Schindler's List

Wow. This is a must see movie. If you find yourself on a Friday night with nothing to do go down to your nearest Blockbuster and rent Schindler's List. You may want to buy a box of tissues while your out.

I watched it last night and it really struck me. It is set during World War II. The movie was about the suffering of the Jews and the life of a man who tried to help them. His name was Oscar Schindler. He was a smart, wealthy German businessman. When the movie starts he seems like your average rude and mean German (at the time) who hates Jews. As the movie progresses you see him change into a man who really cares. He ends up saving over a thousand Jews from torturing and death by opening up his own factory. 

I really liked the story line of this movie, but it was also very graphic. It showed every detail of every shot that the Nazis fired. This was very painful to watch but I think that it made an even bigger impact on me. The movie really raised some questions for me too. How could the Germans kill so many people? Were they even thinking? Did they ever stop to think that maybe killing those people might be wrong? There had to be something inside of them that was telling them how wrong it was. What they did was murder, and that is just so wrong. 

I could barely watch some of the killing scenes, but Jews during the time had to watch that every day. Every day they had to watch their family and friends being killed right in front of them. I can't even imagine how it would feel to stand in a line while a man with a gun shot down dozens of people around me. The blood would be one thing, but then to think that you could be next. You could be the one that those horrible men were killing for no reason. 

This movie had such a huge impact on me and I would urge you to watch it. It may not be a happy movie but it really gets you thinking. 

Intimidation factor...

I recently participated in a debate about the atomic bomb and World War II. We argued to wether the US used their actions in Japan to intimidate the USSR for the post-war era. The actions in Japan would be defined as dropping the two atomic bombs and the post-war era would be described as the spread of communism into Europe and the rest of the world. My teams argument was that they did not use the atomic bombs to intimidate Russia. I gave the opening statement and I brought up a couple of good key points against the other argument. 

I started by saying that the US ended the war for one reason, to end the war as quickly as possible. There had already been 2.5 million deaths between the US and Japan alone and the president didn't want any more. The US had two plans: to drop the atomic bomb or a plan of attack called operation downfall. Operation downfall was a military invasion that would have prolonged the war for a long time. It would have cost an estimated million casualties on the US side and tens of millions on the Japanese side. Dropping the atomic bomb may have killed 200,000 but this is no where near the amount that the invasion would have killed. Harry S. Truman, the president of the United States in 1945, even stated why he decided to drop the bombs. He said that it was to bring about a quick resolution of the war by inflicting destruction, and instilling fear of further destruction, that was sufficient to cause Japan to surrender. This clearly has nothing to do with intimidating the USSR.

Another point that I brought up was the fact that the US and the USSR were allies during World War II. They even had an agreement called the Lend-Lease act which was created in 1941 and was still active in 1945 when the bombs were dropped. Through the Lend-Lease program the US sent 11 billion dollars worth of war supplies to Russia. In 1945 Stalin of the USSR said "Lend-Lease is one of Roosevelts most remarkable and vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance." As you can see the two countries were in agreement during this time so we had no reason to need to intimidate the USSR. 

I had one last point that I did not have time to bring up in the opening statement. As I stated before the US had a plan called operation downfall just in case for some reason they could not use the atomic bombs. Why would they even need a back-up plan if their only reason for dropping the bombs was to intimidate Russia? Operation downfall would not have intimidated Russia at all so the US was obviously dropping the bomb to end the war as quickly as possible. 

Doing this debate was very interesting and it made you have to look at both perspectives. In the end both teams had very good arguments and the debate was very heated and exciting.

The next level...

In my last post I talked about the art journal that I've recently been keeping. Well now I'm taking my art to another level. I chose three of my favorite pieces and transfered them to photoshop. I then made them less complex so that I would be able to paint them. After this I picked one that I liked the most and make a painting out of it.

