Tag Archives: Art

I Love Glass!

Posted on September 24, 2017 | 2 comments

I have always been enamored with glass artwork. I don’t know why; maybe it’s the intense colors or unique shapes they often have. Whenever I am at an art museum or art store, any objects made of glass always catch my eye. And when choosing a piece of original art to buy, I typically gravitate to those made of glass.

But of all the glass artwork that I have ever seen, pieces created by Dale Chihuly are my favorite. If you have never seen any of his artwork, I would highly recommend checking out his website at Chihuly.com.

I think I was first exposed to Chihuly when one of his exhibitions came to an art museum in Memphis. My first experience was incredible, taking this art form to a whole new level for me! Of particular interest was a display of intricately interwoven multi-colored pieces resting on a glass ceiling that you walked underneath. It was amazing!

A number of years went by before I was able to see another one of his exhibitions. I happened to be in Oklahoma City visiting my sister when she suggested we go to an art museum in downtown that happened to have a special Chihuly exhibit. I obviously jumped at the chance and had another thoroughly enjoyable experience.

While at the museum, we also got a chance to see a couple of videos of how Chihuly produces his beautiful pieces. If you have ever seen a picture of Dale Chihuly, you will immediately notice that he wears an eye-patch over his left eye, the result of a car accident many years ago. As a result of this injury, he has lost his stereoscopic vison meaning he has diminished depth perception. But in spite of this disability, Chihuly creates his glass art using a team approach with him as the creator and director. In fact, blowing some of the larger pieces literally could not be done without a team.

In the museum gift shop, I was amazed to see that some of his pieces were actually for sale. But the price for even a medium-sized piece was $15,000, well out of my price range. However, there were several books on his work (much more affordable) that featured some of his large outdoor installations. These photos were absolutely amazing.

My sister noticed my interest in one of these books and since it was close to my birthday, she surreptitiously purchased this one and gave it to me for my birthday.

It was a great gift that I read cover to cover!

Then one year on my annual trip to Amsterdam, I happened to walk past an art store on my way to the Van Gogh museum when I noticed they had Chihuly pieces for sale.

Even in Euros, I still could not afford one but it helped me to decide that my favorite shape of his work was what he called a Macchia, this particular one a bowl within a bowl.

And once looking for furniture at a local modern furniture store, I discovered that among the many furnishings they carried were what became known to me as “fake-Chihuly’s.” And at a price 1/30 the cost of a real Chihuly of similar size, I could definitely afford this (the real artist is Ioan Nemtoi).

This became my favorite piece of glass art that we owned and it enjoyed a prominent location at our home first and then at our condo.

Then in 2013, I got to experience what for me was the grand slam of Chihuly exhibits when my wife, daughter and I toured his Glass House and Garden, right next to the Space Needle in Seattle.

It far exceeded any display I had seen to date. Even the outdoor installations were amazing; my first experience of these.

And incredibly, the glass house was available for renting out for special occasions. Can you imagine having your wedding reception here?

This past July, I got another chance to experience Chihuly art when I went to visit my sisters in northwest Arkansas. While the main reason to drive over was to see my two sisters…

…what tipped the scale for this particular trip was the fact that Crystal Bridges had a special Chihuly exhibit, both indoors and outdoors.

Obviously, the Macchias caught my eye…

…but what was most impressive was a new display I had never seen before, explosions of glass, illuminated with ever changing light colors set to classical music. It was almost as if it were an indoor fireworks display with appropriate “oohs” and “awes” as the colors changed.

The outdoor displays…

…were no less stunning.

The only downside of the outdoor exhibit was the blistering afternoon heat, 95°F in the shade, which made returning to the cool interior of the museum that much more comforting. At night, the outdoor displays are lighted and on Saturday night, they have live music as well. Being a Saturday, we debated about coming back in the evening but ultimately decided we would wait until the fall when cooler evening temperatures would make the whole experience that much more enjoyable.

Naturally in the museum gift shop, they had Chihuly pieces for sale, smaller than the ones I remembered seeing in Oklahoma, but much more reasonably priced, although still above my price range even for this one, my favorite.

