Architecture in Art

I choose to write on the topic of architecture. The magazine article that I choose to write a review on was called “The Urban Remodeler.” This article was about Mitchell Joachim and his architectural and futuristic proposals. Mitchell Joachim is an architect who has new visions for the future. He has come up with ideas like jetpacks tethered together in swarms, houses grown from living trees, low-altitude blimps in New York City with chairs so pedestrians can use them like ski lifts. Joachim has even come up with ideas for robots that would grind and compress waste into I-beams or even make the resulting cubes into furniture components. These are designs that could come into life today. Instead of cubes of cardboard, plastic or steel you could make waste into the cubes with metal bands just like recycling plants do now. All you would have to do to change the shape of your furniture or I beam is to change the shape of your mold. Kind of like a Play-Doh mold. Joachim says that “We could do this yesterday”. H e says that our cities will become healthier, friendlier and more sustainable with the use of these new ideas for the future. Terreform ONE is a nonprofit design collective that Joachim co-founded to look at sustainable, fully intergraded urban planning has been imagines how future cities may best serve their citizens on a large scale. They make experiments on small scales to predict what would happen in the real world. The group will be converting a roof top in Brooklyn into a test bed for modular growing, making designs for maximizing available sunlight and making ultra-lightweight soil mixes that are needed for rooftop garden growing. He has also come up with a way to make “living homes” that by grafting trees together around scaff olds and growing them on the job site. The other futuristic plans that Mitchell Joachim has mainly focus on mobility. He believes that transportation both shapes and is shaped by urban design. In his vision he would like to have individual cars replaced with car-share systems that work like luggage carts in an airport. He thinks that you could pay, get into a smart car that talks to the city grid. You drive to where you want to go that leave the car there. The cars would be made of a soft springy outside with inflatable protective bladders and transparent foil that would make the cars bump together as they traveled in “flocks”. He says that no one would ever die in a car accident again. He has also made jetpacks for the Martin Aircraft Company that is to go on sale later this year. Joachim forgos lucrative commercial projects and sticks to running a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to the reimagining of a future. Joachim is looking 150 years down the road. He is planning for how cities will have to function within the environment around them if civilization is to grow and last. Joachim admits even if the technologies are around today these changes will not just happen overnight. It took about 15 years to get the first hybrid car off the lot and. I takes 40 years to make a large shift with the way that buildings are constructed. He thinks that it will take 100 or even 150 years to change entire cities. He is staying busy with making growing living walls, making jetpacks, and planting organic lettuce on urban rooftops.

I liked this article. It was very interesting. I have always wanted to go and see a garden rooftop. I love the idea of having a garden roof top. I think that it would be good for people who live in apartments. They would be able to get out and see beautiful flowers and foods and get fresh air. I think that Spokane should look into getting some garden roof tops! I would live to see that. It would make Spokane greener and more interesting. I would also love to see the furniture that is made out of waste. I think that that is a good solution for not filling up the landfills and rivers with garbage. I would buy furniture made out of waste as long as it was cleaned out good and didn’t stink!

Written By: Gutter Chic

My Resources:

Author: John Bradley

Document type: News

Section: THE FUTURE OF THE ENVIORNMENT: VISIONARIES

Publication Title: Popular Science: New York: Jul 2010 Vol. 277, Iss. 1; Pg. 46, 2 pgs

Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=2068915981&sid=2&F=3&clientld=8493&RQT=309&Name=PQD

Animals in Art

I choose to write on the topic of why do animals play such an important role in ancient art? My first paragraph will discuss animals in history. Mainly discussing Paleolithic art. My second paragraph will discuss art in the Neolithic period. The third paragraph discusses my own feelings about what I have read from books about the topic of animals in art.

Animals in art history make animal history visible and accessible to people. It is a record of how people in the past lived, felt, and acted in different parts of the world toward animals. We are being told a story without using words. About 40,000 years ago, the first carvings and paintings of animals on cave walls that were deep in the earth were found. Hunter-gatherers followed animals that they hunted for food and carved/ painted images of what they saw. Which gives us an insight as to how they must have lived and what they did from day to day. It also gives us an insight into how they hunt and gathered what they ate. In central France the oldest known cave paintings were found. There were dozens of them. Among all of the paintings there were paintings done with charcoals and earthen pigments of animals. The paintings showed animals such as horses, rhinoceroses, tigers, and other large animals. The Cave paintings also showed animals that are now extinct. In southern France there are images of large and small animals. The depictions of animals were done so by careful observation of the animals as well as human contact with the animals. It has been believed by scholars “that the purpose of naturalistic Paleolithic art was to bring the spirits of animals into rituals related to the hunt.” It is now to be believed that the purpose was for sanctuaries where the children were initiated in ceremonies that were based on symbolic and metaphysical associations while the animals that are in the images/paintings. There are many paintings of animals that were found all over the world.