This was actually kind of a challenging process for me. When I was looking through my art, I couldn't really find three pieces of art that I was proud of. I found one that I really liked so I started by scanning that one so that I could work with it on the computer. It was a picture of some balloons that I drew with markers. I ended up transferring it onto a dark blue background and adding stars and a moon so that it looked kind of like the balloons were soaring into space. This idea struck me because I have always wondered where your balloon goes when you let go of it. 

My next idea was kind of harder. When I was looking through my notebook I came across a drawing that I never really finished. The drawing was a locked box in the middle with thought bubbles all around it. I called the piece box of secrets and the thought bubbles on the outside were supposed to contain secrets that people could have. Unfortunately I never got around to putting the representations of secrets in the thought bubble. So I decided to do this because I thought that this might make a good painting. So I did this but when I transferred it onto photoshop, something just wasn't right... Then an idea was given to me. I decided to look up pictures of everything so that it would be more clear to what each "secret" inside the thought bubbles really was. I think this idea worked out pretty well so I decided to use this one as the one that I would paint. I hope the painting turns out good! 

For the last couple of weeks I have been keeping an art journal. Its been a little bit of a challenge for me because I've never really been an artsy person. I wasn't looking forward to the experience of keeping an art journal but it hasn't been too bad. It has helped me be a lot more creative. At the beginning it was hard to think of ideas but as the days went on I was able to come up with some ideas, even if they weren't the best ones. 

I feel like doing this art journal has helped me develop in my artistic ability but thats not the only thing it has done. I feel like I am more appreciative of art. Since it has been hard for me to even think of ideas it really makes me appreciate art and artists around me. Their jobs aren't as easy as you would think. Some people might think that making art is an easy job and that they don't really do anything but it takes a lot of work. Its a real challenge to think of something creative and aesthetically pleasing while at the same time being original so that you aren't copying anyone else's work. 

Another thing that I have gained out of this experience is that art isn't going to be in my future. I like art and all but I don't think I'm going to make a career out of it. I think that its really great that people make a living using art but its just not a passion of mine. I did enjoy drawing in my journal but it took too much thought and I wasn't exactly proud of what I came out with. But at least now I know that its not something I want to pursue! 

Brenda York

I have recently had the chance to interview an artist by the name of Brenda York. She has a very unique style that is a lot like cubism and abstract styles. She mostly paints people but she makes them unique by rearranging the features on their faces. I thought it was amazing that even though the people she paints are abstract she could still make them have a lot of emotion. They all had facial expressions that displayed some sort of emotion and it looked so life like. 

Brenda has been an artist for her whole life. She has been drawing for as long as she can remember and studied art in college. Most of her jobs have been art related and some of these include Graphic Design, jewelry making, children's book illustrations and now painting. 

I got to ask her a wide range of questions from what inspires her to what her her favorite kind of paint is. She is inspired by Picasso, who is also one of her favorite artists. She is also inspired by peoples faces because that is the most common theme in her paintings. She also has one trick that she uses to get started on a painting so that she doesn't get stuck. She starts with her canvas black instead of white because a blank white canvas can be a little bit overwhelming. 

I also talked to her about the kind of paint she uses. She says that she has used almost all different kinds of paints but has decided that she likes oil the best. It dries the slowest and is the most forgiving. If you want to change something on the painting the next day you can because it will probably still be wet. She says that watercolor is the least forgiving kind of paint. 

Another thing I asked her about was how she made a living as an artist. She said that she sells paintings through her website, online galleries, art shows and commission. I found it interesting how many ways that there really are to sell paintings to make a living. 

Overall I really liked interviewing Brenda. She was very open and I learned a lot about her, her art, and making a living as an artist. If you would like to look at some of her art for yourself you can visit her website at www.brendayork.com. 

The Diary of a Young Girl...

The Diary of a Young Girl is a real life memory of what happened in during World War II. It was written by a jewish thirteen year old girl by the name of Anne Frank. She wrote in this diary almost everyday while she was in hiding. I recently have read an excerpt from this diary and what I read was really amazing. 

