Einstein on Art

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein 

Photo taken at Duncan McClellan's Glass Art Studio                                          Elizabeth Gordon

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
Albert Einstein

Maya Lin(click)

Vietnam War Memorial   Maya Lin               google image

At 21 years old as an undergraduate student, Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam War Memorial beat out 1,400 different proposals.  At the time it was controversial, many thought it should be a realistic  sculpture of the men who fought.  As a matter of fact such a memorial was later built by another sculptor, but it was never as successful nor meant as much to grieving friends and family as Maya Lin's design.  On her granite block cut sculpture they could fine their loved ones name, touch it, stand by it, pray by it, and cry by it.  A conceptual art work with so much deep and thought that called for interactive participation from the viewers was far more emotive than a realistic sculpture would have ever been.  Art, in some people's mind, is geared toward realism...art is rarely that, even realism isn't what people think it is...it is only a perception that is created on a two dimensional or three dimensional surface.  To open peoples mind, to change their views about what art is and is not, is a role as an art educator and artist has always been what I find interesting.  When showing my work I have met very educated people who can not see beyond realism and pretty, and I have met uneducated people who walk up and just start loving colors and shapes, thoughts and feelings.  I would have to say I appreciate them most, because they approach the work with out prejudice or preconceptions.

   Maya Lin  detail Vietnam War Memorial       google image

Maya Lin, Artist

May Lin was a college student in Athen, Ohio.  Her Aunt was a foremost architect in China.  Her work  makes one think deeply and is well designed.  She saw the design as a wound to the Earth in the soldiers memory.  

STREET ARTIST

I thought you all might enjoy this you tube video on Street Artist.  There is another whole genre of artist who eschew the galleries and their high cost to connect directly with everyday people.  Keith Haring was one of the first well known graffiti artist in this country.  His influence started a movement of young artists that reach out directly to their communities and they love breaking rules! How do we define street artist, graffiti artist, and artist who paint murals differently?  That will be a conversation for our next blog.  In the meantime enjoy the film.

"I found I could say things with colors and shapes I could not say any other way...that I had no words for."   Georgia O'Keeffe

Artist looking at Nature's Fury

Artist looking at Natural Disasters
 Thomas Hart Benton
Flood

Flood by Thomas Hart Benton                                                google image

Tampa, Florida on Bayshore Blvd.   Flooding from Tropical Storm Debby
google imgage

Flood by Thomas Hart Benton    google image

Storm surge Tropical Storm Debby,  Florida

Flooding by Frank Forward   google image

River Flooding from Tropical Storm Debby

One of my very earliest memories as a child of 3 or 4 was of a flood.  We lived in a city where two major rivers convened and at that point no dams had been built to protect the town.  I can recall my teacher Mother saying to me. "Betsy, come here here and watch the floor furnace, if the water comes through, come get me."  of course I thought I had an important job and that was Mother's intent, as well as, keeping me calm and busy.  I remember also a small motor boat coming to our porch bringing groceries and asking us if we were all right and did we want to leave.  Floods have always been in my dreams my whole life.  Today in Tampa and in Florida the waters are receding and the rivers have reached their peak.  It is now clean up time and back to normal until the next tropical storm or hurricane....it is summer on the Gulf Coast!

Happy Birthday Gaudi!!!!

Antonio Gaudi
The Birthday of an Architectural Genius

Antonio Gaudi

One of my favorite trips will always have been one I took to Barcelona.  I had read about Antonio Gaudi and see a photo of his work in art history class, but I truly did not have a grasp of his genius.  It is a bit of a sad story at the end....Antonio at the close of his life penniless going begging door to door for money to finish his finest masterpiece "La Familia", the cathedral of artistic wonder.  His architecture is not angular nor right angle block like, it is fluid like a river, or a melting candle.  It bends and flows like a fine sculpture, it is more like a living thing than not.  I will include here a series of pictures I took during that trip.  

Sagrada Familia

Casa Batllo

Roof Chimneys of Casa Batllo

Sagrada Familia

Winslow Homer                                American Realist    google image

Florida, my home state, is under a tropical storm watch with flooding and high winds.  I was on my way home from New Orleans when the storm intensified and got help up in the Northern part of the state.  While watching the weather and tv updates I thought about one of my favorite paintings of storms and danger, that of Winslow Homer.  This picture is brought with danger from the waterspout to the left, the sharks in the forefront and the only ship that is of hope far away in the distance.  With a broken mast there seems little hope.  If you have a favorite artist who you think of in stormy weather let me know and the art work you like.

