Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Digital Art Walk: Rising Stars Bring Life “To Life”

Art Brushes
Art can be much more than merely "art for arts sake," especially in an era as provocative as this one. While it may be the singularly most beautiful thread of creation that connects humanity art can also be a lot of things: a voice, an experiment or a love song to life.

Despite the masses flocking toward whatever recent clich Thomas Kincaid just barfed out for some quick cash the real art world is still alive and as evocative as ever. As much as we'd like, most of us cant afford to tour the world in search of the decades most brilliant and authentic (read: non-sellout) artists, but that probably wont happen for most of us. Luckily, a few clicks of a mouse can introduce you to some of the most evocative, astounding artists to enter the scene in the twenty-teens.

Katie Daniels

Daniels has been in the field for less than 10 years, yet she has already won the Claire Weiss Emerging Artist Award, which will take her delicate patterns and ornamentally charming pieces into the real world with tessellated plastic patterns breathing new life into fences and parks in the New York area.
Katies sculptures and installations might be as breathtaking as they are alluring. She winds beads, pearls and wires up into a twisted, floral garden of thoughts and colors. An exquisitely controlled chaos calls upon the beauty of nature and a hint of fantasy as inspiration.

Stephen Dent

Stephen Dents art peddles the ordinary as something more, not necessarily grand and under appreciatedbut worth examining. His cardboard oil installments are both plain and stunning; as he explains on his site that he wants us to focus on cardboard more than we normally would, and the role it plays in our life, Stephen Dent mentions: The first is that as we see the thing we are paying attention to in more detail the second is that we begin seeing it in places that we had not noticed it before.

Dents other work is one part social commentary, one part relevancy and two parts whimsy. Pieces like I Like Airplanes uses almost violent strokes to compose a stunning piece that would look just as at-home in a museum as it would in a studio apartment in Greenwich.

Ryan Peter Miller

Its tempting to say Ryan Peter Millers message is only trumped by his exquisite talent as an artist ... but it would be a lie, because his pieces are equal in societal relevance and compelling beauty. Millers use of paint transcends paint itself, as he treats the paint like its his own personal element forged solely for the purpose of letting him breathe new life into the art world.

Miller takes us from the age dinosaurs in his series Excavation, to the living rooms of famous porn stars in Mark Making, and manages to break thought provoking ground while doing so. His method of layering paint and letting it harden, then crafting it into a mlange of objects and stories is unique enough to poise him as one of the great artists of the 21st century.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Kernel's Library: The Happy Prince and Other Stories

The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde Book 00066: The Happy Prince and Other Tales
by Oscar Wilde


Title:
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales or The Happy Prince and Other Stories

First Publication:
- 1888


Trivia:
- As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men.
- In 1878, his poem Ravenna won the Newdigate Prize. Shortly after leaving university his first volume of poetry was published.
- Wilde wrote fairy stories for his two sons. These were later published as The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
- An animated version of The happy Prince was produced in 1974, starring Glynis Johns as the swallow and Christopher Plummer as the Prince.




If you are in for some great stories then don't hesitate to read Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Stories. The book is filled with wondrous tales of love, magic, and friendship... This simply fantastical work creates a surreal effect to the minds of its readers. Could a statue have a life of its own and experience human emotion like sorrow and happiness? Where do the term "gentle giant" originated? What if you have a nightingale that fulfills each of your wishes? If you wondered of these same things, take a copy of this book and feel free to investigate the answers....


The book includes the following stories:

The Happy Prince
The Nightingale and the Rose
The Selfish Giant
The Devoted Friend
The Remarkable Rocket

Here is a brief description of one of the stories:

The Happy Prince

The protagonist of the story is a gilt and bejewelled statue of a prince, who stands on a tall column overlooking a city. A swallow, who has delayed his migration to Egypt for the love of a reed, rests on the statue's plinth; the Prince is crying at the injustices he can now observe, having been isolated from the realities of his society while he was alive. The Prince asks the swallow to remove the ruby that adorns his sword, and give it to a poor seamstress with a sick child; the swallow does so. The swallow stays with the Prince over the ensuing weeks, distributing the jewels and gold from the Prince to the poor of the city. When the Prince is completely denuded of gold, the swallow realizes he is dying from cold; the Prince asks the swallow to kiss him on the lips. The swallow dies, and the Prince's lead heart breaks. The next day, the Mayor of the city observes the state of the statue, and orders it to be removed and melted down. The Prince's heart does not melt in the furnace, and it is discarded on to the same dust-heap where the swallow's body is lying:

"Bring me the two most precious things in the city," said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

"You have rightly chosen," said God, "for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me."

Grade: A

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Adele To Perform Academy Nominated James Bond's Skyfall At The 85th Academy Awards

Adele

Come February 24,2013 and we will again witness one of the prestigious events in movie-making, the 85th Academy Awards, which will be held at the Dolby Theatre in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California. Honoring year 2012's movie achievements, the event will be hosted by Seth MacFarlane for the first time and is said to pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film series.

How timely it is, of course, since Skyfall, the song performed by Adele, is nominated in the Original Song category, the first Bond theme song to be nominated after over three decades, the last of which was in 1981 with For Your Eyes Only performed by Sheena Easton and featured in the Bond movie of the same title, starring Roger Moore as "Bond, James Bond."


To put a hype to the James Bond tribute, Adele will perform the Academy nominated Skyfall, written by Adele and Paul Epworth. Adele has released an official statement on her website:

"We are delighted to confirm that Adele will perform her Oscar-nominated song Skyfall at the 85th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on 24 February.

"Adele will perform Skyfall live for the first time anywhere during her exclusive Oscar show performance. It will also be Adele’s first public performance since the Grammys last year."

Skyfall had also been nominated and won the Best Original Song at the 70th Annual Golden Globes Awards. It was also nominated for Best British Single at the 2013 Brit Awards to be held on February 20, 2013.

This will probably one of Adele's biggest appearance after she gave birth of her first child on October 19, 2012!