Visual Essay Assignment

For the visual presentation project, I finally decided on a subject. My topic of discussion is going to be Aesthetics of Architecture in Atlanta. At this point in time I had no idea about what I was going to write about specifically, but I knew what my theme was and the general direction in which I was going. My strategy was to go out with a camera and take pictures of architecture around in the Midtown area. Amazingly, the hardest task was acquiring a camera. The library was booked for cameras for the following week, so I had to turn to a friend on the floor below me. She allowed me to borrow her camera that was on its last leg. Reluctantly it worked out and I ended up taking a total of 175 photos. This was much more than I needed. The experience was nothing short of amazing, seeing as how it gave me a chance to explore the city around me and spend a relaxing evening with no distractions. The pictures above were some of my favorite, but if you click here then you can check out more on my Picasa page. Now all I have left to do is come up with an overlying topic.

Art of Greg Martin

About one year ago I started searching for backgrounds for my laptop computer. I stumbled upon a website called Art of Greg Martin. This site contains some of the greatest edited photos I have ever seen. Greg Martin is a Photoshop genius if you ask me. He has complied many different pictures on his website for people to see and/or download onto their computers for backgrounds. If you visit his site you will see different sections containing edited photos or 100% Photoshop rendered images. They are truly amazing and mind blowing. The skills needed to do this kind of work must be far greater than I can imagine. What is even more amazing is that he does this for no profit at all. Every single one of his photos are open to anyone on the internet.    

Peter Sekaer

For the proceeding assignment to the art analysis essay, we are focusing on photography. As I stated in the previous post, photography is a very unique art. It may be very effective with very little skill. Our coming up task is to create a visual presentation with ten self-taken photos. Well, I have never taken professional photos, or any purpose oriented ones for that matter, but I am looking forward to this one. My possible topics are architecture, graffiti, or unique sculptures in the Midtown area. Since we will have to take our own photos (possibly, unless you already have yours) we will need to at least familiarize ourselves with examples of effective photography. Nearby at the High Museum there is an exhibition called Signs of Life by Peter Sekaer. Sekaer was a government employee for the Rural Electrification Administration and the United States Housing Authority, which is where many of the pictures were taken. The exhibition consists of 75 photos that document the effects of the great depression. Before doing the project I believe it would be a great asset to visit this exhibition, especially since we have unlimited access. To access the exhibition page, please click here. 

A hobby or a profession?

When it comes to the typical sense of art (i.e. painting, drawing, photography, sculpting, etc.), I find photography to be the simplest, but most interesting. In the other forms of art, a very difficult skill is needed to construct an attractive work, for the most part. For example, a poorly constructed painting that had a lot of intent behind it may not be as effective as a photograph that was taken with the same “amount” of intent. My point being is that less physical skills are required to take a very good quality photo that can have a very strong argument behind it. Also, in this time period, photography may in fact be a much cheaper alternative. With internet being accessed by more people, higher and higher quality cameras on cell phones, and technology becoming cheaper, photography has the potential to be an enjoyable hobby or a very serious occupation. The picture above is my friend Taylor Skalyo Riggs' Facebook profile picture. I believe it is a perfect example of what I am trying to argue.  

The Elephants

I first discovered Salvador Dali about one year ago, and it was this painting in which I was introduced to that caught my eye. Me and a couple of friends took a senior trip to Savannah, Ga. and one of them was attending SCAD this fall, so we headed toward to campus. On the way there we passed a small poster shop on River Street. As we waked in a large, red poster grabbed my attention that was hanging in the corner. I found the artists’ name, saved it in my phone, and after finding access to the internet once again I immediately looked up Salvador Dali.

The work itself is very broad, in my opinion. From my perspective I assume the elephants represent humanity-or possibly even this reality-and the long slender legs could symbolize how unstable everything really is. This perspective interprets to the belief that our world balances on a very unstable platform. Not only did it make me think in different ways and question different aspects of life, but it presented me to Dali: a painter who changed painting and introduced radicle new ideas to the world of art, and psychology for that matter.  

