Friday, April 17, 2009
0
UPDATE
Written by Zach in News

The month is half over and we have had a terrific response to our Mad Bull backstory contest.  I have to admit that I am pleased and astonished at the difference between men and women writers.  Men have broadly similar perspectives to one another, and women have similar perspectives to one another, but the genders overall have completely different story instincts.  It’s terrific reading.  At any rate, we have another 13 days left to submit your entry.  Best of luck!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
0
MAD BULL CONTEST
Written by Zach in News

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The Mad Bull moving picture is up on our main page!  Kudos go to Danny, Justin, Ben, and Mark for getting everything up.  If you’re a winner, then we have a task for you.

We would like you to–well first we’d like you to watch the thing if you have a minute to spare, but after you do that, we’d like for you to contribute a backstory for the Mad Bull short.  Provide a 500 word narrative answer to the question, “Why is the bull so mad?” and you could be the big winner.

Justin and I are medium-sized winners because we get to judge the entries.  The big winner gets his choice of any two items from our store.  We’ll also put the winning entry on the blog so folks can read it, which means everybody wins!  Put on your winnable smile, and winsome attitude and Win doggone it! WIN!

One minor clarification.  When I say “WIN” I don’t mean to abbreviate “Wolność i Niezawisłość,” which as everybody knows is an abbreviation for a Polish anticommunist organization in 1945-1952.  I meant “win” as in, achieve victory doggone it!  ACHIEVE VICTORY!

Okay, let’s recap just to make sure we’re clear.

1. Watch the Mad Bull moving picture

2. Write an awesome backstory for the bull in 500 words or less.

3. Send us the story here.

4. Check back on April 30th to see if you WIN!

Thanks, and happy writing!

Friday, March 6, 2009
0
Grimm and Other Folk Tales — Official show poster
Written by Cory in News

Hey everyone, I’d like to let you know that the official poster for my first solo exhibition is out.

I hope to see you there!

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What can you expect to see?

Well, you will see monsters, princesses, and trolls. And a goat. A billy one.

“Educational” isn’t quite the right word but I’m not coming up with a better one right now so, here it goes, I’m presenting the show in a somewhat “educational” format — along side the finished, framed pieces will be the progression — from original idea to thumbnail, to rough, to drawing, to watercolor, and finally to finished piece. Yup. That’s the steps, there.

Bob Jones University
Sargent Art Building
Lower Level

April 3 – 10, 2009

Opening Reception
April 3rd
Friday

6 – 10 PM

Grimm and Other Folk Tales
is an Alumnus Art Exhibition by Cory Godbey and is comprised of entirely new works.

* * *

Also, you can check out my blog on the sidebar over there on the right to get a sneak peek at some of the progress.

Monday, January 19, 2009
8
Andrew Wyeth
Written by Zach in News

As I’m sure you now know, 91 year old Andrew Wyeth died last week.  His death allowed many an excuse to reexamine his work.

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His paintings operate on both a subjective personal plane and a transcendent universal plane.  The subjects he paints incite emotional power, but it’s because they are intensely personal subjects.  They are neighbors, friends, locations near his home.  He imprisons the emotions he feels in tempera or watercolor, like a fly in amber.  But the moods we experience when we see his works feel transcendent.  A stone wall might exist in a local way, but when used as a gateway for profundity, it becomes epic and universal.  

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Critics sometimes label his work “sentimental.”  Sentimentality is a dismissive term when it refers to maudlin self-medicating emotionalism–like the Victorian fascination with dead children, or the way moms enjoy movies that make them cry.  But can one easily dismiss sentiment itself?  What if one sees a fragile grandeur in the death of a crow?  What if one feels moved at the careless clumsy way humans tread on things.  Can the trampling of a weed have emotional resonance?  Art teacher Robert Beverly Hale famously remarked, “First we draw what we think we see; then we draw what we know; finally, we see what we know.”  Andrew Wyeth’s ability to see what he knows translates for the viewer into a type of gratitude.  This is a slap in the face to those who preoccupy themselves with the faddish ingratitude of disposable art.

 

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One reason Wyeth’s paintings offend critics is because they are sincere, unironic, and speak uninfected by Warhol-ian detachment or tongue-in-cheek-ness.  One Baltimore Sun writer scoffed that Andrew Wyeth’s paintings were representational.  “That appeals,” he said “to a public inadequately exposed to art and lacking confidence in its interpretive powers.”  Translation: Interpreter critics are mad when the art can speak for itself.  In fact they get so mad that Wyeth’s paintings can exist without them that their criticism becomes reckless and their sense of pitch a little high.  Consider critic Hilton Kramer’s manic and straining dismissal of Wyeth’s work: “It’s provincial, it’s sentimental, it’s illustration and it’s without substance.  In my opinion he can’t paint.  They are just sort of colored drawings.  It’s one of those illustrated dreams that enable people who don’t like art to fantasize about not living in the 20th century.”

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Andrew Wyeth can’t paint?  What the Sam Hill?  Did Andrew Wyeth’s 20th century subjects fantasize about not living in the 20th century?  It’s the self important myopia best represented by art critics in Manhattan.  Because they have to splash through puddles of homeless people’s urine in order to get to work, they scoff at Norman Rockwell’s depiction of a Midwestern Soda shop.  “It’s a mythological America!” they scream indignantly as they stand knee deep in garbage waiting to purchase tickets for a broadway sex show.  If they can’t be sensible at least they provide some entertainment when they strike with the iron fist of condescension.  Say with a furrowed brow that because you don’t like Wyeth, his paintings must be for people who don’t like art.

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Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, said, “Undoubtedly the criticism of his work has a lot to do with the politics of the art world and the demand by critics and many artists themselves that only contemporary abstraction be recognized as a viable language for the postwar era.  The cadre of critics who promoted that made a point of discrediting everything else and deliberately devaluing other artists’ work.”   Michael Kimmelman, a writer for the New York Times noted that the defenders of contemporary abstraction ensconced themselves in the New York art world.  “And as bohemianism itself became institutionalized, Wyeth encapsulated the artistic conservatives’ paradoxical idea of cultural disobedience through traditional behavior.”  Wyeth’s work deserves Solzhenitsyn’s praise of art. “By means of art we are sometimes sent dimly, briefly, revelations unattainable by reason, like that little mirror in fairy tales.  Look into it and you will see not yourself but for a moment, that which passes understanding, a realm to which no man can ride or fly and for which the soul begins to ache.”

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Wyeth’s paintings show the benefits of craftsmanship over instinct, tradition over novelty, and meditation over stimulation.  On that basis alone, it seems we can be grateful for his life and work.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
1
Justin on Tor.com
Written by Zach in News

Justin [terviewed] Gerard was just interviewed by Irene Gallo on Tor.com.  You can read the interview here.  Three cheers for Justin and his Hobbit project.

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