While the exhibit at Crystal Bridges was not of the same scale as Chihuly’s Glass House in Seattle, Washington (his home state), it was none the less enjoyable. Combined with visiting family and having several great meals together, it was an all-around A+ weekend of art and family time.

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Posted in Art

Tagged Art, Crystal Bridges, Dale Chihuly, Glass Art, travel

Painting at Work

Posted on August 6, 2017 | 4 comments

In 2013, I wrote a blog post about exploring the artist in me—an artistic challenge that was inspired by my admiration for a painting that hung on the wall where I work. I was so fond of this particular piece of artwork that I decided to try to paint it myself. In that post I wrote:

My first attempt at creating art grew from an appreciation for a painting I passed daily at work on my way to the cafeteria. I was drawn to a modern painting of a couple of buildings. Maybe this was a resurfacing of my adolescent love for architecture. I admired the interesting colors and the straight lines and I thought, “I could do that” and I am going to try. I knew aspiring artists often developed their skills painting other artist’s paintings. But I knew I couldn’t sit in the hall at work all day attempting to paint this painting. So I took a digital photo of it and took it home. You can even see a reflection of me in the glass.

I took that photo in 2004 so the refection you see of me in the glass (in front of the red building) is a much younger version of me. In that 2013 blog post, I went on to describe how I painted my version since I was not a trained artist:

I decided to make my version of the painting the same size as the original so I could judge how well I achieved my goal. I printed out my photo and began to measure the dimensions of each of the features. Knowing that I needed to accurately translate the building’s dimensions from an 8 X 10 photo to a 16 X 24 canvas, I pulled out my calculator and determined the proportions necessary to “blow up” the scale. Using a ruler, I drew all the straight lines on a piece of paper to allow for any necessary corrections and then once I had the 16 X 24 drawing on paper, I redrew it on the canvas.

I knew with my hand skill limitations and my desire for precise straight lines that I was not going to be able to paint straight lines either. So I used blue painter’s tape to block off a section at a time for painting. I didn’t even try blending colors; I just used the paint right out of the tube. While this can be a slow, tedious process, taping and painting and repeating, it allowed me to achieve my goal. And I thought a fairly true rendition of a real piece of art.

This is my finished painting that, thanks to my wife’s encouragement, we hung on our wall at home. I loved my rendering of the original painting and was very proud that I had been able to recreate it. It has hung in several different locations in our home for the past 13 years.

If you are a regular follower of my blog post, you know that I will be retiring later this year—as a result of the 2016 announced closing of my work site. While this will mean huge changes for me and my family since I have worked at the same location for almost 35 years, interestingly one aspect will remain the same.

With my work site closing, it was determined that certain assets would not be relocated out of state to where our operations were being consolidated with an existing company site. As a result, employees were encouraged to take home the plants located throughout our facility. I found this nice one to take home.

In the fall of 2016, I learned through the grapevine that employees would also be allowed to take home certain furniture and fixtures that would not be moved to the new site. And included in this allowance was some of the corporate art that had graced our walls for all the years of operation.

Some of the art work; in particular original oil paintings of our company founder and of one of our iconic corporate brands, will hopefully find new homes in local museums. When I inquired about the painting I had admired for so many years on my way to the cafeteria, I was told I could have it. Now almost a year later, that painting has now moved to our home.

With the two paintings side by side, I could easily see that while I had intended to reproduce it in the same size, I had far under-estimated the original’s size. In fact, once I got it home and held it up in several different places in the house, it was too big for the space being much larger than I even remembered. With its ultimate location uncertain, I temporarily leaned it up against our dining room table until we could figure it out, at least until my 2-year old granddaughter pulled it over onto herself with a resultant loud crashing sound. Other than being frightened by the sudden noise, my granddaughter was unhurt and when I picked up the framed painting, I was glad to see that it too was undamaged. Finding a place to hang the painting then moved up in priority.

With a two story entry hall, this wall space offered the scale such a large painting needed.

And so it now hangs.

