Creative Cogitation

In 2010 I par­tic­i­pated in the first #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit.  It was a char­ity event set up by David San­dum and oth­ers to ben­e­fit a library in Moss Nor­way.  The funds raised from that exhibit pur­chased 221 new chil­drens books.  David San­dum got over 260 twit­ter artists from 24 dif­fer­ent coun­tries to participate.

Well David is at it again.  This year the #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit will help fund The Women’s Cri­sis Cen­ter in Moss, where abused women and chil­dren can get help. The cen­ter also pro­vides a 24 hour phone-service, coun­sel­ing, food and shel­ter etc.

And of course David came back to the artists who help him before. I thought, “Okay, I can do that again,” but I didn’t actu­ally read his instruc­tions first.  Appar­ently David learned some things from his first event and made some changes to the for­mat. Mean­while I hap­pily crank out Heart of a woman.

heart of a woman, by Jake Beck­man. 8.5 inch x 5.5 inch acrylic paint­ing on water­color paper fea­tur­ing a goddess/woman and a glow­ing fly­ing canary

So after I fin­ished paint­ing my lovely “heart of a woman” I went to the sec­ond #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit web­site to find the mail­ing address, and as luck would have it, I found out David had imposed size lim­its on this year’s sub­mis­sion.  She was nearly twice the size she should have been.  Of course I did ask for a rul­ing from the coor­di­na­tor and he said he really needed the post card sized limit.

(sigh) my bad.  Later on David changed his mind, but then of course “cher­ish” was nearly complete.

So “heart of a woman” is for sale …make me an offer. Ship­ping should be quite rea­son­able as she fits in a cat­a­log sized enve­lope.  She is made from qual­ity pro­fes­sional artist mate­ri­als: 140 cold press water color paper, coated with gesso on both sides, painted in Golden pro­fes­sional grade acrylic paints and var­nished with Liq­ui­tex matte var­nish.  The sub­ject mat­ter was drawn from the char­ity that she was sup­posed to ben­e­fit, but also link­ing to my binary birds social media inspired series.  The col­ors are vivid.  She already as a FAR tag 17563 attached to the back.  The cap­tion with title, copy­right & con­tact infor­ma­tion over­lay­ing the image shown here is merely a water­mark made with Pho­to­Shop; it is NOT part of the actual painting.

As for what is wing­ing its way to Moss Nor­way now?

cher­ish, acrylic paint­ing by Jake Beck­man. 4x6 inches. Image of a child hold­ing a canary in the palm of her hand

I intro­duce “cher­ish.” As much peo­ple liked my “heart of a woman” this paint­ing has also been well received.  I still drew upon the ben­e­fi­ciary of this exhibit for inspi­ra­tion, while main­tain­ing my link to social media & twit­ter via the binary birds con­nec­tion.  I think my child came out equally well. 

Yours in Art

Jake, 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.

Howdy My Fans.  Going to try giv­ing stuff away to find collectors-specifically 8x10 inch prints mat­ted to 11x14 inches.  Haven’t worked out the details yet.  Also think­ing of set­ting up stuff on FineArtAmerica.com as well.  Stay tuned.

Mean­while on of my MonOrchid Bunch (MOB) bud­dies, Kris­tine Bram­billa, took up roller derby in the guise of Raven’s Night.  This even­tu­ally leads her to start up Seven13Sk8, a roller derby proshop, in down­town Phoenix AZ.  Appar­ently the alter­na­tives are either quite a drive from the cen­ter of town, or online/mail order.  As with all such things, it is tak­ing longer than expected to get going and so she decided to throw open her doors to her fel­low MOB-sters.

I check out the space on First Fri­day last week.  It is a small­ish space, but more than enough room for 10 artists with mod­est sized pieces.  She has painted the walls black with glitter.

While I was there, I got to meet her busi­ness part­ners. One is another Roller Derby gal, Gracy Dah­mer AKA Amanda Queen, and the other is Free­dom Crump.  In addi­tion sev­eral other roller derby girls were there at the shops grand open­ing and they are a hoot.  After a few hours down­town with these lovely ladies,  I found myself turn­ing to thoughts of the upcom­ing show, binary birds, and roller derby.  The prod­uct is a dig­i­tal paint­ing, pic­tured below.

Unti­tled digia­rt­work by Jake Beck­man — Name This Paint­ing contest

You will notice there is no binary in the paint­ing yet.  That is because it is part of a Name This Paint­ing Con­test I decided to have.  The win­ner gets an 8x10 print of the paint­ing.  Since this work is dig­i­tal art, the print is con­sid­ered “Orig­i­nal Art” because the printed image is its final form, much like a photograph.

Any­way, this will be the 6th show for the MOB (we renamed our­selves the Mob, after the MonOrchid Mys­tery Gallery shut down) and this is our first gath­er­ing in 3 years.  I am very excited about the prospect.  The show will begin on Novem­ber 26th and runs through Decem­ber 10. The shop is slated to have hours, Tues­day through Sun­day and of course part of the sales of any art­work go to the shop.

So check out the Name This Paint­ing Con­test –maybe you  will win, and I hope to see you at the Mob’s reunion artshow in down­town Phoenix, AZ.

Jake
Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!
The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use this con­tent in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

I met Jonathan Man­ning, @BladeTheArtist, via Twit­ter. He imme­di­ately embraced the idea of doing an inter­view. I am excited because Jonathan pro­motes his art using online video. He is self-described techy and his entire artis­tic jour­ney is online. Jonathan’s answers reflect a cer­tain play­ful out­look on life. I hope you enjoy his art as well as find­ing out more about this artist who has embraced com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­ogy in such an inter­est­ing way. (more…)

Novem­ber 7, 2011 UPDATE: My Trees For Life Paint­ing did sell at this event along with many oth­ers.  The last tally I read said they had made more than 5,000 pounds for their char­ity.  Not bad. Not bad at all.

I gen­er­ally do not con­tribute paint­ings to black-tie char­i­ta­ble events. There are a num­ber of rea­sons why, but mostly it is because I do not feel char­i­ties in gen­eral play win-win with the artists who donate to their event. The artist gets noth­ing for their dona­tion of time, money, effort except a warm fuzzy and that is a lot to ask when a char­ity is ask­ing for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of an artist’s poten­tial gross income.  (more…)

The Bold Brush of Artist Franziska San Pedro This inter­view is a first in a series of inter­views I plan on doing with artists I have met online and in other places.  I recently com­pleted my first online inter­view with Franziska for her blog so I feel there is a cer­tain sym­me­try sat­is­fied with hav­ing Franziska as the first inter­view for my blog.  Franziska’s abstract land­scapes have bold color and well-defined strokes.  I hope you enjoy images of her art as well as find­ing out a lit­tle more about the artist that cre­ates such brightly col­ored impres­sions. (more…)