New blog

I may still post here from time to time, but I am posting more on this new blog:
http://darla-dixon-artist.blogspot.com/

For whatever reason, my thoughts seem to flow better there, and I have been blogging a lot more because of that.

Watch a mural evolve

Michelle Black of A Color Affair in Loganville GA will be painting a large scale mural at Trip Elementary School in Grayson, Georgia. Trip Elementary is a newly built school in Gwinnett County, GA. Michelle is donating her time and talent to the school. She worked worked with the librarian for two months on this project. Michelle invites us all to watch as the project progresses.
She'll post pictures every night as she hand paints the mural.

Follow the mural on Michelle's mural website
Follow the mural on A Color Affair's Facebook page

Painting a brighter future

Here I am painting yesterday. Photo by Sharna Fulton.
Notice the messy apron. I invited kids to paint on it.
An artist should have a messy apron, right?

Yesterday, I was in my tent at the Snellville Farmers' Market. Artist Sharna Fulton, creator of Chloe Pink (TM) joined me. We both created paintings that were silent auctioned. 100% of our painting proceeds helps our local food bank, the Southeast Gwinnett Cooperative Ministry.

It was fun to have another artist with me to commiserate about the heat and humidity! It is really a challenge to be in a festival tent in 91 degree Georgia heat. I try to drink a lot of water and Gatorade, but even that is a challenge, because the Farmers' Market ends at noon, and that's when we end the art auction. The acrylic paint dries fast and there's little time, so I have to paint very fast and furiously most of the time.

Sharna Fulton painting at the Snellville Farmers' Market.
Photo by Darla Dixon

Not a lot of time for chatting. I've been at the Farmers' Market for two Saturdays, and I haven't had time to walk around and buy anything from other booths at all.

The painting I did last Saturday raised $55 for the food bank

It's all worth it though. Together, Sharna and I raised $110 for the food bank yesterday. It will go a long way. The director of the food bank told me that they have had to operate without cash for quite some time. Families in need really struggle in the summertime. Many families really depend on the free or reduced lunch provided in public schools and when school is out for the summer, kids eat a lot. Some of the people who used to donate to the food bank are now seeking assistance themselves. It felt good to be able to help.

What's on tap for Saturday, June 19th's Snellville Farmers' Market? Well, it won't be festival tents, I can tell you that. I think I'm done painting tents. I am thinking about something pop art with a cat or cats. Cats are usually popular, and I want the painting to bring a lot of money for the food bank.

Links:

Snellville Farmers'Market
Southeast Gwinnett Cooperative Ministry food bank & more
Sharna Fulton - Chloe Pink Cartoon
Darla Dixon (me!)

New reality show is like Survivor for artists

I just finished watching the premiere episode of a new reality show called Work of Art: America's Next Great Artist. It's sort of like a mix of Survivor and Project Runway.

Tonight's challenge was to create a portrait of another competitor which showed the person's inner self, not just what one sees on the surface.

Some of the artists didn't include any image of the portrait subject at all, explaining with some arteeste-speak: "I wanted to capture my impression of the essence of the person."

Hmm. Uh-huh.

I guess you'd need to see the show, but I got the feeling that the "abstract" or performance artists (at least those in this program) weren't confident in their ability to render a likeness of their subject, so they turned to the "ethereal" impression of the essence route. [If an architect doesn't know how to properly design a building that won't fall down, can he just capture the essence of a safe building?!? See my earlier post, "Are Artists Lazy Airheads?"]

After that, the artists have the nerve to look down their noses at the amateur artist who did try to create a portrait. At least his portrait had a human image in it. It may not have been a great likeness, but it was human.

It wasn't just some blue sky/leaves (although Amanda's painting was beautiful for a notecard and I would love to own her art) or a series of dots connected by lines that another artist created.

I thought Nao's dot artwork was intriguing - despite myself, but I agreed with the art critic that there is no 'portrait' in it. The art critic said maybe there is a portrait in it in the artist's mind, but there's no portrait or understanding of the existence of a portrait in it by any viewer. The dots and lines were representative of the pattern that Nao saw Miles (another competitor) make around the workspace.

I noticed that the artists that were unable (or maybe just unwilling) to try to put any human form in their works were the among the least able to accept criticism.

Will I follow the series? I'm not a big fan of "reality" TV in general, because I don't believe that most of them aren't largely scripted. However, I do plan to watch Work of Art.

Although some of the competitors are fairly unlikable (and I think they cast them for this purpose), there are enough artists on the show that I do care about finding out how they fare, and the works of art they create will be interesting to see.

The season will continue on Wednesdays at 10 pm on Bravo. Compared to many things on TV these days, this program is pretty good.