Category Archives: Art

Escape Plan

Posted on by Bill Chance

In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big goddamn poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Andy’s favorite hobby was totin’ his wall out into the exercise yard, a handful at a time.
—-The Shawshank Redemption

The other day, after the really cool bike ride from the Dallas Contemporary, we all returned and hung out for a while, looking at the exhibits. There was some really good stuff… really good.

One special exhibit, off to one side, was Acceleration – a set from 35 artists run out to honor the 35th anniversary of the space. Walking through it, I came around a corner, looked at a sheetrock wall, and found one in particular that really spoke to me.

It was one of the coolest pieces of art/sculpture/exhibition I’ve ever seen.

A simple work by Bradly Brown, named “Escape Plan.” It was a heavy, sharp compass, mounted against the wall. An unseen force turned the compass slowly, and the sharp steel point was slowly digging its way through the wall.

"Escape Plan" by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

“Escape Plan” by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

The circle cut into the wall displayed a ragged edge where the spike had torn through the outer paper layer. When I looked closely, I could see that it had dug deep, almost through the drywall, and was digging deeper.’

"Escape Plan" by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

“Escape Plan” by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

I watched it going round and round, and talked to some other folks that walked up. I said, “it must have some sort of mechanism mounted inside the wall.”

Then, on a whim, I walked around until I reached the opposite side of the wall and was surprised when, there, I found the other end – the business end – an electric motor slowly turning a shaft that pierced the barrier – obviously turning the compass on the other side. It was set up as another part… a hidden part of the art. It would have been interesting to find the motor first – to see it moving and try to figure out what it was doing. You would never be able to guess.

The back side of "Escape Plan" by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

The back side of “Escape Plan” by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

I looked closely and saw that it was spring mounted – I assume pulling the mechanism through the wall… eventually.

Carrollton Collages

Posted on by Bill Chance

To get to the Carrollton Festival at the Switchyard I rode my bike to the Arapaho Red Line DART station – hung my bike on the transit hook and rode downtown (as always, I was a minute late, missed my train, and was twenty minutes late downtown – I need to cut that crap out), met a friend, and we then rode the Green line out to Carrollton. It would have been quicker to drive my car down Beltline (to get anywhere in Dallas you start out driving down Beltline Road) – but then I would have had to find a place to park, plus there is a lot of freedom and flexibility in having a bicycle. With a bicycle and a DART pass – I can go anywhere.

At any rate, heading back downtown, waiting for the train, I had the time to look around at the artwork on the Carrollton station. To my uneducated, ignorant, and untrained eye, DART has done an admirable job of adding artwork to its train stations – at least as far as a giant government bureaucracy can be expected to go. Maybe I should do some blog entries on some of my favorites….

At the Carrollton station – elevated high in the air (cool view from up there) over where I suppose the old switching yard might have been, I noticed all these little windows cut into the concrete pillars supporting the roof structure. In each window was an old photograph combined with, or framed by, pieces of found metal. It made for a series of interesting and entertaining collages. The time spent waiting for the train was reduced by me dashing up and down, looking into the little windows at the parade of aged faces and arranged fragments of history.

Later, at home, an internet search led me quickly to the artist, James Michael Starr. Although, he seems to be unhappy with the initial installation – everything seems to have worked out and his collages are there for the enjoyment of the unwashed masses. The bits of metal seem to be mostly artifacts that the artist was able to dig up around the area, now on display, high in the air… forever waiting for the next train.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

Banjo Player

Posted on by Bill Chance

When you want genuine music – music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whiskey, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pinfeather pimples on a picked goose – when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!
—- Mark Twain

John Pedigo of the O's. From a photograph taken at a beer festival, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas. (click to enlarge)

John Pedigo of the O’s. From a photograph taken at The Big Texas Beer Fest, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas.
(click to enlarge)

They think the banjo can only be happy, but that’s not true.
—-Bela Fleck

Digital Art – Bicycles

Posted on by Bill Chance

After having saved money for years I now have a graphics suite installed on a computer at home – Photoshop, The Gimp, Illustrator, and Corel Painter along with a Wacom Tablet.

What I want to do is to develop some skills… and more importantly, a vision. Right now, though, I’m playing around and learning my way around the pixels. Here’s a couple simple ones I did last night… both bicycle related.

