"Heaven" - Closing Scene

I'll keep with the film theme today, and present to you a very lo-fi recording of my favorite scene in the movie, "Heaven" by Tom Tykwer. This scene mirrors the beginning of the movie in which Giovanni Ribisi's character is flying a helicopter simulator and starts going straight up rather than across the terrain, his instructor says, "Control your height! Easy! You can´t fly like this in real life," to which he replies, "How high can I fly then?"

(forgive the low-quality, the scene is still powerful despite it)



This closing scene was the inspiration for a piece I did a few years ago on paper:


Nathan Abels, "Weight of Air", Acrylic on Paper, 22x30"

Found

Here's the enthusiastically scribbled inside cover of a vintage grammar school book I found years ago. I think Cy Twombly would be a fan of the "Arf Arf Boys."

Cy Twombly
Apollo, 1975
Oil stick and graphite on paper
59 1/16 x 53 15/16 in (150 x 134 cm)
Photo from the Gagosian Gallery

Stills from "All the Real Girls"

I have been thinking about film a lot more lately because I want my upcoming show, "A Blur Defines It" to have cinematic feel to it. David Gordon Green's movie from 2003 called "All the Real Girls" is perfect inspiration. It's a quiet movie soaked in gorgeous late evening golden-hour light. Here are several screen captures from one of my favorite scenes in the movie:

Watch the first three minutes of this clip:

Painting a Rich Black Color According to Me

I am aware that not everyone reading this may be a painter, so I thought it may be interesting for some of the non-painters to see how I get a rich black color for my night time paintings. I'm still working out a formula, and it varies slightly each time. That said, for this corn field painting I used a mixture of Golden Van Dyke Brown, Liquitex Transparent Raw Umber, Golden Raw Umber (These three colors are all real dark, rich browns), with Payne's Gray (a near-black Blue hue). This gave me a semi-transparent dark, warm black. While the paint is still wet (not much time for acrylics - on a thin coat it is five minutes tops), I could wipe out some of the highlights. This mixture of paint leaves a nice gold-brown/black stain when it is wiped out. After this is dry, as stated below, I will be putting a transparent glaze of Payne's Gray with a little Raw Umber over the entire surface - again wiping out the highlights. If all goes well, that should do it for this particular painting.

In some of my past night-time paintings I would also alternate glazes of dark Blue/Greens (Payne's Gray and Hooker's Green mixtures) with glazes of rich reds (I prefer the Windsor and Newton brand red pigments). As you can see I go through a lot of Payne's Gray and Raw Umber. I also don't have exclusive brand preference - I think the Raw Umber in Golden Paints is darker than its Liquitex equivalent, but I often buy both because sometimes I prefer a more neutral tone. I would say in general though, I use more Golden and Utrecht paints than other brands.

Golden - Van Dyke Brown

Golden - Payne's Gray
Golden - Raw UmberLiquitex (PDF)- Transparent Raw Umber
Utrecht - Hooker's Green

Windsor & Newton - Cadmium Red Deep
Windsor & Newton - Alizarin Crimson

None More Black

This afternoon:

Tonight:

The new painting is nearly done. It's hard to tell in this photo, but the black is a really warm, rich, dark-brown-black right now. Tomorrow I'll put a deep blue oil glaze over the painting and that will really make that black more black. I'm sure by tomorrow night it will be like that scene in Spinal Tap:

"none more black"

Guillaume Lemarchal

Guillaume Lemarchal

Ben Kehoe

Speaking of Tiny Showcase - I was lucky enough to get the very last print of the most recent edition they featured:

Ben Kehoe, "Death Is Carried On The Backs Of The Innocent"

This is a great image - passive and violent at the same time.

Big News: Nathan Abels at Tiny Showcase

Nathan Abels, "Island", Graphite and Colored Pencil on Paper

I am pleased to announce that on May 20th at 7:30 pm EDT a small editioned print of my drawing titled "Island" will be available for purchase for no more than $25 through the wonderful Tiny Showcase. I would recommend visiting their web site and signing up for their email list - they will write you a reminder the afternoon that my print goes up for sale. I am very excited about working with them. I will be in good company too -Tiny Showcase has printed editions of works by notable contemporary artists like Josh Keyes, and Marci Washington, and has even been featured in Oprah magazine as well as numerous art and design blogs.

This is a great and very affordable way to start your contemporary art collection and donate to a good cause. Tiny Showcase donates a percentage of the proceeds to a charity of the artist's choice - in my case I will be donating to the Alta Vista Center for Autism here in Denver, where my wife works. Austim rates are soaring nationwide, currently affecting one in every 150 children in the US. This is a organization and cause I feel strongly about and by purchasing my print from Tiny Showcase, you will be donating to help children with autism that attend the Alta Vista Center from all over the Front Range here in Colorado.

Trevor Appleson

Trevor Appleson: Los Loss
images from Hales Gallery

Death at sunset (pig)
2007
C-type print
126 x 158cm
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Crack (eggs)
2007
C-type print
106 x 84cm,
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Fallen in the morning
2007
C-type print
126 x 158 cm
Edition of 3 +1AP

In last weeks Westword, Mark Dragotta wrote, "What is it about Trevor Appleson's new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's prose? Is it the intense quiet, the obsessive detail or the undercurrent of violence? Honestly, it's probably a little bit of each. Edging out all background distraction with a large black screen, the images highlight the still-life poverty, dirt and death in his otherwise commonplace subjects."

I couldn't have said it better, comparing these images to Cormac McCarthy's writing seems very appropriate. Looks like I'll need to get over to the Denver MCA to see this.

