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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Swimming Bench

Yeates-Swimming Bench
In 2002, Marcella and Megan Yeates created this park bench located in Valleywood Park in Northwest Reno. The bench is titled Swimming Bench. It is in the shape of a giant fish.
It cost a total of $16,500 and is made up of thousands of mosaic tiles. Its colors include: orange, yellow, green, blue, white and browns.
A perfect place for adults to sit and watch their children play in the park.
I live very close to this park and always take the kids I babysit down to play on the jungle gym while I do indeed sit on this giant fish!
Looking quickly at this bench you see the obvious fish like structure of it, when looking deeper at it you can see all of the fine details that was put into it. Every individual ceramic tile was placed exactly where it should be. I could not imagine making a piece of artwork this big, and having the patience to do it. I respect these artists very much!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Drift Pictures

While wandering downtown I began to notice lots of fences and railings. It made me think of how enclosed and limited we really are. The cities view may be that of helping people however, by blocking off potentially dangerous areas that we should not explore for our safety. Notice that there are many different styles of fences: steel, wood, plastic, curved, straight, rusted, shiny, noticably new and old ones too.













Monday, October 4, 2010

Treaty Signing at Medicine Creek Lodge


John Taylor’s painting, Treaty Signing at Medicine Creek Lodge, is representational art. It is far more realistic looking and nicely painted to look like Native Americans at a council meeting with whites, versus Howling Wolf’s drawing. Wolf’s drawing is abstract due to the bird’s eye view nature of it; you almost have to tilt your head to see the whole image correctly. Both pieces are about the peace treaty signing, however, Taylor’s painting is more organized and orderly, much like a formal meeting. Wolf’s drawing is much more childish in a way with its bright colors and immature objects. The landscape in John Taylor’s piece shows great detail in the leaves of the trees, grass and logs that people sit upon, where as Howling Wolf’s piece shows trees that look like Q-Tips and instead of sitting in grass the people look to be floating in the white background. Taylor seems to suggest that he is more focused on the treaty signing itself but Wolf is more focused on the whole issue and included other aspects such as the river. Being from different cultures may have impacted their view on the situation. Wolf’s artwork is to the point, you can easily tell the differences from men and women and the Native Americans versus the white people. Taylor’s artwork has more gray areas with the people being blended and harder to tell apart. The role of women was much more evident in Wolf’s piece. Women seemed to have a belonging role in society but in Taylor’s painting they seemed to not have a big role in dealing with government issues.

                 
http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/mls/syllabi/702/702-1c.cfm