5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

Getting Back to the Spirit of Artists in Paris
Forget about exhibitions and juries, try these five ways to grow as an artist
From Jerry Fresia, for About.com

"I... must stick to my principles, our principles, which were, no jury, no medals, no awards.... Liberty is the first good in this world and to escape the tyranny of a jury is worth fighting for, surely no profession is so enslaved as ours." Mary Cassatt

"Think less of the success of the by-product and you will have more success with it. Keep living." Robert Henri

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal.

2. The painting process is always a beginning.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are.

John Langdon: Ambigrams, Logos, Word Art

Wordsmith

A great Wordsmith ambigram designed by John Langdon.

“Ambigrams are the hottest trend in typography since Helvetica.” Wired Magazine 4.20.09

A Clever Collection of 40+ Inspiring Ambigrams

Sep 17th in Inspiration by Sonali Vora

An ambigram as defined by Wikipedia, "is a typographical design or artform that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation." To simply put, an ambigram is a typographical creation where the word reads the same when upside down, or flips to create a whole new word. Ambigrams are often very sophisticated and very imaginative typographical style of visual design.

So let's take a look at some delightful graphic logotypes that read the same when they are reversed or flipped upside-down.

Ambigram Artist and Drexel's John Langdon Behind Symbols Appearing in Angels & Demons
May 04, 2009

Philadelphia
All those symbols flashing in Web site promos and posters promoting Ron Howard’s new film “Angels & Demons,” based on the novel by Dan Brown, were created by a professor of typography at Drexel University. John Langdon, who, not by coincidence, shares the same last name as the film’s protagonist played by Tom Hanks, has been creating ambigrams — words that can be read from left to right, upside down or from multiple viewpoints — since the 1970s. The follow up to the international blockbuster “The DaVinci Code” features Langdon’s ambigrams, which were first seen by the public in Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons, published in 2000. Read more...

The Style & Design 100

The Design 100 by TIME

Good design is everywhere these days. Great design—the objects, places and ideas that fuse functionality and aesthetics and then push the boundaries a step further to capture the imagination—is more elusive. Take a look at the standouts.


designed by British design firm Pearlfisher

African and Oceanic Art From the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting

ART REVIEW | 'AFRICAN AND OCEANIC ART FROM THE BARBIER-MUELLER MUSEUM, GENEVA'

Putting ‘Primitive’ to Rest

By HOLLAND COTTER

Published: June 5, 2009

This show, an unabashed masterpiece display, is a gold mine of historical data and a connoisseur’s delight.

Cuba Obscura - Pinhole Photographs

These are a collection of Pinhole Photographs taken in Cuba during December 2006 and January 2007 by Brian Barry. They were printed as Photo Intaglio etchings between September 2007 and January 2008 in Cork Printmakers.
Pinhole photography (or Camera Obscura) is photography stripped back to its rudimentary beginnings. Pinhole Camera consists solely of a light-tight box with a tiny pinhole at the front which acts as a lens, thus dispensing with roughly 150 years of innovation and technological advancement. Read more...

New Acropolis Museum, Athens

Opening Ceremony Video Projections directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari
"Reflections" -- Large-scale site-specific video projections accompanying the opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, on June 19-23, 2009.

Conceived and directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari. Animations by: antidot design studio, HAOS Film, Nomint motion design, and Oval Image. Music by Stavros Gasparatos.

Greece: Parthenon (Room 18)

Playwright, author and British Museum trustee, Bonnie Greer celebrates the enduring beauty and humanity of the Parthenon Sculptures
447 – 432 BC

The Parthenon was built as a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena. It was the centrepiece of an ambitious building programme on the Acropolis of Athens. The temple’s great size and lavish use of white marble was intended to show off the city’s power and wealth at the height of its empire.