One thing that she said that really struck me was in the first paragraph of what I read. It may not be very important to the plot but it is very interesting how it all plays out. On June 20th 1942 Anne wrote "It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary... because it seems to me that neither I-nor for that matter anyone else-will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl." This quote seems interesting to me because that is so far from the truth. Not in a million years did Anne think that her diary would be published as a historical book. Millions of people have read it and been deeply touched by its content. She never thought that anyone would read her diary but she was so wrong. 

Another thing that Anne says really struck me because she spoke about something that I had never heard of before. On one page she says “There are a great number of organizations, such as “The Free Netherlands,” which forge identity cards, supply money to people “underground,” find hiding places for people, and work for young men in hiding, it is amazing how much noble, unselfish work these people are doing, risking their own lives to help and save others.” This quote really got me to thinking. I never knew anything about organizations such as these before reading this quote. Why don’t we learn about groups like this when we are learning about the rest of the Holocaust? These people and organizations seem like they would play a big part in the Holocaust, yet all we learn about is Hitler. It would be interesting to learn what kind of impact these people had on the outplay of the war and the Holocaust. 

Art During the Interwar Era

Contrary to what you might think, there was a lot of art during and after World War 1. Some of the art movements include expressionism, cubism, dadaism, precisionism and surrealism. There were a lot of art movements during this time that were lashing out against the war.

One such anti-war art movement was called surrealism. This art movement had very irrational art because the artists believed that the horrors of World War 1 were a result of rational thought. The art was very dream like and was an expression of subconscious mind. One example of a surrealist artist was Salvador Dali. Here is a painting of his called "Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of a New Man." 

Another anti-war movement was called dadaism. This movement expressed its feelings toward anti-war by doing anti-art. The paintings were not aesthetically pleasing and for the most part had no meaning whatsoever. Most of the work was offensive and all of the artists were against World War 1 and its barbarism. One of my favorite dada paintings is called "Les Tablettes" which means the artists palette. It was painted by Marcel Janco in 1918. I found this painting intersting because it actually was the artists palette. After making his masterpiece, Janco decided that he liked the palette better so he used that as his art. For being anti-art, I thought this idea was creative and unique. 

This is just some of the art during the interwar era but there is so much more to learn.

Revision: The Key to Success

Tempera paints and pigments are two things that most people don't usually know a lot about. But thanks to projects at school now I am not one of those people. I've studied all different aspects of tempera paints and pigments from their history to health risks. I'm writing an essay about pigments and tempera paints and I am now on my second draft. Revising this paper has really opened up a lot of new ideas and given me better ones. The feedback I have gotten has helped the process as well. 

When writing an essay, I believe that the most important part is the revision process. The first step of this would be to get feedback. Usually getting feedback from multiple people is even better. After getting their feedback, you take it into consideration when reading over your essay again. In the places that they ask content questions you can answer these by looking for more resources. In a lot of cases, like mine, you will find more websites that are even more helpful than the last. As far as pigments and tempera paints, writing the actual essay was very challenging. Like I mentioned in previous blogs, I couldn't seem to find any website that helped me or even had any valuable information at all. Heres one that I found in my second process of revising... 

http://www.sinopia.com/paint.html

This website helped me answer questions that people had about my paper such as: What is a binder? What are different kinds of binders? And what is the difference between oil and tempera binders? This was the only website that told me anything about binders, but it also explained all aspects of what paint is. If you have any questions about paint in general, this website should be very helpful. I'll end with a little picture that has come up in almost every pigment search that I've made...

Until next time!

Poetry Interpretation...

Interpreting a poem into a something else is a lot harder than it seems. I wrote a poem about friendship that I was required to transform into something different like a movie, photo series, digital image, painting or something similar to that. This seems like a simple enough task but it is a lot harder than it seems to transform words into a visual. Maybe it was the poem I picked but it was actually really hard to do. I did a photo series and all week I walked around my neighborhood to take pictures that reminded me of friendship. The photo series ended up being more about friendship in general but my poem was about a specific friendship between my friend and I. 

