Welcome to Timeless Rhythms Studio, online art journal! Look at some of my posted art (above), read my entries and feel free to comment on any part of the blog that interests you! Most of my art is available for purchase and I can also be commissioned for a variety of custom painting projects, from portraits to murals. Contact me here by leaving a comment on any post. I look forward to hearing from you in my Timeless Rhythms Studio, online art journal!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Holiday Offerings: Art Originals

I am beginning to hear the drum beat of the creative entrepreneurial spirit for the holidays!

Take a look at two examples of what I have chosen to offer for this year's holiday shopping:

Original paintings in a fixed-SIZE range at a fixed price-range, in either a floral favorite of your choice or pet portrait of your pet companion(s). Painted in acrylic paints.

*

* This floral painting is available for sale and it is already framed!




To fixed prices add ship'g xtra:





HulaHub Launches in PDX!



In some places, Santa is early this year!!

Hula Hub Online Cultural Hub is Active...Jump in!


By Pollyanne Birge

Wed, November 18, 2009 4:14pm


"The creative community has been waiting for nearly two decades for an integrated, dynamic, online cultural calendar. We couldn't be more please that the private sector has stepped up to provide this innovative calendaring system at no cost to our region"


--Mayor Sam Adams

Now with HulaHub, Box Office Tickets Inc. (BOT) delivers a powerful social networking infrastructure that arts organizations can use to provide visitors and people in their community with a single consolidated calendar of events, profiles, reviews, ticketing and blogs.

In addition to connecting with audiences, HulaHub makes it easy for producers, artists and venues to collaborate, share services and cross-promote events. For example, producers and artists can search for venues by type of performance space, capacity, and other parameters. Artists and production personnel can post their professional profiles.

People can sign up to be on mailing lists and make donations online. Best of all, HulaHub frees cash-strapped arts organizations to spend less of their time and energy on web technologies — and more on making and promoting their art.

Watch a video from the launch party:



BOT is also launching an iPhone HulaHub application that will engage more people and make it even easier to keep up with events and arts news on the go. HulaHub on the iPhone opens new mobile/arts opportunities.



Box Office Tickets Introduces HulaHub™ Social Networking for the Arts


Free service connects people and arts organizations and creates community


Box Office Tickets Inc. announces HulaHub™, www.hulahub.com —a free social networking service for the arts that helps organizations connect and interact with audiences and others in their community to create new synergies.

"At a time when every penny counts, many arts organizations of all sizes are needlessly spending thousands of dollars on websites and online calendars that too few people know about or visit," says George Domurot, President/CEO of Box Office Tickets Inc. (BOT). "With HulaHub, we’ve created one centralized hub where people can post and find information about local shows and events, reach new audiences and join in on the conversation."

Founded more than 15 years ago as an alternative to ticketing agencies that charge exorbitant fees, BOT has leveraged the power of the Internet in a shared-services business model that enables even the smallest arts and nonprofit organizations to offer their patrons the convenience of online ticketing.

A single dynamic online space for community arts information and interactions


"HulaHub is a tremendous resource," says Jeff Hawthorne, Director Community Affairs, Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) in Portland, Oregon. "With so much event information in one centralized location, and a great interface for audiences and art lovers, HulaHub is a powerful way to increase the entire community’s participation in local arts and culture. We applaud BOT for working closely with community arts organizations to develop such a comprehensive system. HulaHub is a prominent feature on the Regional Arts and Culture Council's Website."

Creating community, promoting the local economy

HulaHub is a national web brand with a universal login that automatically connects members to their local arts community, while also enabling individuals to browse hubs in other locations, for example, to plan for a trip. There is no charge for listing events in the calendar, posting a profile, or using the blogging and social networking features of HulaHub. HulaHub connects to all types of shows and events, whether paid or free and whether ticketed through boxofficetickets.com® network, through local outlets or other ticketing services.

HulaHub works with local "presenting partners" to set up a calendar and social networking site that matches the community’s needs and share revenues. Revenue comes from feature ads in the Browse and Buy section of the website, web page sponsors, and a small service fee on tickets purchased through the boxofficetickets.com network. BOT provides all its presenting partners and sponsors with reports that track impressions, clicks, and click-thru rates. BOT also donates five cents for each ticket sold through its network back into a community fund, which, at the end of the year, is donated to a local nonprofit.

