London Shop Fronts

from the London Shop Fronts blog
Hao Wah, Peckham High Street, SE15, from the London Shop Fronts blog. Click image to visit the site.

As the London Shop Fronts blog reveals, every place in the world has a unique character that may be difficult to define, but is instantly recognizable. It's one of the things I love about Oklahoma City.

I'm drawn to the flat, almost clinical documentary style of these photographs. Although these are architectural spaces, the frontal perspective flattens the real-life objects into an abstracted array of color and texture. And the homebrew typography is always wonderful.

Related Paho Mann, photographer. See particularly the Reinhabited Circle-K series. Bernd and Hilla Becher, architectural photographers. See the Framework Houses series at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for examples.

Alison Bechdel on Creating Fun Home

Alison Bechdel is the creator of the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. Her recent book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, is a frank and tender deconstruction of her childhood and adolescence. It's never easy to understand one's parents from an adult perspective, and Bechdel uses Fun Home to explore her father's identity through fresh eyes.

Note: If you are reading this blog (and watching the videos) in Firefox, good for you! (If not, please switch browsers right away. You won't regret it.) Since you are a savvy Firefox user, you might benefit from the Flashblock plugin, which reduces the load time for web pages with embedded videos.

I Met The Walrus

From I Met The Walrus' YouTube page:

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation.

Liz Roth: Expert

Arizona, oil painting by Liz Roth, from the series America 101 Arizona, oil painting by Liz Roth, from the series America 101. Click image to visit the artist's site.

Liz Roth is one of my fellow artists from Art 365. Her installation of paintings, titled America 101, is a comment on consumerism versus the preservation of the American landscape. For her project, Liz travelled to all 50 states (yes, all) and painted two small landscapes from each state. These 100 paintings were hung along with one billboard-sized painting of one of America's most ubiquitous disposable commodities -- a water bottle.

Liz teaches at OSU in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In this video, Liz exemplifies the qualities I think every good art studio professor has. Her students learn from her about three important disciplines in art: technical, conceptual, and professional practices. I hope prospective art students see this video and enroll!

Speaking of prospective art students, OVAC is gathering information about opportunities for high school age artists. Read more about that here.