I don’t recall when my company first purchased this particular piece of art so I cannot say for certain how many years I have walked past it on my way to lunch. Now in its new home, every time I stride through our entry hall, I will walk past this long-admired painting. I do not know if it will always remind me of work, only time will tell. But whether or not it does, it will still serve as a reminder of when I actually began to explore my creative side by rendering a likeness of it by my own hand, a pleasurable artistic activity I plan to spend more time enjoying once I do actually retire.

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Posted in Art

Tagged Art, creativity, Memories, Painting, Retirement

A Curated Condo?

Posted on November 6, 2016 | 3 comments

Our oldest son, his wife and daughter were in town for a visit earlier this year. On their last night in town, they spent the night at our condo since they had an early flight the next morning and our condo is a quick 10-minute drive to the airport. They had not actually been to our condo in a couple of years so it was their first opportunity to see what all we had done since their last visit.

When I was dropping them off there, I took it as quite a compliment when my son walked in, looked around and said our condo looked like it had been curated.

I’ve written before what a wonderful, vacation-like place our condo is and how we have worked at making it a special place. And I absolutely have to give my wife tremendous credit for decorating it with the help of her life-long friend. Whether by strict curatorial discipline or a wonderful vision, I had to agree with my son’s assessment. That is because everything hanging on the walls is an original piece of art and many of the pieces of furniture are vintage mid-century modern, almost one of a kind period pieces that my wife has found on the Internet or purchased at estate sales.

In early December 2013 once we had purchased the last of our furniture—barely 6 months after completing the extensive renovation—our walls were completely bare. But even before we had reached this milestone, my wife had been busy scouring treasure. And one of her favorite venues for this is a silent auction where the thrill of winning a prize exudes from my wife with child-like delight when she ends up being the top bidder.

The first five pieces of art to be hung in our condo all came from three different silent auctions my wife attended while we were still busy renovating and furnishing the condo.

All of these looked very nice, but being someone that likes to complete one project and move onto another, I soon grew impatient wanting to add more to give that finished look. My wife on more than one occasion made it clear to me that she did not want to take any existing art from our home down to the condo. And for a long time, I respected her choice by not bringing pieces from home to fill the empty walls. Not surprisingly, I began to ask her when an upcoming art auction might be in the hopes of discovering more art. But several of the next ones we attended proved fruitless despite my strong desire to advance our art decorating.

Case in point, this small blank wall between the door to our kitchen and bedroom proved quite difficult to fill.

For a while, all that was there was a 1950s set of nesting tables my wife had shipped from Denmark. A small cabinet eventually replaced this; another Internet find.

But we had trouble finding what would go on the cabinet as well as above it on this small wall. Then one time when my wife was out of town, I brought two of my favorite items from home just to try them out: one that I refer to as my “fake Chihuly” and the other a three dimensional piece entitled “Collecting Dreams” that we had gotten one year at the River Arts fest.

I recognize and willingly accept that if a more appropriate item is discovered in the future, that these items will be replaced but at least for now, the space is not empty even if it is occupied with temporary “squatters.”

Over the next couple of years, a few other small pieces have been added…

…as well as a couple of my favorites. A tribute to our local microbreweries we found at the Cooper-Young festival…

…and a vintage photograph by Don Newman, a local photographer from the mid 20^th century, that my wife gave me for Christmas one year.

The spot over our bed was also empty until my wife made another successful discovery on the Internet, a tile mural.

And for the longest time, our bathroom walls were empty but thanks to another silent auction and a visit to the old Tennessee Brewery, appropriate photos were obtained.

At this point, I felt we were nearing completion but still at least two more spots needed art, one over our dresser and the other next to our vintage dining room table. The spot over our dresser was filled following a trip to Asheville, NC when I ran across a panoramic canvas photo of the famous Linn Cove Viaduct on the Blue Ridge Parkway, my favorite road in the entire world.

The other was the printing and framing of four different photos my wife and I had taken on some of our trips to Amsterdam, some of our own art.