Re-Routed Overnight

There's a fascinating post on blast walls in Iraq at the Subtopia blog. These blast walls are often installed under cover of darkness, and the post called "In the Business of Blast Walls" features several eerie night-vision photos of the construction process. Check it out.

photo by flickr member jetsetjer
photo by flickr member James Gordon

Building

Yesterday I built the panels for my next/final three paintings for the upcoming show. I thought people may be interested in the process behind the construction of these panels. I use 1/4" Birch plywood for the actual surface and I build the frame/backing out of 1x2" "Select Pine". I sometimes use Aspen or some other hardwood, but generally the "select" pine works well if I can find enough straight boards at the store. It is a light-weight wood that is still strong and pretty durable. On the diagram, the lines that are sticking out all around the frame are nails. I glue the panel on top of a frame like this and clamp it all around, usually putting a gallon of paint or something heavy in the center to make sure the panel adheres to the middle as well as the edges. Then I sand the edges, as usually the panel itself is slightly larger than the frame - after sanded it usually matches up. Then I usually put between 8-10 thick coats of Gesso (prime) on the panel. This is a little overkill, but I enjoy the surface qualities that are achieved with this quantity of paint. After gesso-ing I sand it down with a orbital sander and wipe off the dust with a damp towel. Then I'm ready to paint. Gesso-ing is by far my least favorite part of the entire process. After the painting is finished and dry, I paint the edges with a neutral color.

Black-Billed Magpie

Photo by Nathan Abels

We enjoyed the day in Rocky Mountain National Park today where we were greeted on a trail-head by the black-billed magpie. It is a very beautiful bird that can be seen all over the Western United States.

Landscape and Memory

Tonight at Sliding Door Gallery

“Landscape and Memory”

Recent paintings by Berndt Savig

These paintings revolve around how landscape for me personally is often associated with individuals I have known or still know. I often think of certain people when I see images of or am in certain environments. Sometimes this connection is very concrete and specific. For example, a certain river or a certain hill will remind me of someone I knew at a particular point in my life. Sometimes this is because both of us were at that place together at some time, or in some cases, I think that person would relate to that location. Even if the relationship with that person ends or changes, the link to that landscape continues to exist.

Sometimes the connection between someone from my life is not tied to a specific location but a type of place. Maybe a smoky bar or a cityscape at night will trigger a memory of someone.

The paintings in this show are gouache on board or paper and painted from life, photographs or memory.

Opening reception: Friday May 2, 6 – 10 pm

Fake Ruins or Follies

Fake ruins, which can also be known as "follies" are buildings or parts of buildings that are constructed as ornamentation. The thought of building a structure purposefully in a state of ruin is intriguing. By taking the function out of the architecture it becomes more closely aligned with sculpture or even installation/land art. It also makes interesting comments on history, wealth, and the function of truth in art. Intentional impracticality is especially provocative in the current climate of economic uncertainty. I mean what could be more frivolous than building a giant castle that functions as a prop in your landscaping? Well, This could be more frivolous, but the concept of a folly is fascinating beyond the seeming absurdity. On a trip to Germany in 1999, I saw the estate called "Sans Souci" in Potsdam, where a fake ruin was placed in the distance to enhance the viewers experience on the grounds:

Sans Souci fake ruins, photo by Maureen Gallagher

I was reading about this particular folly in a review of Daniel Eisenberg's movie "Persistence". I have not seen the movie, but the review is very well written and brings up interesting insights into the film and the post-war German landscape. Jeffery Skoller writes, "Early in the film, we see images of Greek ruins on the grounds of the Sans Souci Castle on the outskirts of Berlin. These were built as ruins by Fredrick the Great in the eighteenth century, as his own personal History Machine, perhaps to contemplate his own place in time through the evocation of the signs of an imagined past. As a fake ruin, the monument becomes, in the film, a metaphor for the way in which objects are imbued with meaning and then used as fulcrums to understand relations between moments of time."

If we can't believe our ruins to be true than in a greater sense, we question the truth or realness of everything- including history and especially art. Art critic Clemet Greenburg said of Barnet Newman, "the truth of art lies for him, as for any genuinely ambitious artist, somewhat beyond what he knows he can do." In this sense, fake ruins could be an admission that presenting real truth may be beyond what one can create. I suppose there are a few ways of viewing this:

• "Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?”-George Moore
• "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth"-Pablo Picasso

Pardon my philosophical meanderings. Maybe it is a matter of interpretation - that some of us see the dream trumping reality and some see the lie and what tells us about truth...

Spring Snow and Rain Mix

Detail of David Fried's "Rainscape No.4", 2003,
archival c-print on diasec, aluminum, 100 x 130 cm.  

It's the first of May and it is snowing here in Denver. It was 80 degrees yesterday and snowing this morning. We sure do get some strange weather here. In light of that, I was thinking about an old post I made this time last year about David Fried's "Rainscapes" photography. Check out the post here.

And I made a Rain/Snow Mix for you:

Hand Drawn Vintage Video Game Maps

I love these hand-drawn vintage video game maps by various unnamed artists. They remind me of Joan Miro, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu and Mark Lombardi. Great stuff - especially the Zork I map.

from Zelda Legends
from Zelda Legends
from Atari 2600 dot com (available for purchase!)

via Twigsta666

from Secret Fun Blog
Zork I from Secret Fun Blog
from a forum thread on hand-drawn video game maps at theshizz.org
from a forum thread on hand-drawn video game maps at theshizz.org