Festivals going 'green' in a big way

Festivals going 'green' in a big way
By Barbara Diamond

Green is more than a color to the city's arts community.

Festival of Arts

The Festival of Arts will collaborate with the Endangered Planet Foundations to present "A Day of Art Goes Green," from 1 to 4 p.m. July 26, to increase awareness of environmental issues

Educational and cultural activities and entertainment will show visitors how they can go green on a daily basis and how green colors the artists' work.

"Festival people came to us, based on the green festival we are going to do in October," said Charles Michael Murray, founder of the foundation and the Endangered Planet Gallery that spawned it.

"They wanted the artists to embrace the concept of going green and how artists can align themselves with the environmental movement that is so powerful right now.

"Artists are often in the lead of movements before the general public and politicians. They think outside of the box."

The foundation will be actively involved in the Art Miles Mural and Art Shoes projects announced for the afternoon.

"Several murals will be exhibited, and we will be there to talk about artistic ventures occurring globally," Murray said.

The mural project promotes peace through art.

Thousands of banners painted throughout the world will be gathered in 2010 in Egypt to build a "Pyramid of Peace and the Exhibition of the Century," with 12 miles of murals and modern technology.

Festival visitors and artists will paint three murals as well as participate in the Shoes of Hope project.

Donated shoes will be painted and shipped to needy African children.

A special handwritten message of peace and hope is tucked into every shoe sent to babies, children and youth in refugee centers, orphanages and schools.

Other activities scheduled for Green Day include a lectures on green art throughout the afternoon by former festival board President Bruce Rasner.

Docent Gretchen Thompson will conduct a tour of the festival at 3 p.m. Mary Anne Henderson will lead a tour at 3 p.m.

The tours will provide insight into the creative use of sustainable, recycled, ecologically safe and recovered materials as demonstrated in the works of fiber artist Rose Hamner and oil painter Eric Gerdau; mixed-media artists Mia Moore, Mada Leach, Carolyn Machado and Claudia Posvar; photographers J. Romeo and Christian Kiely; ceramist Monica Dunham; printmaker Julita Jones and watercolorist Geri Medway.

"Hopefully my vision will prompt you to do your part to save this wondrous, delicately balanced world, that we have been gifted to live on! May we become better, more conscientious stewards," Medway wrote in her artist statement.

"Go green."

UnScene Orange County voting is live... please cast your vote!

Please cast your vote!

http://www.944.com/rsvp/unscene/finalists.phpx

Orange County Fair

I finally had a chance to visit my photos at the Visual Arts display at the Orange County Fair.

My photo, Crystal Cove Sunset #011 (Anemone Sunset), seen to the left won 1st place in the Seascape Class of the Professional Photography Division.

This image was taken 06 NOV 2005 at Crystal Cove State Park between Laguna Beach and Newport Beach. I utilized a 3-Stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density Filter to even out the sky and foreground, and added fill flash to illuminate the foreground.

A collection of sunset images from Crystal Cove State Park, including this one, can be seen on my website here.

Updated display at Festival of Arts

I've updated my display at the Festival of Arts and added two new prints.

1) California Golden Poppies taken in the California Poppy Preserve out near Lancaster, California.

2) First Light on El Capitan taken on a chilly October morning in Yosemite National Park. I arrived at this spot waiting before dawn for the light to hit the face of El Capitan and capture the reflection in the Merced River.

UnScene Orange County Evite

All are welcome...

Festival of Arts: Art Goes Green Event

Yellowstone Bison #001 (as seen on the OC Register website).
Link to all Yellowstone Bison images

The Orange County Register has recently run a story about the "Art Goes Green" event at the FESTIVAL OF ARTS. I will be highlighting my nature photography.

Link to OC Register Story

'Art Goes Green' day spreads eco message through creativity

Festival of Arts and Endangered Planet Foundation come together to host special activities this Saturday.

By YOONJU KIM

The Orange County Register

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

What are you doing this Saturday? How about spending a couple of hours having fun and using your creativity to help make the world a cleaner, more natural and peaceful place?

The Festival of Arts and Endangered Planet Foundation will host the first Art Goes Green day at the festival, offering activities that emphasize eco-friendly practices and demonstrate how even small gestures can unite people across the globe.

