Alex Alvis Art

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

What is Art?

Lightening Field - Walter De Maria

My husband Mark suggested that this is a very controversial question...What is Art? At some point in time he noticed that this topic sparked tons of conversation in LinkedIn or Twitter...I can't remember which.

Recently, I was reminded of him telling me about this. We were in a museum last week, the Western Heritage Center on the way back from visiting the town of Sturgis, South Dakota (pre-motorcycle rally madness, mind you) and one of the displays was one of these:

The sign on this pile of rock was this interesting sign:

if you can see it...maybe not...but there is a sentence in this sign that says "Since the purest form of art is art that is not made for a purpose, but rather is an action a person is compelled to do, they represent this action: the motivation came out of idle time...they were created to enhance the lives of us plain folks by people unschooled in the formal practice of art and art history."

So Stone Jonnie Art - there you go.

So the photo of the lightning at the beginning of this post is there because I wanted to talk about Walter De Maria today. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia :) is this:

Walter Joseph De Maria (October 1, 1935 – July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer. He lived and worked in New York City. Walter de Maria's artistic practice is connected with Minimal art, Conceptual art, and Land art of the 1960s.
LACMA director Michael Govan said that "I think he's one of the greatest artists of our time." Govan, who worked with De Maria for a number of years, found De Maria's work "singular, sublime and direct."

So, Lightning Field is De Maria's best known works and it is an outdoor installation of 400 vertical stainless steel posts which give all sorts of interesting optical effects at different times of the day and night and also attracts lightning. It can be seen in New Mexico and is maintained by the Dia Art Foundation...this from their site:

Commissioned and maintained by Dia Art Foundation, The Lightning Field is recognized internationally as one of the late-twentieth century's most significant works of art and exemplifies Dia's commitment to the support of art projects whose nature and scale exceed the limits normally available within the traditional museum or gallery.

Incidentally, I found this photo on a wonderful website which every artist should know about (IMHO) called Daily Serving - An International Publication for Contemporary Art.

So that is all I have for us today. What is art to you?

"Till tomorrow!

~Alex

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

How Artists Make Time to Make Art

This is such a question on my mind this time of year. August is fast approaching and my work is in three shows in August. Many of you trying to get into even one show will be thinking that this is a good problem to have. It isn't that I'm complaining. Not in the slightest.

I love this time of year. I will be meeting past collectors and future collectors at two of the shows and the other show I simply cannot make it to.

This weekend you can find me and Mark in Colorado Springs at A Celebration of Horses Through Art and Music - an all equine art event and fund raiser with filmmaker Ginger Kathrens of the Cloud Foundation. I hope you will come by and see the show and watch Ginger's presentation about our country's wild horses. We would love to see you there!

The very next weekend is the acclaimed Sculpture in the Park in Loveland, Colorado. What a show it is and I am looking forward to seeing past collectors at the Friday Patron's Party and am very excited to meet future collectors of my work during this this weekend long fabulous event! I will be talking more about that in a post next week and about the American Women Artist's show that I will be unable to attend.

Which brings me back to the title of this post. How Artists make time to make Art. Some artist are diligent about making time to make art every day, (I have never met one, but I hear tell they exist) as is suggested by Alan Bamberger on his site Artbusiness.com. But Alan - though very involved in the business art world - does not say he is a practicing artist in his bio on his site (although, he could be one...). On artist's Dan Johnson's site Right Brain Rockstar there is an excellent guest post from artist Michele Theberge who also has a great site called The Mindful Artist. This post suggests using mindfulness to cope with distractions.

This time of year I need mindfulness to cope with not losing track of what my own name is. I would love your stories of the strategies you use to keep your busy self in the studio. Help me out here.

I'm going to try again tomorrow.

talk with you all then!

~Alex

Monday, July 28, 2014

GUESS who painted these ??? No fair peeking!

1908, Le Viaduc de L'Estaque (Viaduct at L'Estaque), oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm, private collection

Still Life with a Bunch of Grapes - Georges Braque

Still Life with a Bunch of Grapes, 1912

1909, Port en Normandie (Little Harbor in Normandy), oil on canvas, 81.1 x 80.5 cm (32 x 31.7 in), The Art Institute of Chicago

Are you thinking Pablo Picasso??

Picasso this Picasso that. He was not the sole inventor of cubism as so many people think. He is probably the most celebrated artist working in one of modernism's most well known movements - but he alone did not construct this new type of painting which was derived from a re-imagining of the works of artists such as Paul Cezanne.

This is the work of Georges Braque (1882-1963).

This from WikiArt:

The development of cubism came shortly after Braque met and began working with Pablo Picasso, in 1909. Both artists produced representative paintings with a monochromatic color scheme and interlocking blocks and complex forms. The summer of 1911 was especially fruitful for the artists. They painted side by side in the French Pyrenees, producing paintings that extremely difficult to differentiate each other’s paintings. The ultimate result of their time together was the development of a new style of painting, Analytic Cubism. show more

The two artists worked closely together until the outbreak of World War I, upon which Braque joined the French Amy and left Picasso’s side. After his return from the war, in which he was seriously wounded in the battlefield, Braque moved away from the harsh lines and sharp pointed complexity of the cubist style, and instead began to paint pieces with bright colors and eventually return to the human figure.