In the Neolithic period the motifs/dominant themes used were used on clay pots and were usually inspired from plant and animal forms. Unlike Paleolithic art Neolithic art was abstract. Paleolithic art was more naturalistic. For example Wall painting of animals is naturalistic and Earthenware beaker is more of an abstract art piece. Animals have also been portrayed in early medieval art. Like the bronze 5^th century art piece Scythian Animal made by the Scythians. This is an abstract animal form that influenced (according to books on the topic of animals in art) groups in the British Isles, Scandinavia, and China. This style has been seen later in woodcarvings, stone carvings, and metal work. I think that animals play such an important role in ancient art because it gives us a look at what kind of animals were around at the time that the art works were made. It also shows us which animals are now extinct and also what animals have survived. Animals in art also give us an insight as to how people interact with animals. It brings up questions like did they hunt them, eat them, worship them, or sacrifice them for spiritual rituals? Sometimes art shows you without words what happened in the past. Lastly I think that animals play such an important role in ancient art is the fact that they gave people inspiration for something to draw, paint, carve, or use as any other art depiction. Just the beauty of all the different kinds of animals makes some people want to depict them in art work.

Gutter Chic Inc. 2010

The Nature of Art

Art evokes feelings, memories (good and bad), passions, drives, pleasures, and pains. People come in to contact with art in their daily lives every day even without sometimes realizing it.

Art influences our lives in many ways. From the clothes that you wear, to the car you drive, to the dishes that you eat out of. Someone had to design them. We as human beings create almost every day. We create the way we want our lives to look and feel. Even such a simple act of dressing yourself or the way you decorate your house reflects the way that you perceive yourself as well as the way that you want other people to perceive you.

Art is a representation of an idea that is made with skill with the use of a medium. Artists use different kinds of media to express their ideas and feelings that they want to show others. There are many different kinds of media including clay, fiber, stone, wood, paint, video, computers, photography, music, dance, theater, literature, visual arts, and movies.

The nature of art is people expressing their feelings, views, and passions with different kinds of media. Art is visual expression that is made with skill and media. People can express some things with art that they otherwise could not express in words (or would rather not express in words). Like colors, shapes, political views, social views or religious views. Art can be enjoyed, understood, misunderstood, hated, or loved. Art is around us all the time in our homes, art galleries, and churches just to name a few. Art influences many things and it can take almost any form. In our day to day lives we are around art most of the time from the houses we live in, the art we hang up in our homes, to the ads we see in magazines.

Our languages, arts, beliefs and our traditions are a part of us as human beings. They show who we are and what we believe and what our culture is. Art can be made with many different kinds of medium. As technology advances so does the kind of mediums that artists have to choose from to work with. The kind of mediums that artists choose to work with shows a little about that period of time in which the art piece was made. It also shows what was available to work with at the time. It shows the artists skills that they used in making that art piece with the mediums that were used. Art can also give us an insight to the history surrounding that art piece. Art can make a statement, inform, embellish, inspire, excite, awaken, and thrill us. Art can also make us angry, sad, or humiliated. Art can also confuse us and make us ask questions and investigate and have more of an insight toward it. We may not always know what an artist had in mind when they made an art piece. But that evokes our inner curiosity and insight.

Art can tell stories fictional or true. Art can be practical and useful like flint knives, dishes, and cars. Art can serve useful purposes like the Blackfeet Parfleche rawhide envelop made out of rawhide that was used to carry personal goods in the nomadic Native American society. The dish from East Iran is another useful art piece that was used for day to day living. Both of these art pieces serve as useful objects as well as show the peoples who made them cultures. Art can also have spiritual meanings. The earliest cave paintings and cave carvings were thought of as having spiritual/magical purposes. The arts helped people in the stone-age hunt and gather. Art shows the quest for understanding that human beings have. Art can also be used for worship and ritual. Stonehenge is believed to have been used for various rituals. Many historians believe that Stonehenge was used to show humans their place in the universe. The Chalice made in 1986 made out of pottery could hold concentrated wine for Christian ritual. Art can also be used for personal expression. Rembrandt van Rijn showed his feelings that were directed toward life through his paintings. He had an inner need for self expression. Although not all art is meant to show the artists personality some do. Others provide less information about themselves like the designers of art that is produced cooperatively by many individuals like movies or building designers. All forms of art allow us to express ourselves and our feelings to some degree. Art can serve a social cause. It can show the good and bad events that have happened in the past. Like Francisco Goya’s drawing called The Disasters of War shows his outrage toward the Napoleonic Wars in his country. Art can even show good and bad events that can happen in the future such as Chaz Maviyane-Davies’s poster called Global Warming. Art can also be a visual delight. Art can evoke pleasure, delight, happiness, warm memories, enjoyment, amusement, joy, diversion, and embellishment in our lives. Art can bring beauty into our lives and make us feel good.

In conclusion this article covered the nature of art and about what art is. It talked about how make us feel and how we express ourselves through art. Art can be made with a verity of materials and it can make us feel and be inspired. Art can be in almost any form and you can show your creativity and self expression through it. Art can show out traditions, religions, and cultures to others. Art can describe things without the use of words. Art can also show our past and our future. Art can be very powerful, beautiful, and thought provoking.

-Gutter Chic Inc. 2009

Hello New Blog!

Hello everyone this is a new blog by Gutter Chic of Gutter Chic inc. This blog will discuss briefly on different preiods and styles of art. I will also be posting my own pictures of art work that I have made over that past few years. I hope that you enjoy this blog. Please feel free to comment on the things I write about and the pictures of my art that I post. I am interested in learning more about art and appreciating others art works. Post your own art work or links to it. Thanks. Hope that you enjoy this blog.

Sincerely:

Gutter Chic
Of Gutter Chic Inc.