Northwest Florida Arts Association
Artist Spotlight
Artist Abdi Farah
Aug 17th
Abdi Farah was the winner of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. The prize – a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum and $100,000. Sweet!
John Pugh – Trompe l’oeil Artist
Apr 1st
A friend of mine emailed me about the artist John Pugh. I had never heard of him. As it turns out, John Pugh is an amazing Trompe l’oeil artist from California. His studio is actually located in the upper peaks of the Santa Cruz mountains. Trompe l’oeil….what is it? What little I remember from my college art history classes (which seems like a million years ago) are paintings like these:
Ceiling Oculus - Andrea Mantegna 1471-74
Ceiling in the Church of St Ignazio - Andrea Pozzo 1685-94
The official definition of Trompe l’oeil is the art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear three dimensional, instead of actually being a two dimensional painting.
Below are the kind of Trompe l’oeil murals John Pugh paints:
Taylor Hall, California Stae University
Bay in a Bottle
The passer-by is part of this mural and the next mural.
Main Street
John Pugh
“I have found that the ‘language’ of life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience. It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked. Once captivated by the illusion, the viewers are lured to cross an artistic threshold and thus seduced into exploring the concept of the piece.” - John Pugh
Art Clokey – Creator of Gumby Dies
Jan 10th
Art Clokey, the creator of the clay animation series Gumby, died this past Friday. He was 88. Clokey was born Arthur Farrington in Detroit in October 1921. Tragically his father died in a car accident when Art was 8, and his mother abandoned him after they moved to California. A few years later, he was adopted by Joseph W. Clokey, a music teacher and composer. Joseph would later say that Gumby’s adventures were inspired by the adventures he and Art had on trips to Mexico and Canada.
Gumby was the result the experimental stop-motion clay animation film Gumbasia Clokey made in 1953. The president of 20th Century Fox saw the film and asked Clokey to do a children’s show.
Gumby debuted in 1956 on the Howdy Doody Show. Soon after, The Adventures of Gumby debuted. This show was the first use of stop-motion clay animation on television.
The Adventures of Gumby was cancelled after a few years. Clokey created and produced another stop-motion clay animation series in the 1960s, the sickly sweet, Christian morality show Davey and Goliath. Art used the proceeds from the show to revive the Gumby series for a few more years.
Gumby from the 1950s:
Gumby from the 1960s:
A few notes about the creation of Gumby:
Gumby was green because Art Clokey cared about the environment.
Gumby’s head shape was based on Clokey’s father’s hairstyle.
Despite the belief that “only someone on drugs” could come up with the Gumby idea and stories, Clokey wasn’t. He didn’t start experimenting with LSD and other drugs until the 1970s when he studied Zen Buddhism with gurus in India.
Art Clokey and Gumby
Michael Godard – Rock and Roll Artist
Dec 13th
I discovered Michael Godard’s artwork a few years ago thanks to my daughter’s high school art teacher. The assignment was to visit art galleries. I’ve always dragged my daughter, usually against her will, to galleries or museums while on vacation, this time it was her turn. We went to the local Wyland Gallery. While Wyland’s art is wonderful in it’s own right, Michael Godard’s work is truly amazing. Hard to believe the main subjects of most of his work are olives and martini glasses.
Matrix Martini
Card Shark
If you can get through the first thirty seconds of the horrible picture montage, his video promo is a good representation of what Michael Godard is all about.
Last Martini
Visit Michael’s website at
www.michaelgodard.com
Spawn Creator Todd McFarlane
Nov 17th
I had a discussion today with a friend of mine about Spiderman, one of my favorite comic characters. That got me thinking about who was the best Spiderman artist. Who made the character more interesting than the actual story. Has to be Todd McFarlane.
McFarlane joined Marvel Comics in 1984. He took over the drawing duties of The Amazing Spiderman book in 1988. He also drew the first 16 issues of the spin-off comic Spiderman starting in 1990.
While at the top of the heap as an artist in the comic book world, Todd decided to form his own publishing company with six other top artists. This group of artists left Marvel Comics and formed Image Comics. Through Image Comics, each artist had total creative control of their own characters. McFarlane’s character Spawn debuted in 1992.
There’s more to his career than just comic books. McFarlane has branched out into producing movies, directing music videos, animation, designing hockey jerseys, and designing toys for his own toy company. For a cool retrospective on his comics career checkout
Todd McFarlane: A Retrospective.
Todd McFarlane’s website
spawn.com.
Philippe Halsman
Nov 14th
Salvidor Dali
Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) arrived in the United States, fleeing Hitler’s invasion of France, in 1940. His friend Albert Einstein helped him get a US visa. Two years later Halsman was photographing covers for Life Magazine. He ended up with 101 covers to his credit, the most of any photographer.
Philippe Halsman by Yale Joel
Some of Halsman's Life Magazine covers.
Alfred Hitchcock
In 1952, after finishing his assignment, Halsman started to ask his subjects to jump. And so started his science of jumpology. Halsman himself described his newly invented science as “when you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so the real person appears.”
Bridgette Bardot
Marilyn Monroe
His book, Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book, published in 1959, is a must read.
Artist Spotlight: Alberto Seveso
Nov 12th
Alberto Seveso
Alberto Seveso is a graphic designer and illustrator from Italy who has simply created a fantastic style by mixing colourful vectors with black and white photos known as “sperm shaping”.
His work is very unique and is one of thew digital artists I truly respect. His originality in a genre filled with copycats is very refreshing and shows there are still many styles “traditional” artists have never seen or imagined.
Check out his website at
http://www.burdu976.com/
He is still a very active graphic designer, always pushing the limits of his work.
Below are some of my personal favorite works of his.
