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Archive for the ‘Neat Stuff’ Category

Sprites at the West End

Posted in Current Events, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , , , on August 4, 2016| 4 Comments »

SPEAROW at the West End

SPEAROW at the West End

I am totally out of the loop about the current Pokemon Go craze as well as Pokemon in its original form.  I don’t know what the characters are or what they are called.  Nothing.  I only know about it from the stories I have heard of people so engrossed in playing the game on their phones that they walk into traffic and so on.

But it turns out that the sprites, as I learned they are called, have been spending time in the West End Gallery lately.  The gallery is a PokeStop in Corning and there has been an increase of people coming in with smartphones in hand to the point that owner Jesse Gardner began to worry about their safety on the stairway leading to the upper gallery.  The idea of someone stumbling down the steps in pursuit of an invisible sprite isn’t in her business plan.

Jesse took a few pictures of some that she found hanging around the work.  So if you come to the Gallery Talk this Saturday you might be able to catch sight of NIDORAN, SPEAROW or CATERPIE or whoever else might be there that day.  Hopefully, they won’t cause any problems during the talk.

And don’t worry, they are not eligible to win the painting that will be given away at the end of the talk.  So whether you see the sprites or not, I hope you can make it to the West End Gallery for the Gallery Talk that runs from 1-2 PM.  There will be refreshments, a prize or two, some art and maybe a few laughs.

CATERPIEwithGCMyers

CATERPIE using the Bridge

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EEVEE Taking in the show.

NIDORANwithGCMyers

NIDORAN at the West End

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Wearing the Beard

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , on May 16, 2016| 2 Comments »

walt-whitmanI’ve worn facial hair of some sort for the past twenty years and am used to seeing many people with beards.  I might even end up with a big white beard like Uncle Walt Whitman, as seen above, when I finally accept that the white hair I have is a true indicator of my age.  So a guy wearing a beard seems like no big deal, right?

Joseph Palmer 1789-1873 Harvard Worcester MAWell, it wasn’t always that way.

There was an interesting entry on the Anonymous Works  (a great site and blog featuring unique Folk art and other neat stuff– check it out!) Facebook page yesterday about a fellow named Joseph Palmer who lived in Worcester County, an area just west of Boston , Massachusetts from 1789 until his death in 1873.

Looking at his photo here on the right, his beard raises no offense to our modern sensibilities and he looks like an alright fellow.  In fact we might even think that with his big beard he looks like a typical man of his times.

Palmer Beard GraveThat was not the case.  Palmer’s beard was a source of great conflict throughout his life, to the point that when he died, it was the central theme of his wonderful gravestone in Worcester County, shown here on the left, that bears the words: Persecuted for wearing the beard.

Below are two entries that were on his listing on the Find A Grave website, another wonderful source of information, that tell his story.  The first is from a person listed as New York Historian.

Despite the conception that the past was a hairy wonderland of bearded outdoorsmen, bushy facial hair was long considered the mark of lunatics or worse, heretics. Today there is a Massachusetts gravestone that still remembers one man’s heroic fight against the forces of anti-hirsute vigilantes and a whole town’s persecution against his epic mane.


A veteran of the War of 1812, Joseph Palmer began wearing a beard in the 1820s. Beards had gone out of style in the 1720s, and Palmer was considered by most all in his small town to be slovenly and ungodly. He was even criticized by his local preacher for communing with the devil, famously responding to the accusation, “…if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not unlike mine.”


In May of 1830, Palmer was attacked by four men outside of a hotel in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Armed with razors and scissors, the men attempted to forcibly shave Palmer’s face, but the bewhiskered man stabbed two of his attackers with a pocketknife, and was subsequently arrested for assault. He could have avoided jail by paying a fine and court fees, but Palmer refused, maintaining his innocence, and more importantly his right to a glorious beard. He was subsequently jailed for 15 months, including time in solitary confinement.


Upon leaving prison, Palmer joined the Fruitlands utopian community in nearby Harvard, Massachusetts after being influenced by his friendship with fellow Fruitlander, Louisa May Alcott. The character Moses White from Alcott’s “Transcendental Wild Oats” is later based on Palmer. Palmer died in 1865 and his tombstone displays a portrait of him with a long beard, and as a final act of rebellion, the inscription, “Persecuted for Wearing the Beard.

