"Why Should I Do All The Work?" Mariano Gonzales

Mariano has done a lot of work, so it's not like he's being lazy.  The title will make more sense when you read the artist's statement below. 

A.

If you live in Anchorage, I'd strongly recommend getting to the museum Sunday April 18, 2015, the last day of the Mariano Gonzales exhibit.  It's in the small gallery on the 4th floor.


I took a couple of computer art classes from Mariano and I can only say, he's one of those incredible people who do world class work, live in Anchorage, and most people are totally unaware of their existence.  Don't just take my word. 

Mariano can work in any medium, with incredible craftsmanship.  But it's the concepts and social statements Mariano is making that are always important. 







The titles of the works in this post are (not in this order)

1. Number 3
2. Oh Say Can't You See?
3. Don't Touch My Cheese
4. A Man In The Shadows
5. Tsunami

I think you should be able to match them to the right works.  Answer key at the bottom.

A Man In The Shadows is the name of the exhibit.  There are lots of possible meanings of that in this exhibit.  One of the most obvious are the shadows in the the three dimensional works he has.  

B.

I've tried below to give a sense of the next work as a whole and then the details.  This one is full of military vehicles.  I've saved it in higher than normal resolution so you can enlarge it to see it better. 

C.

Here's what Mariano says about the work in this exhibit - particularly the three dimensional pieces. 

Below I tried to capture a sense of the shaped aluminum and the metal frame behind these works. 

And here's one more.  The whole work is in the upper right and the background and other two images are details from the larger work.  There's a lot of amazing stuff in this piece. This one can also be clicked much larger.

D.

Not all the work is in this form.  There are a number of other pieces that have different media - from scrimshaw, to canvas, to silver, and the one below. 

E.

Again, Sunday, today for most who read this, is the last day of the exhibit.  And you can check out the Captain Cook exhibit while you are there.   Though it will be around a lot longer.

By the way, there was a sign that said the work could be purchased through the museum gift shop.  So even if you're not in Anchorage, you can inquire about purchasing one of these pieces.  

Titles Code:
A=4
B=1
C=2
D=5
E=3

Dan Bern Songwriting Workshop Anchorage Evening 2

 I took Mariano's digital art class after seeing what he did digitally to photos.  I thought, I can take photos and then play with them.  What I didn't quite realize was that it was an art class and the other students were serious artists.  An early assignment was to use a couple of the photo shop tools to draw a picture.  I started with a very simple round flower with roundish petals and a simple stem.  But I noticed the screen next to me had a perfect cowboy boot with all the details.  The screen on the other side had a great human figure.  I realized I was out of my league.  But Mariano encouraged me saying these people have to adjust from their normal medium (oil, or water colors, or charcoal) to digital and I would be starting with digital.  In the end it worked out reasonably well.

Dan's standing on the left

But at least I believed I had a visual sense, even if I couldn't execute what I had in mind, at least I had something in mind.

Music is different.  I don't think aurally.  Tunes don't pop into my mind.  I'm just not musical.  But the song writing workshop is forcing me to confront one of my own stereotypes about myself.  Don't get me wrong, there are serious song writers and musicians in this class and compared to them, my musical talents are, politely, in the most formative stage.  But I didn't completely bomb in the workshop Monday or last night.

Monday Dan talked about how little children go around merging words and melodies that they spontaneously create.  It got me thinking.  He talked about speech and singing not being that far apart.  Certainly not opposites that some imagine.  He said I should just relax.

I thought about students I've had who told me they were 'just not good at math.'  I'd always ask them, "Which teacher did this to you?"  and 90% could give me a name and a grade without a pause.  I still remember one student holding out his hands for the ruler as he said, "Sister Margarita in 5th grade."

And the light went on that I've been going around saying I'm just not musical.  OK, I admit the oboe and I were not a good match, but I shouldn't have given up on dating music.

All this is preamble to my fortune cookie based song.  (See the previous post.)

This group's work sparkled

I ended up choosing the numbers in the fortune rather than the words.  The first three in the sequence were 03 14 29 which I immediately translated into March 14, 1929.  I googled it and came up with obituaries of people born on March 14, 1929.  The first was just birth and death dates with locations of each.  Toronto and Desert Hot Springs.  I imagined a song that filled in the gap.  I found a woman who was born and died in Lufkin, Texas.  There was a little more about her.  A guy born in England who died in Santa Maria, California with a whole career and family.  Who were these people, did their lives cross paths?  There were all sorts of possibilities.

