balance

Balance Art





Michael Grab
Rocks
Since 2008



   


        Michael Grab was born in Edmonton, Canada in 1984 and relocated to Boulder, Colorado in 2002 to attend University. He stumbled upon the art of rock balance through an unexpected spell of boredom in the summer of 2008. Since then he has gained a local reputation for designing large-scale balanced rock gardens up and down Boulder Creek, which flows through the heart of Boulder. The community response is normally very positive and many report meaningful experiences when they witness Michael’s stone balance work. He hopes to use his stone balance experience to perform demonstrations, but also to practice architectural design and to teach kids the benefits of creating nature art, including free artistic expression, presence of mind, and connecting with their surrounding environment.
        Land artist Michael Grab creates amazing towers and orbs of balanced rocks using little more than patience and an astonishing sense of balance. Grab says the art of stone balancing has been practiced by various cultures around the world for centuries and that he personally finds the process of balancing to be therapeutic and meditative. Looking at his creations makes me feel quite peaceful. It has a very calming effect on the viewer and the affect on nature is a positive one because nothing damaging is used in his creations.



http://www.gravityglue.com/?m=201304&paged=2

Texture

The Luncheon







Claude Monet
Private collection
1873 Musée d'Orsay,
  Paris, France
Oil on Canvas
162 X 203 cm









       Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. As a child he showed great interest in art. Instead of doing his school work he drew carricatures of his teachers, of which he sold on the streets. His father wanted him to go into the family business but Monet wanted to take another route. Now painting in oils, he enrolled in the Academie Suisse in 1859, where he met his future wife Camille. After an art exhibition in 1874, a critic insultingly dubbed Monet's painting style "Impression," since it was more concerned with form and light than realism, and the term stuck. Monet struggled with depression, poverty and illness throughout his life. He died in 1926 from lung cancer.

        I love how the texture comes through in this painting, just as vividly as the colors do. You can imagine the feel the slats of the wood bench, of the weaved wicker of the tray, the cool dirt under Monet's playing son, and the smooth metal of the coffee pot on the table. Monet did an amazing job with this painting to allow one to almost become a part of his life. To experience what he did through his brushstrokes.

http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/biography.html

                                                                                                                     
My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects.

– Claude Monet

color

The Tattooist










Norman Rockwell
Created in 1942
Brooklyn Museum
Oil on Canvas
43 X 33 in.

 

            

         Norman Percevel Rockwell,(Feb. 3,1894-Nov. 8,1978), was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works were, and still are, very popular in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. The most widely known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, Saying Grace, The Problem We All Live With, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his work for the Boy Scouts of America; producing covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations.

 

          Norman Rockwell worked from various staged photographs while painting The Tattooist, which was used as The Saturday Evening Post cover on the March 4, 1944 issue. In Fact, Rockwell used photographs as an aid in doing most of his paintings.  Many of Rockwell's friends and neighbors were models for his works. For the actual tattooist, he used one of his fellow illustrators from the Saturday Evening Post, and a neighbor, Clarence Decker, as the sailor. Schaeffer only appeared in this Rockwell illustration. Decker was ‘Master of the Grange’ in Arlington, and shows up in quite a few other Rockwell illustrations. For The Tattooist, Rockwell borrowed a tattoo machine from the Bowery tattooist Al Neville. Rockwell consulted with Al Neville, along with former sailors to insure the accuracy in his painting The Tattooist. I love the use of vivid color in this painting. The different shades being used helps to create the appearence of sweat, reflection of light, and contour in everything. I chose to blog on this piece because it is my husband's favorite by Rockwell. I honestly never really looked at Rockwell quite like I do now.

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http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/norman-rockwell-americana-the-tattoooist-circa-1944/

Value

The Kitchen




Pablo Picasso
MoMA NY
November 1948
Oil on Canvas
69" x 8' 2 1/2"








          Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, printmaker, sculptor, ceramicist, and stage designer. He was born Pablo Ruiz y Picasso October 25, 1881 and died April 8, 1973. A precocious draftsman, Picasso was admitted to the advanced classes at the Royal Academy of Art in Barcelona at 15. After 1900 he spent much time in Paris, remaining there from 1904 to 1947, when he moved to the South of France. Picasso had many different styles in his works like his Blue Period, Rose Period, and Cubism.

         Picasso created this somber, existential work at the end of a series of large-scale monochromatic paintings all of which depict scenes of violent turmoil. The works restricted, mute abstraction may be a response to Europe's then recent atrocities, (Picasso had just returned from his first visit to the Nazi Concentration Camp in Auschwitz, Poland), as well as the loss of a great friend, his good friend poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had passed away thirty years before. Picasso wanted to strengthen the emotional impact of things like war through his works. I believe he has done this using value. He used black, gray, and white to show that emotion. I feel that the agony is shown through the dark tones.



http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79668

 

 

Proportion/Scale

                                                  

                                                            


The Big Yellow Rabbit

Artist Florentijn Hofman

Örebro, Sweden

Concrete, metal, wood and takspån (sweedish pine shingles used for roofing)

13 x 16 x 16 meters

 

 

         Florentjin Hofman is a Dutch artist. Born  April 16, 1977 in Delfzijl, Netherlands. He received his Masters in Art in Berlin, Germany in 2001. Hofman likes to create larger than life sculpture of everyday things from giant bunnys, pigs, slugs, dead flys, rubber ducks, and colorful paper boats to painting entire buildings one solid color so people will start looking again at what was and is there. Since 2000, his installations have appeared all over the world. 

         Hofman: 'My sculptures cause an uproar, astonishment and put a smile on your face. They give people a break from their daily routines. Passers-by stop in front of them, get off their bicycle and enter into conversation with other spectators. People are making contact with each other again. That is the effect of my sculptures in the public domain.'

          The Big Yellow Rabbit was a temporary 13 meter high sculpture. Hofman, and his design firm, are best known for their larger than life sculptures and clever statues. In this photograph, Hofman and his team created an enormous yellow bunny in the middle of the town square in Sweden. The bunny provides a new focal point to the public space, which once was the Statue of Engelbrekt (standing behind the rabbit). The sculpture provides a new experience to people who regularly use this space for shopping, restaurants, and church. Florentijn Hofman encouraged Orebro visitors to examine the space both with the bunny, and then again after its removal. The 43 foot high rabbit is hand constructed with Florentijn Hofman’s team and 20 volunteers. The sculpture is made on site, of all local materials, wood, some metal, wood shingles, and paint. Each wood shingle was screwed on, one by one! It’s only when you are up close that you can understand the detail and precision that went into its making. The work was seen seen during the summer of 2011 during the OpenArt biennale.

 

        I love these larger than life constructions because they take you back to your childhood. The exaggerated scale of  his works are seen all over the world. He has a giant rubber duck that swims the world from New Zealand to Japan. A giant, fat monkey that lies stretched out in a park in Brazil, and countless others that greatly impact all who see it. An encounter with one of his extraordinary pieces invites you to stand still for a moment and look; to really look.   

 

 

 

http://www.florentijnhofman.nl/dev/