Portland Metro

Portland, Oregon’s Metro Area HulaHub is a vibrant online community that grew out of a partnership between BOT and the nonprofit Film Action Oregon (FAO) in 2008. Today, there are 100+ presenting partners invested in the Portland Metro HulaHub, with 400+ arts organizations using the calendar service at no cost. Among the features the Portland Metro HulaHub offers members are a weekly email digest, personalized to the individual’s preferences and including timely "Director’s Picks" recommendations by the artistic directors of Portland’s most prestigious culture and performing arts organizations.

"Portland is a city that embraces the arts and fosters innovation," says Portland’s mayor, Sam Adams. "With HulaHub, Portlanders now have even more ways to get involved, take advantage of all the city has to offer, and support a new service provided by a local company."

HulaHub on the iPhone

BOT is also launching an iPhone HulaHub application that will engage more people and make it even easier to keep up with events and arts news on the go. HulaHub on the iPhone opens new mobile/arts opportunities. For example, plans are underway to develop an iPhone downloadable walking tour of the public art in Portland.

About Box Office Tickets:

For more than 15 years, Box Office Tickets Inc. (www.boxofficetickets.com) has been providing ticketing solutions for the arts and entertainment industry. In 2003, the company revolutionized ticketing for small to medium size arts organizations by creating dynamic and shareable content, all at no cost to the organization. In 2009, the company launched HulaHub™ www.hulahub.com, a free social networking site for the arts to help organizations connect and interact with audiences. Box Office Tickets also offers discounts and other promotions to help create new audiences and assist organizations in filling more seats.

The BOT-Bullet, connecting people, creating community, HulaHub, RoBOT, RoBOT StopLight, Social Networking for the Arts, Empowering Entertainment, PDX Cultural Calendar, PDX Ticket Network, and BOXOFFICETICKETS.COM and Design are trademarks of Box Office Tickets Inc. © Copyright 2009 Box Office Tickets Inc. All rights reserved.

Press Contact: pr@boxofficetickets.com

***Come on Corvallis, Oregon, you're hokey poky-ing behind the sleeping wheel, AGAIN!
This is big! It's hot!! Get on this NOW!!!

Why Business Leaders Should Act More like Artists

From Harvard Business Publishing
(Please note: I have changed the posting options for this post here on my blog so that my holiday post stays at the top!)
5:16 PM Tuesday December 1, 2009
by John Maeda

Tags:Leadership

Stereotypes abound about artists: they range from the mild ("they have fuschia-colored hair"), to the absurd ("they starve,"), to the disturbed ("they do things like uncontrollably peeing in the fireplace as depicted in the popular movie Pollock."). Granted I know artists with wild-colored hair and others who are certainly struggling to make ends meet, but they all choose to use the restroom. I've also met artists who are quite plain-looking and plain-acting CEOs, lawyers, stockbrokers, and scientists.

Even as someone who has worked to weaken some of the sillier stereotypes about creative types, I must admit that I've carried a few stereotypes around myself. In particular, I'd always believed that artists are much like the kind of geeks I grew up with at MIT — passionately focused on their work with little regard to their own physical or financial circumstance, and often more comfortable working as a lone constructor instead of as a collaborative player on a larger team. So when I observed RISD students exhibiting the classic "lone wolf" traits of this kind of "creative geek," my mental model was confirmed. But when I recently spoke with two RISD textile entrepreneurs in Chicago about this stereotype, my mind fortunately re-opened.

The three aha's I received from my conversation with partners Robert Segal and Alicia Rosauer were:

1. Artists constantly collaborate. The example given was the common occurrence of an exhibition with multiple artists showing together, or the so-called "group show." Even in the context of a solo show, the artist works with the gallery owner, the curator, the framers, the installers, the lighting person, the publicist to bring their vision to life. Every exhibition is a collaboration to the nth degree.

2. Artists are talented communicators. The whole point of a work of art is to communicate something — a thought, an idea, a feeling, a vision. More explicitly, the artist frequently gives a talk to explain the thought process behind the artwork. Engaging the audience in a meaningful, expansive dialogue is often critical to the exhibition's success.