Getting further into the google results brought the fact that Mickey Mouse's 4th cartoon was released on March 14, 1929 - The Barn Dance.  Clearly, Disney had no idea who Mickey would become and Minnie ditches him for Pete, when Mickey can't stay off her toes.

And then there was this post on a German Einstein website:

In 1920, after Einstein's achievements had been widely recognized, Ulm also wanted to honour him. Thus, for example, in 1922 the decision was made to name a yet to be constructed street after him. Even though in Nazi-Germany this street was renamed Fichtestrasse (after Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762-1814, a German philosopher), it was named Einsteinstrasse again in 1945. On the occasion of his 50th birthday on March 14, 1929, Einstein was informed in a letter of congratulation by the then mayor that the city of Ulm had named a street in his honour. With respect to the Einsteinstrasse Einstein remarked in his reply: "I have already heard about the street named after me. My comforting thought was that I am not responsible for whatever is going to happen there." Between 1920 and 1929 a lively exchange of notes between Ulm and Albert Einstein developed which, interrupted by the political situation in Germany, was only resumed in 1949.

In 1949 Ulm wanted to grant Einstein the rights of a freeman of the city. Einstein however declined, pointing to the fate of the Jews in Nazi-Germany.

But how to put this all together?  I could focus on the day, but I also wanted to trace the paths, beyond the day, of those born on March 14, 1929.  And I had to try to sing it the next day in the workshop.

I ended up focusing on the Einstein story.  The line about taking comfort knowing he wouldn't be responsible for what happened on the street had a bittersweet sensibility.

Dan had told us Monday, in answer to a question about the problem of writing a song and finding out that someone had already written the melody.  The difference between a real songwriter and everyone else, is that the real songwriter will simply change some things here and there and call it his own.

And using the Mexican hat dance as the tune for our moose encounter songs Monday also showed me 1) how useful it was to have some structure, a skeleton,  like that to hold the words onto and 2) how hard it was to mesh - in my head -  the rhythm of the existing song to the rhythm of my newly created lyrics.

So, I decided to lift a Dan Bern song as my skeleton.  His songs are mostly stories put to music, but they do have melodies.  But I have to listen a few times to get them into my head. I picked Dan's Rome, from the "Dan Bern" album.  I tried to write lyrics, but the words from the Einstein website didn't flow with the music.  I had to start chopping back, finding words that were shorter, that had some rhyme.

I figured with my singing ability and the extra syllables here and there, no one would know where it came from.  Here's part of what I did compared to the lyrics of the original song.  I think I need another week to get this working.   But it's as far as I got before class.

March 14, 1929	Rome
Einstein got a letter from the Mayor of Ulm On the fourteenth of March Nineteen Twenty nine It wished him a happy Fiftieth  Birthday They gave him a street on which kids could play. Ulm was his birthplace Ulm was his past Ulm was the city That’d he’d return to last.	We pulled into Rome With blood in our eyes After days of travelin' Months of lies Taking our various Turns at the wheel Taking booze And pot and cigarettes. . . Rome was a bust Rome was a scream Rome was the final Rapid eye movement To this dream

HTML Tables

The Rome link gets you to the song so you can hear how it goes.

My last lines, which I left out here, just never could capture the Einstein quote.  Again, I need to find a totally different way to say it.

I also tried to throw my inhibitions to the draft and just sing.  Just as I'm doing here posting these lyrics on the blog.  This is a learning activity right?  The only lines that really work for me are the first two.  The rest need lots of massaging.  I stuck in the Ulm lines after listening to the Rome lines and I think musically, that worked best.  Clearly I have to toss the date altogether, it's just too clunky, and rely on it being the title.  But I guess that's part of the evolution of a song.

Dan asked if I played guitar, then pulled out his and gave me the perfect back up; that helped a lot.  Did he know what I was doing?

I did explain how I got to this point and read the class enough of the Einstein article to understand what I was trying to convey.

