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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

A “Home+Land” Preview

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , , on July 13, 2015| 1 Comment »

"Heightened Awareness"- GC Myers

“Heightened Awareness”- GC Myers

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

—Hermann Hesse

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Well, my show, Home+Land, is now hanging at the West End Gallery ahead of this Friday evening’s opening reception.  Feedback has been very strong thus far which alleviates some of the jitters that normally accompany the run-up to any of my shows, something I’ve written about here a number of times in the past.

This period between delivering the show and the opening is always one of uncertainty.  Even though I may feel confident and truly satisfied in the work, in this time period a lingering doubt always seems to rise up that perhaps my perception of the work will not jibe with that of the general public.  After many years and many of these shows, I know this an irrational fear, that how others see the work is beyond my control and so long as I feel that the work speaks honestly and confidently for me there is nothing to worry about.

And that is something that I definitely feel the work does in this show.  I feel completely invested in this show with a certainty that this group is an authentic representation and extension of my work and my self.  For better or worse, it just feels honest.

This was something I found to be true when I was putting together the short video preview below as I wanted to keep it shorter and didn’t want to include everything.  It was difficult deciding which pieces to include and which to leave out– each would add something and none which be out of place.

But in the end I felt pretty good about the group I chose and hope you’ll take a moment to decide for yourself.

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In the Moment of Grace

Posted in Current Events, Music, Opinion, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- In the Moment of GraceThis is a new piece, an 18″ by 24″ painting on panel, that  is part of my upcoming show at the West End Gallery.  It is titled In the Moment of Grace.  Fittingly, it was finished in the time that I listened to President Obama‘s stirring eulogy for the victims of the Charleston tragedy on Friday in which he pulled its theme from the classic hymn Amazing Grace.  Although I was already fully invested in  this painting, that fact added so much more meaning to it for me.

That eulogy was the culmination of a remarkable and historic week, one that found the Supreme Court issuing decisions that upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and made Gay Marriage a right throughout the nation.  And if that wasn’t enough, the Confederate flag finally came down in South Carolina, though it took the act one young black woman willing to be imprisoned for her civil disobedience rather than the act of an intransigent State House and Senate.  The President’s words over the fallen in South Carolina framed the end of this week perfectly.

Amazing Grace.

Despite the wonder of it all, I know there is much more to be done and more conflicts to be faced in the struggle for equality and fairness for all.  That is the nature of change and change is the nature of America.  And I think that is the point that is missed by so many of those who hold so tightly onto the past,  those people who say that they want “their country” back: America is not a monolith, not owned by one group or region and cannot be defined by one thing, person, place or time.

That is its strength.  Like a great work of art, it lives always in the present.  And the present is an inclusive and shifting prism, a kaleidoscope or, yes, a rainbow of diverse people who make up this nation.  It has eventually always made room for all who sought to live in that light and it is that spirit of inclusion that separates us from the rest of the world.  Tolerance unifies a disparate people and brings us closer to grace.

As I said, there are many more hurdles to be overcome, more work to be done.  I could continue preaching here for a while but I wish to just sit back for a moment and relish the present.  So, for this Sunday morning music I thought a little Amazing Grace would be appropriate.  Her is a truly beautiful version from Judy Collins and the Boys Choir of Harlem, sung on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Have a good Sunday and reflect for a moment on this remarkable week.

 

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AERMETRY

Posted in Neat Stuff, Photography, Video, tagged , , , , , on June 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

AERMETRY - Photographer Nicolaus WegnerThere was an interesting video recently online called Art of the Storm from photographer Nicolaus Wegner that featured a fantastic time lapse of a super cell forming over the Black Hills of South Dakota earlier this month.  While it was beautiful and awe inspirng, it was a link at the end of the video to some of his other time lapse films that caught my eye.  One in particular stood out.

Called AERMETRY,  it features storm and cloud formations and movements that are mirrored as they move across the screen, creating kaleidoscopic images that are fascinating.  Definitely hard to look away, especially if, like me, you are one of those people who try to identify things in random patterns.  There is however a photosensitive seizure warning attached so if you are susceptible to such things please take note.

You can see more of the work of Nicolaus Wegner, including more sensational time lapses, at  his website, Light Alive Photography.

AERMETRY from Nicolaus Wegner on Vimeo.

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Time Flows

Posted in Music, Painting, Video, tagged , , , on June 15, 2015| 4 Comments »

GC Myers Time Flows 2007Just a while ago I had been thinking about this painting, about 18″ by 26″ on paper, from back in 2007.  It’s called Time Flows and it’s a bit of an anomaly for me, with all the stonework and waterfall.  A one time only thing that pops back into my thoughts now and again.