I started out by taking pictures throughout my neighborhood of things that I think represented friendship. I had a plan to start out by taking pictures that were exactly like the poem. As I started taking the pictures I realized this was going to be hard and it wouldn't be very aesthetically pleasing. So I decided to take pictures that illustrate friendship in general with a little emphasis on my friend and I. Something I found interesting was the interesting things around my neighborhood that were in pairs. For example, something that I thought illustrated friendship was a specific tree i found on my street. It was a tree that came out of the same roots but there were two tree trunks. I also photographed a lot of flowers in pairs because I thought these really captured friendship. They are beautiful, they grow from the same roots, and they are always together. 

Even though I was able to find these portrayals of friendship it was really hard to get just the right ones. I couldn't just do flowers, I had to find something else. So I also went through past pictures that I have taken. One that I found that I really liked was a picture of two shadows. It was of me and my friend. 

So as a reflection on this project, I would like to say that it was harder than I expected it would be. I tried to use all the resources that I could and in the end I was able to get it done. I was pretty happy with my final product but it didn't turn out how I had first expected.

Claude Monet... The first draft

In reviewing the art of Claude Monet I have, of course, learned a lot about his paitings and his life. I've been able to look deeply into why someone would like his art and why someone might not like it. I looked at both sides of the arguement. I learned about his life and process of becoming an artist.

Besides all of this, the part I like the best were the little interesting facts that I learned about him. Did you know that he started at age fourteen by drawing caricatures? Did you know that he used to charge for his portraits when he was fourteen? He became popular throughout his whole town because of his art. Did you know that during his caricature years he thought of landscape scenes as "revolting"? He hated them and didn't consider them art at all. Of course once he opened up his mind enough, he learned to love them and that is what he is really popular for now.

I also thought it was amazing that his art basically started impressionism. He was considered the first Impressionist. Do you know what an amazing accomplishment it is to have started your own genre of art? Thats pretty amazing.

I used to think of Monet as an artist that painted pretty water lilies. But now I know that he is so much more than that. First of all he does more then just water lilies. Second of all his shading and detail are just amazing and intricate. He is so much different then any other artist.

Perspectives...

Monet's paintings all depend on your perspective. One could say his paintings are unrealistic and sloppy. Of course one could also say they are beautiful and that the portray the real beauty in a landscape. These perspectives have played an important part in my writing of the reviews of Monet art. Writing these reviews is all about your perspective on art.

The process of reviewing Monet's art has really opened my eyes to different point of views in art. Not only with Monet but with all artists. Depending on the style you like a piece of art can be beautiful or meaningless. I never thought of Monet as a controversial artist but when you think about it he probably was during his time. Although now, most people think that Monet is a talented artist that paints beautifully, when he was first starting out I'm sure there were some negative critics. Back then people were not used to the kind of art that he paints. His paintings don't exactly portray exactly what you see when you are looking at a landscape. Most people realize this and think his art is stunning and intricate. Other people might think that its unrealistic and they might not like the change. Just something is different doesn't always make it bad but that all depends on your perspective...

Researching Monet has opened my eyes to new points of view. I hope this blog has helped you understand what I have just realized.

The Rest of Tempera Paints and Pigments...

So this next blog is related to my last blog that was about tempera paints... today (well actually yesterday but I'm just getting around to blogging about it) I finished up my rough draft for Anne's chemistry class. Like I mentioned before I decided to do two separate papers, one about pigment and one about tempera paints. The pigments proved to be a little bit easier to research on, but not much easier. Here are a list of websites that were more helpful...

http://painting.about.com/od/artglossaryp/g/defpigment.htm

http://www.nycosh.org/workplace_hazards/Chemical/RI_LeadpaintLawsuit.pdfhttp://www.pictureline.com/newsletter/article.php?id=322

http://webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/index.html

The first website is just a definition of pigment to get me started. 

The second one was actually very helpful. For each paper we needed to find a controversy relating to either tempera paint or pigment. This has been the hardest part because it was is very hard to find anything about paint, let alone a fight people are having about it. So this website tells about a lawsuit happening in Rhode Island about pigment. It is about lead poisoning that has been happening to children from their paints. The only question I had was what was what different brands were the ones with lead in them? 

