Baja Review Blog by Viktorya of Sacramento Napa and Baja California Mexico

Edwin Deakin exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento CA

Viktorya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:42:31 GMT

Edwin Deakin Exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento CA

Celebrated painter Edwin Deakin's beautiful works depicting picturesque scenes of California and European landscape, architecture and still life were incredibly moving. Fortunately, I got to view the exhibition before it closed on 20 April 2008.

While looking at Edwin Deakin's paintings and sketches in the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento CA, one could appreciate this amassed collection of his work as the true gift it was, that the Crocker pulled this exhibition together. To follow is a description from the Crocker, with a Deakin quote.

Deakin knew the Crocker Art Gallery (as it was formerly called) well and thought highly of it. He visited in 1888, three years after Margaret Crocker donated the gallery building and collection to the citizens of Sacramento. Impressed, Deakin spoke warmly of his visit:
He says he doubts if in the Louvre the doors are finer than in this gallery. Of the paintings Mr. Deakin gives a frank and critical opinion, commending most in comparison with similar works abroad, and . . . thinks the city possessed of a great treasure in such a property. The artists agree that the School of Design is situated in rooms not surpassed, if equaled by any. For more information about the artist

Deakin's imagined and real worlds came through his brush. I stood in front of his Grapes and Architecture paintings for several minutes, and then sat in a chair looking directly at the painting again and again, quickly jotting notes. (I'm sorry to say I couldn't find an image of these paintings to show here.) My notes follow:

Deakin's "Grapes and Architecture" have a musky, grayed atmosphere, out of which finely rendered grapes extend toward the viewer, as if they are welcome to be picked, plucked, and popped into one's mouth for a succulent squirt of sweet sugar from this ripened fruit of the vine. As a painter and one who has painted grapes, bunches and bunches of them, these Deakin grapes are iconic and one can see the relationship to one of his endeavors of Japanning. The atmosphere Deakin creates fills the canvas background's outer regions with a hazy, smoky quality, muting the subject. There seems to be little transition from the gray phthalo blue/green with tinges of turquoise to the foreground grapes in robust purple, dark and full, rounded and transparent.

It's an amazing accomplishment, achieving contrast that doesn't have to be grounded in reality, yet the realism is so ultimately satisfying that even one like myself who prefers abstract expressionism, can drool and dream of having the control to paint like Deakin.

The conversation between viewer and the artwork itself rambles through so many realities that for a painter like myself, while looking closely at perspective, use of color, atmosphere and image placement on the canvases, questions came up of how did he do that? Beyond that a desire to explore realism was evoked.

--Viktorya is an art appreciator and art maker who lives in Sacramento.

Feminist Majority Foundation

Viktorya — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:23:33 GMT

This is What a Feminist Looks Like!

See this new video from the Feminist Majority Foundation now!

Reprinted from email newsletter from Feminist Majority Foundation

What do America Ferrera, Larry David, and Amy Brenneman have in common?

They are all proud to call themselves feminists.

Celebrate Women's History Month with them and other feminists by watching our special This Is What A Feminist Looks Like video.

And help the Feminist Majority Foundation continue to make women's history by making a donation now.

Our mission is simple. We aim to achieve equality for women and girls around the world.

If you believe women:

should have the right to decide if and when they want to have children,
deserve equal pay for equal work,
have a right to go to school, to work, to own property, and to drive, no matter where they live in the world,

Then you too, are a feminist!

Please help us show the world what it means to be a feminist - send this video to five of your friends. Let's build the feminist movement so together we can continue to change the world for women and girls.

For Equality,

Eleanor Smeal
President

Kathy Spillar
Executive Vice President

Paintings -- Loose Works

Viktorya — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:18:15 GMT

Many of my paintings are hung loosely on the wall. Dressmaker pins hold up the work -- pins stuck through canvas that is un-stretched and therefore, unframed. These paintings fall into what I call 'Loose Works'. I enjoy a play on words, whereas depending on intonation, the phrase can impart different meanings. Loose Works, or Loose Works.

Stretching and framing complicates my process, and honestly does not speak to who I am as an artist, and above all, I want to paint canvas. Period. Those who buy my work have the canvases stretched and framed themselves. Loose Works!