The other entry:

Joseph Palmer was a veteran of the War of 1812 who later joined the Fruitlands commune in Harvard, Mass. started by Amos Bronson Alcott, Charles Lane and other Transcendentalists in the 1840s.

Palmer wore a full beard, which was very much out of fashion since Colonial times. He was the only man in Fitchburg, Mass. with a full beard when he moved there in 1830. He was so reviled for doing so that people would throw stones at him and break the windows of his house. His pastor refused him Communion. In 1830 he was jumped by four men who threw down and attempted to forcibly shave him. In the process of defending himself, Palmer stabbed two of the men. Palmer was charged for committing an unprovoked assault and was fined, which he refused to pay on principle. He was jailed in the Worcester city jail for non-payment and the prison guards and other prisoners also attempted to shave off his beard by force. After much bad publicity in the press he was to be released, but Palmer refused to leave the prison unless he could receive a proclamation that it was perfectly acceptable to wear a beard. No such proclamation was forthcoming and Palmer was forcibly removed from the prison by being tied to a chair and carried out. Palmer became a celebrity and worked for the Temperance and Abolitionist movements. He appears as the character Moses White in Louisa May Alcott’s story “Transcendental Wild Oats.”

His grave in Evergreen Cemetery has a likeness of his bearded face with the inscription “Persecuted for wearing the beard.”

The intolerance we see today seems ridiculous but it seems that although we pride ourselves as a nation of freedom and crow constantly about our personal rights and liberties, we have always been pretty quick to tell others how they should look, act and live their lives.  Hats off to Joseph Palmer for holding fast to his wearing of the beard.

 

 

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Deconstructed

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Painting, tagged , , , , , on May 13, 2016| 3 Comments »

Jigsaw Planet- Early Riser GC MyersI was going through some older posts from this blog when I came across a couple that featured some of my paintings on the website Jigsaw Planet.  It’s a site that allows viewers to either choose from a large group of puzzles or to upload their own images and create jigsaw puzzles that they can assemble on their screens.  It’s an interesting diversion.

For me, the interest comes in seeing my colors and forms deconstructed, getting to see them in singular bits that allow me to examine their texture and depth away from their normal surroundings.  I am sometimes surprised, mostly pleasantly so, by what I see.  And, despite having an advantage in knowing these painting intimately, I still struggle at some points in putting them back together– mainly because I find myself just examining the individual pieces for an extended period of time

So this morning I went to a page on the Jigsaw Planet site from a regular reader of this blog who goes by the moniker TheWOL ( and who also writes a blog called The Owl Undergound) and has posted a number of my paintings there.  There were a couple of new paintings that are featured in my upcoming June show at the Principle Gallery so I thought I’d share one with you today.  It’s Early Riser which you can see in full at the bottom and in partial reconstruction above.

If you want to try your hand at figuring out the puzzle of this painting or any of the others TheWOL has posted, click here.

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Be Cheerful, Live Your Life

Posted in Music, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , , , , on May 9, 2016| 2 Comments »

2200-year-old-Antakya TurkeyMosaics 2Be Cheerful, Live your life– that is the translation of the words on this mosaic.

Archaeologists recently uncovered this wonderful mosaic floor with those words in Antakya, formerly the Greek-Roman city of Antiocheia, in Turkey that dates back over 2200 years, back to the third century BC.  This is an area that is famous for the discovery of a multitude of floor mosaics that once decorated the homes of the upper crust of society.

This particular mosaic feature three panels with the final panel being a reclining skeleton with bread and wine just chilling out.  The central panel shows a man with butler in tow heading anxiously toward his evening bath which was a communal event at the time.  9 PM was the time for bathing and to be late was frowned upon which  he obviously is as he is pointing to a sundial which indicates the time as being between 9 and 10 PM.  The first panel, which is damaged, is thought to have a figure throwing fire which is symbolic of the preparation for a bath.

But it’s the skeleton with it’s message that kind of lines up with Bobby McFerrin‘s song from a number of years back, Don’t Worry Be Happy, that catches our modern eye.  I think we don’t give the people from the past,  both from the near past and the very distant past, with having  a sophisticated view of life or sense of humor.  To see something like this gives us a closer connection to how they saw their own world as well as allowing us to see that they were not so different than us even though 2200 years separate us.