3. Artists learn how to learn together. Perhaps the reason why artists collaborate and socialize so well is that they learn in the studio model — ten or more students in the same room for hours on end. Bonded together in a personal space of intimate self-expression, they come into their own through the familial ties of the studio setting. When interviewed recently about the differences in her education at Brown and at RISD, one student who is getting a dual degree from both institutions said, "At RISD there's a lot of learning from your peers. Brown (in the classes I've taken so far anyway) is about listening and note-taking in class."

Whether they explicitly acknowledge themselves as leaders or not, artists often move others to follow them — into neighborhoods, into a new a social movement, or even just a dialogue. They do it through the skills that are inherent in their work as professional "inspirers" and provocateurs. Sure, some artists might be introverts and some extroverts, but through their art, they act as creative leaders in their boldness to often express a point of view as the naked truth.

We've all seen the business world increasingly crave an approach that balances values with profits. One natural way to do this is to adopt an artist's point of view; the honesty and integrity that artists naturally bring to their work will be increasingly relevant.

John Maeda is a world-renowned artist, graphic designer, computer scientist and educator whose career reflects his philosophy of humanizing technology. For more than a decade, he has worked to integrate technology, education and the arts into a 21st-century synthesis of creativity and innovation. He is the author of four books, including The Laws of Simplicity. Since September 2008, he has been President of the Rhode Island School of Design.

Becky Bermont is Vice President, Media + Partners at the Rhode Island School of Design. Prior to her work at RISD, Becky has worked as the Director of Sponsor Management at the MIT Media Lab, a Product Marketer in Yahoo!'s Connected Life group, and a Consumer Research Analyst at Forrester Research. Becky holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Women Artists Marginalized Again in Small University Town in America

I am posting that in my local home village, where I have tried to support and promote the arts, I have been swindled! In my efforts to locally screen the movie: Who Does She Think She Is?, one local Artisans Market Boutique have partnered with the local University Women's Center to screen the film with no reason whatsoever yet who have pushed me out of the project all together.
No one even knew anything at all about this indy film here until I promoted it. As it was one of my own ads that was found by the A.M.B. on craigslist.
The film ironically is about women in the arts who choose to raise families simultaneously, and how marginalized these collective voices continue to be in the world of art and social culture. It is a poignantly painful film that opens the door of awareness on a group who need the support of community, and to have their works not just seen and heard but valued in the larger arena of the arts.
I am dumbfounded that people who just take from others this baldly are supported at all. Yet, I am afraid this habit is all too common. It's very painful to experience being targeted so others can convince themselves they are well, as they only build false stature.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

This article on Contemporary Art Sales at Christies & Sotheby's this past Week, in the NYT!

Full Speed Ahead for Contemporary Works

By SOUREN MELIKIAN
Published: November 13, 2009


Cy Twombly's drawing went for $722,500 at Christie's.

NEW YORK — The auction market is booming and, when it comes to contemporary art, it is charging on at an accelerated pace, as it did before the financial turmoil broke out in the autumn of 2008.

This week, those attending Christie’s and Sotheby’s evening sessions traditionally reserved for the most important works might have briefly thought that there never was a recession. No awareness of it appeared to linger in the bidders’ minds as they ran up paintings, drawings and sundry three-dimensional works to three times the estimate, or more.

It all culminated with the staggering $43.76 million paid at Sotheby’s on Wednesday for Andy Warhol’s “200 One Dollar Bills,” a silkscreen and pencil work dating from 1962.

This extraordinary outburst of bullishness was the upshot of a two-part play in which Christie’s session on Tuesday served as a launching pad to Sotheby’s superior sale.

The sale Tuesday, which netted $74.15 million, leaving only seven out of 46 works stranded, said a great deal about the renewed eagerness to buy contemporary art. It revealed for the first time a deep interest in works on paper, in contrast to the past when contemporary art had to be spectacular and big to do really well.

The session began with a drawing on board done in 1961 by Robert Rauschenberg. This was titled “Untitled,” possibly because it is difficult to find a label for a panel in which a wheel, some wristwatches and various rubbings have been haphazardly jotted down, in the manner of street graffiti. The colors were pale and the size small — 29.2 by 26 centimeters, or 11.5 by 10.25 inches. Christie’s expected the Rauschenberg to be knocked down between $100,000 and $150,000, plus the sale charge. With bids coming in from every side, the sketch ended up at $938,500.