I asked Dan during the break if he had any idea what original song was my crutch.   He didn't and when I told him, he more or less congratulated me on a successful steal, "If I couldn't tell, no one else could."  I suspect that means I was so bad, there was no resemblance at all, but I'll humor myself. 

Musically,  mine was the shakiest.  The others in there are real musicians.  But they were kind, and I got credit for being the only one who found a way to use the numbers from the fortunes for the song.  Others were amazing, among them one who used a plastic cup and her hand for great backup percussion. 

Saturday, some of the members of the workshop (not me, I assure you) will present their songs at 2pm at Out North.  It's a pay what you like donation.  There are some gifted folks in the class and it should be fun.  I'm feeling a little like George Plimpton.

We had a series of interesting new exercises, including a group activity as you can see from the pictures.  I've got homework for tomorrow, plus my Chinese class meets again on Thursday.  So good night. 

". . .a major socially conscious artist whose works would be far more visible if he resided in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago"

On Mariano Gonzales in Tikkun:

M. Gonzales - posted with artist's permission

"Rarely do we imagine Alaska as a major center of art and culture, save for its well-recognized tradition of exceptional Native sculpture, painting, and printmaking.

These generalizations are largely accurate* but incomplete. Alaska is also the residence of a major socially conscious artist whose works would be far more visible if he resided in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or indeed, in any major urban center in the “lower 48,” especially one with a substantial Latino population."

So begins a long article by Paul Von Blum, UCLA Senior Lecurer,  on Anchorage artist and UAA art professor Mariano Gonzales in the influential national Jewish magazine Tikkun that regularly takes on difficult topics.  (Tikkun olam, in Hebrew, means "to repair the world.")  Mariano is a true local boy here, having grown up in Anchorage. 

M. Gonzales -Collateral Damage - with artist's permission

I've known Mariano as a colleague at UAA and as a student in his digital art class**.  He's a self-effacing man in person and dedicated to his art and his students.  He's not big on promoting his work. (He told me that Von Blum saw his work and contacted him.)  But as you can see from the pictures I've posted here - with permission from Mariano - he has some strong feelings and he thrusts his artistic knife right into the heart of an issue.

There are other examples with the Tikkun article.

He told me he's working on new images now for a solo exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of Art and History in 2014. I should mention the images I have up here are much lower resolution than they deserve. But you can click on them to see them a little better.



*I should also counter Von Blum's image of Anchorage as a cultural desert.  Mariano is by no means the only impressive member of the Anchorage cultural scene.  Given our small population (under 300,000), we have a constant variety of local art, music, and theater events to take up one's time every night of the week in great venues small and large.  This blog regularly mentions just a few of the many.  And Outside performers seem to  enjoy the small town hospitality and the chance to share their talents in the school system and with other locals, as well as to enjoy all the natural beauty Paul Van Bloom did mention.  Tonight, for example I'm going to the first of a three evening songwriting workshop with the amazing singer Dan Bern.

Mariano Gonzales - Carousel - Posted with Permission of the Artist

**He's not responsible for my weak photoshop attempts, but whenever I actually do get something right, it can be traced back to things I learned from Mariano.  You can see other posts that mention Mariano - particularly the class - here.

Putting Up, Taking Down, and Taking Off

University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) art professor, Mariano Gonzales, has a show at Alaska Pacific University (APU) which asks the question "Why are Americans still dying in the Middle East?" and asks visitors to put up their answers on a large white poster. According to Phil at Progressive Alaska, apparently this has embarrassed the President of APU who got his own paper to write a response. No, the question isn't neutral, but for those who believe those deaths are serving an important purpose, Professor Gonzales offered a big piece of paper to convince the world they are right.

War does set up a dilemma. People generally justify their enlisting to patriotic reasons - for those who aren't drafted - and then when they die, their families have the choice of believing their soldier died a hero or died in vain (or worse.) For most, that choice is easy. Even if it doesn't match reality. Anything that challenges that choice pushes a very strong emotional button.

Alaska Report blogger Dennis Zaki reports in an email that he keeps having problems with people using his photos without permission. I've written a bit here about photos and copyrights. It seems Dennis got ticked off enough with Dan Fagan for putting up his (Dennis') pictures without permission that he got Fagan's website (the Alaska Standard) suspended for a bit until the offending picture was taken down. Here's what I got when I went to Alaska Standard on Wednesday.


