Prismatic Perceptions

My friends!! Where the hell have I been all week? I know that pressing question has been nagging you for days, and that you’ve lost tons of sleep over it. Okay, maybe not. DOH! Actually I’m the one who hasn’t been able to sleep. Clearly I have a disorder, and I believe the clinical name for my condition is “lovelornitis”. But just to be sure, I’ll check with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and get back to you

Also, we’ve had some hot flippin’ weather the past few days. As usual I worry about my cats who live outside and have to endure the scorching temperatures. We know of course that cats survive just about everything and worrying about them is a needless waste of time. Yet I do it anyway.

Now I bring the art, baby! I should say Francisco Malonzo is bringing the art. The last four Saturdays I’ve been posing for Dan Gheno‘s painting class at the National Academy. Francisco is a student of Dan’s and has painted me many times. He’s also a great guy. For the morning session I posed clothed, at Dan’s request, in a red tank top and grey cargo pants. Francisco created this dazzling piece and was kind enough to let me photograph it for the blog:

During the breaks, as I admired Francisco’s painterly style, he told me of some contemporary artists who inspire him a great deal. One is Alex Kanevsky, another is Mark Horst, and the third one is Paul Wright. I’m very glad Francisco introduced me to these three compelling artists.

Again by Francisco, my portrait which he completed today in one session:

You can see much more of Francisco’s work on his Flickr page and read his marvelous art and classical music commentaries on his blog Raeburn’s Ramblings.

Enjoy what’s left of the weekend everybody. I’ll see you all very soon. In the meantime, be happy, love life, and keep cool!

Painting Mozart

Helloooo friends! Greetings from a dreary, rainy, thundery NYC. I don’t know if “thundery” is a word, but it should be. I was awakened from sleep this morning by some ominous rumbling and cracking. Kinda scary! Part of me relates to dogs who crawl into closets or under beds when they hear thunder

It may be a stormy Monday, but it’s still Music Monday here on Museworthy. I found a wonderful video to share. It was uploaded on YouTube by Paul Barton, a pianist, artist, and animal lover living in Thailand.  He juxtaposed himself playing Mozart’s Sonata in C with him painting a large oil portrait of old Wolfgang. It’s really cool to watch. I’ve embedded the video here, but you might want to watch it on the YouTube page and click on the “Show More” button. There, Paul generously provides a lot of information about his process and inspiration, which further enhances the enjoyment of this delightful video.

Welcome Summer

Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,-
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer’s smile,-
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?

– Summer Song, William Carlos Williams

Yesterday was the Summer Solstice. The dog days – the dreaming days – are here. In the next few weeks we will the crack open new watercolor sets, open new books, join in games with children, kick off our shoes at every opportunity, pen little stories, ride our bikes to the water’s edge, toss frisbees and softballs, spray hoses, and laze under the big yellow ochre ball of the sun

Summer Night, Riverside Drive, George Wesley Bellows, 1909:

Linocuts by Lill

This week’s Music Monday is a special treat for me, although I’m sure many of you artists, creatives, and Museworthy darlings will appreciate it too. As you may know, my recent experiences in printmaking class have introduced me to the joys of making linocuts and woodcuts – relief printing techniques. As much as I enjoyed learning intaglio, relief really won me over. Imagine my delight – excitement actually – when I stumbled upon an image for Music Monday that is the work of a tremendous printmaker I never knew of until now. She is Swiss-born Lill Tschudi, and if she were still alive I’d write her a fawning fan letter. Tschudi worked primarily in lino, short for linoleum, which is a material commonly used for floor covering, made of linseed oil and cork. In printmaking it is carved into fairly easily with cutting tools. For color prints Lill Tschudi used multiple blocks, inking each one with a different color and printing on top of each other to achieve the desired effect. Very labor-intensive process.

Here are two music themed linocuts by Lill Tschudi:

The Cornelia Siegel FIne Art Gallery is the exclusive representative for Lill Tschudi’s prints. Visit their site for more images by this gifted linocutter. And check out this beauty from the Met Museum collection. As for me, I’m on my own now since class has ended and I’m without the guidance and instruction of my wonderful teacher Lisa Mackie. But it’s all good. I’ll buy a set of carving tools and some lino blocks from the art supply store and just let it rip and see what happens! My composition skills could use some help. But if I can create one decent, artistic print within a year I’ll be happy

The Photographic Nude

I had the great pleasure of hanging out with a fellow blogger yesterday. Dave Levingston, photographer of Exposed for the Shadows, was in town visiting. He and I were lucky to find a few mutually convenient hours to meet at the Met on a positively gorgeous New York afternoon. Dave was most interested to see the “Naked before the Camera” exhibition and I was delighted to see it with him. The show explores the history of photographic nudes, from the earliest examples of the 1800s to the present.

I’ve learned that it’s advantageous to see a photography exhibit with a photographer. They share with you their passion and enthusiasm, and provide opinions and insights that not even the informative wall texts can offer. Dave was no exception. The man knows his stuff.

Because all the photographs belonged to the Met’s own collection we were allowed to take pictures, which I did. But as I prepared this blog post I found that the images on the exhibition page were really amazing. So the choice was between my crappy pics with glares and glass reflections all over the place, or the superb resolutions on the museum site. Kind of a no brainer. I’ve chosen just a few which I admired for various reasons, but do visit the selected works as there is much more to see.

[Seated Female Nude]  Eugene Durieu

Albumen silver print from glass negative, 1853-54

[Two Standing Female Nudes]  Felix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin

Daguerreotype, ca. 1850

[Thomas Eakins and John Laurie Wallace on a Beach]  Thomas Eakins

Platinum print, ca. 1883

Nude No. 57,  Irving Penn

Gelatin silver print, 1949-50

Mambo!

