Dance

When I was little, I wanted to be a ballerina, like all little girls.  However, my mom was a ballet teacher and owned her own pre-professional ballet school.  I started taking lessons when I was 3 and never really appreciated it as an art form until I became a teenager.  Now, I see classical dance as an expressive form of art that takes true talent.  I realize that professional dancers train for years, working all day every day on perfecting their talent.  While I loved dance, I wanted to be an engineer, so I focused on my studies, but dance was always something that I loved doing.

In my opinion, ballet is one of the most boring things to watch as a dance style, unless it's an allegro.  However, when you see a ballerina doing something, anything, slowly, you see each and every muscle work.  It takes so much time and effort to hone the abilities needed to be an amazing dancer.  When you watch a ballerina perform, just the things she can do are amazing.  The flexibility and strength they must have is amazing.  When it is put together with choreography, a beautiful piece of work is created.

I love dancing and always will.  I love to perform mostly.  Something about being on the stage and getting to show off is more fun than you would think.  The more I write this blog, the more I want to go back and take a ballet class.  Also, I'm going to brag.  This is me when I was little.  Like I said, I've been doing it for a long time. I'm the one on the right.

And I'm on the left in this one:

Dance has always been a part of my life and with my mother as my ballet teacher, I grew up learning about the greats and going to the Russian ballet.  This art form has always been a part of my life, and it will be for years to come.

Teefury

I know a lot of people have already talked about how clothing is a type of art, but I just wanted to mention the best website ever, teefury.com.  At this website, they have a different design for a t-shirt every day for $9 and if you don't grab it that day then it's gone forever.  The styles range from anything you can possibly imagine.  Some are more thoughtful and artsy, while some are ridiculous and just fun.  In fact, most are ridiculous and fun.

 

 

Many of their artists make spoofs on Star Wars, videogames, famous bands, and many other things.  They are whimsical and fun shirts and I have to log on every day because I know I'll miss something amazing if I don't.

I just want to mention my favorite photographer that I've ever seen.  Her name is Rachel Loux and I've known her since she was a baby, so I know when I say that she is incredibly talented in many forms of art.  She always catches the perfect light at exactly the right angle to take beautiful photographs.  She also knows the secrets of editing, not to change the image completely, but to enhance the beauty that she's already captured.

I think this is definitely one of my favorite photos by her.  I was with her the day that she took this picture.  We were driving through downtown Athens after she had just bought a roll of film for her camera.  This one actually doesn't have any editing done to it.  The lighting was just that perfect.  I've always admired her work.  We've been friends for so long, so I'm sure that helps, but she's still an amazing photographer.

Too Much Time On Your Hands?

Today I would like to talk about a few ridiculous ways to use duct tape.  We all know that duct tape fixes everything, but did you ever think that you could create bags, flowers, even dresses and tuxedos out of duct tape?  I started playing around with it and I can make different roses and flowers, but I've always wanted to create an elaborate prom dress out of it.  After looking through the pictures, you'll see that they're simply amazing, but it must take SO much time.  I wish I could have a duct tape prom dress...  It would take me a year to make and it wouldn't look very good probably, but if I could have one, I would.  It would be a masterpiece!

Optical Illusions

I've always been fascinated with optical illusions, especially hidden image stereograms.  With these, if you focus your eyes a certain way, an image pops out at you.  They always intrigued me as a child and I would find the image then find the glitches in the pattern that would make the image pop out to me.  Here are some examples.

If you look closely enough here, you can see a dinosaur.  You have to get very close and cross your eyes before backing away slowly as your eyes focus to the image.

Here are some great illusions just like the one above.  If you can find the hidden object, you'll have a lot of fun looking at the ones in this gallery, just as I did.

Dali - Las Meninas

When I went to the High last week to find my painting to write an analysis on, I found a small painting at the beginning of the exhibit that caught my eye.  As it turns out, Dali idolized Diego Valezquez and Las Meninas was one of his favorite paintings by another artist.  He had painted his own portrait of one of the dwarfs in the original painting.  It was whimsical and strange, much like the rest of his work, but I was surprised to find something like that.  I also found that Dali was good friends with Andy Warhol and Duchamp, who famously placed a mustache on the Mona Lisa.  I just found it interesting.

Imitation

In Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag, she spoke of Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle and their views on art as imitation.  For Plato, art serves no purpose and is only an imitation of the representation of an idea.  You couldn't eat a painting of a bowl of fruit or sleep on a sketch of a bed.  It was useless to him.  Aristotle believed that it was useful in the sense that it could relax the mind and was pleasing.  I believe that art can be imitative and I agree with Aristotle in the sense that it is relaxing and therapeutic to enjoy a piece of art.  One brilliant artist comes to mind when I think of art as imitation.  Each time I look at a drawing of hers, I think that it's a photograph, and it amazes me.  I can't help but stare at her pieces for long periods of time.  Her name is Nicolien Beerens and she is from the Netherlands.  She has drawn many of her favorite actors and sent them her works and they've been amazed, which is expected, since she is, in fact, amazing.  When she draws, she captures every detail, including wrinkles and each hair in a man's five o'clock shadow.

Graphics

Last night, I watched the original Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time.  It occurred to me as I was watching it that in 1984 when the movie came out, it must have been absolutely terrifying.  The mass amounts of blood and Fred's burnt face were pretty scary back then, but now a lot of teenagers, including myself, have laughed at these graphics and animations.  When you think about it, people 25 years from now will be watching the Saw movies and laughing at them just like we today laugh at Fred Krueger.  I, for one, will watch a movie from 20 or 30 years and think it cheesy and stupid, but it almost makes me sad when I think that when I'm my parents' age, I'll show my kids something like Avatar and they'll think that the animation is jerky or poorly done.  Peoples' tastes, technology, and artistic styles will change very quickly and over the short time of just 20 years, some of today's most amazing films will be silly and outdated.

3D Sidewalk Chalk

Every child loves drawing on the sidewalk with Crayola sidewalk chalk, and so do a lot of people here at Georgia Tech that want to advertise for clubs and meetings.  The most exciting images I've ever seen on a sidewalk can only be looked at correctly from one angle.  They create three dimensional images and scenes when looked upon, and they are quite the sight.

This artist is Julian Beever and he has created many of these chalk drawings that are simply amazing.  When I think about how long it would take to create something like this, it blows my mind.  To be able to do it, he has to visualize what the piece would look like and have to draw it from all angles.  From the wrong angle it looks something like this:

But when you see it like it is meant to be seen:

His works are whimsical and entertaining and anyone passing by on the street corner can see them.  He does it because he loves peoples' reactions to his drawings, not for money or for fame.  My favorite thing about this is that he does it because he loves doing it.  His ideas are always so creative as well.  he does a lot with things falling into holes in the sidewalk and they're always entertaining.