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer                                              After the Hurricane

For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature.
Ann Druyan

STELLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Street Car Named Desire

CANAL STREET RIDE   PHOTO BY ELIZABETH GORDON

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS 

a playwright and author who lived and wrote in New Orleans penned a play by the name of " A Street Car Named Desire".  I will never forget the play nor its effect on me.  I was in high school, my brother in college at a near by university where the theater group was performing the play.  My brother invited me and my Mother to see the play and got tickets for us all.  I was so excited, it was my first live play and I felt so grown up going on the college campus to anything.  I was not prepared for what I saw nor Tennessee Williams raw in you face style of writing.  The amateur group did a wonderful job, when Stanely Kowolski yells out Stella!!!  I was riveted to my seat.  I remember walking out of the theater that night stunned at the raw emotional journey Williams had taken me on.  I literally could not speak for hours I was so overcome by it all.  I have since see the movie and been moved again, but nothing like that first time as a young high school student at a university production.  
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 A DAY'S SIGHT SEEING IN NEW ORLEANS

Odds and Ends

Drive By Photo's 

Sometimes you just don't have time to do more that shoot pictures out the window on the way to do other things.  This series of shots came from a day like that.  Enjoy the scenery!

Old Joy Theater downtown New Orleans

Detail from sign near Lake Pontchartrain Park

Detail of sign near Lake Pontchartrain 

Rust Glorious Rust!!!!!

Sign near Lake Pontchartrain Park

Telephone post art New Orelean

detail from telephone meal

Dr. Bob's Garden

Metal sculpture across from Dr. Bob's Studio

NEW ORLEANS FOOD IS AS DELICIOUS AS THE LESSER FORMS OF SIN

Mark Twain  

Stanley's Interior on Jackson Square photo by elizabeth gordon

Marble table with bent wood chairs in Stanley's
photo by elizabeth gordon

I am a lover of history, old worn thing,  polished old wood, antique marble and stained floors.  I love the thought of other worlds existing before me and imaging what they may have been like.  As I look a these two photos my mind goes back to an earlier New Orleans bustling with cotton day commerce and paddle boats chugging down the great Mississippi River.  I think of ladies in fine lace and petticoats, and the clop of horse hooves on cobblestone streets and the calls of street vendors......a cacophony of sound, lively, exciting, like an energetic buzz humming throughout the Quarter.  I think of days of the French Quarter, the American Quarter, the Spanish named streets, and Italian immigrants...I think of the days of slaves and human bondage for profit, the time of duels and honor, the days of 6 different flags that flew over this impossible city that lived on and on. New Orleans is a story of survival against impossible odds and still is. And it is well feed for its effort, food is the ties that binds, no bad food is tolerated here...the people of New Orleans expect the best and get it. 

Reflections of the Quarter                photo by elizabeth gordon

When I took this photo I did not notice the wooden boat with posed people until later.  I was so busy walking and snapping photo's so my attention was a bit distracted.  However, later when I looked at my shots and noticed this photo with the other images it all became clear.  The imagery and symbology resonated within me later.  The people in the boat standing with heads bowed in morning or resignation to their fate in this ghostly pale blueish white seems to stand for the historic flooding of New Orleans when the relentless storm broke down the levees and this huge immense city of hundreds of thousands flooded.  Lives were lost, bodies floated bumping up to the interstate bridges, spay painted symbols on housing speaking in codes of how many resided and how many died....a city lost, a way of life lost, memories and entire childhoods washed away....the ghostly boat drifts away with the lost souls into the mist of the bayou, the fog closes in and they are gone drifting on, drifting on. The metal water cover on the bottom right calls our to the problem, water...too much water, the sewers flooded, water bubbled up from underneath, Earth was not longer firm, the ground upon which one stood.  The crime warning tape wrapped like a decoration and a stop light all say stop, caution, the shame of a crime by levees not maintained that broke...corruption that finally gave way and betrayed, but in the background are the ever present wroth iron balconies and lush flora bursting forth...a promise of renewal.  Art and galleries, new commerce is hope, hope for the city that doesn't die.  


REFLECTIONS  NIGHT THE LEVEES BROKE


A MISTED NIGHT 
FOG ENGULFS ALL IN ITS WHITE CLOAK
THE BAYOU CLAIMS THEM BACK 
THE WATERS FLOODED 
 OVER THE BANKS INTO THE CITY
ETCHING, ERODING, ERASING 
GATHERING SOULS IN SHROUDED HANDS
CRIES FOR HELP, PLEAS FOR RESCUE UNHEEDED
FROM ROOF TOP A THOUSAND CALLS ECHO ACROSS
CANALS, STREETS, AND NEIGHBORHOODS,
SOME WERE HEARD, MANY NOT
AS SHE GATHERED HER CHILDREN SHE MARKED X'S ON DOORWAYS WITH LONG BLUISH WHITE BONEY FINGERS, NOTING HER BOUNTY FOR ALL TO REMEMBER
THEIR SPIRITS STAND IN THE BOAT AND DRIFT, SLOWLY, SURELY INTO HER REALM...MOTHER DEATH, QUEEN OF GRIEF AND SORROW
AS SHE TURNED LOOKING BACK OVER HER SHOULDER, SHE SAW A LIGHT, A SMALL LIGHT THAT SEEMED TO GROW BRIGHTER AND BRIGHTER
SHE HAD NOT CONQUERED ALL, 
HOPE LIVED IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE
SHE COULD NOT CLAIM
SHE DRIFTED ON INTO THE BAYOU WITH THE REALIZATION
HER POWERS WERE NOT ENOUGH TO OVERCOME LOVE


BY ELIZABETH GORDON

The Vampire of Chartres Street

Breaking news Vampire Lesat seen on Chartres Street!