The final piece that I had been wanting to add for some time but had not been willing to spend the money on was a Vitra Design Museum miniature chair to sit on our vintage end table next to the vintage ash tray.

Thanks again to my wife, she gave this piece to me for my birthday this year.

As I reflect back to the comment my son made, it is easy to see how he would have concluded this. Over the past three years, each furniture item and each piece of art has been carefully selected from a multitude of sources. So the condo—our condo—that I have referred to before as my vacation condo is now, thanks to my son’s assessment, also a personal art museum. And with our lifetime memberships in hand, my wife and I are free to visit any time we want.

3 Comments

Posted in At Home

Tagged Art, Midtown Condo

I’m Not an Artist – Part 3

Posted on February 23, 2013 | 2 comments

This is Part 3 of a 3-Part series. If this is your first visit to the blog, click on the link to the right to Part 1 to read the entire story.

Almost six years went by before I painted again. Again my thoughts were how many building paintings could one have. This led to quite a dry spell. I would still capture photos of interesting looking pictures whenever I traveled and even captured some of the more famous New York buildings just in case. At one point, I went so far as to start on another building painting and picked out some colorful buildings in California as my subject. I got to the point of drawing the buildings directly onto the canvas trying to save effort of drawing it out on paper and then again on canvas. But after just drawing a few lines, I realized I would have to draw it out on paper first and so just gave up.

At this point, my wife and I had had a very successful trip to photograph the flowers at Keukenhof gardens, an enormous park an easy train/bus ride from Amsterdam. The tulips had really been at their peak that year on our visit so we had a huge selection. I had previously used photos from Keukenhof in calendars that I had made. I decided it was time to show off some of our pictures to others beyond just calendar recipients. So we had six professionally framed and grouped them together on the wall in our home.

Several years later, I was thumbing through the flight magazine waiting for our plane to take off so I could read my Kindle. I usually just flip through these magazines with little interest just waiting until we reach an altitude where it is safe to use portable electronic devices and ran across an article about subway art in New York City. I had been on New York subways before but I didn’t recall seeing any art so this article intrigued me. But it was this station that stopped me in my tracks.

Ignoring the double ping tone that gave the all clear for my Kindle, I continued to read and stare at the photo in the magazine. Here was a possible new way to paint: striking colors in random patterns. But oh no I thought, I couldn’t paint the curves. I racked my brain trying to come up with an alternative approach to my “tape and paint” technique that would allow smooth curves. But I just couldn’t come up with a solution. The colors haunted me though.

When I got home from the trip, I decided to try to find a picture of the subway station on the Internet. This was necessary because I had failed to take the magazine with me even though they encourage you to take them off the plane. It must have been the haunting that whispered to me not to take the magazine.

When I found the photo, I printed it out and continued to stare at it. It seemed to stare back at me taunting me. And then it hit me. Rather than trying to reproduce the design in my painting, I would create a design of my own using straight lines. I also realized that this would be much easier to paint than any of my building paintings: very few lines and no details. I jumped into the project and in no time was finished. It was hung in our kitchen, just weeks before we had a house full of guests in town for our daughter’s wedding.

One of our houseguests was to be my sister, the artist. I was not there when she saw it for the first time but she texted me that she loved the colors and the movement. Wow movement, I hadn’t thought of that. That must be some artist term to describe a painting. Even though I didn’t get to witness it, I was pleased with her reaction.

Could this become a gift idea for my sister? For me being a card-carrying perfectionist, I couldn’t imagine painting something for a real artist. I am my own worst critic finding little mistakes in everything I had created; a character flaw my wife likes to point out. And I knew my sister could find the flaws just as I could. She of course had the eye of a real artist. But I was ready to take the plunge.

I decided to make a smaller painting for my sister since she might not have wall space for a 24 X 36 frame. I also decided to try painting on a hard surface so that I could attach the tape even more securely for making even finer, straight lines (trying to make it more perfect). Having found a suitable 18 inch square laminate canvas, I thought about making a smaller version of my own painting but thought the small size would diminish the impact of the movement. I went for a totally different but similar approach.

