“He tries to give a voice to what’s been silent,” is a quote taken from the trailer for the soon to be released documentary featuring French photographer and street artist JR. “Paper & Glue,” a MSNBC Films production chronicles years of JR’s photography and installations, which increasingly focus on humanitarian issues. In JR’s own words… Read More
For the past 16 years Stuart Humphryes (on-line persona BabelColour) has been a notable colourisation artist. What is that exactly? Humphryes is known for his restoration of early color photographs and film. This is not colorizing, the addition of color to black-and-white images (still or moving), Humphryes restores and enhances aged color images. Recently Stuart… Read More
What is your calling? There are millions of occupations out there. Some professions are well-known such as banking, medicine, or teaching. But there are hundreds of careers that are unique and, outside of their milieu, their contributions go completely unnoticed. James Niehues fits the latter. As a painter, he is definitely not the only landscape… Read More
In 1961 the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” opens with Audrey Hepburn, as Holly Golightly, wearing a black party dress. This scene may have solidified the little black dress (LBD) as a symbol of true fashion elegance. Truthfully, the original LBD is attributed to Coco Chanel, who’s drawing of a knee-length black dress was published in… Read More
German architect and author Ernst Neufert (1900-1986) did. In 1919 Neufert attended the Bauhaus and was one of Bauhaus founder Water Gropius’ first students. Having been a bricklayer and a student of the “Baugewerbeschuile” (German school of construction) prior to his enrollment, Neufert was familiar with building, construction, and design principles. Modernism, industrialization, and mass… Read More
Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959), estranged from family members, was a loner who owned and operated a portrait studio in Herber Springs, Arkansas. For pocket change, locals would pose for a photograph to commemorate just about anything. Individuals and groups sat for formal or informal portraits—all of which had an honest, stark austerity about them—unlike portraiture of… Read More
If you see faces in these two objects, you are experiencing pareidolia. By definition, pareidolia is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. Last November, in this blog, I shared my pandemic pastime of picking up scrap metal while riding my bike back and forth to… Read More
Recently I was introduced to the work of Rex Brasher (1869-1960), the little known bird painter, who as a boy vowed to paint every bird in North America. Brasher worked from life and painted birds in their natural habitats. Without any formal art training, Rex painted 3,000 individual birds which included males, females, and juveniles.… Read More
Yelp reviewers are notoriously harsh in their reviews of anything, any service, or any place. The service industry is terrified of receiving a bad review posted on Yelp which could drive their business into the ground. Surely no one would expect Yelp reviewers to verbally trash our national parks. Well, they did and illustrator/designer Amber… Read More