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The Longest Mural In Phoenix

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So some­time last sum­mer James Day rec­om­mended Hugo Med­ina’s Phoenix Fes­ti­val of the Arts mural project to me.  You know how it is.  Awash in the lazy days of sum­mer I said yes, and Decem­ber was so far away.  LOL.

So as the date of the Phoenix Fes­ti­val of the Arts crept up I got busy.  It is not unusual.  The hol­i­days and all man­ner of other things con­spire to make the fall into win­ter and spring very busy for me.  How­ever, I did say yes, and that which I have promised I gen­er­ally per­form, even if it hair­lips the governor.

I got my paints a few weeks before the event. I even had a design ready, because I knew I had a busi­ness trip the week­end before the Phoenix Fes­ti­val of the Arts and would only have 1 day in between return­ing from that trip and the fes­ti­val to get my stuff together.  I guess I should have thought about it a bit more, because I ori­ented my sketch ver­ti­cally, but the 80 of us were sup­posed to be cre­at­ing the “longest” mural.

concept sketch AZ expressionist artist Jake Beckman Phoenix Festival of the Arts Mural

So instead of mak­ing sure 3 pan­els a total of 8 feet wide and 8 feet high got cov­ered in glo­ri­ous paint, I worked on some­thing that was 16 feet wide and 4 ft high.  Let me tell you from an design stand­point that is an entirely dif­fer­ent ani­mal.  Oh, well time to Sem­per Gumby all the way.

The morn­ings and evenings were crisp but dur­ing the day it was warm enough for me to get a sun­burn in Decem­ber.  Since the mural was in the same place each day, I got the sun­burn on my right arm, and the right side face and neck; these things hap­pen in the great out­doors. I very much enjoyed talk­ing and work­ing with the artists on either side of me and on Sat­ur­day I loved it when the chil­dren picked up my pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion paint and added to the mural as well.  Lots of peo­ple walked by and enjoyed my dancer and she came to life on the pan­els.  And remem­ber there were 79 other murals com­ing alive as well. I really enjoyed my par­tic­i­pa­tion in this event.

Jake's 2012 Phoenix Festival of the Arts Mural, Maiden dances with Phoenix over the the blazing city

Noelle Mar­tinez, the artist to my left, cre­ated a vibrant abstract of explod­ing bub­bles and lines that I merged with on the left side; on the right var­i­ous patrons added to the mural.  I used paint left over from the pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion to paints swirls incor­po­rate the art the pub­lic added to the mural on the right side. The cen­ter panel is all me and my lovely dancer with her fiery dance part­ner.  I think it came out well.

The entire mural is slated to be moved to a new park on Indian School Rd and cen­tral in Phoenix.  I am not exactly sure when the instal­la­tion will hap­pen, but when it does, we will all be invited back to touch up the installed work, and have a lit­tle artists shindig. This was an amaz­ing event.  Hugo Med­ina deserves major kudos for pulling it together. I want to extend my thanks to the artlink vol­un­teers who manned the mural artists lounge in the ven­dor area; after sev­eral hours in the sun, it was nice to have a place to go sit down, grab a cup of cof­fee or a bot­tle of water and wait for the kinks in my body to set­tle.  All in all a very suc­cess­ful event and a suc­cess­ful project as well.

I wel­come your com­ments below. If you decide you need a mural painted some­where, I am open to doing a project for hire.  Check out my web­site to see what is pos­si­ble, and lets talk.

Phoenix AZ Abstract & Expressionist painter and muralist phone number

Yours in Art

Jake, AZ Expres­sion­ist, Abstract & Fan­tasy Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Child of the Sea Care Bear for Red Brunch

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Sounds like the title of a rock ballad.

Its not though.  The Red Brunch is a char­ity event orga­nized by Aunt Rita’s ben­e­fit­ing var­i­ous AIDs related char­i­ties on World AIDs Day, Decem­ber 1, 2012.  To buy tick­ets etc got to RedBrunch.org.

About a week ago, Nancy Hill of Gallery Hazel in DoPho con­tact me and says, “You wanna dec­o­rate a bear?” OK I am intrigued and she arranges the drive by and drop.