This is "Left Face", acrylic on canvas, 82" x 82" c. 2003

Hillary's SNL phone call from Obama -- It is about Experience

Viktorya — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:51:26 GMT

The Saturday Night Live spoof about the 'Who do you want to answer the phone at 3 am?" Hysterical!! Love what these folks are doing to emphasize our best candidate for President of the USA. Please enjoy! If you want more videos from Saturday Night Live, please visit their website.

Frida Kahlo at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Viktorya — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:54:59 GMT

For Baja La Mision Residents -- A favorite Artist is Frida Kahlo

Urban Eye of the New York Times offers a great Slide Show of Kahlo's Art being exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

SLIDE SHOW:

Frida Kahlo at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Slide Show from New York Times Urban Eye

Holland Cotter writes: The show is modest and compact, but like Kahlo’s work, it offers both an unnerving and pleasurable effect.

ARTS
Banco de MÃ©xico
Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust
Published: 20080228

Saturday Night Live Lets Go about Bias Media

Viktorya — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:38:40 GMT

Check out how SNL reports on the Obama's Free Ride by the Media

Clinton on Saturday Night Live

Viktorya — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:23:27 GMT

Clinton shows her fine sense of humor on Saturday Night Live, 1 March 2008

Review by Arthur Kanegis about The 11th Hour

Viktorya — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 08:04:40 GMT

Can Leonardo DiCaprio's Homemade Movie Save The World?
by Arthur Kanegis

Can Leonardo DiCaprio's Homemade Movie Save The World?    (article on Scene4 Magazine)

     In this summer's blockbuster hit Transformers, "Decepticons" from an alien species, wreak havoc on Earth – things look bad, humanity seems doomed. But just in the nick of time, against all odds, our young heroes save the planet. From Superman and Wonder Woman to Batman and Spiderman, we love to watch our celluloid heroes save the world.
     In Leonardo DiCaprio's new documentary, The 11th Hour the alien species is us.   And the ways in which we "aliens" are wrecking havoc on planet Earth are far more frightening than anything dreamed up by Hollywood:
   •   Injecting poisons into the atmosphere causing our children to choke and wheeze in an epidemic of asthma.
   •   Dumping toxic chemicals into the oceans killing 90 percent of the big fish.
   •   Poisoning our food supply with pesticides, mercury, herbicides and more.
   •   Hacking down whole forests vital to Earth's ability to sustain life.
   •   Burning huge fossil fuel reserves, creating so much smoke that it disrupts the fragile atmospheric balance that regulates temperature and makes Earth livable.
   •   Contaminating our drinking water, melting our icecaps and killing off species forever.

     How would we react if an alien species came down and did this to our planet?
     "We face a convergence of crises, all of which are a concern for life," says DiCaprio, narrating his new documentary coming to theaters August 17. "Every living system is in decline – the forest cover, the soil, the oceans. There isn't one living system that is stable or improving. And those systems are required for life"
     Earth is dying? People must be gathered around their TV sets, brows furrowed in worry, clutching their children to their breasts as they anxiously await answers, some glimmer of hope for how humanity can fight back.   Let's take a look now.
     What? They're watching TV news coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton? There's not even a single TV channel broadcasting live minute-by-minute feeds about the perilous state of our planet?
     At a press conference at Cannes, DiCaprio told us about the frustrations he faced when he tried to work with a TV network to make an environmental documentary in the late 1990's. Every truth by a scientist would have to be "balanced" by a lie from an industry spokesman. "We had to make it just two people arguing the same point back and forth and at the end of the day it just became moot."
     DiCaprio was determined to make The 11th Hour different. "This was really a homemade movie," DiCaprio said.

