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!

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.

Treaty Signing at Medicine Creek Lodge

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

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                  

Faith Ringgold

     In 1930, in Harlem, New York, an emerging new artist was born, Faith Ringgold. Ringgold is an African American best known for her painted quilt stories. Influenced by every day life around her and the history of quilting, she began her career as an artist in the late 1950's and 1960's.  (1)
     "Being an artist who has devoted much of my creative energy to the cause of equal understanding among the races, I am particularly interested in what a person would feel, think and do if their racial identity was suddenly changed." (2)
     Many of Ringgolds' artworks focus on race and how the world views people. In her painting done in 1964, God Bless America, Ringgold describes the piece in reference to the Civil Rights movement. A black woman is a prisoner, being denied the right to vote.       (3)
     In the years following, Ringgold decided to start writing children's stories, after her mother past away. Ringgolds' main goal in her books is to teach children to "take flight" and go after their own dreams, much like her mother taught her. (4)


References/Pictures:
(1) nwhp.org

(2) http://www.faithringgold.com/racialquestions/

(3) http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.faithringgold.com/ringgold/images/frg0067d.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.faithringgold.com/ringgold/d67.htm&h=352&w=231&sz=40&tbnid=XWuj70446x1aoM:&tbnh=277&tbnw=182&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfaith%2Bringgold%2Bgod%2Bbless%2Bamerica&zoom=1&q=faith+ringgold+god+bless+america&hl=en&usg=__S0TXw-C_eSpeTXKm-dDtCKcI1XU=&sa=X&ei=dsufTKLzGZTksQPa9OX3BA&sqi=2&ved=0CBgQ9QEwAA

(4) http://www.ndoylefineart.com/ringgold.html

Consuming Culture

Walking through the Chester Arnold exhibit “Between Heaven and Earth” shown at the Nevada Museum of Art, the work of art that stood out to me the most was a piece titled The Road to Paradise. The main visual image that stands out in the piece is the water spurting rapidly out from the broken pipe in the ground. Behind the splashing water is a piano with an open top, a few rusted keys, and a blue binder sitting atop of it all. Along the right side of the piece is a sidewalk with many cracks. An old shoe, cigarettes, as well as a paint can and brush rest on top of the sidewalk. A roll of grass turf, a little green frog, as well as unopened letters from a mailbox are scattered amongst the dirt on the left side of the artwork.

I was drawn to this artwork for all of the different elements in it. You cannot walk by and notice everything in a quick glance, a long hard study of this piece will eventually tell you everything. With a ladder, mailbox, briefcase, even a broken down car in the background, this work of art is representing what we, as Americans, consume in everyday life. The items we consume are often not thought a lot about and thrown away without hesitation and build up in our cities streets and neighborhoods as litter. As consumers we always want more and more and are rarely satisfied. Immediate gratification is what most Americans want. The culture we live in today is very contemporary. Art is displayed all over, we see it everywhere; as billboards, TV commercials, the latest fashion trends and so on. Culture changes over time, every minute of every day. Styles change, and new advanced technology and products come and go without warning, and we must have them now!

This artwork resembles a broken down suburb. Most people live in large cities and towns, verses destroyed neighborhoods with abandoned houses as resembled in this artwork. The feeling of claustrophobia overwhelms me when looking at this piece for all of the clutter and garbage that has been thrown into a once beautiful landscape. Sadness is also an emotion I feel to see the frog sitting in dirt looking into the sewer water, a place I’m sure he used to feel at home, now taken over by the cruelty of inconsiderate people. To get to paradise, as hinted in the title, The Road to Paradise, we must change how we act today. Making changes is hard but necessary at times. You cannot simply over step through waste and junk to a plentiful area without the thought of needing to lend a helping hand. Hoping to bring a new persepctive to people about what we are really doing to our world, Chester Arnold shows us his take on our consumerist society.

This piece speaks words to those who will take the time to listen and reflect...