Another drawing followed. The large sheet of paper sprinkled with blobs and dots in black ink was signed by Philip Guston and dated 1953. Its severity and lack of color did not appear to augur well. Yet, lo and behold! The Guston rose to $542,500, more than double the high estimate. It set in the process a world auction record for a work on paper by the artist.

Two more world records were later established for contemporary artists, or artists conventionally held to be “contemporary” even though they are no longer in this world.

One went to a cartoon in the naughty-schoolboy-at-the-blackboard manner of Jean-Michel Basquiat. “Untitled,” as Christie’s called it, the large size sketch, 152.4 centimeters high, brought one of the more astonishing prices achieved this week. At $3.1 million, it tripled the previous record for a Basquiat work on paper that was set in Paris at the Artcurial auction house in December 2005.

Later, a sketch in ink and gouache by Brice Marden, “Untitled with Green,” set an auction record for the artist at $2.04 million. Squiggles repeated in three vertical columns were apparently deemed irresistible.

Other large prices paid for works on paper confirmed that a new pattern was emerging. A typical exercise in random scribbling by Cy Twombly made $722,500, nearly double the high estimate. The sketch does not markedly differ from the nascent bouts of creativity of 4-year-olds expressing pencil in hand their joie de vivre. Interestingly, this similarity to early childhood artistic endeavor has no bearing on the price. Visual aesthetics are clearly not among the primary considerations driving contemporary art buyers.

If any doubts could be entertained on that score, the $1.98 million paid at Christie’s for another work on paper by Basquiat would dispel them. “Untitled (14 Drawings)” describes 14 sheets of paper individually framed. Each one is adorned with a few lines inscribed in block letters. The first one reads “A LOT OF BOWERY BUMS USED TO BE EXECUTIVES.” The attraction presumably lies in the would-be tongue in cheek witticism — if this is the word.

A new interest in austere paintings came along with this willingness to pay top dollar for works on paper that do not appeal to a yearning for the spectacular.

A dark geometrical composition painted around 1980-1981 by Jasper John in predominant gray nearly doubled its high estimate at $4.33 million. Moments later, a virtually black picture in oil on paper done by Rauschenberg managed to sell for $962,500. A kind of crumpled effect is created to animate a surface that would otherwise resemble a piece of black slate.

The double focus on drawings and on uncompromisingly severe paintings revealed at Christie’s on Tuesday suggests that a new gravity now drives some contemporary art buyers.

Yet, no great importance is attached to personal aesthetic creation. In most cases, words and names alone matter. The parodies of Jeff Koons attract as much attention as ever. A “Large Vase of Flowers” perfectly imitated in polychrome wood brought $5.68 million. Those in despair for having missed it may comfort themselves with the thought that it was produced in an edition of three, plus an artist’s proof. Two vacuum cleaners hygienically displayed in transparent Plexiglas casing “New Shelton Wet/Dry5-Gallon, New Hoover Convertible Doubledecker,” which, the catalog cryptically noted, was a work “executed in 1981-1987,” stirred sufficiently deep emotions to realize $3.1 million.

Minimalist art, which offers another variant of limited artistic intervention, was also well received.

Agnes Martin’s alternate bands of blue and white, which could be mistaken for a sample of fabric or wallpaper were it not for the signature and date (1996), thus comfortably sold for $1.31 million.

Figural art, however, was not forgotten. The great success story at Christie’s was indeed Peter Doig’s “Reflection (What does your soul look like)” painted in 1996. That exceeded the high estimate as it realized $10.16 million. Influenced by the 19th-century French school of naturalist landscape painting, Doig’s large picture bore no connection to any of the other works. Eclecticism, or as some might believe, indifference to what the eye sees, was the order of the day.

These trends were all confirmed on a magnificent scale on Wednesday when Sotheby’s took over. It was as if Christie’s performance had released a spring. During the first half of a session that ended on a $134.44 million score, bidders could barely hold themselves.

Two auction records were set as the first four lots came up. Remarkably, the first record price, $1.65 million, was paid for a picture by an artist whose name, Alice Neel, meant little to the general public. “Jackie Curtis and Rita Red,” a figural double portrait dating from 1970, is broadly painted, with the merest soupçon of Expressionism in the handling of the faces.

The second record price went to the French sculptor Germaine Richier who is well known within a circle of specialists, but hardly rated as a celebrity. “La Feuille” (The Leaf) is the title of a rugged female figure cast around 1950. The severe stylization which distorts the human body and the dark brown surface make the record price, $842,500, particularly noteworthy.