     He made it with private funding so that "no studio and no network could impose their agenda on it."
     In order to make sure the film is taken seriously, DiCaprio and his team built the film with an impressive array of over 50 leading scientists, Nobel prize winners, professors, and great thinkers ranging from Scripps Institute oceanographer Jereme Jackson and Stanford University Environmental Director Steven Schneider to former CIA director James Woolsey and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who founded Green Cross International.
     The real-life images are terrifying as we see nature fight back against the relentless assault of the humans: homes ripped from their foundations, cars tossed in the air like toothpicks, embattled rescue workers swept away by churning waters, fires raging across the land.
     "The evidence is now clear, industrial civilization has cause irreparable damage. Our political and corporate leaders have consistently ignored the overwhelming scientific evidence," DiCaprio warns as his experts ring the alarm bells: "Not only is it the 11th hour, it's 11:59... What we saw with Katrina is just a prolog. The worst is yet to come... The UN estimates that by the middle of the century there may be 150 million environmental refugees... There are too many of us using too many resources too fast... The rate of decline is accelerating... The tragedy is the potential extinction of humankind."
     World-renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, whose medical condition requires him to speak with an eerily authoritative computer voice, sent chills down my back as he explained:
"The danger is that the temperature increase might become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already…

     the warming of the seas may trigger the release of large quantities of CO2 trapped on the ocean floor. In addition, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets will reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space and so increase the temperature further. We don't know where the global warming will stop, but the worst case scenario is that earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temperature of 250 centigrade, and raining sulfuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions."
     Now hold on just a minute. We humans may be willing to take a lot of abuse, but are we going to let "aliens" mess up our planet? Destroy the human race? Fry poor Fido and our prized rose bushes?
     We're not the kind of people to take something like that lying down. No way! Our heroes will come to the rescue.
     "All of these forces sweeping over the planet are the forces created by human beings," comments National Geographic Society explorer Wade Davis. "And if human beings are the source of the problem we can be the foundation for the solution."
     "We?" So you mean DiCaprio's not going to be our celluloid hero who saves the world? We have to do the job ourselves? Be our own heroes? Isn't that asking a little much?
     "During this critical period of human history, healing the damage of industrial civilization is the task of our generation," DiCaprio says, as the film demonstrates that we already have the technological know-how to reduce the human footprint on planet Earth by 90 percent. "Our response depends on the conscious evolution of our species and this response could very well save this unique blue planet for future generations."
     Leila Conners Petersen and her sister Nadia Conners directed the documentary. We visited their Tree Media Group in Santa Monica – a small office buzzing with activity as everyone prepares for the film's final release.  We managed to first pull aside producer Brian Gerber,


     who was exuding excitement with the possibilities for winning the fight to save the humans:
     "It has been just a great, tremendous experience. We have been working on the movie for 3 years and now it's very exciting to finally get it out there. We could not be happier with Warner Brothers picking it up and putting it out. It's, you know, it is a dream come true for us."
     "In the film, we present a whole wide range of impacts that man is having on our home planet and we also spend a lot of time offering visionary solutions to all the different environmental problems that we face."
      Brian is a man with a plan: "Our big push is the 11th Hour Action Campaign; so audiences will be able to take off and do the actions needed to make a shift in their own lives, and then from there a broader societal shift can really happen."
     We were finally able to pull the directors away from the editing room where they were putting final touches on the images of our planet being battered by multiple assaults on its very life systems.
     "We're kind of in a pitched battle to save what we have and not to continue destruction," Nadia told us.
     "Are you discouraged," we asked?
     "When we first started making this movie, I was worried about the bad news, and felt that we were going down as a civilization and as a planet. But After interviewing all these people, I couldn't be more hopeful. I feel that we are really going to turn this around and that not only is the planet going to be better off, but human beings are going to be better off."

     "I don't believe that people maliciously wake up in the morning saying I'm going to hurt the earth today," her sister Leila added. "All of this is simply a byproduct of the way we constructed society. So we just have to redesign our society at every level so that it doesn't destroy the planet."
     Nadia didn't seem to find this to be a daunting task at all:
     "One of my favorite lines in our film is when Paul Hawken says, 'What an exciting time to be born, what an exciting time to be alive, because this generation gets to completely remake this world.'
     The 11th Hour is a stunning film. It is packed with facts we human beings need to know to save our planet. You owe it to yourself and to your future to go see it. It is the ultimate horror movie, action flick and feel-good movie all wrapped up into one.
     If an alien species attacked our planet's vital life systems, we'd be up in arms. So why do we let our own "Decepticons" get away with telling us that global warming isn't real? That we can't control our corporations because they are "persons" with rights, but nature is property and we can do with it anything we damn please? That the magic of the free market will solve the world's problems? That we must give up our freedoms to fight for "freedom" (i.e., oil?)? That it's our patriotic duty to shop and shut up?
     Here on Earth, you and I are "aliens" when we go to any of 191 other nations on Earth. And they are "aliens" when they come here. We human beings have made ourselves all aliens on our home planet. How are we ever going to save the Earth if we are all aliens? Maybe it's time we threw off the grip of our own Decepticons and recognized and acted on the reality that we are all citizens of one planet Earth – and we're going to sink or swim in this together.
     "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"

