Us as Art

My wifey had this artwork made of our family, done by Who What When Where Why.

Not bad eh?

A Sudden But Happy Realization...

Chatting with my wife while solo shopping at Walmart, when I had a sudden but happy realization...

Yep! Toys equal art supplies in my world, baby!  Truth!

Good Artists Copy...

One of the phrases often used by artists to discuss the creative process is  "good artists copy, great artists steal." On my personal quest to expand my artistic horizons from LEGO to larger action figures, I am still in the process of figuring out techniques and styles.  As a  result I can't honestly say I am great at it - so I decided to go with the copy route.

Recently I obtained a 1/4 scale Deadpool action figure, and have been working on getting some ideas for how to shoot it.  In search of inspiration I went spelunking thru a Google Image search and came across a promo poster from Comic Con for the movie Deadpool 2.

I decided to recreate it.  This is the result:

It is interesting to shoot larger figures. I have been shooting LEGO figures for so long that it is refreshing to be able to treat my subject more like traditional photography - including using studio lights, soft boxes, and backdrops.

Scale is still an issue tho as I had to make due with whatever stuffed animals were in my daughters toy box.  As a result I had to composite in the bear to get the scale at a proper scale (in real life the bear is almost the same size as Deadpool).

Oh, if you are wondering about the original, it looked like this:

Source: https://movieweb.com/deadpool-movie-poster-ew-comic-con-magazine-cover/

So thus ends my second foray into shooting action figures.  I think things are going well, even if I do say so myself.  Don't you agree?

Six Image Narrative: Superhero Edition

The last two posts have been showing a series of six-image narratives of life on the same street corner in small town America.  The first was about normal life, the second had a surprising twist.

12 images wasn't enough so I kept shooting and ended up with a third series.  This one explores the juxtaposition of comic book fans, and comic book heroes.

Six Image Narrative - Creativity Gone Wild

It is funny how creativity takes hold of me sometimes and doesn't let go until I create a large amount of work.

In the last post I showed a six-image narrative of scenes from the same street corner in small town America.  I had a lot of fun shooting those, but I wasn't done yet.  I actually shot and processed 20 shots, that explored the events on that street corner in 3 different ways.

This is the second story.

Six Image Narrative

Over on the Toy Photographers blog they have a feature called the six-image narrative.  The idea is to come up with 6 images that are tied together in some way - tell a story, processed in the same style, etc.

I got a new LEGO set, so I decided to use it to create a six image narrative of my own.  The set was an old 60s style diner, with a sidewalk outside.  I got to thinking that in any town a street corner sees a lot of people, but most are heading somewhere, and don't stick around.  So I wanted to capture vignettes of various scenes that I imagine may occur on the same street corner during a random day.

Investing In The Arts

I have recently made an acquisition for my art collection.  A print of an amazing photograph from +Ang Cheng Ann aka ZekeZachZoom.  Here it is hanging up on my studio wall:

The moment I saw this image I fell in love with it.  It works on so many levels. 

First of all it is the classic riff on the "Alas, poor Yorick"  scene from Hamlet. 

Second this is a scene that could have actually happened when Darth Vader was on Cloud City over Bespin... and C3P0 was conveniently dismantled at the same time.  So it is not a stretch to think they would have been in the same room at the same time.

Finally Anakin, who would become Darth Vader, created C3P0, which means the next line in the play "I knew him, Horatio" is a totally legit thing to have been said (assuming one of the Storm Troopers was named Horatio, which granted is a stretch, but this is fiction about galactic empires and space wizards, so why not have a Stormtrooper named Horatio?  We have one named Finn after all.)

It now sits proudly in my studio.    If you want your own +Ang Cheng Ann print, check out his store: zekezachzoom.com/store/

Lenoir Sculpture Festival 2014 (Part 2)

More pics from the Lenoir Sculpture Festival we attended today. (Click here for part one).

This wire bird is 6ft high.

President Barack Obama giving his stump speech to some Democratic Blue Dogs. (get it?)

 This is almost my favourite sculpture of the festival. It reminds me of something from Tolkein - except the hand and foot in the middle.  This was called something like the creation of man... sometimes artists are a little too obvious with their symbology.

This looks like fun! I want a turn next.

This wired fellow is life sized.

I really want to go geocaching here.

This is definitely a highlight of the festival, and really needs to be placed outside a library somewhere.

The Dude abides.

This sculpture is supped to be about sadness, grief and loss.

 I really liked the colours in this one.  Sculptures tend to be very monochromatic. This one is vibrant with colours.

