue”;“shades of yellow”;’“shades of orange”; persistence; timeless; motion; love; desire; happiness; heat; grains; skin; scratches; oily; “white lotion”; smiles; reflections; tan; rays; shade; liquid; waves; current; energy; sleep; eyes; “dew drops”; moisture; salt; sweat; aluminum; “red and blue plastic coolers”;  “bathing suit shapes”; curls; boards; moonlight; wind; grass blades; “ocean smell”; vibrant; alcohol; relaxation; breeze; touch; fear; rush; acceleration.

Take one word that explodes off the page and elaborate on the inspirational thought. If writing, drawing or painting-make a rough draft or sketch as quickly as possible (no thoughts included just action) Once the idea crystallizes in your mind and pushes you in a direction, slowly elaborate by adding other words, one at a time, until a message, feeling or thought is conveyed. Finally, formulate a finished piece by putting the components together like a puzzle until it makes sense. Be a child and don’t forget how to draw- Just create!

 

~Matt Weiler

Transforming Color Theory into Sustainable Garden Art

Focal Point of Hot Hues

Washington Post, Photo By Kay Wheeler
 

Imagine having the control to create layouts, plans or designs that interweave your home environment, landscape, architecture and art. How can you make your home more environmentally friendly while creating an artistic composition? How can you turn this into a productive activity or hobby? Using the color theory and color mixing principles rooted in painting, a DIY project can transform art principles into a spatial composition integrating plant shapes, textures and masses of color to create an artistic landscape design or space.

The canvas you’ll be working with: Natural outdoor spaces. The importance of re-using these spaces and resources is found in sustainability. Sustainability as defined by the EPA:  “everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment.” Now, take a breath and take back what is rightfully yours! However small or large- diagram land and spaces that can be transformed into planting areas. Once grounded by artistic fundamentals, this project will enrich mental and physical health, as well as provide an eco-friendly habitat; it’s so easy and enjoyable even a child can help form ideas!

Artistic requirements: knowledge of color theory and color mixing. In painting, the knowledge of color theory and mixing colors is essential. Combinations of colors are created and paired through relationships on the color wheel between primary, secondary and complementary colors. In most painting color models, primary colors (Red-Yellow-Blue) create secondary colors (Green-orange-purple) then complementary colors are found in pairing opposites in the same color model.   

Color Wheel

Color Theory Turned Design. A famous landscape designer named Gertrude Jekyll used these principles derived from her years painting to create designs through plant arrangements. She viewed her garden design as a series of seasoned views intertwined with the cycles and change of year.  In her design, she applies colors, shapes, textures, and architectural features of different plant forms to create spaces and unify a composition.

Using sequences of colors and textures, Jekyll defines spaces and creates movement and flow. Based on relationships on the color wheel, single plant varieties are used to construct complimentary and contrasting color pairs. As with paintings, colors of different plant forms are combined to create positive and negative space.

Perspective of the viewer is the key to these designs. Depth and openness of space is achieved by using cooler colors such as blue and purple to create a composition that is inviting to enter or access.  In contrast, warm and radiant colors like orange and yellow are intended to confine space and force the viewer to stare and gaze.

A Cool Palette of Brush-like Strokes

Perennial garden at Wave Hill in June. Photo By Mick Hales

Example of plant arrangement in design: Typically Jekyll’s designs are completed with woody paths and grassy areas merged together with woody spaces creating multiple framed views of natural scenery. In the sequence of color relationships, she begins with a cooling composition, heats it up with bright hues then cools it off again with darker hues. Adrian Higgins describes one of Jekyll’s gardens as it begins with “perennials full of soothing gray and blue-green foliage, with blossoms beginning pure blue, gray blue, white, pale yellow and pale pink, ‘each color in distinct masses and partly inter-grouped.’In the center, she planted stronger yellows to set up a sizzling color scheme of oranges and reds before beginning to cool off. The flower colors recede from orange to deep yellow to pale yellow and pale pink, bridged with blue-gray foliage, before ending in purples and lilacs in contrast with the blues at the other end.”

Become your own designer: Keeping in mind the time and effort you are able to put forth; Apply a foundation of color theory and color mixing principles and basic fundamentals.  Mark off space and start planting arrangements based on their relationship to the color wheel!

 

~Matt Weiler

 

Higgins, Adrian. "A Painterly Palette Is the Gardener's Crowning Touch." The Washington Post 20                  Mar. 2008.<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR200803190095 2.html>