A fascinating site for research (student, curator, collector or art fan) isthe Web Gallery of Art, found at http://www.wga.hu/index1.html. This extensive site (over 20,000 images spanning seven centuries) is a work of art itself.

The gallery has a search function, as you would expect, as well as an alphabetical Artist Index (at the bottom of every page). You can view the work of each artist as a thumbnail or in a pop-up window for a larger version (in varying sizes). Details about each image include date, size, medium and background information or description. You can also link back to the artist’s bio.

In Dual Mode, which is found at the top of the page, you can bring up work from two different artists to compare side by side. The site has lots of nice features, and it takes a while to navigate the features with confidence.

In the words of the site’s designers:

Portrait of My Life

This photo is titled, Portrait of My Life. I took this photo with the intentions of using it as a symbolic metaphor of my life as of today. Everything you see in this photo has a metaphorical meaning. Right now, it may just look like a simple crack in a wall, but I can assure you, there’s more to it then that. And after you read the significant meanings of these symbols, you’ll understand why I titled this photo “Portrait of My Life.”

As you can see, there are 4 major elements in this photo. They are, the half in darkness, the crack, the step, and last, but certainly not least, the half overwhelmed in light. Their meanings are as follows:

The Half in Darkness

This is by far, the simplest symbol. It simply reflects my past.

The Crack

In The Half in Darkness, (in my past) you’ll notice a large crack. This crack represents the physical and emotional pain during my 7 operations (in which 3 I was awake during the surgery), during 2006. I spent over 9 months in a hospital bed. I spent my mornings, waking up with tubes connected to my arms, back, and stomach. I spent my days attempting to swallow my 5 medications, each with its own unique overpowering pungent taste. And I’ve spent my nights, listening to the monotonous beeping of my heart monitor, and the heart monitor of the weary infant next to me, praying to God that they both sustain their healthy, rhythmic beat.

Although all of this pain is in my past, it has made a significant impact on my life. It has made me stronger, and more appreciative towards life.

The Step

This step is a metaphor for the step I took on September 10^th, 2007, my first day back at school. Even though I had only been released from my shackles of tubes only a month before, I decided on that day, that my time of suffering was over. So I surprised everyone by getting up, getting dressed and starting a new chapter in my life. That was the step that finally lead me to the light.

The Half in Light

This brighter side of the wall represents the goodness in my life today, and also my future. I have met so many great people, and made many incredible friends now that I’m back. I’m now perfectly healthy, and I’m working very hard to catch up in school. This September, I will finally be a senior at Banning High. And in June of 2009, I will graduate, and pursue a career in Photography, Journalism, or The Music Industry.

[gallery]

D3200 @ ISO1600; Canon P, Canon "Serenar" 135/4
pro lab developing in Xtol

I was able to capture this image while sitting at a wedding (on the bride's side, if that matters), using a long lens on a rangefinder. The Canon P has framelines for 135 mm lenses, and they came in handy for this moment. The lens I was using didn't have great light-gathering power, but shooting Ilford's Delta 3200 certainly helped. I usually rate it at ISO1600, which depending on who you ask is actually a push; its "true" ISO is known to be less than 3200, probably more like 1200. The Unblinking Eye, among other places, has some good information on exposure and development for this film.

I've always liked D3200 for its push performance, which it's obviously designed for; in my experience, contrast stays manageable and the texture can't be beat. Since this is a relatively low-light photo, grain tends to be exaggerated; this gives an atmospheric quality that I like.

There’s Still Time (Seriously!)

Deadline: Now! Show: Saturday, August 2nd!
Calling all FASHIONISTAS!

It's the summer in Tucson, and, "STAYCATION" Tucsonans just want to have fun! Ever want to show one of your wearable designs at a real, live fashion show?  At Dinnerware Artspace, a new 30 ft FASHION RUNWAY has just been installed for:

Dinnerware's First Annual
Thunder and Lightning Fashion Benefit
Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 7pm

Usually Dinnerware exhibits the work of up-and-coming, edgy artists, but HEY, what about our FASHIONISTAS?  Dinnerware heard your outcry!

Email me with your interest in showing your work, even if it's one or two fashion statements. It helps if you have your own model. Dinnerware will provide the staging, DJ, lighting, event staffing, and beverages.

This is a benefit event. We're trying to raise money for Dinnerware and have a good time doing it. If you're not the designer or a model, there is a $10 donation at the door.

Email David Aguirre at dinnerware@dinnerwarearts.com with your interest, or call 792-4503 pronto!

Dinnerware (Thunder and Lightning) Artspace

When it rains it storms so they say. It seems all at once I had run out of packaging cardboard and perhaps that is why my sales slowed this week. I believe you emit those things via energy fields to the world. I am now prepared again. Bring it on Baby! I salvage excess clean cardboard from local businesses and cut it down to the four standard sizes I need for packaging orders.