I wrapped it in brown paper and sent it home with my nephew and his wife who lived with my sister in Arkansas. I knew at the time she was out in California visiting her grand kids so I didn’t know when she would return and open her Christmas present. But early one December morning, I got a text from my sister with a picture attached. She had hung it in her kitchen where all could see it. I remember joking that she hung it the wrong way trying to deflect the discomfort of her compliments but I don’t think she got my joke. But she seemed genuinely to like it. And then it hit me; I had painted something that an artist had liked. For someone who doesn’t view himself as an artist, I had arrived.

In addition to having three of my paintings hung in my own home, I now have paintings hung in both my sister’s homes and in my daughter’s apartment. And I still have relatives without any artwork from me. Better watch out.

One of my frequent statements I make to my wife upon completing a project is, “It took a lot longer than I thought.” When I sat down at the computer early one morning, I didn’t know where my writing would take me or whether in the end I would convince myself that I was an artist. I know each of my readers will have to form their own opinion; I don’t plan to take a poll. In exploring and analyzing my artistic endeavors over my life, I know that I am not a Van Gogh or a Pissarro, two artists I highly admire. But I am who I am. And now I know,

I AM AN ARTIST!!

2 Comments

Posted in Art, Insights

Tagged Art, creativity, subway art

I’m Not an Artist – Part 2

Posted on February 16, 2013 | 4 comments

This is Part 2 of a 3-Part series. If this is your first visit to the blog, click on the the link at the right to Part 1 to read the full story.

I took the challenge from my sister to heart. For my second painting, I knew that I wanted to use the same painting technique and I wanted to paint other buildings. I thought if I could find or take a picture of real buildings, that I could use my trusty ruler, proportions, and calculator to transcribe the buildings from the photo onto my canvas. Just what buildings did I want to paint?

I know I wrestled with this dilemma for some time. What about a famous building like the Empire State Building? No everyone would compare my painting to the image in his or her mind of that building and my painting might not be judged so favorably. And I liked the blend of realism with a touch of fantasy in my first painting that depicted a building but not the detail of a real building. Knowing how many hours it would take to complete another painting, it couldn’t just be any old building.

I don’t know how the idea came to me but I thought: “How about buildings from Asheville, NC?” This was a town that was special to my siblings and me; this would make a special painting as well. But how was I going to get a picture of some interesting buildings? I searched the Internet for photos of street scenes from Asheville. I even ran across some paintings of street scenes in Asheville but I couldn’t find a picture of a street with buildings that held any significance to me.

I finally pulled up the Asheville Chamber of Commerce website and although I didn’t find street scenes like I was looking for, I did find a number of photos of individual buildings that held some potential. I remembered that my painting would have a little fantasy in it and I thought, “I could make up my own street scene and include buildings from different locations throughout the city.” With this plan, I just had to pick the right buildings.

Having selected three that looked interesting, I next had to decide what color I should paint each building. My first painting gave me a sense of freedom since it was painted by an artist and had included an orange building and a red building. Other than scenes like the Rainbow Row in Charleston, SC or the New Harbor in Copenhagen, I didn’t think these two buildings were actually red and orange in real life.

So I picked three colors that I thought would look pretty together and yet provide a bit of fantasy. Since I had a separate photo for each of the buildings, I had to “scale up” each separately making sure that proportionally they would all be the same size on a single canvas and fit together without any one of them overpowering the others. Having expanded to three buildings, I also had to grow my canvas size up to 24 X 36 inches. Thank goodness I loved algebra.

I created my scene on paper as before and then I redrew it on the canvas. I also discovered on this painting that you could buy painters tape that had a much smoother texture that was designed to leave even finer paint lines. And finding a canvas that also had a smoother texture, I was all set to produce my second painting. It was on this painting that I also first explored blending paint to create unique colors, a technique that any artist could probably do in their sleep. I had not done this on my first painting as I knew I would have to mix up additional batches for touch up and fixing mistakes and I didn’t think I could recreate the same color that matched perfectly at a later time. But with finer tape and a smoother canvas, I was emboldened to give it a try. I was very pleased with the outcome.