As at Christie’s, Sotheby’s sale thus showed that world fame is no longer an absolute prerequisite for financial success in contemporary art. Neither are bright colors. A Jasper Johns painted in leaden gray as the title, “Gray Numbers” indicates, fetched the second highest price in the sale, $8.7 million.

An even harsher work, a “Large Torso” cast in bronze in 1974, set a world record for a sculpture by Willem de Kooning at $5.68 million. The artist, famous for his Expressionist pictures, is not often associated with sculpture. The price, like those paid for Richier’s bronze or for the gray picture by Jasper Johns, tells us that a search for new avenues to explore is under way in contemporary art.

Works by artists that did not always fare well in the past are now fought over without a moment’s hesitation.

The French painter Jean Dubuffet who is perhaps best described as an Expressionist Naïf did brilliantly with his grinning, rather sinister figures painted in pseudo-childish fashion. A picture in this vein, “Trinité-Champs-Elysées,” dated March 1961, set an auction record for the artist at $6.13 million.

Behind the bewildering diversity of the works that were most enthusiastically received, one constant feature recurred. Most had been consecrated by the passage of time. Of the top 10 lots sold at Sotheby’s only one, Bruce Nauman’s “Violins Violence Silence,” which dates from 1981 or 1982 and sold for $4 million, was less than 30 years of age.

Perhaps buyers willing to spend the largest amounts were not too sure that the art they were looking at was to be taken seriously. The reasoning appears to be that if public acclaim or at least media recognition lasted that long, they had a fair chance of making the right choice.

If doubting Thomases questioned the artistic character of “200 One Dollar Bills” mechanically reproduced by Warhol using the silkscreen technique, you could always point out that the artist’s oeuvre had been sung for half a century. Warhol’s work has actually risen beyond the wildest dreams. The picture that climbed to a dizzying $43.76 million this week had only cost its consignor $385,000. He bought it on Nov. 11, 1986, at the sale of the estate of one of the most famous collectors of contemporary art, the late Robert C. Scull.

Every buyer of contemporary art dreams of such coups, if not necessarily on this scale — it is the most fabulous ever, in any field. If only for that reason, the odds are that contemporary art is set to leap forward for a while.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

A Commissioned Artist At Last!



Tonight I received one of those calls I have dreamed about but haven't allowed myself to wait on, for a very long time now! Life inside this soul has been truly hell for the past number of years, single parenting in financial poverty to find my own way to my soul's calling, clarifying the old history without a life partner or a circle of friends because that work was too much, but had to be done in order to clarify me and step away from the dysfunctional past, and light of my life down the center of it all_ raising one incredibly wonderful human being who is now doing us both proud out in the world, a senior in college majoring in music.

With this belief and investment in my art way beyond needed dollars, I am going to breathe from here on because this is so much more than a commission. So much more. My soul is literally coming back to life! So you nay-sayers and distance keepers, just watch and listen as all of the color, light, laughter and looseness from way down deep, comes all the way back up to the surface! I welcome this flow from the universe with gratitude and all the blessings that come with this one yes shown in my direction. Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you! Art is my life, it is what makes me happy. It is how I can be in this world and share what is possible with everyone.

From here there will be fresh imagery as I make that progress, and a solid conversation about what making art is, from this artist's perspective and renewed experiences. Now, you really do want to stay tuned in.

I'm back! I am coming back to me! Happy, free, believed in, befriended, commissioned. Woooooo! Hooooooooooo!!!!!

Anyone else ready to call for a second commission? It'd mean me buying a camera with which to record fresh and original imagery to my art blog!! As I make it! Yeah!!!

WDSTSI- Live: National House Party, Follow-up Event

Lots of interaction and discussion with the audience in cooperation with Emerging Pictures at the WDSTSI National House Party Event at Symphony Space in NYC, today! "Who Does She Think She Is?," debuts in this forum and we all get to listen in at the !
Unfortunately, I am unable to figure out how to get the House Party event follow-up film code to embed on (picky!) blogger, but I did come up with this link to that event for now, until I monkey around with the code!
WDSTSI Tweets via national participation with the house party event are here!
* Visually, I can embed a (good ole!) YouTube update of Maye Torres, who was unable to participate in the National House Party, follow-up film event in NY, due to two very recent deaths in her family.