(I think the image quality in this Preview app is very rough. The quality of the printed images is MUCH higher!)
Posted in Other, Uncategorized
Tagged American southwest, book, landscapes, photobooks, Photography, photography books, southwest
I am thrilled to have accumulated so many followers and readers of Random Sights. Readers and followers of Random Sights may be interested in my other blog, Reparametrization: Culture Society Education Technology, which offers essays and news on topics in the intersection of culture, society, education, and technology. It’s not updated nearly as often as Random Sights, but readers might find some of the essays interesting. All welcome to visit!
I posted earlier this week a series of Grand Canyon images and included the one with rocks that appear like a seated figure. I remarked at the time that it reminded me of a Henry Moore sculpture.
I have long had an affection for Henry Moore’s works – going back to the last 15 years or so of his life (Moore was born in 1898 in Yorkshire, England, and died in 1986. In my view, Moore was one of the 20th Century’s greatest artists. He is especially known today for the many huge sculptures – works of public art – found throughout the world. In many of these works, Moore worked to achieve semi-abstract depictions of the human form, especially the female body, and often the shapes of mother and child. Although massive, most of his works includes holes and other pierced or enfolded spaces, so that the work is much greater than just the stone or bronze but is actually the totality of the space it envelops. In remarkable ways, Moore’s works manage to manipulate space beyond just the shape of the work itself.
HenryMoore.com is owned by someone with no connection to Henry Moore. →Henry-Moore.org is the website of the Henry Moore Foundation established by the artist on his Yorkshire Farm in 1977.
Three stories or things about Henry Moore have always intrigued and amused me. One is the fact that Moore used to walk the moors on his Yorkshire farm, and while roaming he would collect little stones, pebbles, rocks, sticks and twigs whose shapes interested him. Eventually, it would take three barns to hold his collection, but often those stones and pebbles and twigs formed the germ of ideas eventually to become a work of art.
The second story is about the fact that Moore lived in London during second world war. During the German blitz, Moore would huddle with other Londoners in the cramped quarters of the London tube and other underground air raid shelters. The experience of huddling en masse with fellow Londoners, while endowed with a sense of the human spirit that was London during the blitz, also formed the basis for many of his large scale works that depicted human forms enfolding in on themselves, and groups of figures huddled together.
A Google search for →Henry Moore images produces hundreds of images of Moore’s work. It’s difficult to visit any major museum or city today and not see Henry Moore’s works, though I think the Getty Center here in Los Angeles has some of the finest.
Posted in Commentary, Other
Tagged 20th Century art, Getty Center, grand canyon images, Henry Moore, henry moore sculpture, Seated Woman
THE BOOK, both print and even current versions of the electronic reader, are already near artifacts. Book publishing is in the death throes of the last century, bound up in static, linear publications. At the same time, the technology of the new media has developed to such a degree of creativity and innovation that Alice Rawsthorn commented in the New York Times of November 28, 2010 that,
These devices offer thrilling possibilities for us to do much more than read words on a screen, and it is deeply disappointing that so few designers and publishers are embracing them.
At the same time, the Fine Art community, artists, museums, and developers have risen to the challenges and opportunities of new media. Tablets, smart phones, and the myriad of new apps enable artists and art lovers to experience art in the most comprehensive and dynamic ways. Just as the iPod changed the shape of the music industry, the Fine Art, and indeed the entire book publishing industry, is on the brink of a paradigm change. Can The Book adapt and survive?
More after the jump ... Continue reading
With huge advances in the human lifespan over the last 50 years, we are all living much longer. Life in what we once euphemistically called “our golden years” is being radically transformed.
Women especially, with the impacts of feminism and vast societal changes that have occurred, and often in light of today’s new economic realities as well, are finding all kinds of new options, roles, relationships, lives open to them. For women in our 60′s, the question “what’s next?” rarely suggests what we’ve traditionally thought of as retirement. We continue to be active, to grow into new dimensions and seek out new opportunities, roles, relationships, activities.
Artists, especially, are continuing to be vital and creative, in their 60′s, 70′s, 80′s, even beyond, and to discover and communicate in their work some of what it means to be women today.
This book will explore how such women artists are creating new lives and careers for themselves today. The planned book of photo essays will document through photographs and interviews these women’s work and lives.
The galleries at Joanne Mason Creative (→www.joannemasoncreative.com) have all been rebuilt, and I’m proud to announce that this site is now open again.
Collected photographs are organized in these galleries:
Images will be added regularly. Most of the images have been posted on this blog, but there are some new ones that bloggers have not seen. There is also a Featured Images gallery, which this month highlights some of the American Southwest Desert images.
Most images in these galleries are at substantially higher resolution than what is posted on this blog. I’m currently posting images on the blog with 1200 pixels on the long side. Images displayed in the galleries at joannemasoncreative.com start at 1860 pixels on the long side, and the images are available for download and licensing as TIF images in sizes up to 4288 pixels on the long side! High quality prints are also available in sizes from about (without mats) 4”x6” up to 16”x24”. Canvas wrap prints are available even larger, up to about 24”x36”. (Some older images will have been posted at different sizes.)
Galleries can be viewed as full screen slide shows. (Do watch them in glorious full screen!) The icons do the following:
You can create a free ecard with most images, add text of your choice, and send to your friends on the internet! You can also design greeting cards and postcards using most photographs.
There is also a new About… page, which includes some reflections on the craft of photography.
Don’t download or copy images from this blog! These images are almost all copyright and rights reserved. The images represent my hard work. You may link freely to any images you wish on the blog. To obtain or license images properly, in full size hires (without watermarks!), please go to the www.joannemasoncreative.com site. Thanks.
Illuminated Manuscripts 2
It is a rare privilege to be alive during one of history’s most exciting periods, a time that civilization and culture grow in leaps and bounds. Such a time was 1200-1350.
From the Getty program:
John the Baptist surrounded by Angels
The Romance of Tristan and Isolde
→Gothic Grandeur. At the Getty Center, Los Angeles. Through May 13.
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Posted in Commentary, Other, Reviews
Tagged Getty Center, getty center los angeles, Gothic era, Gothic Grandeur, illuminated manuscripts, illustration, Middle Ages