Although he departed from his harsh lines and forms, Braque never abandoned his cubist style. Whereas Picasso freely painted in many styles, from representational to cubist, surreal, and abstract, Braque held true to his fragmented forms and simultaneous perspective. By the time of his death in 1963, he was regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the School of Fines art in Paris, as well as in modern art.

And so interesting this is to me. To learn of the evolution of different artists in history.

Glad to be back writing to you this evening. I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I will be in Colorado Springs this coming weekend at a show and I hope if you are in the neighborhood, I will see you there. More on that tomorrow!

'Til then!

~Alex

Copyright information about the images used on this site:

(if I have at any time deviated from these principles - I extend my deepest apologies and will remove the image in question)

Fair use rationale:

it is a historically significant artwork
the image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
the image is readily available on the internet
the image is a low resolution copy of the original artwork and is unsuitable for commercial use

Artworks protected by copyright are supposed to be used only for contemplation. Images of that type of artworks are prohibited for copying, printing, or any kind of reproducing and communicating to public since these activities may be considered copyright infringement.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Happy Friday

My technical difficulties are continuing and I will have to put my daily blog writing on hold until Monday. I have only my ipad to work on at the moment and the blogger app is just too hard for my lack of technology minded self to deal with. I hope you have a fabulous weekend and I will be back in a few days!
~Alex

Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Academic and the Conventional

In the book written by Harold Speed (over 100 years ago) called The Art and Science of Drawing - in Chapter 6 "The Academic and the Conventional" he begins the chapter by writing: "The terms Academic and Conventional are much used in criticism and greatly feared by the criticized, often without either party appearing to have much idea of what is meant." he writes on about schools of art, etc., and then says something that makes me think of my own work - for I very much feel it speaks with my own authentic voice.

Speed goes on to write "There is much foolish talk about conventional art, as if art could ever get away from conventions, if it would. The convention would be more natural or more abstract according to the nature of the thing to be conveyed and the medium employed to express it. But naturalism is just as much a convention as any of the other isms that art has...been so assailed with. For a really unconventional art there is Madame Tussaud's Waxwork...they have real natural chairs, tables, and floors, real clothes and even real hair. Realism everywhere, but no life. And we all know the result. The is more expression of life in a few lines scribbled on paper by a good artist than in all the reality of the popular show."

And that's what I think my sculpture conveys; expression of life; the personality of the life and spirit of the animal portrayed.

What do you think about your own art or about the art you collect? Does it, no matter the ism represented, portray an expression of life?

I will continue to share my favorite insights from this book in the days to follow so stay tuned. Oh -and sorry there was no post yesterday but there were technical difficulties beyond my control that prevented access to the internet. It happens.

'Till tomorrow!

~Alex

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

UNCLE!

I have had an Uncle-y month. Today has been hell-ishly busy...and I feel the necessity of making a meal especial for one uncle visiting even so. But still there is the matter of a daily blog post. Another Uncle has come to my rescue (he knows who he is). I hope you also enjoy this link he emailed to me several days ago. http://www.boredpanda.com/worlds-most-creative-statues-sculptures/

Hope you enjoy this link - I know I did.

'Till tomorrow :)

~Alex

Monday, July 21, 2014

Unlimited Power

God help me, I do indeed have an Anthony Robbins book.

TONY ...yes.

Well. I could only wish to have half his energy. But, you know. If wishes were horses....

So Unlimted Power is the last book I pulled from my library to turn to a section. And what I found in Google Images when I put in "Unlimited Power Art" took me on an interesting journey. I saw a photo of an artist, Alvaro Cardona-Hines standing in front of a painting of his. This is the image:

But that's not the whole story. Because in discovering this image I discovered something even more interesting.

As you may know, in Google Images you can choose to just view the image or visit the page where the image is located. I did both and I'm very glad I chose to push the "visit the page" button because it led me to a very wonderful and inspiring blog and I hope so very much that you will visit it.

It is contains humble stories of one artist's journey and sprinkled within its pages are many words of wisdom for artists. This particular blog is written by Jeane George Weigel . Her blog is titled High Road Artist. I liked it very much and maybe you will too.

This particular blog entry was written in February of 2011 and is titled Art Matters: Alvaro Cardona-Hine Answers Why is Art Important?

I hope you will check it out and give it a read.

So - now lets go to the random-opening-to-whatever-page of Tony's intrepid book, Unlimited POWER ...shall we?

Here goes:

Okay. My finger landed on page 214 - right in the middle of the page. This quote is there:

"Where there is no vision, people persish."

--Proverbs 29:18

and the paragraph under that reads:

"Now you should do one final thing: make a list of the things you already have that were once goals --all the things in your ideal day you can already do, the activities and people of your life you are most grateful for, the resources you already have available to you. I call this a gratitude diary. Sometimes people get so fixated on what they want, they fail to appreciate or use what they already have. The first step toward a goal is seeing what you have, giving thanks for it, and applying it to future achievements. We all have ways to make our lives better at any moment. Achieving your wildest dreams should begin today with the everyday steps that can put you on the right path. Shakespeare once wrote, "Action is eloquence." Begin today with eloquent action that will lead to even more eloquent outcomes."

I think that is a very good thought to end the day with. May it make you tomorrow even better than it would have otherwise been.

"Til then -

~Alex