But it is its texture rather than the subject that always sticks out for me– thickly layered and very rough with deep pits that go all the way to the paper below.  It was coarser in many ways than my normal surface but it worked perfectly for this particular piece.  The pits captured pigment in an interesting way, more interesting than if I had tried to paint it with a brush.

It came back to mind this morning in the aftermath of last night’s flooding that took place just a few miles north of the studio.  Small streams and falls turned into raging cascades, washing out and covering many roads.  Thankfully, no injuries.

Seeing the videos of the local water in motion made me think of it connected to a song from Jimi Hendrix titled May This Be Love.  I always  think of the song  as being titled Waterfalls.  Like the painting, it is definitely more placid than the swollen streams from last night.

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The Shining

Posted in Music, Photography, Video, tagged , , , , , on June 14, 2015| 1 Comment »

Lost World Photo by Mikko LagerstedtThe other day I came across this luminous photo from Finnish photographer Mikko Lagerstedt.  Titled Lost World, it shows a sailing ship partially sunk in shallow water beneath a densely star-filled sky.  All of the elements of the image– the color, the composition, the reflection on the water and the glow of the sky– give this photo a mysterious and intriguing vibe.  Just a great photo.

Mikko Lagerstedt is a self-taught photographer who specializes in what he terms atmospheric photography with an emphasis on simplistic landscapes and  night scenes.  They have a brilliance in them that plays well off the sparseness of the landscape and the immensity of his skies.  For more images and info, go to his site by clicking here.

I thought I would find a piece of music to go along with it for this week’s Sunday music and one of the first things I stumbled across had the feel that I was looking for.  It’s The Shining by Badly Drawn Boy from back in 2000.  It’s a song that pops up on my playlist every so often and always pulls me in with its opening moments that feature a mix of cello and french horn.

Enjoy.  Hope your Sunday goes swimmingly.  Not exactly sure what that means but I’m sticking with it.

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“Native Voice” Preview

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 2, 2015| 4 Comments »

This is a short video previewing some of the work that is part of my Native Voice show that is opening this Friday, June 5, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  The opening reception runs from 6:30 until 9 PM and is open to the public.  This is a show that has some real visual oomph in its colors and textures and while I think the work shows well on the computer screen, it definitely comes across better in person.  So if you’re in the DC/Alexandria area on Friday evening, please stop in and see the work in person and say hello.

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Uyuni and the Big Quiet

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , on May 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Salar de Uyuni- Enrique Pacheco FilmI came across a terrific video from travel cinematographer and time-lapse specialist Enrique Pacheco called Reflections From Uyuni.  It is a film that has time-lapse views of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flats located in the Andean highlands of Bolivia.  The flats cover an area over 4000 square miles in size ( much larger than Yellowstone, more than twice as large as the Grand Canyon and about 90 times larger than our Bonneville Salt Flats) at an altitude of over 11,000 feet, with only a few feet of variance over the entire area.  Very flat indeed.  With its crust of salt, it is obviously a great source of salt as well as lithium, of which it is estimated to hold well over 50% of the world’s reserve.

But all that said, for me, these strikingly beautiful images are filled with a sense of silence that I find so intriguing and often find myself trying to embed in my own work. The Big Quiet as I call it. Take a few moments to judge for yourself.  Also, please check out Enrique Pacheco’s other films at his Vimeo page or his website.  Truly stunning work.

 

Reflections from Uyuni from Enrique Pacheco on Vimeo.

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Heroes

Posted in Biographical, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on May 3, 2015| 6 Comments »

Arthur Ashe HeroismKeeping up the theme that was the subject of an earlier post this week, I decided that for this Sunday morning’s musical selection I would play a lovely version of Heroes from David Bowie.  It’s an acoustic version (with Gail Ann Dorsey accompanying him on vocals and bass) from a 1996 performance at the Bridge School Benefit, an annual concert began by Neil Young to benefit the Bay Area school that helps kids with severe speech and physical impairments.  In that context, the song takes on additional layers of meaning as you see the many parents in the audience with their children, many cradling them.

Heroism.

Looking for an image to illustrate this post, I did an image search by punching in the word hero.  It was all superheroes and warriors which saddened me because I know that heroism is something far more than that.  It’s about doing those things that need to be done, about taking responsibility  in  order to serve a purpose beyond your own needs.  We think of it as a rare thing but it is evident every day in the actions of those people who give so much of themselves to others.