That fall, I had a couple of business trips scheduled, one to San Francisco and one to Amsterdam. It was on this trip to San Francisco that we got to visit our daughter who had recently moved there to pursue her PhD in Russian literature at UC Berkeley. As we were exploring downtown Berkeley, I began to notice a number of unique looking buildings. I thought what better way to get photos of buildings than to take them my self and as we walked around, I captured snapshots of eight different buildings.

On my return home, I started thinking that my wife would be hesitant to hang a third painting of buildings on our walls and a quick question to her confirmed that suspicion. But with my best photos yet, I really had a passion to paint one more because I knew I could create a masterpiece. Suddenly it came to me; since the buildings were in Berkeley where my daughter would be for a number of years, I could paint a Berkeley scene and give it to her. Problem solved.

I wanted to increase the scale of this painting but stay with a 24 X 36 canvas so I limited my selection to just two buildings. And since this painting was specifically for my daughter, at least one of the buildings should hold some significance for her. That part actually turned out to be very easy, as fortunately I had photographed a building that she frequented on at least a weekly if not daily basis.

Confident in the expression that “the third time is the charm” would lead to my best painting yet, I set out on my task. Returning to my “artist license” that I had used on my second photo, I created my own street scene by combining the Peet’s Coffee shop with one of the most interesting looking buildings I had encountered. Having become skilled in my technique, I drew out the buildings on paper and then transcribed the pencil drawing to the canvas.

For paints, I decided to keep these buildings true to color. I chose this path because I didn’t know what my daughter would think if I a painted a purple Peet’s Coffee shop. (She actually probably would have loved it but for me it wouldn’t be real.) I also didn’t change the colors because I thought the buildings each had their own natural beauty. I think I made the right decision.

That November, my daughter was able to come home for Thanksgiving. This gave me the opportunity to give it to her as a late birthday present. I wish I could have captured her expression on film when she saw it for the first time, I can just picture the glee. We snapped this picture of it hanging in our entry hall later. Knowing that she would have to take it back on the plane, I engineered and built a wooden case with handle that just fit the painting. I was struck when I finished the case and realized this was just like a real work of art, one so valuable that it required its own custom carrying case.

I am happy to say that my daughter has proudly displayed this painting in a place of prominence in each of her apartments in Berkeley and now in Pasadena. And for each of her moves, she has used this carrying case to protect it from damage. Anyone familiar with her website and blog, Krugthethinker, might recall seeing the painting sneaking into view in a photo of whatever was being featured.

That fall, I also traveled to Amsterdam. By 2004, I had been to Amsterdam 14 times and had always enjoyed seeing canal houses. Having developed a love of Amsterdam and these canal houses, I knew this had to be my next painting. My last full day in the city, after I had completed my work, I walked canal after canal. I can’t begin to imagine how far I walked. I captured a number of photos of possible scenes to paint. Before the sun set, I realized I had almost overlooked probably the most famous canal house of all, the Anne Frank House. More canal hiking and good fortune; being the end of October the tree in front of the house was almost leafless. I took several different perspectives before my hike back to the hotel and my trip home. These photos lay in waiting.

The next year, in conversation with my oldest sister, I found out she was teaching her class about the Diary of Anne Frank. She seemed very passionate about the subject and mentioned how she would love to go to the Anne Frank House. I recalled my photos from the previous fall in Amsterdam and thanked my lucky stars for remembering to photograph the house where she and her family had hid. What better birthday present than to paint Anne Frank’s House for my sister.

By now, you know my routine almost as well as I do so I won’t repeat the details of its creation. I must say when my sister was in town in the fall, I had the perfect opportunity to give it to her. Fortunately this time, I captured it on film.

But did four paintings mean I was an artist?

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Posted in Art, Memories, Travel

Tagged architecture, Art, creativity, travel

Tag Archives: Art

I Love Glass!

Painting at Work

A Curated Condo?

I’m Not an Artist – Part 3

I’m Not an Artist – Part 2

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