Chartres Street Vampire                              photo by elizabeth gordon

As I was walking about Jackson Square in the heart of the Quarter I snapped this photo of one of the street entertainers atop a USA news box.  I loved the pose and the irony. Anne Rice is an author who lived and wrote in New Orleans.  Her books became famous and were made into movies and her vampire tales legendary.  Lestat was one of the most famous of her mythic beings. The quote below is from one featuring Lestat.   


“I will be the Vampire Lestat for all to see. A symbol, 


a freak of nature - something loved, something 


despised all of those things. I tell you I can't give it 


up. I can't miss. And quite frankly I am not in the 


least afraid."

Jass on Jackson Square

JACKSON SQUARE

Jass                                  Jazz

In the early 1900's there was this sound that was edgy, sexy, and dangerous...it flowed out of the black neighborhoods on to the streets of the French quarter edging out more refined popular dances of the day.  No one is quite sure how Jass changed to Jazz, and some say that music was a bit different and lost forever, but whatever, it was the birth of what we know as jazz today.  

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Cat on a wrought iron balcony   photo by elizabeth gordon

Tennessee Williams loved New Orleans.  He lived and wrote here.  A city with a cast of characters that could keep a writers busy for a hundred years.  He loved this lush wild city that is as quirky as it is elegant.  Though Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was set in the Delta Plantation life of Mississippi, Tennessee's play "A Street Car Named Desire" was set in New Orleans in the French Quarter.

Retro Ride in the Quarter

Royal Street Ride                                                photo by Elizabeth Gordon       

Bicycling seems to be a popular way to get around the busy narrow French Quarter streets, where parking is just about nonexistent and tourists jam every street. I was having a cup of cafe au lait in one of my favorite places on Jackson Square named Stanley's when I saw this bike chained outside.  I loved its colors and retro look.  It looks like a good ride.

An Angel of A Different Kind                               photo by Elizabeth Gordon

On Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans there are many kinds of street entertainers, from the musicians cranking out Dixie Land Jazz, to the Artists who hang their paintings on wrought iron fences to tarot readers promising a glimpse at your future.  Four million tourist a year visit the Quarter a year, an amazing figure even considering the struggle to come back from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  A teacher with her class of students with lunch bags in hand are entertained by one of the resident angles...this golden angel also has vampire teeth.  The children are fascinated with this unearthly being..New Orleans is like that, there is something always unexpected and magical.  

New Orleans Still Life                 photo by Elizabeth Gordon

NEW ORLEANS

SOME SAY SHE IS A LAZY LADY
LAID BACK AND EASY
THAT SHE SAUNTERS DOWN THE QUATER
SWISHING THIS WAY AND THAT,
HER BEADS DANGLE UPON FLITTERING GAS LIGHTS,
ONE COULD MELT IN THE SOFT HUMID NIGHTS, 
PERFUME OF CONFEDERATE JASIME LINGERS UPON
A WIFT OF A MISSISSIPPI RIVER BREEZE,
SHE IS A MYSTERIOUS SULTRY SOUTHERN BELLE WHOSE
SPIRIT IS AS WILD AS THE HURRICANES THAT SWEEP ACROSS THE BAYOUS BENDING BACK THE SUGAN CANE, AND STORMING IN LIKE A RAGING LION, 
SOME SAY SHE IS A LAZY LADY, LAID BACK AN EASY,
BUT SHE IS NEW ORLEANS AT HER BEST, ALL FAT AND SASSY.  BY ELIZABETH GORDON

Art Can Help Us See

Vietnam War Memorial                                      Maya Lin         from google image

War               Francois Robert                                                               google image

Re-cyled Weapons Sculpture by Kendal and Bromley           google image

A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

URBAN AGGRESSION IN OUR CITIES


Take a look at artists who paint or sculpt or create about violence in urban communities.  They help stop and take a closer view of all the facets of our world, the parts that are dark and hidden, that are not our best moments as human beings....in some works we reflect, others we feel rage or sadness and in other we think how we might change things and make them better.  Some artists think it is not their roll to make a difference, but only to express what they see as a reflection....others see art as a strong positive way of effecting change in communities and the world toward the good.  How do you see it, what role do you see art playing in changing communities that are infected with violence?  

Bresson is a brilliant French painter who uses the techniques of the old masters to address complexities of our modern era.  His technique and skill put him in a class of Toulouse and other master artists.  When we look through his eyes into this hidden world that skirts and breeds in our inner cities, it is almost like looking down Alice's Rabbit hole.  It is a world we know exists, we live in and around, but few of us have a passport to that world.

Guillame Bresson                                                                              google image

Bashir Malik was born in Wisconsin.  His parents were activists in the community tying to make a difference in inner city neighborhoods for the good.  Bashir inherited the same passion for making a difference using art as his conduit.  

Bashir Malik  Stop the Violence  google image

Guillame Bresson  Dans Sur Toille  google image

Romare Bearden 

Carl Fredrick Reutersward      Non Violence  google image