Solutions in Progress

I went back and studied the videos of Ned's work and realized that basically he had a net(work) that supports all of the individual metal or plastic plates. Since I am working much smaller, I realized (I believe), I can acheive the same effect by using hardware cloth with 10mm sequins suspended inside each of the squares. I will cut the cloth to the shape of my dolphin kicking figure, and because this is hardware cloth, the overall structure will be much lighter than if I had tried to make it out of wood and used the Reflecto-Lite system (or similar style with finish nails and sequins).

Now the next step is getting all of the pieces together without a car...Hopefully someone will respond to my calls. If not I will be empty-handed in class.

Final Sculpture Challenges

Although I have not heard back from Ned Kuhn Studios, I have been searching the internet for an alternative to his metal plates to create my final sulptural piece. I have only found one company which makes the shimmering effect used on large billboards and signs. Reflecto-lite is located in Canada and they haven't been answering their phones since last week. They seem to be the only source for the shimmering discs. Their system, however costs $20.40 per square foot; that's before shipping. Ok back to the drawing board.

The other challenge I am facing, besides time, is weight. If the mobile piece I am trying to create is life size (this would be ideal) there is a logistical nightmare in trying to rig (suspend) the work if I am dealing in wood and metal. There has to be another way to create this piece.

After coming across this image and the last video, I believe I can combine these two ideas into a single work which should demonstrate the idea of an undulating body form. Getting the idea of the movement firmly established in the mind is the first step to successfully completing this challenginging style of swimming.

Technorama Facade

In thinking about my final sculptural movement assignment, the piece is supposed to help enhance a movement or hinder a movement. Since my movement is "learning how to dolphin kick" and the first step to that is understanding undulating movement, I am fascinating by this video of Ned Kahn's sculpture which captures undulating movement of air currents and translates them into something the eye can see.

Everything I have read about the dolphin kick says that you must first envision this undulating movement in your mind. This tells me my sculptural piece must be conceptual in nature. To truly help, it must convey this idea of undulation before even moving into the physical logistics of muscle movement.

Proposed Sculptural Installation

As part of my bronze assignment, we were instructed to make a miniature of a monument that we would like to see installed in the Alfred area. Since coming to AU, I have come to realize that Harder Hall (the art building) is a place that has given me a true sense of artistic freedom. With wings being a symbol for freedom, I thought I would create a monument based on a stylized idea of flight.

The photo seen here is a Photoshop combination of the actual monument location (Harder Hall), the bronze (the actual piece used in the photograph is approx. 16" tall-the finished bronze would be 72" tall). The glass feathers will be cast glass, faceted and polished, with the longest feather being approximately four feet long.

My hope is this piece will inspire and motivate other students to give their imagination wings and being willing to explore their own potential during their time in Harder Hall.

Hannah Mermaid SHOW REEL

Here is a collection of some of the best footage of Hannah Fraser in her mermaid incarnation. She is a professional model, mermaid, activist and artist. Hannah has several now five different tails all of which she has created herself.

I'm trying to contact her to discuss a variation on her mermaid tail, one specifically designed to mimic that of a dolphin. Something that I hope I can create for our assignment in enhancing a movement (in my case dolphin kicking). You can find hannah on myspace.com and all over YouTube.com

Japanese Fishing Futo Citizen of Taiji Dolphin Slaughter

I wish there was a way to stop this. I applaud people like Hannah Fraser who are trying to draw attention to this wholesale slaughter.

TGIF? & Frustrated Librarians

Once upon a time, we used to say, "Thank God its Friday." Unfortunately, that seems so meaningless at the moment. I have too many projects happening at once and I don't like the quality of any of them. I need more hours in the day, days in the week or fewer projects.

A note of particular frustration: In pursuit of the therianthrope issue, looking through the journal listings with the assistance of one of the reference librarians, I found that worldwide there are less than 30 published articles on this topic. Of those, 24 of them are focused on prehistoric rock art in either Africa or Spain. I put out what seemed to be the best 7 requests for inter-library loans/access and all but two were denied as the information is unavailable or no longer exists in a format which can be shared.

