Artists

It's a beautiful summer day in Vancouver. The wonderful thing about a lazy weekend afternoon is that the mind feels free to wander back and forth, from ideas about the future, to things lived in the past, to concepts we rarely consider during the busy work week.  I'm thinking about movies, books and conversations about creativity. Browsing through this blog, I run across something I had posted a few years ago. It seems to fit with the present train of thought:
 
The posting was about a quote from American novelist William Faulkner in an industry newsletter sent to me by e-mail.

I had been wondering how to define art. That's a difficult and subjective thing.  Yet there it was, in Faulkner's words, clear and neat:

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by 
artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when 
a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."

I don't know if you agree, but I think that's very good indeed.

It's a good reference point for a summer day thinking about movies and stories and illustrations.

Detroit rises again

My grandmother lived to over one hundred years of age. One of the things I will always remember about her was her abiding faith in young people. All her life, she enjoyed spending time with children and teenagers. She found they buoyed her sense of optimism and kept her young at heart.

Whenever I see youth taking the initiative to build something, I think about my grandmother.

Recently, my son forwarded a link about a video project that explores how young people in Detroit see new possibilities in the resurgence of their city. While many media reports have focused on Detroit's blight, this perspective is refreshingly different. We've all heard how the city has staggered under the crippling blows of the collapsed housing market, the world banking crisis and the subsequent near-death experience of the auto sector. Many sections of Detroit do indeed look like parts of New Orleans after Katrina. The city faces monumental challenges.

But the essence of Detroit runs deeper than the highs and lows of the auto industry. Thanks to the "can do" attitude of growing numbers of young people, Detroit survives and is very much alive, reinventing itself in new and unpredictable ways.

In the mini-documentary, posted on the Palladium Boots website and presented by actor Johnny Knoxville, one gets a sense of a city within a city. In one sequence, for example, the producers talk to long-time resident and club owner Larry D'Mongo about a desolate part of town. D'Mongo explains, in his own characteristic way, how he came to open his Cafe' D'Mongo in that location:

"When I first left, I always tell people, the pigeons had left. I mean there wuz no homeless, no nothin'. About five years ago, I saw white girls running down the street. Now, in the past, everybody would call 911, like, 'who's chasin' em?' ... (but)I realized that they were joggin'. And I said, 'Am I in Detroit?' "

"And these kids who live down here; they kept aggravatin' me, knockin' on the windows: 'Sir, please open, please open.' "

"I said, 'Okay, I'll open.' "

The pictures tell an interesting story. It's a story about new uses for abandoned urban spaces, of creativity, modern soul and entrepreneurship from the young and proud.

Check out the video. It's in three parts, shot in 2010. The first part on its own is enough to give you a sense of this alternative, up-beat perspective of a city coming to life again. The project is called Detroit Lives.


Photo credit:
Detroit picture courtesy of Anttank (Maha Rashi), Michigan.

Great street art

Many thanks to my friend Sandy, who passed this along.

This is an example of the work of two enterprising artists in Brazil.

Anderson Augusto and Leonardo Delafuente are turning some common street fixtures in São Paulo into fascinating works of art.

You can see 20 more entertaining examples of storm drains here. It's great inspiration for a sketcher like me.

The artists form the 6emeia project, which is explained here, with more links to murals and other creative works.

Photo: www.oddee.com

The world on the point of a pencil

Visual artists have the ability to transform what the eye sees into images that can be preserved for posterity.

In the process of recording what the eye sees, artists usually transform the object of their attention into something that is unique and personal.

A lot of variables come into play in this process: the materials used, the medium on which the image is recorded, and the personal stylistic preferences of the artist, to name a few.

Gabi Campanario, who works for the Seattle Times newspaper, is a graphic artist and illustrator who goes one step further. He's also a blogger -- a "sketchblogger," to be precise. At his site here, Campanario shares his passion with the world. And I'm very grateful he does.

He has more pages organized in albums at http://www.flickr.com/photos/baconvelocity/

Campanario is originally from Barcelona, Spain. He has a journalism degree, and it seems he cannot stop drawing. I can't imagine when he finds time for work. He fills his blog with illustrations that show scenes from his daily life in the Pacific Northwest. He rides the bus and he draws what he sees. He looks out his office window and he draws the view. He draws when he goes on weekend excursions. He draws his friends. He gets an e-mail from his library reminding him to return some books, and he draws.

Each illustration is a representation of what he sees in his world. They're portrayals of his living environment; but because they're illustrations, they are also intensely personal and unique.

Thanks, Gabi.

I wish I could draw.

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P.S.
Gabi Campanario is not alone…
If you enjoy seeing the world through sketches, there are many, many others…

He has sketchblogs listed on his site.

Here are a few more:

Jana Bouc (http://janabouc.wordpress.com/) is from California

Mattias Adolfsson (http://mattiasa.blogspot.com/) blogs from Sweden.

And then there's Sarah, from Texas: http://www.sarahmensinga.blogspot.com/

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Photo courtesy: stock.xchng