The site was back up when I checked on Thursday.

A final brief note. I saw in the LA Times yesterday a short piece on Levi Johnston's deal with Playgirl to take off his clothes. I'm a little sheltered here in the big city so I hadn't seen this bit of 'news' when it hit the ADN. With all the free nudes available on line, we know that Playgirl isn't just paying him for skin shots, but for Palin related skin shots. Let's see now - abstinence only education leads to teenage moms leads to teenage dad getting paid to pose nude. Isn't America great?

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 4

Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 had three videos each from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The last one here is totally different from all the others, edgier. It's a little too long perhaps, but this student was working her own vision. The first one is also a very different approach from the others.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 had three videos each from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. These are art students (except for me) and only the last project of the semester was a video/animation project. This first one is one of my favorites. But they all have something of interest. And they're all short.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 2

I posted a few videos from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class - Computer Art and Design - last week. This was not a film or video class per se, but the last assignment was to use Painter or Photoshop animation to make a video that was more or less 30 seconds. Some did theirs totally animated, others, like me, did a combination. Some just used regular video. You can see the first ones I posted at the link above. Here are three more.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 1

While the Anchorage International Film Festival has been going on, in Mariana Gonzales' Art 257 class - Computer Art and Design - we had our own mini festival. Actually, it was our last assignment. And Wednesday we saw everyone's videos - many of which included animation. So, for the next couple of days, I'm going to post a couple of the class videos. These are from art students (except mine) most of whom had not done animation or video before. I was impressed with the variety of things people did, though it seems for my fellow students, the music video is a pretty strong influence.







More tomorrow. Mine's not in this bunch.

More Class Poster Fixer Uppers

I posted earlier about our assignment to take a poster from the Art Building bulletin board and jazz it up a bit. Here are a couple more examples. I bet you can tell which were the originals and which were the student remakes.

Encaustics Poster

It was sunny when I went to my digital art class yesterday at 1. But it was drizzling slightly when I got out. There was a big hole in the sky. And now, it's snowing.




We're moving on from our 'fantasy' pictures where we take four photos and merge them into one picture. Mine is taking longer than I thought, partly because I'm using way more than four different photos. Getting the light to match in each of the merged pictures may be beyond my ability before it's due.

But yesterday we started and finished a new project - focusing on text. Prof. Gonzales' assignment was to go downstairs to the bulletin board in the Art building and find a poster. Then we were supposed to redo the poster so the text and graphics were better. I chose the white one with all the text and one picture on the lower left before the lighter panel.

It's for an Encaustics workshop. I never heard of Encaustics either. So I turned to the web. There were a couple of great descriptions of how to create the encaustics materials on a site called wet canvas (and wet canvas2) but I had to look further for a definition which I got on jocelynaudette:

Encaustic paintings are painted with beeswax, resin, and pigment. It is an ancient process that was used by the Egyptians and Greeks, and examples have been found in Egyptian tombs. Generally, the painting process involves using a hot palette to melt and mix the colored wax, painting it onto the panel using a brush, and fusing the layers with a heat gun. All paintings are on wood panels which provide a rigid and supportive surface. (Like always you can double click to enlarge the pictures.)

So, here's the original poster. It has a lot of details about the class, about cost, discounts, times, places, etc. but it isn't very eye catching. It seemed to me that a poster for an art workshop ought to be somewhat artistic itself. So I googled encaustics images and there were plenty. The workshop poster talks about collage too, so I figured I should have a collage like poster. And as much should be visual as possible. So I got the seven people - all from different encaustics work on line - that was the maximum class size. I found an encaustics picture I could use as the base of the poster - one that had a fair amount of white space I could fill in. The flag is a Jasper Johns encaustic. And the beeswax had to go somewhere since it is the basis of encaustics as I understand it.

I had to leave out a lot of the text, so I put the contact information in a prominent place. We were supposed to then take our printed posters and pin them up next to the old ones. But yellow wasn't working on the printer, so it should get done Wednesday. Fortunately we were supposed to get this done in the 45 minutes left of class so it was 'done' when the time limit was up and I don't have to agonize over it to make it perfect.