So, if you’re fretting on this Monday, hurrying around to beat the clock (or sundial), just remember that partying skeleton and heed its advice–Be cheerful and live your life.  If you need an accompanying beat to start the week off on the right foot, there’s little dose of the Booby McFerrin song at the bottom.

2200-year-old-Antakya Turkey Mosaics 1

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Aline Smithson’s Arrangement in Green and Black

Posted in Neat Stuff, Photography, tagged , , , on April 21, 2016| 2 Comments »

Aline Smithson Arrangement in Green and Black CompilationJames McNeill Whistler- Arrangement in Grey and BlackI have written here in the past about the composition from the iconic James McNeill Whistler painting Arrangement in Grey and Black— better known as Whistler’s Mother.  It’s a beautiful, solidly structured composition that works as a wonderful template for creating a solid visual image of any subject.

Several years, ago, contemporary photographer Aline Smithson used Whistler’s image as the basis for a series of photos that she called Arrangement in Green and Black: Portraits of the Photographer’s Mother.  Inspired by a print of Whistler’s painting that she found at a rummage sale and using her then 85 year-old mother (an obviously loving and patient woman who unfortunately passed away before seeing the finished series) as the subject, Smithson created 20 images with varied takes on the famous composition.

They are quietly comical individually and as a group. I just find them interesting.  Below are some of my favorites.

For more on Aline Smithson’s work, please follow this link to her website where you will find many more portfolios featuring her distinct eye for observation.  She also has a current exhibit, Aline Smithson: Self & Others, at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massacusetts.  It closes May 1 so if you’re in the area, don’t waste any time in getting to the museum.

Aline Smithson_Arrangement-14 Aline Smithson_Arrangement-11 Aline Smithson_Arrangement-10 Aline Smithson_Arrangement-1 Aline Smithson Arrangement Aline Smithson Arrangement in Green and Black a Aline Smithson_Arrangement-3

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Waiting For the Bus/ Carmen Herrera

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , on March 30, 2016| 1 Comment »

Carmen HerreraThey say if you wait for the bus, the bus will come.  I say, yeah, I waited 98 years for the bus to come and nobody cared about what I did.

—Carmen Herrera

***************

Carmen Herrera RondoThe words above are from a documentary called The 100 Years Show starring Carmen Herrera from filmmaker Alison Klayman.

It tells the amazing story of  artist Carmen Herrera‘s persevering belief in her art, a belief that kept her at work without acknowledgment for over 60 years before the art world finally took notice. She sold her first painting at the tender age of 89 and for the past decade she has enjoyed the accolades and attention so long overdue.  She continues to work to this day.  On May 31 she turns 101 years old.

Carmen Herrera was born in Havana in 1915.  Through the 1930’s and 40’s she split her time between Cuba , Paris and NYC, studying and immersing herself in the vibrant post-war art scene.  Her work just never seemed to be in the right place at the right time or was overlooked  because of her gender or ethnicity.  She tells of a conversation with the owner of a well-known NY gallery, Rose Fried, who acknowledged that Herrera was superior to the painters she had in her stable but she would not give her a show because she was a woman.  I can’t imagine how disheartening or confusing that must of been for her but , as she says, Rose Fried is dead now and she is enjoying the fruits of her long labor.

Besides she didn’t think the world was ready to receive her work.

So she continued to paint full-time without any acknowledgment and in 2004, an old friend recommended her for a show of female geometric painters at a NY gallery.  The show brought her work to light and revealed how she was among the pioneers of the genre, the dates of many of her works making them milestone pieces in the evolution of geometric minimalism.

So at age 89, she had her breakthrough.  Galleries and museums vie for her work  now and she still paints on a full-time basis.  It’s an amazing story and a great lesson in staying true to your belief in your own expression.

As they say, if you wait for the bus…

At the bottom is a teaser for the film:

Carmen Herrera 1 Carmen Herrera 2

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Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen

Posted in History, Neat Stuff, Painting, tagged , , , , , on March 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Hilma af Klint - Painting the UnseenJust a few days ago, a new exhibit opened at the Serpentine Galleries in London.  It features a group of abstract and symbolic paintings from a Swedish painter by the name of Hilma af Klint who lived from 1862 until 1944.  The images of her work on display are quite captivating and intrigued me enough to look further into her work.  It’s an interesting case.