For me, an example of this came to me in a very personal way.  When my mother was struggling in the last months of her battle with cancer, I visited her for  last time.  Her and my father had been together for about 46 years at that point, years which could be described as turbulent at best.  For such a long married couple, they had an odd love/hate relationship which had them always on the edge of huge screaming  battles that were fraught with violence.  They were terrible things to see and even as a child I often wondered why they remained together.  But they did and as she neared the end of her life, Dad became her cook, her maid, her nurse,  and her driver to the many treatments that made up the last months of her life.  Her everything.

When I made my last visit, I noticed a photo on her bedside table.  It was photo of the two of them together from several years before, standing at some Florida site drenched in sun.  On the cheap little frame, underneath my father was a word formed in simple block letters, those type of things that you rub on from a sheet.

It was the word Hero.

Now, at that point in my life I didn’t see my father in heroic terms.  Far from it.  No, he was and is a very flawed human being with many traits that are far from any definition of heroism.  But in this case, he took on the form of a hero for my mother and in that moment, looking at that photo, for  myself as well. I realized that the word was not about great accomplishment but rather about following that need to serve another.

So it can be for everyone, as the song says :

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day

I finally came across the  quote at the top from the late Arthur Ashe that seemed to best fit the thought .

Have a great Sunday. Be a hero to someone today.

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What Makes a Hero?

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Motivation, Neat Stuff, Quote, Video, tagged , , , , , on May 1, 2015| 1 Comment »

Joseph Campbell quoteI’ve been a fan of the late mythologist Joseph Campbell for many, many years.  In his many books on myth, including his classic The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well as a great PBS series, The Power of Myth,  with Bill Moyers , Campbell documented myths from around the world but more importantly showed how intimately they related to our individual lives.  Campbell showed us that we all had lives that very much followed the patterns that ran through the classic myths of all cultures.

In short, we are all, in our own way, heroes.  We may not slay dragons or find great treasures, but we all at a point experience some form of the hero’s journey.

There’s a wonderful animated short film called What Makes a Hero?  from TED Ed and educator Matthew Winkler that succinctly illustrates Campbell’s premise, including the eleven stages of the hero’s journey.  It’s a delightful short that will hopefully help you to begin to see the mythic elements that make up your own life.

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Budapest

Posted in Influences, Music, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , on April 19, 2015| 2 Comments »

Sandor Galimberti- Tában Cityscape in Budapest (1910)It’s funny how you sometimes come across things.

I had heard the song Budapest from George Ezra recently and had decided to share it on my Sunday music interlude.  It just has an infectious sound that seemed like a good way to start what looks to be a beautiful day.  Plus I liked the fact that he lists Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly as influences– kind of unexpected from a 20-something Brit.

So I began looking for something visual to accompany this lead-in to the music and punched in Budapest painting into my search engine.  Up came many lovely watercolor-y  images of the beautiful  grand riverfront along the Danube.  They were nice but tucked in among them was a rougher, more modernistic cityscape that really stuck out to me.

Red roofs.  Simple forms and dark linework.  A path leading in and up.  Even the tree that divided the upper right section of the scene looked familiar.  It looked like something that could have easily been tucked away somewhere  in my own body of work.

The painting, shown above  was titled Taban Cityscape in Budapest and the artist was listed as Sandor Galimberti.  Looking deeper, there was little info on Galimbert’s life except that he was Hungarian, born in 1883.   From a rough translation on a Hungarian site, I gleaned that he studied with Matisse and  had began to achieve notoriety for his work around Europe before World War I.  Married to another artist, he lived in Paris then finally Amsterdam before returning to Hungary to enlist in the army during the early days of the war.  In 1915, Learning that his wife had contracted lung cancer, Galimberti returns from the battlefield and his wife then dies.  Hour later, he takes his own life at the age of  32.

Yet another tragic story of what may have been an epic career cut short.  Looking at his work online (including his final work, Amsterdam, shown at the bottom) I am impressed on so many levels and can only imagine what may have come from an artist just reaching his maturity in the aftermath of the war.  We might be talking of him in the same terms as Matisse and Picasso and other modern masters.  But a tragic fate intervened and he is little known outside of a few certain circles.

So what began as a simple search for an image gives me a new artist to wonder at and study- perhaps my Hungarian cousin?  So many hidden treasures in this world.  Enjoy the song, enjoy the day and be glad for those things that bring you joy.

Sandor Galimberti- Amsterdam 1914

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