Tag: hendricks

Every Work of Art

“Every work of art is a culturescape of you, your memories, the moments you spent working, your hopes, energies, and neuroses, the times you live in, and your ambitions. Of the things that are engaging, mysterious, meaningful, resistant over time.”
― Jerry Saltz, How to Be an Artist

Digitally enhanced image, Hendrick©2022

Finally, I got a gallery set up. I have to explore more because I am still determining if the plug-in NextGen Gallery is worth it.

I am reading Jerry Saltz’s book—Art is Life. I like it. He is very entertaining. I am unsure if I like him, but he speaks his mind. He seems to have compassion too. So I guess I do. But he would be a challenge, I think.

Loved his story of himself laying down the idea of being an artist. He speaks of creating art… akin to meditation and communing with the unknown. His question about … Is There Great Art on Instagram? I appreciated that he seemed to honor all the artists working… discovering… exploring… and most of all, creating art as an unknown but still creating. 

Then this article/chapter—Iconoclasm Now: Charlie Hebdo and the Lethal Power of Art. That chapter was a show-stopper for me; as a Quaker and even as a young man, I believed that what I created on paper, sculpted, and images I made, I breathed life into the work. So whether it is seen or unseen, it has life cause it was/is a part of me. He didn’t go there exactly, but when he spoke about the image breakers that believed the images that “the thing itself and, as made not by God, they contain demonic spirits.” So I identified with that some people believe similarly about an image as I do—the demonic bit … not so much. But as a Quaker, there is the “Light of God” within the work. 

The short of it, I am learning a lot, and Mr. Saltz’s book is good. It is approachable and entertaining.  

Creation or Construction

 

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. 

G.K. Chesterton’s “Are You Creating or Constructing?”
Tumult, Mixed Media, Hendricks ©2021

This article came to me through a friend on LinkedIn that I respect very much, Chris Zuege. The article is by Robert Rose. Chris posts on LinkedIn often, and I always find his posts enlightening.  This resonated with me because the work I do is very off the cuff.  I often wonder as I am working and when it is done. Am I the tool or the creator? For me, this quote and article gave me an answer. I am the tool, and what I create was loved before it existed. 

I know it has been quite a while since I posted to this blog. The truth is that I was off learning. I studied color… read philosophy… learned more about  3D digital art. I will be posting more regularly again.  

Today’s post was important to me. First, to wish everyone a great holiday and an even more fabulous new year and then share my last drawing of 2021.  Its title is Tumult. It fits for 2021. 

Frustration Builds …

A bit frustrated because I have been so busy. Doing least than expected but more of everything else that really is important but not doing as much art as I might.

My Web Tools class and my Intro Class, Thurs a.m are doing some very good work. The web Tools class in particularly interesting to me because so few had HTML. They experienced a huge learning curve at the beginning but many have a keen understanding of what they are doing.

As for myself, I am still captivated by shadows on houses and the lines produced by nature. The bare trees now are taking on more complex shapes as the leaves begin to bud. The few I took yesterday have very angle shapes… almost pained but then too it is a conversation about life and rebirth or even a comparison abut sleeping and death. This image almost rips the atmosphere as it slashes through the image.

A cracking in our foundation… a tear in society as we wrestle with global warming, immigration… the economy. Maybe that is what I am seeing as these shadows are fragmenting our institutions, homes and businesses.

My time I think will be taken up this week by getting my work over to Soo Visual Arts Center and getting it up and running. A little nervous about getting Grinder up and running again.Well, perhaps more this week. As my week progresses.

LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE

The problem that I seek to address as a faculty within the media arts area is how does a faculty member within the arts and humanities assess affective learning. Affective learning is growth in feelings and emotional areas such as attitudes. In the arts it would be valuing the worth or value a person attaches to a particular object, idea or approach to an aesthetic or beauty. How does one build a meaningful rubric and take into account both the students’ and instructors’ cultural and aesthetic bias?

This problem arises because we live in a post-modernistic era that is characterized by a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories and favors spontaneity and discovery in creation (Klages ).

Milton Glaser, an artist, illustrator and designer characterizes this schism well in the following statement from an article titled “Ten Things I Have Learned”. The article was composed from a lecture he gave in London as part of an AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) presentation. Here he creates a juxtaposition between the aesthetics of modernism and the post-modern movements. “LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE”. Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realized that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realize that every part of that rug, every change of color, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. “Just enough is more”. The funding would allow me to research and assemble processes that faculty within the arts might use to provide objective assessments of the affective aspects of creating compositions, art, photography, furniture making, architecture and design. I will, also, focus on discovering or developing a process/tool that would allow faculty to recognize and disclose their cultural bias and, at the same time, discover the students’ cultural influences. Then with both the faculties and students biases unveiled perhaps a meaningful rubric might be established, thus giving us an opportunity to effectively assess affective attitudes in a meaningful manner.

My findings will be presented as an article I hope to publish in an art education journal. I also would like to present this research and my findings at one of the conferences offered in the fall or spring. Such as: ITeach or Realizing Student Potential 2007. With this research in hand I would be comfortable enough to organize a teaching circle in the Fall, 2006. The teaching circle would allow our community to examine the processes and provide feedback to some of the conclusions I reached. The faculty could then implement or create their own assessments based on the research.

Moving Forward

“The Shadow as a Metaphor for Power” is in and I am officially done with my degree. You can get a copy of the thesis on my Portfolio page and follow the links.

I am not going to complain about how busy I’ve been but I have. I’ve accomplished a lot. The studio is in good shape too. I’ve applied for a grant to study the post modern critique. In short, it will be looking at overcoming built-in prejudges between the generations. I will post more about the topic soon. Frenchy Lunning was a big help as I worked to narrow focus.

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