[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking. Baren Digest Sunday, 21 November 1999 Volume 09 : Number 791 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Maria Arango Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 21:20:08 -0800 Subject: [Baren 6746] Re: "computer artists" Along with what Greg just said, I have yet another humorous story: When I was working at a certain Health Insurance company, I ran a health education department for our members and found myself looking for a catchy logo to paste all over our literature and health ed. pamphlets. I requested, silly moi, that our "corporate marketing" department design us something. Days, weeks, went by...no logo, catchy or not. I called politely and asked what the delay was. "We couldn't find something, but are strill trying" "Find?" I said befuddled. "Yes, find," they repeated. "We don't have anything like you want in our files." In the interest of corporate teamwork I decided to travel to the corporate headquarters and see if I could help. "You can look for yourself," the graphic artist in charge of my project said, "but we can't find what you want." He was referring to looking through thousands and thousands of clip-art images that they had searched, in their Corel and Photo-shop files, on the web... "They all look like clip-art," he added, "and we can't find the image you requested." "They are clip-art," I responded trying not to offend. I drew something with a Sharpie marker on a white piece of paper, asked them to scan it and assured them that was exactly what I was looking for. The drawing took me 2 minutes, the scanning 15 seconds--alas! we had a health education logo! What had I drawn that in days of work these "graphic artists" had not been able to produce? An apple--a sketchy, marker-drawn-like apple, with a leaf on the stem (that must have been the hold-up), held by a sketchy, marker-drawn-like hand. Long live art. Health to all, Maria ------------------------------ From: Graham Scholes Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 22:29:28 -0800 Subject: [Baren 6747] Computer Art from Kampala Greg wrote.... >The pernicious side of computers in the arts is the subliminal >message it sends that the student doesn't have to work to get the results... > You've ALWAYS got to work. Oh my....Profound is indeed the only word suitable for that statement. Graham ps. Greg, you are not sufficiently aged for this insight and wisdom I will cherish your words through the journeys of my profession. Thank you so very much. pps. Gawd why couldn't I have written that. ------------------------------ From: B Mason Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 23:53:37 -0800 Subject: [Baren 6748] welcome Welcome to all the new recent members who are no longer lurking and now posting. There are so many not posting, I sometimes forget that there are over 100 people on baren. Greg, it was nice to hear from you. We thought your must be busy but we have sorely missed your quick wit and insight. The cases are not here for exchange #3 yet but the prints are wonderful. April, I think your idea of an extra portfolio for opportunities is a great idea. Perhaps we can get into other museum collections or at the very least have a show somewhere with it I ran out the door this afternoon to run down to see my dad who lives three houses away and slipped in the wet grass, going down with all the grace and style an overweight 54 year old woman can manage. I heard the most terrible ripping sound and knew I had really done my ankle in. I was afraid to stand up on it, so crawled back to the house where my husband helped me up. It didn't seem too bad, but soon swelled up like a small football, so off to the clinic. Amazing, when you have an appointment you wait for an hour to even get in. No appointment and they whisk you in, take an x-ray, wrap your foot up, give you crutches and you are on your way in less than an hour. It truly doesn't hurt if I don't put my full weight on it and think I will get quite a lot of sympathy and a much needed rest. However, I would have preferred to rest with two good ankles. I am feeling for you Bea. Being slowed down like this is really irritating and can imagine how hard you knee has been for you. As a new woodblock printer, I learned a lot doing exchange #3. Number one, don't let the paper get too wet.....I have a long way to go, but will plug along. The exchanges force you to keep working, so are good in that respect. I am the type that works best with a deadline and this sure keeps me hopping (literally since this afternoon) Maria, I agree with you that Santa Fe is artist and gallery heaven. they must have 100 galleries there. You can see a tremendous amount of good art there. Keep printing, Best to all, Barbara ------------------------------ From: Julio.Rodriguez@walgreens.com Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 00:39:29 -0600 Subject: [Baren 6750] Re: Computer Art yesterday & today Some very humorous postings by Gregory R. & Maria. By the way Gregory; nothing you ever write is loooong. You have a way with words and connecting thoughts that I am sure most of us here at Baren envy. I had promised myself to not reply to the ongoing discussion about Art, prints, repros & computers....but two incidents today made me realize how close to home this issue hits. First, I was on the phone to a show organizer today to ask about shipping details for my prints. I made them aware that I make multiple prints and that they are available to their public for sale (thanks a lot Bareners for NOT answering my question about this). They inquired about "are they real prints" or "reproductions"......OH BOY!!!! I thought I was back in the Baren discussion all over again....after explaining my technique/process they were very happy to be getting "original" prints....and agreed to not tag my work "as sold" with the first buyer but rather to take additional requests for sales. I guess they tag "sold" work with a red tag as soon as someone commits...not good for us printmakers....the lady and I had a fun conversation about how they have to "educate" their public daily about the difference between original hand-made prints and repros....see Graham, there is at least one honest gallery/group out there. The second incident had to do with an article from an Art magazine I was just reading minutes ago. I will quote just a few lines as it's a lengthy one..... - ----------------- "Idols of Computer Art"........ by Robert E. Mueller "It is not surprising that a device as powerful as the computer should influence art - the latest in the long line of technological developments to do so. While I believe it will ultimately cause a minor revolution in all of the arts, the results to date are exceendingly poor and uninspiring. But all new media take some time to be assimilated - not to mention the economics of making them available for something so nonutilitarian as the arts......... .......Whatever the technical route, we are on the verge of realizing an entirely new artistic mode.....As more interesting ways of rendering visual form are developed and as specialist begin to understand the limitations of their device, I am sure we will begin to see stronger results.....Afterwards, perhaps, the artist can begin to use the computer in his own way. But computer graphics will never become computer art until the technical processes become second nature to their artist-manipulators." - ---------------- The quotes above are from Art in America, May-June 1972 and is accompanied by several pictures of mathematical line-graph computer "art". This is pre-Apple, Atari & IBM PC's. Here we are 28 years later....still discussing the very same topic. What a blast ! Julio ------------------------------ From: David Bull Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 18:33:48 +0900 Subject: [Baren 6751] Down time ... Julio got 'huffy' ;^) ... because nobody answered the earlier question: > Is there a proper way for me to let an exhibition know > that I have multiples of my accepted print available for sale ? Here in Japan it seems to work on a 'red dot' system. People here know without asking that because the art works are woodblock prints there must be multiple copies available. During a department store exhibition for example, the artist usually has prepared a batch of prints for sale, already wrapped up and ready to go. The client asks "Can I have one of _that one_ please?", and the staff takes the money and hands over the wrapped print. A red dot is then added to the label under that particular print on the wall. As the exhibition goes on, some prints develop thickets of red dots, while others may have few or none ... (It isn't unknown for gallery people to 'seed' things with a bunch of red dots scattered around the room on various labels at the beginning of an exhibition, just to 'get things moving ...'.) Because I never sell prints at my own exhibitions, I don't follow this red dot routine myself. Dave Stones down in Aichi can maybe correct what I've written here, or add some of his own experiences ... Dave? *** Enjoyed the posting from Greg this afternoon, except for the glaring error > the semi-annual revisitation on Baren ... Bi-monthly is more accurate I think, Greg ... *** Special notice: As the Pittsburg company which hosts woodblock.com is moving to new premises soon, the web site will be temporarily out of service for a short time. This will happen on Monday December 6th, and is expected to last for a period of somewhere between 3 ~ 6 hours. (The exact time on that day that the outage will begin is not known ...) During this period, the woodblock.com web site will be 'off-line', and if you try and access any of it, your browser will give you some such message as "DNS failure". Hopefully, the 'down' time will be short ... The mailing list itself is hosted here in Tokyo ... so this will _not_ affect the distribution of messages, which should continue normally. Dave P.S. Everybody ready for next Saturday? What, you mean you don't remember what day that is? ------------------------------ From: michael schneider Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 12:23:26 +0100 Subject: [Baren 6752] Re: welcome I consider myself as one of the lurking in the moment, but this not because I am not willing to contribute, but due to the fact, that after tackling with a lot of problems at the same time, I just lost track completely with the ongoing discussions on baren. When I tried to catch up again, I found myself in front of some hundred unread messages. An of course a lot new members, to whom I would like to say hello. I do not want to start the computer print discussion all over again, but I believe the fact to be interessting for all of us, that the jury at the graphic biennal in Liublijana gave all but one of the awards to comutergenerated works. They felt the neccessity to react to recent technonlgical developements. And I belive they feard to be considerd "old fashioned". Unfotunately they had to give the awards to merely mediocre work of art, as real interesting computer generated art is generally not submitted to a prinmaking biennal, comuter art has developed its own structures. I hope to find more time in the future to participate, michael schneider ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V9 #791 ***************************