Tag Archives: Arts & Literature

Creative Arts Video: “How Does Animation Work?”

Created, Animated and Directed by: Tyler Pacana

An overview of how animation is made with traditional, 2D-rigged, stop-motion, and CG techniques.

Music: Hub World – Yotam Perel

Produced at Sheridan College [2020].

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Lectures: “Beyond Gatsby: The Fabled Gardens of Long Island’s Gold Coast”

Originally comprising vast areas of the North Shores of Long Island, the Gold Coast was a favorite retreat of the rich and famous. Beginning around the turn of the century and through the 1920’s, the North Shore was the place to be for some of the most notable Americans. Along with grand houses, they built elaborate gardens, hiring such notable architects and landscape architects as Delano and Aldrich, Carrere and Hastings, the Olmsted Brothers, and Beatrix Farrand. Discover the gardens, as they were originally built, and learn about their history, landscape design, and present condition. This event was presented through the generous support of the Boston Design Center as part of the ICAA-NE Design Series.

CeCe Haydock graduated from Princeton University (BA English) and received a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the SUNY School of Environmental Science and Forestry. After working for the New York City Parks Department, she joined the firm, Innocenti and Webel in Locust Valley, NY, before starting her private practice. In 2007, she did research as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome on Edith Wharton and Italian villas. She has lectured and written on historic Italian, French, and American gardens for Old Westbury Gardens, Maryland’s Ladew Topiary Gardens, Princeton University, and numerous garden and horticultural clubs. A trustee of Planting Fields Arboretum and a member of the International Council of The Preservation Society of Newport County, she is a visiting lecturer at the New York Botanic Garden and an adjunct professor at Long Island University. CeCe is currently expanding her private practice to include landscape sustainability.

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Today: 250th Anniversary Of William Wordsworth’s Birth – “That Inward Eye”

From an Apollo Magazine article (April 7. 2020):

‘They flash upon that inward eye
 Which is the bliss of solitude’
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William Wordsworth Daffodils - I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud - Amazon photo‘We are fond of tracing the resemblance between Poetry and Painting,’ wrote William Wordsworth  (1770–1850) in the famous ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads (1800), ‘and, accordingly, we call them Sisters.’ To speak of the ‘sister arts’ was indeed a critical platitude of the age, though as it happens Wordsworth’s attitude towards painting wasn’t normally very sisterly. 

 

Apollo Magazine logoWhen, in 1840 or so, a well-meaning houseguest called Margaret Gillies made a drawing of the 70-year old Mrs Wordsworth, everyone agreed that it was an excellent likeness; but her kind act was rewarded with a testy and somewhat ungracious sonnet from the sitter’s husband. He preferred to visualise Mary in her salad days: ‘’tis a fruitless task to paint for me, / Who, yielding not to changes Time has made, / By the habitual light of memory see / Eyes unbedimmed, see bloom that cannot fade, / And smiles that from their birth-place ne’er shall flee / Into the land where ghosts and phantoms be’.
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All she possesses, as a painter, is the outward eye: ‘that inward eye’ is the poet’s hallmark, as of course Miss Gillies would have known from Wordsworth’s most famous poem, the one about the daffodils – ‘They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude’. By chance we know (because Wordsworth left it on record, saying they were the best thing in the poem) that those two lines were actually contributed by Mary, so the uxoriousness of the thing is double: not only does she evade the merely visual but she also possesses the innate genius to be able to name the imaginative power that so transcends it.
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FINE ARTS: 4K VIDEO TOUR – THE VAN GOGH MUSEUM “ARTISTIC EXCHANGE”

Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K. Have you always wanted to be alone in the Van Gogh Museum? Step into Vincent’s world and enjoy the private video tour.

Episode 5: Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

New Art & Nature Books: “What It’s Like To Be A Bird” – David Allen Sibley (2020)

While its focus is on familiar backyard birds–blue jays, nuthatches, chickadees–it also examines certain species that can be fairly easily observed, such as the What It's Like To Be A Bird David Allen Sibley Cover April 15 2020seashore-dwelling Atlantic puffin. David Sibley’s exacting artwork and wide-ranging expertise bring observed behaviors vividly to life. 

The bird book for birders and nonbirders alike that will excite and inspire by providing a new and deeper understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing–and why.

“Can birds smell?” “Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year?” “Do robins ‘hear’ worms?” In What It’s Like to Be a Bird, David Sibley answers the most frequently asked questions about the birds we see most often. This special, large-format volume is geared as much to nonbirders as it is to the out-and-out obsessed, covering more than two hundred species and including more than 330 new illustrations by the author.

What It's Like To Be A Bird David Allen Sibley April 15 2020

And while the text is aimed at adults–including fascinating new scientific research on the myriad ways birds have adapted to environmental changes–it is nontechnical, making it the perfect occasion for parents and grandparents to share their love of birds with young children, who will delight in the big, full-color illustrations of birds in action. Unlike any other book he has written, What It’s Like to Be a Bird is poised to bring a whole new audience to David Sibley’s world of birds.