These workshops were over in September, but I guess if you're interested you could still go to the website and see if new ones are planned.

Art for Art's Sake

What with the trip to LA and all, I didn't get to post the project I turned in for my computer art class. I wrote about the instructions earlier and showed what the professor demonstrated. Since I was headed out of town, I did a number of different projects and then turned in the one that I did in the required 30 minute time limit.

This is the display with all the student products. (Like usual, you can double click to enlarge the pictures.) Mine's in there somewhere.

It really is pretty amazing what the computer can do for you. A lot of what comes out is 'accidental' as you explore the different filters that can cause all sorts of interesting effects. But we did all stick within the guidelines. And the similarity shows. Even though they are all very different. Below are some practice eggs I did. These didn't get done under the time limit, not even close. But I got better using the Photoshop tools as I did them.

All the horizons in the original examples were at the top, so of course I had to do one with the horizon at the bottom. There's even an underwater filter which helps give it the watery sense. I tried the shafts of light because Mariano had done that in one of his demonstrations. His looked a lot better than mine.



Based on the three practice eggs, can you figure out which one is mine in the group display? If you figure three rows A, B, C, you can identify your guess as say A1 for the top left egg, or C6 for the bottom right egg.

The new project is to take four pictures and combine them all in one "fantasy" picture. I'll try to post mine on Tuesday if it's ready.

Sarah Barracuda

Local Anchorage artist, Mariano Gonzales, shared his latest creation with me. Part of me wants to enjoy this privately and not add this to the political free for all going on. But Sarah has been proud of her barracuda nickname and I suspect that she'll want to frame this one.

Disclosure time: Mariano is teaching the computer art class I'm taking and I asked him if I could post the fish.

Computer Art and Design

I've mentioned obliquely that I'm taking a class at UAA this semester. It's a computer art class taught by Mariano Gonzales. Actually, I've taken this class ten or 11 years ago, but the technology was somewhat different then. The shock then after the first day was that, "Oh dear, all the other students are artists." But I managed to survive.

So far, we're slowly playing (literally, we are supposed to be playing and experimenting) with basic tools in Photoshop and Painter. So, midterm time is next week and Prof. G talked about the exam on Monday. We will have a set of steps in which we will do certain things and play with certain tools. Prof. G gave us a demonstration, though he didn't precisely tell us the steps - he'll do that today. Basically, he started with one square. Duplicated the square and made it a different color. Then through grouping and copying and pasting, developed a checker board. Then distorted it, used the perspective tool. Added a sky. Then used the oval tool to make an egg, and then on and on. Here are some pictures of the transformation.









I didn't have much time Monday after this demonstration, because I was going to the funeral. But I did start my own version of what I thought were the steps. I, of course, have to be different so I made ovals instead of squares. Then stacked them up. I realized as I was shutting down the computer that I should have made two different colored ovals. Oh well, we'll get the precise steps today and see what students did with this in the past today.

School Starts Tomorrow

Since it looks like I'll be here the whole Fall semester, I've decided to put some structure into my life and take a couple of classes this fall at UAA.

And I'm taking Mariano Gonzales' Digital Art and Design. I took a similar class from him years ago - I think it was just called computer art back then. I'd seen some murals he'd made with video and digital and thought I should learn. Well, it wasn't a class to touch up photos. It was an art class and on the first day when we got our assignment to take three of the tools in the program we were using (Corel Draw?) and make a picture, I quickly discovered that everyone else in class was an accomplished artist.

My simple flower pot with a daisy looked like 2nd grade compared to the detailed cowboy boots on one side of me and the portrait on the other side. But I worked hard and did reasonably well, and learned a lot.

So this will give me a chance to get my photoshop skills back up and do some more creative work with my pictures and from scratch. [Posted with permission of the artist]

Mariano is a UAA professor and wicked artist whose work is technically precise and often political as this picture of St. Ted demonstrates. You can see more of his poster work here. He's doing more sculpture now.

I'm signing up for a weight training class just so I'll get in on a regular basis. I've been reasonably good about running (or biking), but I haven't done weights for a while. Class gets me in twice a week and I get pushed more than I would push myself.

Unfortunately, we head out tonight for Seattle to see the kids and then Portland to visit friends there. I have to get word to the weight training teacher, but there's no name listed.