Darryll Schiff and Descending From Heaven

Darryll Schiff and Descending From Heaven

Devil Fish

Devil Fish. Color Pencil on Paper.
From the series Devil Incarnate
(c) 2016

"ART & THE SENTIENT BEING" EXHIBIT

The opening of the group exhibit was last Friday 15th at the Life Force Arts Center (LFAC) and it runs till the end of April 2016.
You can learn more about LFAC and their events here:   http://www.lifeforcearts.org/site/

The opening was great! A constant stream of people coming and staying for the duration of the opening. It was really an invigorating event!
One of the two paintings chosen for the exhibit was from the series: "Memories of a Long Past Gone"

"Mystical Triangle". Oil on Canvas. (c)

The series is an unfolding exploration of rituals and designs of the Diaguita Indians who lived on the American soil of Northern Argentina. Their culture developed between the 8th & 16th centuries in what are now the provinces of Salta, Catamarca, La Rioja, and Tucuman.

The Diaguitas were one of the most advanced Pre-Columbian cultures in Argentina. They were advanced in architecture and agricultural techniques. Their designs depict a commitment to finding an expression and manifestation of a spiritual life within the powerful simplicity of Mother Nature. They worshipped the Sun, the thunder and lighting. They were very good farmers and had many rituals related to earth fertility and life cycles. They also worshipped some animals such as the serpents, felines, ostriches, and related them to their agricultural success. 

In this series I used some of their designs and placed them in the midst of an overworked background symbolizing the struggles of our 21st century to find spiritual, emotional, and physical peace among all of us humans while traversing across this planet.

Fertilization of the Earth (c)

Awaiting the Rain (c)

Thunderbolt (c)

Ostrich Dancing Before the Storm (c)

(http://www.condorvalley.org/explore-condor-valley/diaguita-history/

BRIGHT SIDE

I became aware of BRIGHT SIDE through a Facebook friend that posted a highly creative video from their page. So ... I needed to explore and I ended up on their website http://brightside.me
Then I learned that this site is a group of people who has as a mission "to make the world a little bit better" by focusing on three principals: inspiration, creativity, and wonder.
The site is full of very intelligent, interesting, inspiring, creative, and funny videos that truly bring a smile to your face, heart, and soul.

I want to share with you their "ten simple ways to make drawing with kids fun and easy". I'm sure you will love it and the kids you share this with, will love it too!
Here is a pic:

A cow

To see more click here:

http://brightside.me/article/circles-to-the-rescue-ten-simple-ways-to-make-drawing-with-kids-fun-and-easy-84755/#image195505

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy by Jack Spicer (1925-1965)

I received the poem of Jack Spicer in an email from the psychology & art group that I'm belong. I find the poem very telling when comes to describe the process of introspection that takes place in a clinical consulting room, the spoken and unspoken world between the therapist and her/his patient, the playground of the unconscious.

Jack Spicer was a NorthAmerican poet born in Los Angeles and who is identified with the San Francisco Renaissance.

Those of you that are in psychotherapy or have been in psychotherapy will be able to identify with this poem, I think ... I certainly can.

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

Jack Spicer, 1925 - 1965

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.

I am thinking of wet hills in the rain

Pouring water.  Shedding it

Down empty acres of oak and manzanita

Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,

Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.

Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana

Driving the hills crazy,

A fast wind with a bit of dust in it

Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.

Or down in the city where the peach trees

Are awkward as young horses,

And there are kites caught on the wires

Up above the street lamps,

And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer

As slow getting started

As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza

After a lot of unusual rain

California seems long in the summer.

I would like to write a poem as long as California

And as slow as a summer.

Do you get me, Doctor?  It would have to be as slow

As the very tip of summer.

As slow as the summer seems

On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside

Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road

Between Bakersfield and Hell

Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now?

I’m thinking that she is very much like California.

When she is still her dress is like a roadmap.  Highways

Traveling up and down her skin

Long empty highways

With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them

On hot summer nights.

I am thinking that her body could be California

And I a rich Eastern tourist

Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas

Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California

That I have never seen.

Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,

Send them.

One of each breast photographed looking

Like curious national monuments,

One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway

Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging

In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?

I am thinking of how many times this poem

Will be repeated.  How many summers

Will torture California

Until the damned maps burn

Until the mad cartographer

Falls to the ground and possesses

The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Social Realism & Berenice Abbott

While searching for news on CNN.com I came across a series of wonderful black & white photographs depicting NYC in the 30s by Berenice Abbott. These photos are high resolution images and they were the projects recently released for download by the New York Public Library:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/06/462128514/new-york-public-library-makes-180-000-high-res-images-available-online

A quick search on Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) taught me that she was an American photographer best known for her black-and -white photography of New York City architecture and urban design

and that she was part of social realism art movement.

Social realism is an international art movement that refers to the work of painters, printmakers, photographers, and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working class and the poor.

Look for instance at this image of the Fulton Fish Market c. 1930

http://www.commercegraphics.com/ny.html#1

 It is rich in expression, in light and shadows, demonstrating the depth of vision in photographer's eye and mind.

It is my hope that you will enjoy her work as much as I do.

 http://www.commercegraphics.com/ba.html

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/14/architecture/gallery/tbt-fifth-avenue-berenice-abbott/index.html

DAVID BOWIE (1947-2016)

From September 2014 to January 2015 the Museum of Contemporary Art @ Chicago presented  David Bowie Is- a retrospective of Bowie's work. (https://mcachicago.org/Exhibitions/2014/David-Bowie-Is)

I've heard of him but I never had a clear idea of
his work until I went to view this retrospective exhibit.

I was elated as well as overwhelmed by the intensity of his creative process and the many forms it manifested. "...From handwritten lyrics, photography, set design, original costumes, album artwork, and rare performance material for the past five decades of his life..." More than 400 objects all together for the first time.

As I walked the exhibit, a sense of admiration grew on me for this artist so open to the creative energy, flowing with it in any way and form. I relate with that way of being, where the physical body becomes the conduit of intense creativity that, like light, splashes over everything that touches.
I relate to the vulnerable self that moves with the energy and follows it because he/she has to.

Living in the creative energy grows more creative energy and it becomes contagious and collaborative so I was not surprised to learn of his collaborative projects with designers in the field of fashion, advanced sound, video installation, multimedia installation, and original animation.
I relate to the vulnerable self that moves with the energy and follows it because he/she has to.

What a pleasure!

His contribution to the world was/is. Very sad to see him go.

Thank You David Bowie for sharing so much with this world.

Two music videos from his last album BlackStar released two days before his departure:

https://youtu.be/kszLwBaC4Sw

https://youtu.be/y-JqH1M4Ya8

ART OPENING- The Creative Soul: Art & The Sentient Being

The Creative Soul: Art & The Sentient Being

"Mystical Triangle". Oil on Canvas (c)
$200

Opening Reception

 Friday
 January 15, 2016

 6:30 - 10 PM


 Exhibit runs
 January 15 - April 26 2016

 

 Life Force Arts Center,
 1609 W. Belmont, Chicago IL 60657.
 773-327-7224

Featured Artists 

  

Steven Blaine Adams     Sharon Bechtold

Grace Bromley Marianna Buchwald Mary Burton         Kurt Fondriest

Dorothy Graden Amy Hassan

John Henderson         Colleen Koziara

Jessica Kronika Beatriz Ledesma 

Claire Mesesan      Sharyl Noday

Britt Posmer  Diana Rudaitis 

 Derek Schulz     Alessandra Sequiera 

Zachary Spaulding      Vivian Zapata