The HIGH

Ok, I have finally come up with the perfect comparison for the High Museum of Art. A piñata! Just as a piñata is fill with sugary goodness on the inside yet still very elegant and attractive outside, the High is filled with a wide variety of amazing forms of art from around the globe but yet it is elegant and eye catching enough on the outside to be considered a true piece of art itself.

First, let us consider the outside. The usual perception of a white wall is dull, boring, drab, too plain, or just unattractive. However, this structure uses white in a different fashion. The High is ALL WHITE, EVERYWHERE, besides the hints of light grey you see every so often and the windows peering into the ALL WHITE interior. Depending on your taste and style you may or may not find this effective, but personally I think this is a very useful strategy. Being a museum it must stand out among the normal Atlanta buildings and it accomplishes this very well by contrasting its shape and color. The color is outstanding enough to break the mold and the luscious green lawn that curves around the building like a wave gives it a very clean, smooth appearance because when you think about it there isn’t really a lawn like that anywhere else in downtown Atlanta.   

Next would be the interior, although I don’t really find the color to be that large of an impact in this case. The design of the interior of the High is truly breath taking when you step back and look at it. If there is one thing I love in a building it is the ability to incorporate natural light into the lighting. Not only does this building do this, but it does it in a very graceful and creative way. Walking through the museum during the day you will probably notice that there really isn’t very much artificial lighting, and a majority of this comes from the large and vast amount of windows. In the atrium you can see the sunlight creeping in from the walls and projecting geometrical patterns on the walls. There are also the windows allowing the sunlight in from the ceilings. In one extension of the building on the top floor you can see that the entire ceiling is a grid of circular window with arched shape extruding toward the floor, giving it definition rather than just having a flat surface. 

Ray-Ban Sunglasses Don't Necessarily Look Better on Tom Cruise

A friend of mine sent this picture to me and I thought it would be perfect for a blog post.  The picture above is an add by Ray-Ban for their sunglass line. The view angle is very unique in that it allows us to see two important things; the surrounding environment and the reflection off the lens. Looking at this we can assume that the environment behind us is similar to that one we can see. As the light enters the lenses, however, it changes the physical appearance of its surroundings. The structures become radically different and the colors are fused together into a sort of rainbow assortment, which revolve around the center of the lens. The add juxtaposes that of what sunglasses usually do, which is take away that color and lifelessness of our surroundings, and portray the product to actually bring life and definition into ones perspective.

Art of Imagination and Insignificance.

     I have recently finished the movie Donnie Darko. The movie revolves around a teenage boy who, at first, seems as though he is mentally insane. As the movie progresses you discover that all of his encounters throughout the story line are apart of a dream, one that allowed him to see into a different life in which his existence dramatized everyone else's life around him.
     Although I would love to continue, I am afraid I cannot do this. If you have not seen this movie yet then I highly recommend it. At the end I immediately thought of a song I had previously herd. "At the Bottom of Everything" is the first song on the album "We Are Nowhere And It's Now" by The Bright Eyes. It explains a story of a man coming to peace with his death as his plane is crashing. He states "I’m happy just because
I found out I am really no one".

     As both of these pieces come to an end I felt as if they have both touched on something different than that of many other works of art. At the end a sense of insignificance in this world came over me. It made me questions ones existence and purpose in life. 

     If you have seen or herd either of the pieces then please tell me the response you got from them. If you have not then I highly encourage you to. They are very interesting pieces and I am interested in seeing different peoples responses. 

What is art?

Art is the physical representation of an idea. It is expressed through a simple skill that is perfected over time through repetition. It can be utilized in order to persuade or to inform a particular audience about a topic significant to the artist. In this photo is a sculpture that stands outside of a large office complex in downtown Baltimore Maryland. It is composed of all metal and welded together to form a fox howling at the moon. It displays ones idea of a living being through the medium of metal working.