As many of you know, this blog as well asArtAndArtDeadlines.com are produced via a wordpress.org platform. I am a wordpress devotee, and I successfully made the transition from wordpress.com to wordpress.org despite my limited knowledge of CSS and such.
I still use wordpress.com for my work blog www.ADayInTheSmokies.com, and today I ran across a official wordpress.com logo contest that looks like alot of fun. There is nothing like a side project to get the creative juices flowing. I don’t believe my blogs qualify because they are wordpress.org platforms, but I’m going to participate anyway. Click Here to visit the full post. Here’s a cut and paste version of the WordPress Logo Fun post:
While we’re away, we’ll be running a contest to see who can use the WordPress logo in the most creative way. Take advantage of your camera, graphics applications, crayons, and anything else you have at your disposal. Create a post on your WordPress.com blog, upload your image or images, and leave a comment here with the URL of your post. Please make sure to leave the URL to your post in the comment text or the entry will not be accepted.
We’ll get you started by providing some official WordPress logos, but the rest is up to you. I’m sure you can do better than the photos I’ve included here. We’ll keep an eye on submissions and post some of them to the @wordpressdotcom Twitter account during the week.
The deadline for submissions will be 4 p.m. EST on Monday, October 19.
We’ll create categories based on the best submissions and run polls to let you select the winners. Prizes will include WordPress.com upgrades, swag, and maybe other surprises. Good luck!
PSYCHOMACHIA (meaning Battle of Souls) is the newest series done in collaboration with Arizona-based artist Jerry Portelli. This work reinterprets the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Holy Virtues in a series of 14 diptychs, one from each artist. The aesthetic theme is the sideshow freak from the circus and fairs of yesteryear–nature’s artwork, if you will.
We seek to honor the sideshow freak as the masque form of the very best and very worst of humanity, regardless of individual morality.This work is wrapped in a celebration of the possibilities of digital media and rejects the pervasive sort of embarassment of digital alteration in photography. The use of square canvases in Psychomachia is meant to echo the pixel of which all digital images is comprised.
The work is ongoing as of October, 2009. I have been sworn to keep the images under wraps until the show opens; however, I think the Clown God will let just a puzzle-piece of two works (see below) out of the bag just for you.
“For years I have used the clown mask as a means by which the ordinary becomes the extraordarinary. However, in the Psychomachia series, I
was able to use the clown mask as masque of the common in favor of the extraordinary spirit of the human condition via the sideshow freak of yesteryear — both real and imagined. The Seven Deadly Sins & Seven Holy Virtues simply add a layer of unexpected judgement of intent to the physical reality.”
“My work habit is to explore the physical reality of my reverence for human potential with ‘self as other’ as reoccurring content. The Psychomachia series, challenged me to not rely on facial expression. While every face is unique, humanity regardless of culture or language recognizes facial expression as the key to discovering the true soul. Limiting use of the face allowed me to further explore the physcial uniqueness upon which the Seven Deadly Sins & Seven Holy Virtues provide the crux of judgement allowing acceptance of the physical.”
As an homage to the new interactive R.L. Gibson site, I thought we could all take a little trip down memory lane with some work from the past. Speak No Evil is not my favorite series to date; however, it is a step in my development as an artist that I cherish. Enjoy!
Speak No Evil, 2006 – 2007
Artist’s Statement: “I am an Objectivist–that is, I believe in objective reality. I believe that words have meanings, and I enjoy the debate that asks, ‘Who defines a language?’ Is a language–be it written, spoken or aesthetic–defined by the user or some other hierarchy of trusted caretakers? And why are people often offended by truth–not the ugly, hurtful truth, but the sky-is-blue truth? How does context change definition and intention? My work explores these questions. I’m not ceratin the answers are clear to me although I do not doubt the existence of the objective truth of the answers–an odd sort of faith from a distinctly unspiritual woman.
“I am deeply influenced by my role as a southern born and reared woman. I have a great love of southern language with all of its innuendos, euphemisms and passive tones that mak a long history of eccentricities, unpopular opinions and niceties. I ws spoon-fed ‘If you can’t say something nice…’ but it wasn’t well digested. Does the adage ‘Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil’ function without ‘Think No Evil?’ This body of work juxtaposes exasperatingly high moral standars against the public question of excruciatingly low moral fortitude and asks, is ‘Speak No Evil’ an acceptable substitute for ‘Think No Evil?’ while posing the personal queston ‘Am I a truth teller?’ or just not a ‘Well-Behaved Woman?’ ” –R.L. Gibson
Click below for a slideshow of Speak No Evil.
See the what critic Michaela Pilar Brown said about Speak No Evil:
“In this series of xerographic prints, Gibson challenges patriarchal conventions about truth, morality, and freedom in a culture increasingly driven along a path to homogeneity, and a return to the exclusion and marginalization of unpopular opinions and ideas. Gibson employs the use of text throughout these images to call attention to the use of language.
“Words attached to art imbue meaning and effect interpretation often more powerfully than images alone. It musts be noted that Gibson makes use of the red editor’s pen. The images are simple, and words are used with brevity. Challenging large ideas with such an economy of words and simple images leaves room in Gibson’s work for both comic relief and austerity.
“Her use of text is both a nod to its literary origin, and a subversive tyrannical act, to make the viewer question both meaning and use in a broader context. In the work ‘Such a Pretty Face,’ Gibson addresses the notion of hiding criticism in a compliment. It begs the questions, in a postmodern world, a world of rapidly exchanged text, ticker tape, and irretrievable digital burps, who owns the language? Can words live in static form? Do they evolve? When are they weapon, propaganda, song?
“In the triptych ‘See, Hear & Speak,’ Gibson addresses the notion of turning a blind eye to evil. It is an image and phrase familiar to most Americans, so familiar in fact that the phrase ‘see no hear no speak no evil’ conjures images of a monkey covering its eyes, mouth and ears and the reverse. A doll’s head has replaced the monkeys. This simple change destroys the kitschy-ness of the image, and presents a more human question. The doll’s head floating against a flat background robs it of its innocence. By ignoring evil are we not responsible for its growth?”
–Michaela Pilar Brown, 2007 as Director of Gallery 107 North
As many of you know, this blog as well as ArtAndArtDeadlines.com are produced via a wordpress.org platform. I am a wordpress devotee, and I successfully made the transition from wordpress.com to wordpress.org despite my limited knowledge of CSS and such.
While we’re away, we’ll be running a contest to see who can use the WordPress logo in the most creative way. Take advantage of your camera, graphics applications, crayons, and anything else you have at your disposal. Create a post on your WordPress.com blog, upload your image or images, and leave a comment here with the URL of your post. Please make sure to leave the URL to your post in the comment text or the entry will not be accepted.
We’ll get you started by providing some official WordPress logos, but the rest is up to you. I’m sure you can do better than the photos I’ve included here. We’ll keep an eye on submissions and post some of them to the @wordpressdotcom Twitter account during the week.
