Montreal Mural Festival

MURALS GALORE!

Montreal Mural Festival

Montreal is a wonderful city.  I went a number of years ago with a friend to the conference for the Association for Death Education and Counseling.  I was tagging along as the art viewer while my partner attended the Conference.  

It had just turned spring after a harsh winter and everyone was delighted to see the sun and flowers peaking out for growth.  I fell in love with the city.  It was quaint, charming, modern, and definite art town with wonderful galleries.  The food was delightful and a great ethnic variety.  

Montreal Mural Festival                      from google image for educational purpose only

I wish there had been a mural festival then, I would have absolutely stayed for it.  After viewing the mural program in Philadelphia I was hooked.  It is such a fantastic way for the general public to share the value and beauty of the arts.  

Jamie Rojo and Steven Harrington             Montreal Mural Festival

As museums have gone up in cost, it is not as easy for low income people of families to attend.  But murals beautify the city and they can be shared by all! 

Jamie Rojo and Steven Harrington                          Montreal Mural Festival

So when I ran across this on line I had to share it with you.  Recently cities near me and those I have visited have had a mural added to their venue, but a whole festival!!!! Wow!  So now lets take a look at the Montreal Mural FestivaL. A massive event took place this summer with over 20 artists form different countries and 800,000 people visiting over a four day period!  
When in St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida recently I observed two new large murals that had been added to the cities public art.  Now in Asheville, North Carolina I have seen several murals throughout the city. 
Perhaps, just perhaps, you can plan one for your community as well! Diego Rivera was right it is the art of the people!! 

 

El Mac, Master Graffti Artist

El Mac

You know as much as one generation may criticize another, I think I am falling in love with this new generation. Their ideas are fresh and edgy. They are not afraid to leave behind old mores.  They are seeing the world in new and different ways, they are interacting socially in a world environment completely out of the box.  I am thinking what would Diego Rivera or Leonardo done with technology and thinking differently about the world.  El Mac's world tour taking graffiti to new heights, putting art where everyone can enjoy it, not in some cooperate board room...bringing the average person to art and seeing the world in a different way.  El Mac(click for link) takes ordinary people and paints them large in a space that people see on their way to work or to the store and bam!, there is art.  He takes pictures of people in one country and paints them in another...a sort of a giant world howdy!!!!

A better explanation of his history and work is from his own bio...here is an excerpt from his site.

"Born in Los Angeles in 1980 to an engineer and an artist, Mac has been creating and studying art independently since childhood. His primary focus has been the lifelike rendering of human faces and figures. He has drawn inspiration from the surrounding Mexican & Chicano culture of Phoenix and the American Southwest, religious art, pin-up art, graffiti, and a wide range of classic artists such as Caravaggio, Mucha, and Vermeer. He began painting with acrylics and painting graffiti in the mid ’90s, and has since worked consistently towards mastering his signature portrait style. Around 1998 he began to paint technicolor aerosol versions of classic paintings by old European masters. This led to being commissioned in 2003 by the Groeninge Museum in Brugge, Belgium to paint his interpretations of classic Flemish Primitive paintings in the museum’s collection. He has since been commissioned to paint murals across the US, as well as in Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, South Korea, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Singapore, Germany, Ireland, and Vietnam."

source El Mac website

google image photo

google image photo

google image photo

 A NEW GENERATION TO ADMIRE! ART CAN BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER AND DO GOOD

Quotes From Frida Kahlo's Diary

One of the fascinating things I read about Frida Kahlo(please click) was that her biography was as interesting as her paintings.  If you have not see the film about her life or read her biography they are so interesting.  Her tumultuous life with artist Diego Rivera is in itself worthy of a book besides the horrible physical conditions that she lived with daily after the bus accident.  Art became therapy to her and an escape.  Here are a few of quotes that I loved from her diary. 


I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my 
head without any other consideration.


I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows. But now the damned things have learned to swim ,and now decency and good behavior weary me.




I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you. 


My painting carries with it the message of pain.

Frida Kahlo/Self Portrait from google image

― Frida Kahlo

In the Land of Cotton/South USA

Cotton was king

at one time in the Southern economy and then it fell by the wayside to synthetics and soy which became the crop of choice. So much to my surprise as we were heading from Florida up through the center of Georgia we saw fields and fields of cotton growing. Rarely did we see soy growing anywhere, all the fields are back to cotton. So the demand is up, and synthetics must be less preferable.

My Mother picked cotton in the fields of Mississippi when she was a young girl in high school. She told me how difficult it was to learn and how she had to soaked her sore fingers at night after a day of picking. "If you don't pluck the white bowl out just right the surrounding sharp husk prick your fingers badly", she would tell me. Mom was paid 50 cents for a hundred pounds of cotton. It is amazing to think of the back breaking work that it was, and a young thin high school age young woman, out picking and carrying huge bags along with other field hands.