Thats all from the festival.  Do you have a favourite?  Let me know in the comments below!

Lenoir Sculpture Festival 2014 (Part 1)

Today the family and I took a trip to the Broyhill Walking park in our current home town of Lenoir North Carolina.  Here are my favourite sculptures of the many we saw.  Starting with this dragon.

This rather impressively large sculpture turned in the wind.

 The look on this eggs face is awesome.

I am a *huge* sucker for art made from discarded metal bits. This one reminds me of an excited puppy, eager to please his master,

Another gorgeous metal sculpture - this one of an egret.

This carved head is well done.

 A crystal bowl made from chunks of glass.

If you don't understand why this sculpture speaks to me, you clearly haven't been paying enough attention to this blog (a hint is in my profile).

This looks like some sort of amulet, but its 4ft across.   Could also be the head of a wizards staff.

 This sculpture, called Abundance, is well done. Looks a little fragile tho.

Continued in Part 2.

Esse Quam Videri From Space!

While doing planning for a cache run in Raleigh NC I ran across this little gem in Google Earth. 

This lives at the North Carolina Art Museum, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places to hang out (it is the place that also contains the life sized Camera Obscura).

This is art that was not even possible 150 years ago... it was made specifically to be viewed from aerial photography.  Each letter is unique.  In short, its awesome and superb, and its mere existence makes me happy.

Sharp eyed folks may notice that the "I" in "this" has words written on it. They are the North Carolina state motto "To be, rather than to seem", which is translated from the latin "esse quam videri" and means "Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.", or in other words "there are many folks who want to be known as good, but only a few who want to be good".  (note: at this stage I wish NC picked a cooler motto, but "live free or die" is already taken).

I headed over to the NC Art Museum and checked out the art from ground level.  This is the view from 0ft relative elevation:

As you can see, it is much more impressive from the air. If you know what you are looking for you can make out the letters, but if you were just a random passer-by, you'd never know you were walking through this aerial piece of artwork:

Cool, eh? Check out the art work for yourself by clicking on ye olde Google Maps link here.

Have you seen similar bits of aerial artwork in your travels?  Let me know about them in the comments!

My First Geo-Art: The Question Mark Series

Today I completed my first geo-art series.

If you are not familiar, geo-art is a series of geocaches that are arranged in such a way that it looks like an image when viewed on a map.  Often these caches take the form of puzzles, since puzzles can have coordinates listed pretty much anywhere.

The series in question is 16 puzzles that created the image of, appropriately enough, a question mark.  Each puzzle builds on the one before it. So to solve the 16th puzzle you have to solve the 15th, which requires information from the 14th's puzzles solution etc.

Todays mission was to turn a quizzical series of questions marks into a quizzical series of smilies.

Last week my in-laws were in town, so I spent many of the evenings solving these puzzles.  Today, after attending a lunch event nearby, I headed out to find the caches.  Another local cacher by the name gbmcache, and the CO (who both happened to also be at the event) came with me.

It was actually quite fortunate that the CO came along as one of the caches was missing (construction being the nemesis of the urban geocache). He was able to replace it for us on the spot (convenient eh? - I highly reccomend bringing the CO along on all your cache runs).

It took me about 6 hours to solve all the puzzles, and about 2 hours to find them all.  Not to shabby.

This was my first geo-art, and it was fun.  I also, somewhere along the way, hit 2800n finds, giving this series of caches a special place in my personal geocaching history.

You can find the cache listings for this series here.

Have you found any geo-art caches?  Let me know in the comments below.

Lego Sculptures

This is Abigail.

She is 18 months old, and despite being life sized, is still rather short.

Behind her is a bison and her calf.  They are not life size, which is understandable given that they are not real.

They are made out of Lego.

The bison family, and many other creatures, are a part of a Lego sculpture exhibition currently going on at the North Carolina Arboretum near Asheville.

On Saturday we took the family over to the Arboretum to do some geocaching, and to check out the Lego.  The following are some shots of the lego sculptures.

Mama Bison is made out of 45,143 pieces of Lego, and the calf is a mere 16,229. 

The butterfly dominated the courtyard.  I didn't get a brick count for this guy, but he was quite large.

 The fox has 17,361 pieces, and the plucky bunny is a lighweight 1,361 pieces.

 This large dragonfly model is made up of 6,535 pieces of brick.

 This rose is about 6ft tall.

 This gardener is life sized, and has 37,497 bricks,

 This hummingbird is 31,565 pieces.

 This wasp dominated the area.  It is approximately 6ft long.

So thats it from the Lego exhibition.  Until next time, my friends, stay frosty.