What do Jackson Pollock and Mel Howse have in common?

Today I stumbled upon this film of Jackson Pollock painting on glass from the 1950's. Some of his tools look remarkably like the metal screens promoted by Bullseye for "painting with light" using glass frits.

My friend Mel Howse laid pasta and dried beans on glass before spraying it with silver stain in her large commission for Sainsbury's Supermarket CMK which I saw her fabricating at Derix Glasstudios.

Bryan W. Lewis

Today while doing a Google image search for "the glass painter" I found the work of Bryan W. Lewis. Here's a description from his Bio:

My art career began at age six when, inspired by a colorful Bible story book, I began creating my own Biblical illustrations. At age ten, my father introduced me to stained glass as a hobby. Throughout high school I was a member of The National Art Honor Society and it was then I began my own small stained glass business.

While in college I excelled in figure drawing and, during my third year, I began to explore stained glass painting. I have been painting stained glass professionally ever since.

My work has been featured in Stained Glass Quarterly, Guitar Magazine, The Kansas City Star, television news coverage and other media.

You can visit his website here: http://www.theglasspainter.com/

Do the Work

I want to thank AGG member Nancy Gong for recommending the book, Do the Work by Steven Pressfield. I don't have a lot of time in my schedule to sit and read but I do listen to audio books all the time in the car and while painting in my studio. This book is short, straight forward and deals with issues creative people struggle with all the time. As soon as I finished it I thought of half a dozen people I wanted to send a copy to. On reflection I realized, like all advice it's better solicited than unsolicited. So look it up and see if you're in a place where you need this book.

Here's a review: http://mark-hayward.com/2011/04/24/steven-pressfield-do-the-work/
and another great link I'll be reading: http://thedominoproject.com/_/No_Idling_DTW_Workbook.pdf

Playing Cards

Today I'm researching about playing cards and I came across these:

Playing cards inspired by stained glass, designed by Gertrude Kümpel, Zurich, 1989 on the website,World of Playing Cards: http://www.wopc.co.uk/

LED installation in Madrid

From the Blog: INHABITAT/Design will save the world:
Madrid's festive season gets a colorful start thanks to a wonderful new installation by Italian designer Teresa Sapey. Commissioned by the city as part of an annual tradition to brighten up Madrid's streets during the holiday season, Sapey opted for row after row of circular LED lights in every color imaginable that warm up a relatively featureless part of the Spanish capital

Read more: Swirling LED Lights on a High Fashion Street Kick off the Festive Season in Madrid Teresa Sapey Christmas Lights in Madrid – Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building 

1410 Photos found!

What do you get when photographers from all over the world are inspired by stained glass? I found the answer by searching "Stained Glass" at the photo sharing site 500px. It's well worth an hour of your time. Enjoy!

http://500px.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=stained+glass&type=photos&page=1&order=votes&license_type=-1

Steal Like an Artist

Here's my rift on Creativity. I've been thinking about it. How do we teach; it how do we learn it.
First a talk by Austin Kleon on Cultivating Creativity in the Digital Age


From the Blog: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/27/steal-like-an-artist-austin-kleon/

Gotta love that Jungendstil

As you may have guessed from today's posts I'm Google searching "Stained Glass Saints". Here's an image that caught my eye from a photosharing site: 500px
Kirche am Steinhof (also called the Church of St. Leopold) in Vienna - Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirche_am_Steinhof
Photo by Mario Traar
It was designed by Koloman Moser

Here are some other windows in the church:

ceiling

Opalescent never looked so good!

Stained Glass Windows by Neal Fox

Installation at Galerie Michael Schultz in Berlin

Johnny Cash

Hunter J Thompson & Billy Holiday

Installation at Daniel Blau gallery in Hoxton Square

The Brit artist takes his stained-glass portraits of Hunter S Thompson and William Burroughs to Berlin

• TEXT BY NATHALIE OLAH
• Neal Fox : http://www.nealfox.co.uk/project/stained-glass-windows

When they were exhibited at Daniel Blau gallery in Hoxton Square last year, Neal Fox’s stained-glass portraits stunned – both on account of their seamless execution and outspoken take on fame-culture. Constructed using traditional glassware methods, each tells a graphic tale of celebrity, depravity and excess through colour-block panels punctuated by quotations from some of the twentieth century’s most polemic literary figures, including Thompson and Burroughs.

“The windows are alternative saints, iconoclasts, geniuses and lunatics.” Fox explains. “They are all people who have been in my drawings, who my granddad’s ghost has met on a crazy phantasmagoric bender through time, space and pop culture. They are quite a diverse group, from Albert Hoffman who discovered LSD, to Billy Holliday and Aleister Crowley.”

The figures appear consecrated, fixed and permanently secured as pseudo-religious icons and in their stasis, stand entirely opposed to those depicted in the artist’s latest work, ‘Wild Frontier of the Mind’.

 

The windows are alternative saints, iconoclasts, geniuses and lunatics.” Fox explains. “They are all people who have been in my drawings, who my granddad’s ghost has met on a crazy phantasmagoric bender through time, space and pop culture

The vast seascape sees the artist make a return to illustration proper, to those slightly distorted, gargoyle-y, tri-tone line-drawings that first won him fame. All the Fox regulars are there of course, in addition to many new faces, and set adrift on an ocean of sexual expoits, chemical warfare and alien invasion that sees Freud, Jung and Captain Haddock battle the Monster of the Id; Charlie Sheen escape the prison of the Super Ego and Picasso and Francis Bacon attacked by nightmarish semiotic phantoms.