What puzzles me about this, is that none of these resources address the half human/half animal(beast,monster,non-human) art and sculpture from the Grecian era through the 19th century. This widespread hole tells me that A) I must be using the wrong term yet again for searching or B)perhaps no one has really done a concentrated, cohesive study of the particular subject and I really might have a basis for developing a foundation for my MFA thesis. Ok, I know I dreaming big here, but why not. I know that I have frustrated the reference librarians with this search, why not keep it up?

Transforming Aurora

As I have said before, I am very interested in trans formative works of art. In my Video art class, I created this piece starting from some simple video static which was run through a Sandine processor and the replicated 8 times in Final Cut Pro. I used a keying process to take out various portions of each frame to be able to see the frame below. I made two versions of this process and then combined them through a Maximus P Jitter patch (with the help of my friend Devin Henry). Then I took this image back into Final Cut Pro, slowing down the visual speed, creating a rotating path, modifying it with motion blurs, skews and enlargements. My intention with this piece is to create a moving painting. Hopefully, this piece and others like it will become part of my overall work when I project these video images both onto painted sculpture as well as illuminating sculptures from within. This is definitely a work in progress.

Although this is a very abstract work, I believe if you look at it as you would passing clouds, you will see many different images appear. Give it a try and let me know what you see. I am interested viewer response to my work.

Visual Experiment / meditation

I would really like to hear back from everyone who sees this video, if they could tell me what images came to your mind while watching it. What did you see? Be sure to click to full screen to get the full impact.

This video meditation was created by Ted Chambers

Practicing the Dolphin Kick (video)

Practicing the Dolphin Kick

Through a study of the movements of the Dolphin, the human body can mimic the Dolphin's fluidity and thereby move through the water with grace and power.

Special Thanks

I just wanted to say "Thank You" to my wonderful friend Christine in central Florida who surpised me. A package arrived from Amazon.com it was the book, "The Quest For Paradise, Visions of Heaven and Eternity in the World's Myths and Religion" by John Ashton and Tom Whyte.

This was one of the books I had just put up on my Wishlistr site (see link at left side of the screen). Again, thank you Christine for your support of my art research and work. You are the best!

When I think about a common movement made every day, I think about writing, manipulating a pen, pencil; even painting is very gestural. What fascinates me about this concept is that when you take it apart piece by piece, you come to realize that working with your mark making implement, you are transferring an abstract concept between the mark maker and the viewer. I believe this is extremely true in the case of small children or people just learning to paint, because they tend to make a mark which describes what they "think" rather than what they "see".

Much later as these skills develop the words/images become clarity with practice and maturity. Therefor you can imagine my surprise when I came across Paya, a 6 year old elephant in a Northern Thailand elephant village who paints. Pachiderms are believed to be on par with primates regarding intelligence. Her painting, however, crosses so many bridges and tells us there is so much waiting for us to see in the animal kingdom that our humanity has overlooked in the past.

This story becomes yet another fascet of my idea of human and animal blending...only here the elephant is creating images which her human audience can cleary understand and enjoy

Therianthropic Creation in the Name of Science

Ah, the Brits have gone and done it! Your wildest fears will be a reality. No wait seriously, Fergus Walsh, the medical coorespondant for BBC America announced "Scientists at Newcastle University have created part-human, part-animal hybrid embryos for the first time in the UK." Using human DNA placed in bovine eggs which have been stripped of their genetic material, the scientist have developed a way to grow and harvest stem cells for further research and development.

And the Catholic Church has gone ballistic in their resounding condemnation of this act of science calling it "monstrous."

All hype aside are we talking about minotaurs or microscopic cells? Thankfully only the latter-and at that they are only allowed to grow for 14 days. This interesting solution came about because of a shortage of human eggs so the scientist simply engineered a replacement with governmental approval.

The blending continues.

I am very interested in the forms of biologically engineered movement. The formation of wings, the muscles which move them and the coordination needed to maintain a life sustaining movement such as flight or moving away from a predator at high speed is fascinating to me.

The act of bipedal movement has been referred to as a "form of controlled falling" and this can be seen in the photographs of Edward Muybridge. Look at how the torso leans forward into the movement and then is 'caught' by the outstretched leg.

Comparing the movement between the running man and fighting birds, there is such a natural fluidity in the bird's movement. The Bird doesn't have to be taught how to move, but the man must train for extended periods of time to perfect his running ability.

I believe we humans observe the animal kingdom and learn from their natural abilities to enhance our own movements.