She was trained in the 1880’s in Sweden as a traditional artist and for most of her life supported herself with naturalistic landscapes and portraits.  This work is well done and attractive but unremarkable.  She considered this conventional work as a means of supporting her “life’s work” which were the many spiritually inspired abstract pieces produced from the 1890’s up to the time of her death in 1944.

Hilma af Klint YouthInterested in spirituality and theosophy, Hilma formed a group of women who met on a regular basis to hold seances to attempt to contact and channel the spirits from other dimensions.  She claimed to have been “commissioned” by one of these spirits to create a series of large paintings which occupied her for a number of years.  These paintings consisted of geometric and organic forms and a distinct visual vocabulary expressing a deeply spiritual element.

At the time of her death, there was a huge group of work, over 1200 paintings of varying.  Some are epic in their size, measuring over 10′ in height.  However, none were ever displayed publicly in her lifetime and she stipulated that it not be allowed to be exhibited until twenty years after her death. for fear that it would not be understood in that present time.  Little did she know that it would actually be more than forty years before it came to light in an exhibit in 1986.  In recent years there have been two major exhibits of her work, including this current show at the Serpentine Galleries, which have really pushed her work into the spotlight.

Her recent discovery and the depth of her work has created a quandary fo art historians who struggle to place her in the timeline of art history.   Her work was formed independently of and, in most cases, before the abstract movement pioneered by Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian.  They don’t know how to categorize her: Is she a pioneer or simply an outsider?

I don’t think this categorization matters.  Just take a look at some of these works on display and most likely you won’t care either.  The work definitely is in the present and alive. And that is all that matters.

Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction3 Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction 2 Hilma af Klint - Painting the Unseen2 Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction

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Paths and Journeys

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , on February 27, 2016| 2 Comments »

2016 AAP Summer Workshop Brochure Cover sThis is the cover for the brochure for the Summer Workshop for the American Academy of Psychotherapists, taking place this coming June.  This group also used one of my paintings (see below) for the program for their national conference this past year so I was really pleased and honored that they chose this painting, Unpuzzled, to grace this cover. I have gotten great feedback for many, many years from professionals in the field of psychology and psychotherapy so its really gratifying that they feel comfortable using my work to represent these events.gc-myers-2015-therapists-program-sm

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Corso Zundert

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , on February 22, 2016| 2 Comments »

ZundertFlowerParadeVanGogh10Since 1936, every September, the Dutch town of Zundert holds the world’s largest  flower parade, the Corso Zundert.  This past September the parade honored the 125th anniversary of the death of Vincent Van Gogh, the town’s most famous native.  Each of the floats is primarily comprised of locally grown dahlias, although other local flowers are not prohibited from use.

While the photos from the parade are spectacular, I am sure they don’t give us the real sense of size and sheer visual impact.  There are a couple of floats, one with stacks of Van Gogh’s chairs,   that I saw briefly in a  short film on the parade for which I could not find images.  But the one’s below give a sense of the variety and creativity that are part of this parade.

"The Potato Eaters" in dahlias

“The Potato Eaters” in dahlias

ZundertFlowerParadeVanGogh5 ZundertFlowerParadeVanGogh6 ZundertFlowerParadeVanGogh7 Corso Zundert 2015

This is Gauguin confronting Van Gogh

This is Gauguin confronting Van Gogh

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This float opens into a sunflower (see the photo below)

This float opens into a sunflower (see the photo below)

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Automata

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , , on February 10, 2016| 2 Comments »

AutomataI came across this film  early this morning and was immediately intrigued.  It’s a film of an automata, a hand-crafted machine made by Swedish artist/craftsman Per Helldorff (his site can be seen here) that has a figure playing the old shell game, the classic con game using three shells or cups and a ball or pea.  The operator puts a ball under one of the cups and shifts them around while the sucker–oops, I mean bettor– tries to follow the motion and pick the final location of the ball.  It’s a ruse that has literally  been around since the times of ancient Greece.

We love to be tricked, don’t we?

I sat and watched this several times, trying to figure out the mechanics behind the trick and can’t quite get it.  I think there must be two  balls and a magnet or  a catch of some sort.  Take a look at see what you think.  I’ve also included a few more of Mr. Helldorff’s other automata.  Just lots of fun.



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