Among the special activities that day are "green" artist tours and a strolling fashion show featuring clothes made from "trash." Visitors can also watch artists paint part of an international mural, and design and decorate shoes to donate to children in Africa.

The artists' tour will be led by festival docents and will highlight the following artists, who have been chosen for their environmentally-conscious techniques, materials, and subject matter:

•Eric Gerdau. An oil painter who uses hand-stretched linen canvases and paints ocean horizons using soft tones. "I would like to celebrate the handmade object and to appreciate the changing beauty of the ocean," he said in an interview.

•Rose Hamner. Using freshly fallen pine needles, Hamner creates baskets that are au naturale, with decorations of walnut shells, antlers, and carrotwood tree pods. "For basket makers to attain recognition as artists, not basket makers, is beautiful," she said in interview.

•Julita Jones. As a printmaker, Jones started off featuring African animals in her metal etchings. Her work now includes all endangered animals, focusing on one creature per piece. She surrounds the animal imagery with text relating its importance to mankind.

•Christian Kiely. The self-taught photographer has traveled across the country to photograph the nation's natural wonders, from sunsets at Crystal Cove to American bison in Yellowstone National Park.

•Carolyn Machado. Machado uses aged materials – rusty metal pieces, old wood – from Japan to create mixed media and mixed mosaic assemblages. "It's about finding the beauty in the antiques," she said. She also creates a combination of new and old, with the use of discarded motherboards in her works.

•Geri Medway. Medway paints using watercolor on the cotton rag fibers of her recycled canvases. Her subject matter is various sights in nature, from ducks to water lilies. "I hope that if the viewer sees how I view nature and appreciate it, he or she will be inspired to become proactive in taking care of the earth," she said in an interview.

•Mia Moore. Asian themes and women are focal points in Moore's work. She travels to countries across Asia in search of items to incorporate into her work. By using old artifacts such as damaged scrolls, screens, and even accounting books, she recycles and evoke a sense of serenity and uniqueness at the same time.

•Claudia Posvar. A self-described optimist, Posvar perpetuates her hope for a green world through brightly-colored oil paintings of trees and women. Some of her paintings also have snippets of text from newspapers and the Internet, focusing on environmental themes.

•Pat Sparkuhl. Sparkuhl's artwork is an assortment of recycled flea-market items, from a worn porcelain doll to a figurine of Uncle Sam, displayed together in thought-provoking pieces. His works express his thoughts on a variety of topics, including the Iraq War. "My artwork is very Americana. Although some of it deals with frustration with war, I feel extremely fortunate to be living in a country where I can express dissent," Sparkuhl said in an interview.

Endangered Planet Foundation, an international non-profit organization, is hosting three other events on Saturday. One of them, the Art Miles Mural Project, is part of a global project called "Pyramids of Peace and the Exhibition of the Century," in which 12 miles of murals will be painted throughout the world and brought together in 2010 in Egypt.

Local artists Sandra Jones Campbell and Tim Chockley will paint two 12 x 5 sections of the mural this Saturday.

Festival-goers can actively create in the Shoes of Hope project, designing and decoratively painting shoes, ranging from tennis shoes to sandals, that will be sent to needy children in Africa. A note of inspiration will be included with each pair of shoes.

Throughout the day Saturday, there also will be models walking around the grounds wearing "Haute Trash," clothes created from items and materials that would otherwise have been thrown away, such as plastic trash bags and packing materials. The clothes are made by associates of Endangered Planet and can be purchased from exhibitors. Ten percent of the sales will be donated to EPF.

Live music will be provided by String Planet, a duo that features the sounds of a viola and the 12-stringed instrument that a band member invented known as the Stick, and their exotic melodies will carry you through the green artwork and presentations of the day.

Contact the writer: entertainment@ocregister.com

Finalist in UnScene Orange County

I have been accepted as a finalist in the Orange County stop of the UnScene Photography Tour.

I will be displaying (10) pieces at the physical showing of the tour on 30 Jul 2008 at the Ayers Hotel in Costa Mesa, CA.

More information to follow as it becomes available.

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The UnScene Tour has partnered with 944 Magazine to generate exposure for emerging photographers via its national mobile tour. The 2008 UnScene tour will launch at the W San Francisco on March 19. The event will also serve as a preview for the much-anticipated launch of 944 San Francisco, set to hit stands on June 1,2008.

