Old Portraits on Weathered Canvases

Working atop faded street maps, vintage National Geographic magazine covers, and decades-old stationery, London-based artist Mark Powell (previously) draws the wrinkled contours of his subject’s faces with a standard black Bic ballpoint pen. The weathered portraits of both famous and anonymous people reflect his antiquated canvases both in texture and tone as he traces the topographies of their faces across literal street maps or paper materials that have traversed the world. Powell’s drawings have grown in both scale and detail over the years, magnifying the impact and density of each piece. You can see more of his recent work on his website where he sells a number of prints and quite a few originals (via).

By recycling the envelopes, he is in some way preserving a bit of history and the tales behind the sender. He says this is why his work, which is primarily portraiture, focuses on older characters that appear to tell their own stories from the very creases and wrinkles of their faces (via).

Powell’s portraits are amusing in the way they incorporate the lines and postage stamps of the envelopes into the wrinkles and shading of each distinct face. Each portrait becomes as much about the canvas as it is about the person depicted, adding another layer to examine as the viewer gets lost in the eyes of the subject (via).

"Each portrait becomes as much about the canvas as it is about the person depicted, adding another layer to examine as the viewer gets lost in the eyes of the subject." I love that. 

The dance between our lives and the canvas and the struggle of muddling through the many layers so as not to be lost, or thrown away with yesterday's trash, and forgotten. 

This one might be my favorite.

You can see more of Mike Powell's work on his website or following his blog where will find some cool postings on Music to Draw to, Parts I and II, and other cool things.

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-N- Stuff  :  Art  :  Beautiful Portraits

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Wall Drawing 797: An "intricate visual butterfly effect"

How does one person’s actions influence the next person’s actions in a shared space? Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings explore this intricate visual butterfly effect in the collaborative art entitled Wall Drawing 797, a conceptual piece that can be drawn by following LeWitt’s instructions. (He died in 2007.)

Scandinavian countries call it the "red thread," the thing that ties all of us together in theme, message, and purpose. 

The first drafter has a black marker and makes an irregular horizontal line near the top of the wall. Then the second drafter tries to copy it (without touching it) using a red marker. The third drafter does the same, using a yellow marker. The fourth drafter does the same using a blue marker. Then the second drafter followed by the third and fourth copies the last line drawn until the bottom of the wall is reached.

The drawing was conceived with student participation in mind and was first executed by four Amherst College sculpture students. "The wall drawing represents a return to the linear repetition that Sol LeWitt explored in his wall drawings of the late 1960s and 19‘70s. The instructions for the drawing direct draftsmen to copy, without touching, the line made by the previous draftsman. The repeated process becomes an exploration of the intricacies of the line. This reflects LeWitt’’s belief that “the draftsman’’s contributions are unable to be predicted by the artist…”. As the draftsman repeatedly copies the line, it becomes drastically altered from its original state, and the smooth original line becomes more and more nervous as it is redrawn."

Before drawing the initial line, the head draftsman drew test lines on paper and copied them in order to see how the different lines would evolve. The line that he eventually chose to draw in black marker on the wall was inspired by the hills of the surrounding Berkshires landscape. Each copy of this undulating line took the draftsman between ten and twenty minutes to execute. The process of copying takes intense focus. If draftsmen feel that they are about to lose focus and deviate from the previous line, they take a break, making sure to start at the exact spot from which they lifted the marker.

I have a giant wall, both in my classroom and in my house. Kinda want to draw a thick black line and see what happens. Maybe an Art Starts?

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-N- Stuff  :  Art  :  On Creativity  

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Watch Them Whip: A decade of fun, confidence, and refuge.

Many of us are looking for a beat, something solid and rooted where we can take refuge and begin to explore the fluidity of being alive, to investigate why we often feel stuck, numb, spaced-out, tense, inert, and unable to stand up or sit down or unscramble the screens that reflect our collective insanity.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm trying to integrate the arts as much as possible into my classroom. One of the most difficult for me is dance. 

This is perhaps the best defense for dance that I've ever read.

Dance is the fastest, most direct route to the truth — not some big truth that belongs to everybody, but the get down and personal kind, the what’s-happening-in-me-right-now kind of truth. We dance to reclaim our brilliant ability to disappear in something bigger, something safe, a space without a critic or a judge or an analyst.

We dance to fall in love with the spirit in all things, to wipe out memory or transform it into moves that nobody else can make because they didn’t live it. We dance to hook up to the true genius lurking behind all the bullshit — to seek refuge in our originality and our power to reinvent ourselves; to shed the past, forget the future and fall into the moment feet first. Remember being fifteen, possessed by the beat, by the thrill of music pumping loud enough to drown out everything you’d ever known?

The beat is a lover that never disappoints and, like all lovers, it demands 100% surrender. It has the power to seduce moves we couldn’t dream. It grabs us by the belly, turns us inside out and leaves us abruptly begging for more. We love beats that move faster than we can think, beats that drive us ever deeper inside, that rock our worlds, break down walls and make us sweat our prayers. Prayer is moving. Prayer is offering our bones back to the dance. Prayer is letting go of everything that impedes our inner silence. God is the dance and the dance is the way to freedom and freedom is our holy work.

We dance to survive, and the beat offers a yellow brick road to make it through the chaos that is the tempo of our times. We dance to shed skins, tear off masks, crack molds, and experience the breakdown — the shattering of borders between body, heart and mind, between genders and generations, between nations and nomads. We are the transitional generation. 

This is our dance (via).

What impresses me most about this video isn't their moves, but their faces. They're all having so much fun, and they're doing it all with so much confidence.

Because it's their dance. 

And its something I've never known, because

I look like this:

We dance to hook up to the true genius lurking behind all the bullshit — to seek refuge in our originality and our power to reinvent ourselves; to shed the past, forget the future and fall into the moment feet first.

For more on . . .

-N- Stuff  :  Art  :  Art in the classroom

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