I filled two large orders this week, one of which is 24 originals for matting, framing and exhibit at the Klausen Gallery which will be for sale during the City's next Gallery Hop on August 8th, 2008. The Klausen Gallery is located at 106 Prince William Street in Uptown Saint John, New Brunswick. I had attended the last gallery hop and not in my wildest dreams did I think my art would be included in next hop.

Jorgen Klausen is the owner and he is one brilliant photographer.

I was also contacted by OrangeWillow about sending reproductions on consignment down to the Pivot Gallery and Boutique in Kentucky that she owns and operates. You can follow the developing story here on her blog. I shipped 18 reproductions out on Wednesday to her.

This is exciting for me. The first two, of hopefully many more gallery contacts.

I may have been creating art since the age of four however it's only in the last few years that I've begun to be recognized for it. I am a beginner at best when it comes to galleries and selling my art. I am learning and doing the best I can as a I go.

^{Image Credits
• 1. Print selection sent to Pivot
• 2. Cutting cardboard on my deck
• 3. Miniatures originals with certificates to the Klausen Gallery.
• 4. Four larger originals with certificates to Klausen.}

At the same time I'm working towards another show in a domestic home which will be very different in tone, with just two artists creating quiet interventions into the fabric of a living space that will continue to be lived in for the duration of the exhibition.

For this second exhibition I want to make small things that might be furniture but have no ostensible purpose. I want to make things that look specifically functional. I'm thinking of amending pieces of existing furniture, and introducing some quietly moving parts as in my Composition with Forks, which was called Conversation Piece once. This might be a reason to develop the chair I've had in mind for so long.

Placing my interventions into a living space places the real-life occupants into the role of performers, whether anyone sees them performing the rooms or not. I think they're specifically performers (rather than participants, or privileged audience members) because the works themselves are once removed. As visitors to the gallery you can't touch the works and you can't use them, and moreover it isn't even clear how they might be used if you had permission to touch. And so there objects remain at arm's length. The result is that anyone we might imagine using the objects or interacting with them somehow also remains distant.

Just as the objects are held apart from the space around them, so are their users. They're all in inverted commas, citations lifted loose from the ground around them. Because I can't quite imagine how a person might use any of the objects, I can't quite imagine the users themselves, and the effect is that I imagine they aren't really real - they're putting it on.

Where I'm coming to is the possibility of integrating the detached position of my objects (in relation to the viewer in the room) with the detached agency of a person (in relation to other people watching). I want to see how this could work as a durational experience in the real-life domestic setting of the Brixton house.

Here I want to try to bring in the concerns of What To Do which I wrote about the other day. I wrote:

My interest through all these gestures has been to draw attention to the surface of the talk itself - not so much in terms of the experience of sitting there, but in terms of the relationship between the viewer and the information embedded inside the talk. I’m interested in how the information (the history of Latin; planting cuttings..) can relate to us in any way; whether it can; whether it’s worth trying to make it relate, and so on. The possibility of engagement is a problem, and happily I find the title of the talk nicely fitting after all.

I think there's a common concern running through these two strands of my work, which up to now I've seen as quite separate things. I don't know yet what it is that they share. It has something to do with the quietening of their affective force, an interest in the way things can be framed, the relationship between the presence of something and one's access to that presence. I think it continues to relate back to the old questions I've always had about what makes something art, and the "art is something that has a frame around it" thing.

I leave this photos to let you know more about Puerto Los Cabos the Newst marina in San Jose del Cabo.

+Warren Berlin

OK, the gallery is up!  Movie night was fun!  We had a light attendance, which is no doubt because people are on vacation and didn't get the e-mail, and not because they have anything better going on, I'm sure.

Ha ha - well, we understand that it's summer and there's lots to do, and that's part of why TNT is working on getting some new exciting things happening.  But, movie night will march on until everyone is back on contract and their gutters need to be cleaned, and seeing a free movie starts to look pretty darn good.

Thanks to everyone who attended and helped out with this.  Incidentally, we need some more of those little popcorn bags like you see in the picture.  Hook us up if you can get some.  I'll pay you back.

Short Life and Eternity

video, fotoworks and music: Detlev Foth

filmmaterials: Ioana Luca

2008

Short Life and Eternity II

http://www.ioana-luca-art.com/

http://foth-malerei.com/

After an extensive train ride from the airport, it turns out that Adam lives close to Wimbledon. This is in the 3rd train zone which doesn't seem to be too far out from the city. Adam then left for work and I just relaxed for the rest of the day, telling him that I would meet him at his work in the city later on. And what a task that was!

He actually gave me pretty good instructions, it was just that the street signs were eluding me to a the point of insanity. I walked up, down, left right, north... and probably east, but who knows? For what was supposed to be a 10 minute walk from the Blackfriar's Tube Station, it took me about an hour and a half, due to my intrepid trek halfway across London Central.

I did, how ever, manage to find the Tate Modern and St. Paul's Cathedral, both of which I'm going to go back and have a look at today. After meeting up with Adam finally, we went for a mission to find a shisha bar, end up at Picadilly Circus (which is basically a round-a-bout). The area was a high-class shoppers dream with every brand name you could possibly think of - even the Apple shop was majestic. We did manage to find the shisha bar, but it turned out that there was a bouncer and that everyone in side was dressed to impress, suit-style. And in our uniform of t-shirts and jeans, we were doubtful about getting in, so we decided to call it a night and after being awake for over 50 hours, I too thought that was a good plan. Homeward ho!