Child of the Sea Bear, AZ fantasy artist Jake Beckman, Care bear for Red Brunch World AIDs Day charity event

Here is the blank can­vas she deliv­ered. It’s about 24 inches tall.  Ini­tially I was think­ing Gothic biker, so I went to a Good­will look­ing for baby jeans.  How­ever, my entire focus shifted when I found a bintsy Hawai­ian Shirt.  Any­one who knows me, knows I have a Hawai­ian shirt addic­tion — gotta be nat­ural fibers though :) Once I found that, it was all over.  My tat­tooed surfer bear “bra” con­cept came quickly into my head.  A pair of tiny jams with surf­boards on them com­pleted the cloth­ing.  You can fol­low the Child of the Sea Bear’s progress on Face­book via the in  images I am post­ing there.

So, con­sid­ered pick­ing up a ticket for the Red Brunch and bid­ding on Child of the Sea Bear, or any of the other good­ies they have for auc­tion, rumored to include more bears of course, wreaths and vaca­tion packages.

Yours in Art

Jake, AZ Expres­sion­ist, Abstract & Fan­tasy Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

The code — use it.

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My art web­site has been around for more than a decade.  You can find car­toons dat­ing back to 1993, I think.  The prob­lem with hav­ing a web­site main­tained by only one per­son, namely me, over that length of time, is that iner­tia makes it hard to make big changes. The larger the web­site became the harder for me (or any­one else for that mat­ter) to make the global changes. The next big switch will be to con­vert to a php dri­ven web­site, but with so much con­tent, well, it is just not a task under­taken lightly.

I have been using html webs-forms for about a decade. And for most of that time I’ve had web-form spam­mers, who usu­ally give up when they don’t get a bite in a week or so.

How­ever, this week a par­tic­u­larly vora­cious robot cruised through the web-forms on my art site; I have hun­dreds of web-forms because I wanted to make it easy for poten­tial clients to con­tact me about a spe­cific piece. The bot started off with about 50 spam emails, but as of yes­ter­day was up well over 100 and by the time I would get those deleted, 10 more would come in.  For the first time I have used IP Address block­ing, even so, I had to block 30 or so IP addresses to get this under control.

I looked through these email form con­tacts to make sure they were all spam and not a legit­i­mate con­tacts and that was tak­ing way too much time. I have received so much form spam over the years that my email fil­ter assumes any con­tact from my forms is spam.

With well over 300 hun­dred pages with forms, there is no way I am con­vert­ing them all to php for a reg­u­lar captcha code overnight, so I have come up with a workaround.

what do you see real person identification code at AZ jake beckman expressionist art

Here it is. You type in the code of let­ters, num­bers, and sym­bols you see in the appro­pri­ate space on the web-form. My spam fil­ter will search for it and pull those mes­sages that have it out into a folder. I have made allowance for sev­eral ver­sions — vary­ing cap­i­tal­iza­tion etc.  Wrong code and I will have to assume you are one of those obnox­ious spam bots sell­ing fake drugs, fake shoes, fake stock tips, porn, etc. and delete you with­out even look­ing. The forms now require the code, a name and an email to sub­mit; html5 actu­ally makes this step pretty easy (I won­der what other new cool code is out there?).

I can eas­ily swap out the code in case some indus­tri­ous spam­mer take the time to fig­ure it out.

It is all I can do.  I was under attack for a week and it took way too much of my time to deal with.  I really hate adding any bar­rier to con­tact, but I had no choice.  On the upside my ban­ner graph­ics now include my busi­ness phone number-so if you really hate the web form, just call me.  I hope you all understand.

Yours in Art

Jake, AZ Expres­sion­ist, Abstract & Fan­tasy Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

 

Longest Mural in Phoenix AZ?

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Jake Beck­man to help cre­ate the longest mural in Phoenix AZ

Phoenix by AZ Contemporary artist jake beckman-abstract phoenix rising above cityHugo Med­ina of HugosArt.com, has invited AZ Con­tem­po­rary Artist, Jake Beck­man, to par­tic­i­pate in his Com­mu­nity Mural Project, which will be live dur­ing the Phoenix Fes­ti­val of the Arts.  Hugo wants to cre­ate the city’s longest mural.  So far 75 local artists have signed on to par­tic­i­pate. If all goes as planned there will be a line of ply­wood sheets in Hance Park.   Each artist will have a sheet to do their own thing on and between each artist there will be a panel for the pub­lic and artists to paint on as well.  The mural will come alive dur­ing the event which is Decem­ber 7–9 from 10 AM-10 PM Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, and 10 AM-5 PM on Sun­day.  Artists ven­dors will be present until 5 PM daily.  Looks to be quite the event in DoPho.