The third one was kind of irrelevant but I thought it was interesting. I didn't use much of the information on it, but it was about pigment vs. dye. 

The last website listed was the most helpful. It was called Pigments through the Ages and it was very helpful with the history aspect of the paper.

All in all writing this paper was very difficult. The first hard part was actually finding useful information. After you found the good websites you had to find what was on the rubric. Then you had to put that all on paper in an informative and entertaining way. 

The Tricky World of Tempera Paints...

Today I started researching for the chemistry portion of the (Art)iFacts project. We have to write a report on tempera paint and pigment. I have chosen to do two seperate one page papers on each of the subjects. Today I started researching on tempera paints, which was a very hard subject to find information on!

I did find a couple websites that were helpful but nothing really amazing. I found one website on the history of tempera paints which was my resource for the history aspect of the paper. It gave me useful information about the history of tempera paints as well as when oil paints began to take the place of tempera paints. It was helpful but could have been a bit more clear... I wasn't exactly sure the approximate year that people began using tempera paints. (http://www.vanaken.com/history.htm)

Another website that turned out to be pretty helpful was the Society of Tempera Painters. It was especially helpful on information about the pigments and how toxic they were. This website will be helpful when writing my paper on pigments as well. I did have a few question such as... What was their view on oil paints? Was there a reason they chose to join a Society of Tempera Painters? Or was there a reason that they preffered tempera paints? Unfortunately, there was nothing on their webiste that answered these questions so I was not able to get them answered. I was hoping to get their opinion on the differences between oil paints and tempera paints. I emailed them on the email that was listed on the website but I doubt that I will get a message back. Oh well... (http://www.eggtempera.com/index.html)

I spent a lot of time researching today, but I can't say that I really got much done. So far this has been a very hard topic to research. I did not get the whole tempera paper done but am very close. I seem to be having trouble finding any misconceptions about tempera paints... I'll have to keep looking and hopefully I can find something that will help me next time I research. Bye for now.

The Beginning of Claude Monet...

Today I started research on Claude Monet. Monet is the artist that I chose to study for a part of the humanities requirement. We are required to write two reviews on an artist who was active between 1800 and 1960. One of the reviews is a positive one and the other is a negative one. So I decided to start doing a little bit of research on Monet's background to begin with.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/

By just looking at the first paragraph of this website I learned something very interesting. Apparently, Monet was the person that started Impressionism. He was considered the first Impressionist. I thought this was very intriguing because Impressionism is such an important form of art. The name Impressionism came from his own painting entitled Impression: Sunrise. One thing I was wondering was since he initiated this kind of art, does this mean that the year he painted that painting was the first year of the Impressionist movement? That would be pretty amazing for Monet to have really started his own kind of art... I was also wondering if there was anybody else involved because in some cases there were many people that started a new trend but only one person gets credit. This website was also helpful because it gave information on his life as well as examples of paintings throughout his career as a painter.

http://giverny.org/monet/biograph/

This website was helpful because it gave a timeline of the important dates in his life. It was very straightforward and factual. It wasn't too detailed but it gave me an overview of his life. Now I have a background on him and will be able to make my reviews interesting and informative.

First Blog...

Welcome to my new blog! We have started a new project and so it seemed necessary to start on a fresh blog. Our current project is one focusing mainly on art and all of its aspects. In chemistry we are focusing on paint and the chemistry related to it. In humanities we are studying the history of art, but will also be making some art of our own. Now that you have a little intro I'll get you caught up on one of the things I've been working on... 

I've been sick pretty much all week so that's why I'm just starting to blog. The first thing I did do this week was have my meeting with Spencer about phase 2 of the Poetry project. I am doing phase 2 on my non-literary poem, which was an aim conversation between two close friends. I chose to do a photo series because I think this will clearly illustrate the poem in a different way. My next blogs will be about my research on other components of this project...