Cruiser in the French Quarter

Cruiser in the French Quarter

If you are curious… for the original source of this – look here.

Folder

Folder

Creation of Chalk

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose… That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

chalk

“He who is in harmony with the Tao
is like a newborn child.
Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,
but its grip is powerful.
It doesn’t know about the union
of male and female,
yet its penis can stand erect,
so intense is its vital power.
It can scream its head off all day,
yet it never becomes hoarse,
so complete is its harmony.

The Master’s power is like this.
He lets all things come and go
effortlessly, without desire.
He never expects results;
thus he is never disappointed.
He is never disappointed;
thus his spirit never grows old.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Four Women

Posted on by Bill Chance

Digital Painting done with Corel Painter and The Gimp, based on a photograph taken in the reflecting pool in front of the Winspear Opera House, Dallas, Texas

“Used to say there was four women in every man’s heart. The Maid in the
Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Four Women, Winspear Opera House, Dallas, Texas

Four Women, Winspear Opera House, Dallas, Texas

Painting a Mural

Posted on by Bill Chance

Denton, Texas. Denton Arts and Jazz Festival.

The URL on their T-Shirts is www.Cityofdenton/watershed

mural2

mural1

Brush Strokes

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln

brush1

Up close, there are only brush strokes, you can’t see what you are looking at.

“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Only with distance, in space and time, comes clarity.

Graffiti, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Graffiti, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ”
― Richard Avedon

“The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

‘Why do you weep?’ the goddesses asked.

‘I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.

‘Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,’ they said, ‘for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.’

‘But… was Narcissus beautiful?’ the lake asked.

‘Who better than you to know that?’ the goddesses asked in wonder. ‘After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!’

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:

‘I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.’

‘What a lovely story,’ the alchemist thought.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Olivehead

Posted on by Bill Chance

Graffiti in an alley in Exposition Park, Dallas, Texas

olivehead

Olivehead

Olivehead

I like the scene painted in the graffiti, especially in the second photo, because you can see one of my favorite things – the Patricia Johanson sculptures in Leonhardt Lagoon in nearby Fair Park.

Pond at Fair Park

A pond in Fair Park. The red paths are part of a massive sculpture by Patricia Johanson. I have always loved those red paths running through the water, weeds, and turtles. A neglected jewel in the city.

The graffiti artist even included the Swan Boats.

Swan boat in Leonhardt Lagoon.

Swan boat in Leonhardt Lagoon.

Fracture Zone

Posted on by Bill Chance

This weekend is the Deep Ellum Arts Festival – which I refer to as the Deep Ellum Festival of Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos. Our plans are to go on Sunday afternoon, when there will be an impressive lineup of music that includes two of my favorite local bands: Home by Hovercraft, and Brave Combo.

Every year though, I like to buy a little monster head in a box, a sculpture by David Pound. He makes little heads out of Polymer Clay and found objects, and mounts them in wooden boxes. I love his work. By Sunday, I was afraid his selection would be thinned out too much, so I decided to ride down on the DART train after work and pick one up Friday evening, when the festival first opened.

I made it down there and walked back and forth along the long line of booths about three times before I saw his booth. For some reason, every year I have trouble finding it, although it’s pretty much in the same place.

David Pound's booth of little monster heads in wooden boxes at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival always draws a crowd.

David Pound’s booth of little monster heads in wooden boxes at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival always draws a crowd.

At any rate, his work was as great as ever. As I looked over the selection, people kept coming in and exclaiming how cool the little monsters were and how imaginative everything was. It was very hard for me to make up my mind -there was the guy with the mouse in his mouth, the alien with cat shoulder blades for ears, or the guy with mole hands sticking out the top of his head.

While I was looking a young girl with bright purple hair that was walking around with her parents bought a yellow head. I told her, “That’s the one I was going to get.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m just teasing.”

Actually, hers was the last one I would have bought. It looked cool, but didn’t have a real face. I decided to buy one that had a wry expression, and picked out one called Fracture Zone.

I hope you like him.

Fracture Zone

Fracture Zone

The heads I bought in previous years:

Persuation

Persuation

Burrow

Burrow

Earrings I had David Pound make for Candy for Mother's Day last year.

Earrings I had David Pound make for Candy for Mother’s Day last year.