Jenny's Art

This last weekend Jenny had portfolio reviews at both St Francis University and Bowling Green University. In about two weeks she should be hearing back from both places via the mail. St. Francis was very positive in their verbal feedback and Bowling Green has a neutral style of review - neither positive or negative while you are there. But while Jenny had her art at home, I was able to take a picture of some of the new and old stuff that I hadn't shot before. You might want to click on them to see the detail that she can usually fit into a picture.


This cross and crucifix she drew from direct observation.


This is an oil painting of a sunset we saw while we were in Hawaii.


This is a self portrait she painted last summer while at the St. Francis Summer Art Academy. They were limited to a couple brownish colors - so that is why her hair and complexion are a little darker than you might think they should be.


Nightmare on Seseme Street


The fall of Adam & Eve

Oil Lamp

She's done! Jenny just finished her painting of an oil lamp, on a table in a corner. It's about 4 foot tall, and the detail of the glass bowl are especially striking. This is what she was working on at school for hours at a time with a tiny brush to get all the detail in. I couldn't quite get the white balance right on my camera so the picture isn't quite true to the color of the painting. Click on it to see the detail. Way to go Jenny!

Saturday Night

After watching the Indiana vs Purdue football game we watched the movie, "I Remember Mama",(1948)a story of a middle-class Norwegian immigrant family, set in 1900 San Francisco. The family is held together by a stern, resourceful, untiring and loving matriarch, Mama (Irene Dunne). Family life is recalled in flashback style from the diary of one of the daughters, Katrin (Barbara Bel Geddes) as she narrates:
"But first and foremost, I remember Mama". The family is surrounded by a colorful procession of relatives, boarders and friends.

One of the reasons we watched the movie was because two weeks ago we watched our second daughter, Jody play the role of Mama in the play put on by New Haven High School. Jody is in the green dress.


After the movie, Bob and Zack were trouble shooting the fan problem with his playstation 2.


Boomer was laying by Bob's feet ready to offer his assistance if needed.

And Jenny is down in the basement painting. I wasn't allowed to take a picture of the painting she's working on, but here is the paint pallet so you can see the colors she's working with.

Joey is taking a nap, and I'm blogging the night away.

Impressionism

Jenny just finished this picture using the Impressionism style - something new for her to try. She says it's not 100% true impressionism,(she didn't emphasize the light in the picture) but mostly in that style. Here is what Google says about Impressionism.

Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists, who began exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Characteristics of Impressionist painting include visible brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.

Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colors, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the world. Previously, not only still lifes and portraits, but also landscapes, had been painted indoors, but the Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details. They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed color, not smoothly blended, as was customary, in order to achieve the effect of intense color vibration

Cubism

CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO SEE IT FULL SCREEN
We don't see too much of Jenny these days. She is working to get her art portfolio done for the St. Francis and Bowling Green U. portfolio days. Admission to the art schools are on the line as well as scholarship opportunities. Yesterday I brought her a Subway sandwich as she was staying at school to work on a painting. It's a large very detailed painting of a crystal oil lamp. It looked good so far, but with the detail she's putting in, she has many, many more hour to go. In the showcase in the art hallway was a painting she did of a Hawaii sunset we saw - again, very detailed in the tree branches and how the sun light hit the water - it is good. The new art teacher at school is pushing the kids to try methods they haven't done before to stretch their comfort zone and one assignment Jenny had this year was to do a painting in the Cubism art style. I got to see it at school yesterday and it's really striking and totally different than what she usually does. She added organic materials to the picture (sand, leaves, sticks and twigs)which gives it a nice texture.

For those of you who would like to learn more about Cubism, here is what Google says:
Cubism is the most radical, innovative, and influential ism of twentieth-century art. It is complete denial of Classical conception of beauty.

Cubism was the joint invention of two men, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their achievement was built the foundation of Picasso's early work then developed to a Synthetic Cubism. As the various phases of Cubism emerged from their studios, it became clear to the art world that something of great significance was happening. The radical innovations of the new style confused the public, but the avant-garde saw in them the future of art and new challenge.

Proportions, organic integrity and continuity of life samples and material objects are abandoned. Canvas resembles "a field of broken glass" as one vicious critic noted. This geometrically analytical approach to form and color, and shattering of object in focus into geometrical sharp-edged angular pieces baptized the movement into 'Cubism'. A close look reveals very methodical destruction or rather deconstruction into angular 3-dymensional shaded facets, some of which are caving others convex. Cubism distrusts "whole" images perceived by the retina, considers them artificial and conventional, based on the influence of past art. It rejects these images and recognizes that perspective space is an illusory, rational invention, or a sign system inherited from works of art since the Renaissance.

Instead of an image of external world we are given a world of its own, analogous to nature but built along different principles. Cubism seeks to reproduce different perspectives or forms simultaneously, as they might be seen by the mind's eye. It attempts to mimic the mind's power to abstract and synthesize its different impressions of the world into new 'wholes'.

Oct 28 - Southern Indiana

On Sunday we left Corydon to go back home to Fort Wayne with a stop planned in Bloomington to visit with John. Our path took us down Indiana Route 66 and we found an chainsaw garden in someone's yard.




Further down the road we saw a huge pumpkin farm.






In Mitchell, Indiana we stopped to see the Gus Grissom memorial.




We made it to Bloomington by noon and met John at his dorm. He was able to show us a video of his last composition performed at IU, a trio performed with a violin, viola, and a vocalist. It was very expressive, beautiful and captivating, we liked it a lot. We went to a nature preserve in Bloomington and had a picnic lunch. Afterwards, John went off to practice his sax and we hit the road for the final leg of the trip back home.






Three hours later we made it home to find the roof still on the house Zack & Jenny had survived and we had two joyful golden retrievers.

Oct 27 - Southern Indiana

Today we decided to drive along the Ohio River to the west and to see what we could find. The first interesting thing we found was a dirt road that lead down to the Ohio River near the town of Leavenworth. We saw a group of barges being towed by a tug boat.



Next we went to Artist Point and saw another barge moving along the river.




Further down the road we found a bridge we had to cross that was built in 1897. The wood was really creaking and complaining as we crossed.





We went to Buzzard Roost and had lunch and Bob took a hike down to the river. Down there he saw what looks like a beaver or maybe a muskrat - can you guys tell from the picture? It looks like a beaver to me. We couldn't see them but we could sure hear the buzzards calling.









We continued down the road following the Ohio River and stopped in German Ridge in the Hoosier National Forest. It was misting at the time so Bob decided not to hike so we drove on after a short rest.



We decided we would drive on to Tell City and then head back north and return to Corydon. We found the Channelton Lock and Dam on the Ohio River along the way. Not expecting it, it came as quite a surprise. We stopped and watch a tug boat pushing 15 barges (5 rows of 3 barges) into the lock and the water rise before it took off again up the river.





We continued on to Tell City and satisfied with our river exploration we drove back to Corydon to relax the rest of the evening.