So the Tony Awards took place last night. Did anyone watch? I didn’t. Well that’s not really true. I watched a little, but I wasn’t paying much attention. But congratulations to all the winners, which brings us to our Music Monday post. It’s this practice of having awards shows and declaring “winners”, the winners presumably being the best of that year’s lot. Having said that, I present to you this implausible scenario: book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, direction and choreography by Jerome Robbins. The year was 1958, and the show was “West Side Story”, and it did not – I repeat, DID NOT – win the Tony Award for Best Musical. It lost to  . . . “The Music Man”

A modern re-telling of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”,  the show is an astonishing masterpiece of American musical theater. The characters Tony and Maria fill the roles of the star-crossed lovers, and rival New York City street gangs the Jets and the Sharks are the urban incarnations of the Montagues and the Capulets. Although none of the original Broadway cast members appeared in the 1961 film version of “West Side Story”, the movie adaptation was equally fabulous. It won the Oscar for Best Picture that year, which I suppose makes amends for the preposterous Tony loss three years earlier.

Here is a clip of the famous Mambo dance scene from the film. That’s the monumentally talented Rita Moreno in the pink dress in a dazzling performance in the role of Anita. I wanted to be Rita Moreno when I was girl. Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer play Maria and Tony. But the real “stars” of this scene are the music and dance. The actual mambo begins at 2:10 and the entire cast thrills with its movements and enthusiasm. I also remember that my father was in awe of the trumpet solo which starts at 4:12. Only trumpet players like Dad could understand how difficult that part is to play. Most exciting solos are. For Music Monday this is “West Side Story”:

The Days Ahead

Hey babes. Wazzup? Hope you all had a good week. Mine was busy, and now I’m on the verge of entering the summer slowdown. I have modeling jobs booked on my summer schedule, but with a lot more free days than I’ve had the past several months. It’s all good. No complaints. It’s the nature of the business. Maybe I can finally get to some serious garden work, long bike rides, and creative endeavors of my own. Speaking of creative endeavors, I owe you all some samples of my printmaking. Next week is our last class. I can’t believe how it flew by! I am most definitely going to continue my printmaking practice, especially linocuts. I have fallen in love with linocuts.

I’m also exploring the possibility of enrolling in a Classics program for the fall, although I must admit that the idea of going through the whole admissions process is a turn off. I’ve already been through all that for undergraduate and grad school. It’s a hassle. So maybe I’ll just do non-matriculating, we’ll see.

So what else can I share with you? The annual summer family vacation has been planned. This year we’re heading up to Martha’s Vineyard in late August. Soo excited for that! I also have some writing pieces I’ve been trying to work on. With my lighter modeling schedule coming up I’ll be able to dig into those and finally complete the unfinished drafts I have saved in my laptop. And, of course, more blog posts

I’m off to bed now. I have a full Saturday of modeling at the National Academy. Here’s a watercolor of me by my friend Jordan Mejias, created a few months ago at Spring Studio. I’m lying down on the job, as we art models sometimes tend to do

Fly on Little Wing

When the entertainment media started reporting that a Jimi Hendrix biopic was in the works, I got super excited. I’m a huge fan of Hendrix. I’m also a fan of the biopic genre of film. This Andre Benjamin guy (stage name “Andre 3000″) from the hip-hop group OutKast, has been cast as Jimi. I don’t know much about Andre, but from what I’ve read he has great passion for the role and is very dedicated to the project. But now the film has hit a significant speed bump. It seems that the Hendrix Estate is refusing to support the film and will not grant licensing rights for use of Hendrix’s recordings. In other words, the film will have no authentic Hendrix music – not his voice, not his guitar. The filmmakers will have to rely on covers. For an artist as original and distinctive as Jimi Hendrix, that could affect the quality of the film. I mean, who is going to replicate the guitar parts? Can they hire Jimmy Page to do it? And any song written by Hendrix himself cannot be used, cover or not. That means, for example, no Voodoo Child, and no Purple Haze. Pretty disappointing.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. If the Hendrix Estate feels they have been denied a voice in the film’s production, then I suppose that’s a legitimate objection. On the other hand, the Hendrix Estate has a well-known history of being difficult to deal with. But unless the film’s producers are planning a defamatory portrayal of Hendrix, which they’re not, I don’t see what the problem could be. Oh well. We’ll see what happens.

For Music Monday, here is one of my favorite Hendrix recordings. This is Little Wing . . . “butterflies and zebras and moonbeams . . .”

No-han Santana!

If you haven’t been a loyal, long-suffering Met fan your entire life, as I have been, you probably can’t fully appreciate what took place at CitiField last night. Finally – finally - after 50 years, a NY Mets pitcher threw a no-hitter. The first no-hitter in franchise history. That impressive baseball achievement has been so elusive for so long, Met fans have wondered if it would ever happen. But now it has, thanks to Venezuelan-born left hander Johan Santana. With a little defensive help from his teammates, namely outfielder Mike Baxter, Santana delivered a great historic moment for us Met fans. What makes it even sweeter is that he did it against the reigning World Series champs the St. Louis Cardinals. And yes, we fans will be milking this and celebrating this for days!

And if anyone tries to rain on our parade by pointing out the questionable foul ball call by the third base umpire, and carp about human error unfairly affecting outcomes, I have just one thing to say to you:  tell it to the Yankees —> Derek Jeter “Home Run”, 1996 ALCS