Carina Fernhout painted this larger-than-life meta self-portrait as Eve; to the right is Adam, to the left, her daughter.
Posts by Karl Zipser
An art website you can make now
Inspired by our previous discussion, I prepared an art studio/blog layout.
What do artists want in a web site? (continued)
Tomorrow I will discuss an art gallery/blog website based in part on the discussion we had last week. more… »
Children’s art, in the perception of the observer [UPDATE 2]
Red gauche on paper
Let’s for a moment accept the proposition that children artists can be considered “real artists.” What an odd type of artist a child makes, if you think about it. What a short career a child has as an artist, always in transition. Who could be worse at writing an artist’s statement than a child?
Please look at the painting above and ask yourself, what does it depict? I have looked at this artwork many times and I always have had more or less the same interpretation of the content. But what was the artist’s intention? Are our views similar? Why don’t I ask the artist? In fact, I am the artist. I painted this sometime during the early 1970’s, but I have no memory of doing so. I have no idea what I intended. I somehow doubt that my interpretation of the picture (which I remember from later in my childhood) is in fact what I was thinking when I painted it.
The painting is framed behind glass, which makes it difficult to photograph. My mother made frames for many of my sister’s and my artworks, without which they would certainly have been lost. Children’s art was the main artwork in our house when I was growing up. If it were not for this early encouragement, I probably would not have become an artist.
Do you frame your children’s art? Do you ever think of the long-term implications of doing so (or not doing so)?
. . .
[Update]
I enjoyed reading the different interpretations of this painting by Sunil, Steve, Rex, Leslie, June, and Birgit. I never had the idea of a giant figure on the right before, but Sunil’s comment made me look at the picture in a different way. An area of agreement is that the picture shows a man. I would really like to know what I thought I was doing when I made this.
I’ve been thinking about this picture a lot, about the role of the “artist.” Here is what I think: my mother’s role in this picture was something like that of a photographer. She didn’t “make” the image by hand, but she created the conditions for it to be made. Presumably it was one of many paintings. She selected this one, framed it and saved it. I think she chose this image for a reason, because it is a compelling. She could also have made a compelling photograph of a pattern of clouds in the sky that looked a lot like a man on a dock or a boat, or what have you. I think my role as a three or four year old painter is completely accidental.
Is children’s art art? It seems to me that it can be, but a parent or some adult has an important role to play in making it art — selecting what is good and presenting it as art.
[UPDATE 2]
What do artists want in a website?
Painting From Life vs. From Photos
If you are an artist, what kind of website do you want to have for your own use?
As an artist:
- Do you want a web gallery? (for a some good examples, see David’s site, Steve’s site, and Franklin’s site)
- Do you want a blog, an online version of a diary?
I think many artists would like to have some kind of combination of these (unrelated) things. The problem is that the off-the-shelf solutions such as WordPress or Blogger are not designed for artists’ needs. That is why a lot of us spend/waste a lot of time tinkering with our websites, to customize them for our specific goals.
Recently Rex brought something exciting to my attention, a new version of WordPress that allows one to host many blogs. That is to say, if someone designs a good artist website template, they can allow other people to create their own blogs with this template on demand, for free — much like you can already get a WordPress blog for free.
To be useful for many artists, such a system should address the various issues that artists consider in a website.
What do you want in an artist website? Can you give examples of sites that have good design features?
Multi-blogging using WordPress Categories [Updated]
I think that using Categories is key to working with WordPress blogs. By using Categories (for example, drawing, painting, photography, the art world) it becomes possible to turn a single blog into a multi-blog.
This lets me turn my tagline on zipser.nl into a functional tagline. It is not only a description of the blog, but a set of links to the content of the separate categories. The basic form is inspired by Edward Winkleman’s tagline. [Steve Durbin also has a functional tagline much like the one I describe here.]
Arthur Whitman suggested that a blog is like a home; different sections (Categories perhaps?) could be like rooms. I think the metaphor is powerful, but I don’t feel quite, well, at home with it yet.
Any suggestions as to how to take Arthur’s idea further?
UPDATE . . .