More updates as they become available.

If you are inter­est in some AZ Abstract Drag­ons or Phoenix art by all means come check out my website.

Yours in Art

Jake, AZ Expres­sion­ist, Abstract & Fan­tasy Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

 

#twitterartexhibit ambassador!

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twitterartexhibit, by az binary bird artist, jake beckman, a canary singsHowdy Every­one

As you know I have par­tic­i­pated in both #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit events.  My first sub­mis­sion was #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit, which ben­e­fited a library in Moss, Nor­way, enabling them to pur­chase library books for chil­dren.  My first sub­mis­sion became part of a per­ma­nent dis­play in the library.

The sec­ond sub­mis­sion was cher­ish, which ben­e­fited a women’s cri­sis cen­ter in Moss, Nor­way.  Cher­ish sold within min­utes of the event opening.

I was hon­ored to par­tic­i­pate in both of these events.

Tak­ing #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit global

Now David San­dum has decided to take it global. Con­grat­u­la­tions on David San­dum and all the oth­ers for mak­ing this great thing happen.

Other newly named big­wigs in David’s orga­ni­za­tion: Chris­t­ian Karls­son @Svorsk, Nor­way,  Natalie George (twit­ter name?), LA, USA, Ryan Ses­low @ryanseslow, NY, USA.

Three sub­lime blog­gers: Robin Pedrero @robinpedrero, Lori McNee @lorimcneeartist , Terry Granger Mar­tin @tmartinart

AZ Binary Birds Artist Jake Beck­man named hon­orary ambassador

Although hun­dreds of wor­thy artists from all over the world par­tic­i­pated in these events, David San­dum only could select a few from these won­der­ful peo­ple to name as his hon­orary ambas­sadors.  The 25 Hon­orary Ambas­sadors include:

1) Jenni Eden, Oman @jennieden84
2) Shirley Peters, Aus­tralia @ShirleyPeters
3) Trevor Jones, Scot­land @trevorjones
4) Maren Jask­i­na­nen, Fin­land @marenart
5) Patti Agapi, Canada @madwithrapture
6) Holly Friesen, Mon­treal, Canada @holly59
7) Chi­hiro Kondo, Japan @chiro_art
8) Andrew Crane, UK @Winsorandnewt
9) India @merlinflower
10) Melanie McDon­ald, France @MelMcDonaldArt
11) Amasilys Ruis, Venezuela @AmaSilyS
10) Kat Ostrow, USA @katost
11) Patri­cia Mim­ilux, Hun­gary @mimiluxart
12) Mar­tina Anag­nos­tou, Somalia/Greece @managnostou
13) Jurian Rexwinkel, Hol­land @rexwinkel
14) Ken Pow­ers, USA @powers_fine_art
15) Russ Potak, USA @russpotak
16) Tim Grosvenor, France @elephantbird
17) Andy Fer­rari, Brazil @a_ferrari
18) Julia Forsyth, USA @juliaforsythart
19) Sarah Wiske, USA @sarahwiskeart
20) Peter Hob­den, Switzer­land @PeteHobden
21) Diann Haist, Alaska, USA @diannhaistart
22) Jake Beck­man (me) Phoenix, AZ USA @dejakester AZ, USA
23) Barry McAdam, Ire­land @Mc_Adam
24) Mar­tin Field, UK @martinfield1
25) Heidi Bjork, Ice­land @Heidi_Art

I am hon­ored to be part of such a won­der­ful crowd of fine folks and fine artists. I encour­age you to fol­low me and these other won­der­ful artist tweet­ers on twit­ter. And if you are inter­est in some AZ Abstract art, Binary Bird Art or Fan­tasy Art, by all means come check out my website.

Yours in Art

Jake, AZ Expres­sion­ist, Abstract & Fan­tasy Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.