Opening Night in Culver City: Saturday 9/12

Here's a map of the galleries in Culver City.  Most of them will hold opening receptions this Saturday night, 6-8pm.  Click on the map for a link to the galleries' websites where you'll find more information on the opening night receptions.

You can also use the Artforum online calendar.

Art vs. Design

I think that both works of fine art and design visually convey the artist/creator's personal style as well as the reason for which the work was produced. I agree with Norman Potter's assertion that design has a more practical value for humans for, in addition to being appealing to the eye, it has a easily discernible function. For example, designs can be used to make websites easier to navigate and messages more appealing to read. Although all fine art mediums have the ability to communicate through, tone, content, and style, they provide the observer with more freedom. Design on the other hand, has a more specific function to carry out and will often "instruct" an onlooker to think certain thoughts or alter their actions to accommodate the intentions of the design they are confronted with. Regardless of the ways in which they differ, I feel that both fine art and design are essential to a healthy and functioning community.

3 Points

Three Points:

1. A tack on my cork-board
2. My sister's freckle
3. The circular Splatter of toothpase on my mirror

Ten ways to bring attention to my sister's freckle:

1. Take a close-up photograph of it
2. Draw a line around it on her skin to encircle it
3. Paint it neon green
4. Verbally communicate its location, "a centimeter below her left nostril, just above the curve of her lip"
5. Graph its location on a to-scale photograph of her face
6. Prick it with a needle
7. Write a childrens picture book about a civilization of microscopic people that live on your sisters face and establish within the book that the capitol of their country is located in her freckle
8. Create a large mural depicting her freckle
9. Use a piece of fabric to conceal it and on the piece of fabric write" it is possible that this is hiding a freckle
10. Follow her everywhere and ask everyone in her vicinity to take a moment to stop and admire her freckle

Art and Design

Art and design are both built off of the same basic concepts of color and competition, but there lie very distinct differences between the two. The most apparent difference is the purpose of the piece. Design is about fulfilling the consumer’s desires, whereas fine art is about the artist. Design is used to serve a purpose and to solve a problem. Art does not have to fulfill either of these requirements. We have talked a lot about how good design can merge into the category of fine art. I believe that if design does even motion, as fine art does, then it can be considered art as well. Without this, it is just design.

cool blogs

hey guys,

i just wanted to share a couple of my favorite design blogs.

http://www.notcot.org/

and

http://mocoloco.com/

these are compilations of what's going on right now in the world of product design, art, architecture, et cetera. try not to get addicted ;)

MFA Lecture Series: Dexter Sinister

David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey joined together to create Dexter Sinister, which from Heraldry, literally means right hand side (dexter) and left hand side (sinister). The platform for their lecture was very simple. Reinfurt and Bailey sat at the front with two laptops and showed pictures while reading from a book they had compiled. The book was separated into individual "texts," each of which was discussed in detail. They would usually begin with a passage and then discuss the foundation of their ideas for each of the chapters.

Dexter Sinister is most notable for their magazine, Dot Dot Dot. They have a small basement book shop in the lower East Side of New York City. The main motivation for establishing a bookstore was so that they could have hands on control of distributing their magazine (Dot Dot Dot). At the time, the bookstore only contained issues of Dot Dot Dot and other publications by either Bailey or Reinfurt. Not long after the store opened, the duo realized that the revenue from their in-store sales covered the rent of the space (which was not expected). As a result, they expanded their inventory to include books that closely correlated with their work and books from artists that they may have worked with in the past.

In all of their work, whether it was the texts or the magazine, they had some sort of thread that stitched each project together. This idea was stressed throughout the lecture.

I thought one of the more interesting things that they discussed was about how words preceded graphic forms. This led into a discussion about the Moholy Paintings, which were a set of enamel paintings supposedly created from a conversation over the telephone between Moholy (the artist) and an employee at a sign factory in Berlin.

Other topics included things like Heraldic color coding, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act and Ben Franklin's publishing company. As you can see, most of the topics had some theme about typography or publishing.

The lecture was somewhat abstract. I was confused as to what they were ultimately trying to promote. It was a little bit boring, but they were both very interesting people that have been successful creating their work in a very unique way.

Kurt Halsey

Don't mean to bombard everyone with website links, but here is probably one of my favorite artists. Sure, he may have gotten a bit mainstream/played out now that duplicates of his paintings are being sold (or at least were before sold) at urban outfitters, but I still love the sweetness of his paintings. There's this feeling of sincerity in Kurt Halsey's art.

Art/Design Blog

Hey all,

Not sure how many of you know about him, but I've been following Eduardo Recife's website 'misprintedtype' for a while now. I can't recall how I stumbled across it, but I was immediately entranced by his meshings of design, art, clippings, and font. There is a certain beauty to the chaos of his work.

Here's a small excerpt from the "About" section pulled from the website itself:

"Today Misprinted Type is where I put my ideas together, either in the form of a simple text, a collage, a drawing or a typeface. Call it design, illustration, art or a waste of time, for me its therapy, a hobby and what makes me happy.

Hope you enjoy!