This really is quite a pretty city.

P.S. I will finish up Hong Kong soon. 'Tis just a lot to write.

For Motorcycles, The Future Is Now

There are several out-of-this-world motorcycles traveling amongst us. This is probably caused in part by the rapidly increasing sales that motorcycle-industry designers and executives are now enjoying, in turn due to the craziness of soaring prices at the gas pump.

To take advantage of this newfound popularity, motorcycle designers are introducing new ideas, with many creatively original approaches to design and functionality. There is a noticeable outpouring of radically different concept and production motorcycles hitting the scene, which challenges our preconceived ideas about motorcycles as we known them in the past.

Many of these bikes are designed like pieces of art, with a conviction that experienced and wealthy motorcyclists would like something more exclusive. The following videos and photo-gallery convey some idea of what many of these creative designs are like.

[wpvideo sdsRk4Xh w=460]

Yamaha's Deus Ex Machina and Other Futuristic Designs

[wpvideo jEGjIRz6 w=460]

The Incredible Yamaha Morpho II

For Motorcycles, The Future Is Now

Technorati: art, design, designers, motorcycles, motorcycle designers, concept motorcycles, futuristic motorcycles, photographs, photography, gallery, photo-gallery, slideshow, entertainment, multimedia, music, video, videos, music video, culture, cultural, social life, society, science, technology, Yamaha, Yamaha motorcycles, Yamaha's Deus ex Machina, Yamaha Morpho, world

Please Remember Me and Bookmark This:

Nascom, from Belgium, has just released this nice interactive experience to celebrate VAIO 10th Anniversary.

The site starts with a neat 3D menu that allows access to each year of VAIO history, represented with a 3D room. These rooms are interactive galleries hosting a range of content for visitors to explore.

Content is managed with a very clever "room cms" tool they've also developed. Check out their blog for all the details on this ambitious project.

Congratulations to the team:

Concept, design: Stephane Leborgne
Development: Sakri Rosenstrom, David Lenaerts
3D Modelling: Michael Mlynek
Audio and music: Felix Luque
With the help of: Ralph Hauwert

Bee Studio, from Poland, have been doing amazing things with PV3D lately.

The Virtual Centre of Contemporary Art ’Znaki Czasu’ is a virtual gallery that can be explored both in a 3D space or with a fast navigation system. They explain here how it all works. It's all managed by a very complete 3D CMS which makes easy to update the gallery.

Tommy the Jumper is a fun 3D platformer to entertain us while we wait for their new site. Collect the goodies and kill the monsters by jumping over them. It makes great use of 3D and it's quite addictive.

Fantastic work guys.

Marzia's opening was held at the popular Paduan summer night-spot, Il Chiosco (The Kiosk) on Wednesday evening. The event was well attended, and not only by the friends of the artist and gallery owner and curator, Matthew Broussard. With a sly nod to the idea of a 'peep show' small groups of 4 to 6 people filed in to an intimate viewing room to see the more than 100 erotic drawings that Marzia had created for the lower drawer of the gallery while many others hovered around the door craning their necks to try and see over the hunched shoulders of the chosen viewers. In the upper drawer of the gallery the 'floor' had been replaced with a magnifying glass marked with centimeters (never ask a carpenter how long 15 cm is). Within the span of a few hours well over 60 people had viewed the works. Four of the drawings were purchased for private collections the night of the opening.

The exhibit will be available for viewing throughout July and August both by appointment within Italy and on the Pocket Gallery website (available July 28th) which can be accessed by clicking on the link located above and to your right. Click below to watch my video of the exhibition opening...

"Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you glad to see me?" With a one-liner Sophie Tucker turns the most intimate of situations into a worldwide cultural icon. Contemporary art often plays with the tension between private and public,exhibiting as "product" the most intimate emotions: a (sometimes) refined variation on the most common marketing ploy of all. Marzia Gallinaro acknowledges this specific aspect of the Pocket Gallery and makes it her own: an art gallery is a public viewing space; but when it's hidden…?...down there, in your pocket…? It becomes a symmetrical mirror of the tendency of contemporary are to trumpet private sentiment in public. She pokes fun at those who become voyeurs under cover of culture, and who slip into small private places (art galleries?) like pre-teens to peek at dirty pictures. Her nervous line drawing which smacks of graffiti (another public venue for private eroticism) creates a tension well suited to the paranoia (of lots of guys) at having to use a magnifying glass or a ruler… the gallery isn't the only place where size matters."

-Matthew Broussard owner and curator of the Pocket Gallery

This is a community type site (I believe) wheremembers can create image galleries, these image galleries seem to be the main focus, I have tried several times to load and browse the website but it seems to be down and possibly struggling with the heave traffic - I have managed to leech some pictures from the galleries.