Read in-depth interviews with The 11th Hour directors,
Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners—Click Here

©2007 Arthur Kanegis
©2007 Publication Scene4 Magazine

Arthur Kanegis is a screenwriter, producer and president of One Films, LLC.
For more of his commentary and articles, check the Archives

Balboa Park in San Diego

Viktorya — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:32:23 GMT

Balboa Park's beauty and cultural offerings will astound you. It is in San Diego CA just a bit more than an hour from my community in La Mision, Baja California, Mexico.   The Spanish Village Art Center was my first stop and when I turned the corner to enter, it took my breath away! It was like stepping onto one of my abstract paintings.


Grid #3 Acrylic on Canvas 55"x42" One in a series of many I call "loose works" c.2007 Viktorya

If you can see in the Spanish Village photo, the Red Door to the Right of the Yellow Umbrella? It is a ceramic studio. I walked into browse for coffee cups and met Mary Cuzick, artist/ceramicist. We started talking about Mexico and I shared with her how I admire the richness of the Mexican Culture and how I love living in Baja. She recounted a story about her first visit into Mexico. She said within a moment in time, she experienced a life changing event, which she commemorated in a poem. She and I were tearful as she spoke the poem. She wrote it on a piece of white paper in pencil for me to take with me -- it lays here now on my pink table. It goes:

I pitied them for they had nothing
Until I turned my face
And in a moment's contemplation
I saw Life's Simple Grace.
-Mary Cuzick

Carole Reil (fellow artist and best bud from Sacramento) and I walked around the Art Center and were drawn into the studio of Jihmye Collins and Sylvia Mejia. Jihmye sat at his drafting table; his pencil lightly touched paper graphically portraying Martin Luther King. Sylvia's ceramic sculptures beckoned touch as she explained her process. Sylvia works with many cultural groups, including Native Americans. You can view Jihmye's Public Art Project at 14th and J Streets, Downtown San Diego commissioned by Wakefield Housing and San Diego Interfaith Housing 2006.

Sylvia and Jihmye are at Studio 13.

For a listing of art events check out Art/Exhibit Openings in the Calendar

The Contemporary Scroll Visual Explorations Exhibition    Aug 2, 07 thru Sep 2, 07
Contemporary works inspired by the cultural heritage of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Outstand Visual Artists    Jun 28, 07 thru Jul 29, 07
Featured artists Judy Pike and Heather Middleton - showcasing outstanding visual artists of the San Diego region.

Paint Out    Aug 18, 07
Paint, draw, and explore Balboa Park. All artistis, amateur to professional, can participate in any and all medium (oils, acrylics, watercolor, ...

Outstand Visual Artists    Aug 2, 07 thru Sep 2, 07
Featured artists Claire-Lise Matthey Anderegg and Joline Ecstein.

Oaxacan Artist Doris Manzano    Aug 18, 07 thru Sep 16, 07

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Viktorya — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 04:50:35 GMT

Molly Post sent the link to this exquisite example of morphing software combining Technology and Art. Please click on the link and watch.

Women's faces painted by men and women transition from one era to another, one medium to another over 500 years of Female Portraits in Western Art. I do believe the word Western is not accurate but rather should be simply Art. The connotation is obvious; however, if it were Western Civilization Art, that would be more appropriate, but then that is being pedantic.

The title is irrelevant but the work eggman913 has done is important.
This is the information from the utube site:
Provided By:
eggman913

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art
Category Film & Animation
Tags: art bach yoyo ma sarabande cello suite