Author Website

DAVID ALLEN SIBLEY is the author and illustrator of the series of successful guides to nature that bear his name, including The Sibley Guide to Birds. He has contributed to Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, BirdWatching, North American Birds, and The New York Times. He is a recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for Promoting the Cause of Birding from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York’s Eisenmann Medal. He lives and birds in Massachusetts.

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New Museum Exhibitions: “Andy Warhol” At The Tate Modern, London (Video)

Although our galleries are temporarily closed we wanted to share the Andy Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern with you. Join Tate curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran as they discuss Warhol through the lens of the immigrant story, his LGBTQI identity and concerns with death and religion.

Meet the man behind the brand. It’s a Warhol you might not know, with some artworks you may not have seen before.

Find out more about the exhibition here

 

Top Artist Documentary: ‘PHYLLIDA’ – A Portrait Of The 76-Year Old British Sculptor Phyllida Barlow

This documentary is an intimate portrait of British sculptor Phyllida Barlow during her preparation for the major survey ‘cul-de-sac’ at the Royal Academy last Phyllida Barlow Cul-de-Sac Royal Academyyear. Directed by Cosima Spender, this film maps the roots of Barlow’s oeuvre, as she revisits childhood memories, domestic and urban spaces, and their subsequent role in her creative process.

Phyllida Barlow began studying at Chelsea College of Art in 1960, and went on to study and teach at Slade School of Art for more than twenty years, becoming Emerita Professor in 2009. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2011, and represented Great Britain in the 2017 Venice Biennale, where she created the ambitious installation, ‘folly’.

Hauser & Wirth Phyllida Barlow 2020

Watch this evolution and the artist’s influences in ‘PHYLLIDA’. ‘I want the work to be traversed in a way that your memory of it is tested, so that you keep forgetting what you’ve seen’, Barlow explains, ‘I think that is the nature of sculpture – not something that can be held as a whole image in your head, only as fragments… The spaces, the silences in between, are as much a component of the work as the thing itself.”

‘PHYLLIDA’ is produced by Hauser & Wirth, in association with Third Channel and Peacock Pictures.

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Artist Profiles: 66-Year Old American Painter Dan Graziano – “Beauty In A Vanishing America”

Artist Dan Graziano
Artist Dan Graziano

“In my paintings, I try to capture the hidden beauty found in the unexpected places and fleeting moments of everyday life.  I continue to be intrigued by the urban landscapes of inner cities – their active streets, time worn buildings and multiple layers of decay, renewal and adaptation – that proudly display the effects of age and use, which I see as testaments to strength, character and authenticity in contrast with modern society’s demand for newness, imitation, disposability and easy duplication.  

Dan Graziano is an award winning, nationally exhibited artist whose paintings capture the hidden beauty found in the unexpected places and fleeting moments of everyday life.  Incorporating dramatic light, shadow, color and perspective, his compositions feature a diversity of subjects – from a simple still life to rugged coastlines, active urban life, lively cafes and bars, small rural towns and forgotten roadside relics.  His work has been featured in numerous publications and is in the collections of private and corporate collectors throughout the world.

Dan Graziano Street Paintings - Website

His artistic vision began taking shape in the 60’s, during America’s explosive political, cultural and artistic awakening.  His first formal training focused on advertising and illustration, but a career opportunity in architecture and urban planning altered his original direction.

When he returned to painting, he was drawn to the rich complexity of the urban landscape – inspired by Edward Hopper and other urbanist painters. As an accomplished blues guitarist (his other great passion), he found the city streets, time worn buildings and multiple layers of decay and repair a visual parallel to the spirit and culture of the music.

“My work is influenced by the American realists such as Sargent, Hopper and the three generations of Wyeths along with California painters Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn.”

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FINE ARTS: 4K VIDEO TOUR – THE VAN GOGH MUSEUM “Artistic Flourishing”

Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K. Have you always wanted to be alone in the Van Gogh Museum? Step into Vincent’s world and enjoy the private video tour. Episode 4: Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam.

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New Literary Podcasts: Author James Shapiro On “Shakespeare And Plagues”

Octavian Report Rostrum PodcastsOctavian Report “Rostrum” spoke with him about a major theme in Shakespeare’s work and life: disease. Specifically, pandemic plagues, which ravaged London repeatedly throughout Shakespeare’s career, shuttering the theaters, and which appear (obliquely and otherwise) in some of his greatest plays.

The latest episode of the Rostrum’s coronavirus series features James Shapiro, the Larry Miller professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, and a leading expert on Shakespeare. Shapiro has published widely on this subject, most recently Shakespeare in a Divided America. He is also an advisor to the Royal Shakespeare Company and to the Public Theater.

Website

James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakespeare and other topics, and he has published widely on Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture.