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I am the instructor for ArtCore, a program that is very unique. It encourages children to explore art beyond drawing, paintings, etc into field such as video art, performance art, music, sculpture, etc.
At the end of the program, we put all of these different fields together into a final presentation.

I am also a painter and video artist. It is difficult to make art and teach it in this economy and I may have to give it up soon so I can pay off my student loans. I live and breath art and giving less and less time to it has become a reality.

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Cool film I found online

http://vimeo.com/10098019

Sunday, June 16, 2013

FW: Mery M

Monday, April 29, 2013

Animation Class

So its been a while since I've posted!!!
I am about to wrap up my third Animation Class at Living Arts.
This class is for students that are in the 6th-12th grades, but I mostly get students that are in middle school.
We use 4 Mac laptops that are provided my Living Arts, and use the programs Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and After Effects. Some of the students come in used to a certain program, such as a current student who is used to drawing in a program called SAI. If they don't like Photoshop or Illustrator, we try to download the others. I prefer them to animate in After Effects or Flash however.
I have learned a lot in these classes as well. I have only been accustomed to how I animate, and students come in wanting to do things that I have not done...so I learn techniques to help them.
I think most students do not expect how long it takes either. Even though we have these programs that make it possible to animate without doing step-by-step drawings, it still takes a lot of time to prepare drawings, pictures, etc for animation, then to work with the programs to animate.
I have also learned how well these young people really listen (This is a statement of a fairly new teacher! I have been teaching for about 3 years now). There are some students who come in and are so eager and ready to learn everything I've got to teach them. Then, there are the ones that already know a little bit about this process, and come in to impress me with their skills, not necessarily to learn anything. I have had a hard time getting through to some of these students, but I have found if I have them integrate what they know into these new programs and show them what they can do in Adobe After Effects that they could not in other program (i.e. ToonBoom), they eventually get excited about the new things they can do.
Here is an example of a talented student's work from my last animation class:
http://livingarts.org/after-school-classes

Monday, September 17, 2012

Animation Screening at Living Arts

I'm curating an animation screening that will take place on Friday, September 21st, starting at 7:30pm at the new Guthrie Green. It will feature local animators, students from my animation classes, and other great works from animations around the world. The band And There Stand Empire will play, then we will screen the cult documentary "Monster Road". Its sure to be a lot of fun!!!
Here is one of the videos that will play: 
 
https://vimeo.com/22348687#
http://barthess.nl/portfolio/palais-de-tokyo-2/


Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Eagleman Stag

Here is a wonderful animated short I discovered, along with the "making of".

The Eagleman Stag

The Making of The Eagleman Stag

Monday, July 30, 2012

some awesome videos I found on a new site

1. http://www.nfb.ca/film/this_is_a_recorded_message

2. http://www.nfb.ca/film/ryan

3. http://www.nfb.ca/film/carried_away

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1IUX0Qy-IDM#!

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YaMIR7uRTLo#!


Original article can be viewed here: http://glasstire.com/2012/07/27/dear-young-dfw-whippersnapper-artists/

"The new normal should be anything but. Time to fuck shit up.

Dear Young DFW Whippersnapper Artists,

Whatever the last “up” economy may have taught you, in your teen years, about what art is, how it should look in an art fair booth or ad in Artforum, how it’s valued, how famous you can get, how dealers will snap you up, etc.? No. Congrats for paying attention and for knowing who Martin Creed is, by the way, but that kind of sophistication can only take you so far.
The new normal is that it’s all in your broke hands now. And there is no real economy for your art being made here in DFW. Almost none. Not enough to make a living. And there isn’t a mainstream press, like there is in NYC and London, to cover your career if you made a commercial leap anyway. And that’s okay. Because this kind of vacuum is when it’s time to fuck things up. This is a magic hour, a once-in-a-lifetime chance when you have nothing to lose, and the place that you’re in—your neighborhood, your city, your region—if you get busy, can get really interesting.
I’m picking on you lot because you aren’t painters (another breed entirely), and you aren’t makers of pretty things and decorative objects. Your brains are wired the right way to fuck shit up. And I’m not writing about Houston or Brooklyn or Silver Lake either. I’m writing about here.
But let’s illustrate this with an example.
Once upon a time, in the 1970s (I know, like, when your parents were young and skinny and did drugs and shit) in a place called Akron, Ohio, this thing happened. Just watch the short clip.
https://vimeo.com/43157612

Dear Young DFW Whippersnapper Artists

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Devo
The new normal should be anything but. Time to fuck shit up.

Dear Young DFW Whippersnapper Artists,
Whatever the last “up” economy may have taught you, in your teen years, about what art is, how it should look in an art fair booth or ad in Artforum, how it’s valued, how famous you can get, how dealers will snap you up, etc.? No. Congrats for paying attention and for knowing who Martin Creed is, by the way, but that kind of sophistication can only take you so far.
The new normal is that it’s all in your broke hands now. And there is no real economy for your art being made here in DFW. Almost none. Not enough to make a living. And there isn’t a mainstream press, like there is in NYC and London, to cover your career if you made a commercial leap anyway. And that’s okay. Because this kind of vacuum is when it’s time to fuck things up. This is a magic hour, a once-in-a-lifetime chance when you have nothing to lose, and the place that you’re in—your neighborhood, your city, your region—if you get busy, can get really interesting.
I’m picking on you lot because you aren’t painters (another breed entirely), and you aren’t makers of pretty things and decorative objects. Your brains are wired the right way to fuck shit up. And I’m not writing about Houston or Brooklyn or Silver Lake either. I’m writing about here.
But let’s illustrate this with an example.
Once upon a time, in the 1970s (I know, like, when your parents were young and skinny and did drugs and shit) in a place called Akron, Ohio, this thing happened. Just watch the short clip.
Akron. a college town in the middle of nowhere. These guys were your age when they started paying attention and got angry and started making art (that in their case took the form of something like music, performance and video). Being polite was not on the menu. MTV did not exist. There was no Internet. And there was no local press to make them famous.
Yet they are iconic. Akron is famous for one thing, really: Devo.
Luckily, their friends back then did document enough of it, and word spread, and they kept working on their own very strange vision of the world, and within a few years they were blowing people’s minds on national television.
Back to the here and now. Why is DFW so polite? I don’t want to call this place the Metroplex, but whatever. Golden Triangle. Whatever. Its politeness is due to what you think it is: religion, screwy politics, the conservative way money is made and spent. So few artists, gallerists, curators, collectors and museums here are taking any risk, whatsoever, that you start to forget what risk looks like. Certainly the people in charge of this stuff seem to have forgotten what it is, even if they were young and interesting like you once. (“How soon will you become the people that you hated?” asks Gerald Casale.)
Why are our youngest, clearest, hormone-and-energy laden brains—you—not going ballistic? Don’t you feel like caged animals? I’m a 42-year-old writer, and I do. But I don’t make art. I just show it.
It was the ‘70s when Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale started worrying about Americans getting dumber and uglier and more violent and lazy: de-evolution. But look at the world today. As Mothersbaugh says in that clip, from a recent interview: “The last eight years have been a really swift downhill ride.”
This applies to the art world, too. The museums, the galleries, the nature of collecting, the nature of philanthropy. It’s all fossilizing and closing ranks. Pretty soon even LA MoCA, an institution founded by and protected by artists for decades, will consist only of two powerful businessmen: Eli Broad and that megalomaniacal asswipe Jeffrey Deitch.
Downhill ride, indeed, for you artists. Make it fun and honest, at least.
Just get fucking weird. Tap into those things that most turned you on last year, the year before, when you were fifteen, eighteen. The stuff you were afraid to bring to light, lest your parents or siblings or neighbors or professors stomped on it. The more genuine and honest you are about it, the better shot you have at communicating something real and identifiable to the world. It’s the secret of great art. Real art, great art, is the geeks’ paradise.
Look outside the art world if you need more reference. Look at Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Look at Patton Oswalt, Louis C.K., and Ricky Gervais and Mike Judge. David Lynch, Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling and freaking Alan Moore. Robert Crumb. The Flaming Lips, the Butthole Surfers. These people started with small, smart, impulses—subversive and impolite and odd as hell (and very, very personal) and ran with it. And wow. It worked. Subversive is not bad. Stop letting this polite environment keep you down. Collaborate, for courage, if you must (often helpful), or not. Up to you.
Sometimes rich people get wind of the good stuff, and want to own it. That’s what they do. They can’t make, so they buy it or pay to produce it. That doesn’t mean they get it, but take their money if they offer it. Plenty of people who can’t afford the work do get it, and will love you for being the shaman and truth tellers of the world. Just like everyone who knows anything loves Devo.
Godspeed.
Love,
CR"
_________________
Christina Rees was an editor at The Met and D Magazine, a full-time art and music critic at the Dallas Observer, and has covered art and music for the Village Voice and other publications. She was the owner and director of Road Agent gallery in Dallas. Rees is now the Curator of Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, TCU.

Monday, July 23, 2012

As I mentioned in the last post, I am teaching Video Art at the New Arts Camp at Living Arts of Tulsa.
It is a summer arts program for students in the 5th-12th grades, and takes place every weekday for 2 weeks, 8:30am-4:30pm.
Each day, the students take 4 classes: Installation, New Music, Performance Art, and Video Art. Their final art piece that is presented on the last Friday of the camp, will involve all 4 of these media.
The students have a blast creating these personal art pieces. It really gives them an unconventional way to express themselves.

I am very proud of all my students this year. Each of them have been using the video medium in very unique ways, and creatively incorporating them into their pieces.

Student 1-
This student's piece has elements of eerie beauty and deception. She will have the audience crowd into their space, then have a projection play in front of them as a sort of a distraction from what is going on around them (she will be sneaking around the audience, secretly moving amongst them). The video is film of her her walking slowing towards the camera, going from a blur to in focus, then editing in sharp, fast movements with beautiful slow motion. Then suddenly the video will switch to a live feed of the audience's backs, with a view of the student moving through the space.

Student 2-
This student is using "finding yourself" as a theme for her project. First, she is going to read a poem that she has written, while a dry-erase board animation that she has created of a girl, with bubbles with letters on them coming from her mouth, each spelling a key work from her poem. Then, the audience will come up to her space to blow bubbles, step on bubble paper, etc. while a video of distorted faces is projected on the wall at the back of her space.

Student 3-
This student is using his love of the game "Minecraft" as the theme of his piece. He is a creating a game show, where he is the host. Before he starts, his dry-erase board animation of the logo and opening credits will play on the wall behind him. Then, he will ask 3 contestants questions. There will be a video projection response to each right and wrong answer.

Student 4-
This student will use her love of underwater life and mermaids as her theme. She has prepared a narration for her piece, where she and an other student will be dressed as mermaids. She has taken some video at our local aquarium and made a short claymation video for the backdrop of her piece.

Student 5-
This student has a love of mystical creatures, namely dragons. She has made a large dragon head and an egg that she will be "popping" out of during her piece. She has made a video of fire, which is a picture that she cut out in Photoshop and manipulated in AfterEffects to look like it is flickering, with people behind the fire, making it look as if they are on fire. She will project with video by the dragon's mouth.

Student 6-
This student is using the pressures of the business world as his theme. His presentation will start out with him inside a "cubical" wearing a suit made of newspaper…there will be a camera inside which is hooked up to a monitor. The monitor is the only view the audience will have of him during the beginning of the piece. Then, he will rush out of his cubical, where there will be a projection of an explosion and fire on him, making it look as if his suit is on fire.

Student 7-
This student a doing a sort of "Hands Across America" theme. She will have a box in the middle of her space, then the audience will be invited to put their hands in paint and put them on the box, while a video of various clips of people holding hands in various ways is projected over her piece. Then, the audience will be encouraged to hold hands, mixing the various colors of paint together.

Student 8-
This student is using birth and coming of age as her theme. She is building a sort of forest in her space, with a tress on the wall and a nest she has made sitting in the corner. A video will be projected between the two, showing her moving as a bird in a costume. She will be using a camera curing the piece, pressing the camera lens close to her body and face, creating an image that will be projected over the other video as a live feed.

Student 9-
This student has written a short, slightly comedic story with a classic "castles and princess" theme.
She is having other students play parts in the story in her space, which she has built a "castle" that is assessable to the audience. She will project a drawing of the castle directly onto her structure, giving it "windows", "bricks", and "doors". It also has instructions on it to "draw on the castle", which is painted in a chalkboard paint. The inside of the castle will be illuminated with a projection of the outside (trees, sky, etc.), turning the "inside out" in a way.

Student 10-
This student is using the feeling of "home" and security as his theme. He has built a "house" that will stand in his pace. His film of a dry-erase board animation of the house will project on it, bringing the outside of it to life; bricks will gradually start to build, a door and windows will show up, a person will walk into the door, etc. Then, the projection will change to a film of people standing stationary outside their houses, bringing his structure to life in other ways, making it look "realistic".

I am very excited to see these students' pieces come to life. I am very proud of all their creativity and progress through this entire camp. I will be sure to post picture of their presentations soon!!!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Video Art

I will be teaching video art at this year's New Arts Camp at Living Arts of Tulsa (http://livingarts.org/edu.htm)
Last year, I was completely new to teaching in general. I was very nervous the first day...and of course it got better over the next 2 weeks of the camp.
I have learned many things about teaching this particular subject (video art) and the first thing is to get the students to think about how video can be used to convey their thoughts and ideas...just like any medium. But of course in video, the paintbrush is film.
In my class, they will use camcorders with DV tapes, digital cameras, the Casablanca video editing system, projectors, TV monitors, DVDs and DVD players, and this year, they will be using Mac laptops installed with Photoshop, AfterEffects, Illustrator, and iMovie.
Here's a video of an awesome feedback effect in China Rose Goodner's New Art's Camp final presentation in 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivbjU-AVmVg&feature=youtu.be