“I watched a film called Magic Trip about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters being pioneers on the frontier of the mind. I was also reading J G Ballard who had spoken about going on a mind safari. I’d been getting into old comics by a guy called Basil Wolverton, who drew really cool science fiction stories like ‘Brain Bats from Venus’. It all went into creating this work that seems pretty insane but certainly made sense at the time, ” Fox explains.

Window Wonderland

Here's a Golden Oldie from our friends at Looking at Glass:

Solar Glass Generates Power Through Your Windows

These window panes, which were unveiled at Taipei’s International Optoelectronics Week, do double duty to block out the elements and create energy for your home. They are slightly foggy and can seemingly replace home or commercial windows.

Read more: http://inhabitat.com/solar-glass-generates-power-through-your-windows/

Nick Sayers

After falling down the rabbit hole doing a web search on sacred geometry and the platonic solids I stumbled upon the Flickr stream of the artist Nick Sayers. Enjoy this!
Read his story about:

Polyhedral Patcham Pupils

On 30 March 2012, I ran a maths-art workshop at Patcham House School, as part of their Maths Day.

In a one-hour workshop, children pinned 12 pre-made, machine-cut plastic silhouettes of themselves together with plastic cocktail sticks, to form polyhedral shapes with tetrahedral symmetry.

The pieces were created in advance. The children lay on a green screen and were photographed from the stairs above. I then took these images, processed them in Photoshop and turned them into cutting files.

They were cut by the very capable Mark at Brighton & Hove Plastics in Portslade.

More images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicksayers/sets/72157629540305162/with/6969613482/

Sinister Saints

From the blog of illustrator Dave Lowe: http://www.paraabnormalthecomic.com/search/label/Sinister%20Saints

Photographers explore an abandoned church

The abandoned First German Reformed Church in the West End

"Venkman and I had just finished up an interview in the abandoned Hopple St. Subway tunnels for a Cincinnati Enquirer article. The sky was bright blue and the sun was shining on a cold, yet beautiful afternoon. "I kind of feel obligated to shoot photos today." I said to Venkman. The weather was too nice and with the holiday break from our respective schools, we had plenty of time on our hands. We agreed to set out in hopes of finding something new. Ironically, on the eve of a Catholic Holy Day of Obligation, we came across an abandoned church."
Read the post here: http://queencitydiscovery.blogspot.com/2010/01/holy-day-of-obligation.html

AGG Member: Dan Maher - A Good Thing

As my wife was looking through the new issue of Martha Stewart Living she just said, "Hey, do you know this guy?" Congratulations, Dan - looking good!

Color Trends for 2013

http://yourhomeonlybetter.com/a-color-story-by-decade/

From the Blog, Your Home Only Better

According to the color guru’s at Benjamin Moore, we are looking forward to some connecting trends for 2013. I love how they related color trends to real life.

But first, let’s get some perspective from trends from the past two years:

• 2011 was all about Balance in an uncertain world. Key influences on color and style trends were: farm, order, escape and tribe. You can read more about it here.
• 2012 evolved from Balance to Preservation. As our world continued to feel uncertain, the key influences were: heritage, process, protection and enlightenment.  You can read more about that here.

And 2013 is looking forward towards an intersection of style and timeframes. While our world continues to feel uncertain, we desire to make sense of it all and find comfort in our surroundings. Benjamin Moore’s Andrea Magno says it best “As we look to the future, we find that our ideas are rooted in the past. What’s new is in the details.”  

Read the rest of the story here.

VIDEO: The Effect of Color

Watch The Effect of Color | OFF BOOK on PBS. See more from Off Book.

AGG member: Troy Moody

www.practical-art.com

Troy Moody has been creating original glass artwork around the Valley since the late 90s.

His unique glass art can be found in a variety of places, including custom stained glass in historic homes in central Phoenix and luxury homes in Paradise Valley as well as large-scale public art installations at the Phoenix Convention Center and the Maricopa County Superior Court Tower.

His most recent series, "Home," is the product of traditional glass techniques including blown glass, kiln casting, and glass painting/staining paired with various found objects. The exhibition will show at Practical Art from December 1 through the 31. There will be a reception for the exhibit on the 14. Practical Art is located at 5070 N. Central Ave.

"Home" is a celebration of the diverse characteristics of glass coupled with the found object, according to Moody. He says he hopes to "explore our relationships with the material world and the by-products of our cultural narratives."

"The found objects I incorporate into my work seem imbued with a history, the resonance of life and a memory of function," he says. "The chipping layers of paint, rusted hardware and aged wood grains evoke nostalgia while the glow and sparkle of the manipulated glass becomes anachronistic and contemplative."

www.troymoody.com

Flag by Troy Moody

Moody also currently has an exhibit at Mesa Contemporary Arts where he teaches part-time, and a temporary installation located at the Scottsdale Civic Plaza, commissioned through Scottsdale Public Art.

You can find out more information at both Practical Art and Moody's personal website.

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