Then came the industrial revolution and now huge machines come by and pick the cotton. However, as you can see in some of the pictures a lot of cotton is left on the stalks left to rot. They roll the cotton up in large yellow bales for market. It is hard to think of cotton and the South without thinking of plantations and slavery. It is hard not to think of the suffering and inhumane treatment of people. There were artists who painted slaves and workers in the fields in the South. There are artists who paint workers world wide in different styles and with different meaning conveyed. I think of Thomas Hart Benton-The Cotton Pickers, Vincent Van Gogh-The Peat Fields, Diego Rivera-The Detroit Industry, Courbet-The Stone Breakers, Munch-Workers on The Way Home and others. Walt Whitman's poems are filled with references to laboring for others. Dorthea Lange's depression era photographs are unforgettable. There is a richness and honesty of man close to the land. There is an on going story of people involved with harvesting, hard work, and struggle-it is an interesting subject for artists of all kinds..from musicians, to actors, to dancers, and visual artists.

The Beauty of the Laborer

Artists have forever found workmen fascinating for painting, sculptures, and murals. Diego Rivera and the Social Realist exalted labor and the laborer in their murals. Van Gogh studied the farm land and the varying play of light illuminating French men and women harvesting hay. Even when I hear Brando's cry, "Stella"!!! (from Tennessee William's play, A Street Car Named Desire). I can see the working class Brandon, muscular, rough and ready. The play was a study in culture clash, and the raw drama riveted our attention to the differences of classes. Thomas Hart Benton highlighted the American worker and labor movement. There is an innate beauty in labor. The sinewed muscles, the stance of the body, the dirt and sweat of wrestling with the land, and the creation that results from the laborers work. The perfect art model!

Red Harvest by Vincent Van Gogh

I have been enamored by construction workers, roofers, yard men, paint

rs, steel workers, and welders for a long time. On the way to work for many years I traveled across a bridge between two cities, one I worked in and one I lived in. My day started early, 7am or so. And my day would often end at 4 or 5pm, taking me across the bridge at the same time most construction trucks were taking workers to their jobs. Men were draped in different poses, half asleep, in open truck beds. The morning light playing on their hard hats, bandanna's, and leather tool belts was beautiful. The grittiness of faces sculpted by hard work and the environment engaging. Some days it rained, or the wind whipped strongly across the bridge, and some days it was ungodly hot with the sun bearing down on the tired workers that often fell asleep before they could get home.

Murals of the Detroit Industry by Diego Rivera

I was waiting in the car for a friend to pick up dry cleaning recently when I noticed construction in process and the workers next door. As we drove in and parked I became fascinated with one worker. His worn hat with its ocean blue hard hat looking a lot like the old twirling world globes we used to have in school. The yellow sticker, that looks like a red cross from afar and his sun scarf protecting his neck that looked very Middle Eastern all drew my attention. His stance is certain and his look of intent on his job was captivating to me. The workmen's jeans giving the Levi American look with chain and keys dangling, all these images screamed, "do art, do art, do something with this!" Everything is utilitarian, a no none sense look. The blue of the hat is repeated in the fire hydrant and the yellow offsets the yellow sticker on his hat. But also the bandanna that looks like a ponytail and the neatly crafted beard and goatee with dapples of light shinning through, all make for the makings of a future art work and the beauty of labor. How it will evolve I do not know, I only know it draws me like a magnate to want to know more, to want to use these images to create. Will it be a sculpture of mixed media or clay, will it be a collage, a print, a painting?....I do not know, nor do I know when my inner artist will say it is time to start this work.

I carry a camera with me at most times and build a visual journal of images. I capture moments of life or nature or just some odd thing I would forget later, but I loved at the moment. If you are an artist you know the call of doing art, your mind says...you can not, not do this...it comes as an urge, then a command. If you ignore it and let it slip away, you feel guilty you did not heed the call and create. An artist often creates because they must!

There are colors that I just love, especially the ones nature and weathering conditions create. The chalky blue of the fire hydrant, the muted hello with a scraffito of marks that seems to be a Earthy hieroglyphics of sort. Think about the world you live in, pay more attention to the details, value the worn and used...do not think of it is garbage or refuse, think of it as tended and messages left behind. Pay attention to the workers and laborers around you...look at how they stand, how they dress, and how their work molds their character. Then go back and look at other artist and how they interpret the nature of work and workers into their art. I welcome any comment or feedback that you may have about what draws your attention, what inspires you to create, and if you have the same feeling that you can not, not do art!