In addition to Dallas, New Orleans and Chicago, the UnScene Tour will travel to 944 markets including San Francisco, San Diego, Scottsdale, Orange County, Miami and Las Vegas. One winning photographer per city will be placed in a leading local gallery or museum. The winner of the UnScene San Francisco tour stop will get the chance to be seen at the Jack Fischer Gallery -- a contemporary art gallery in San Francisco.

944 Magazine will promote the UnScene events on its Web site, which currently garners more than 3 million hits a month. In addition, editor-in-chief of 944 Magazine, Emmy Kasten, will choose a finalist from UnScene San Francisco to compete against future UnScene tour stop finalists for a national photography spread in 944 Magazine.

"944 Magazine is a perfect fit for the UnScene Tour," said UnScene founder and producer Julie Chytrowsky. "The publication targets our core audience and will help us get the word out that photographers should upload their portfolio for a chance to be seen and published. We judge by portfolio rather than a single image, so it really gives any emerging artist the chance for major exposure."

As a national publication with local relevance, 944 Magazine is highly regarded as the premiere lifestyle resource in the nation's leading entertainment hubs and travel destinations catering to the 21- to 48-year-old affluent, upwardly mobile, style-seeker in each city it resides. Capitalizing on publications in the Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and Orange County markets, 944 will unveil its latest endeavor with the launch of 944 San Francisco this summer. Each month, the magazine distributes more than 260,000 copies across all markets to total more than 2.4 million annually, with an average pass-along rate of 5.2 readers per copy.

Last season, the UnScene Tour stopped at cities like New Orleans, Dallas, San Diego, New York and Atlanta and awarded one winner per market with a mini-exhibition at high-profile galleries and museums like the Louisiana State Museum, Mason Murer Gallery, Peer Gallery in NY and the Afterimage Gallery -- one of the most prestigious galleries in the country.

UnScene Online
Now going into its third year, the UnScene launched its online venture lastmonth at www.unscenetour.com. Starting this May, national online contests will debut enabling anyone with an eye for photography to upload their photos for a small submission fee for a chance to be placed at a leading gallery.

Wine & Art Walk (Irvine, CA)

In conjunction with the Festival of Arts, I will be displaying photography along with other FOA artists at the "Wine and Art Walk" at the Villages at Irvine on Thrs July 17th.

Aside from traditional nature photography, I will also display images that are more closely aligned with the theme of the night... I have recently updated my site to include shots from the Napa Valley, Cinque Terre (Italy) and wine producing regions of New Zealand.

These images can be found in the Travel and Travel/Europe sections of my online gallery.



http://myrental-living.com/News/

JULY EVENTS

Wine and Art Walk, Thursday, July 17th, The Serena Veranda, 5:30 - 8:30 pm Enjoy special wine selections as you stroll through original artwork on display in Serena's veranda and courtyard. Purchase paintings, prints and photography. RSVP not required. Tasting tickets available at event. Free for residents. $10.00 per guest.

Photography Demonstration at the Festival of Arts

All artists at the Festival of Arts are required to either volunteer time towards events, or demonstrate their work on site for the enjoyment of the patrons.

This evening I chose to demonstrate macro photography at the kiosk near my display.

Out of the dozens of photos taken, I have attached the two images that I most pleased with. An intimate shot of a pink rose and the heart of an iris.

Each of these images will be on sale at a reduced price of $100 ea for a 12" x 18" print or $35 for a 5" x 7" print. The images can be seen on my website here.

Saturday 12 JUL 2008 Festival of Arts 360°

A digital stitch of 17 source images into a 360-degree QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) image. Taken from a different vantage point, closer to the main festival stage. Larry Horne and Small Change were performing when this image was captured.

Place your cursor in the image and drag to the left or right to scroll.

Lake Marion Track 360°

Another 360°... this one is from the Lake Marion Track in Fjordland National Park on the South Island of New Zealand.

Arthur's Pass National Park 360° panoramic.

Working on the 360° image from the Festival of Arts reminded me that I needed to work on some of my older 360° shots too. Below is a 30 image panoramic taken from atop Bealy Spur in Arthur's Pass National Park on the South Island of New Zealand.

There was quite a stiff wind blowing in towards me, this is evident when you're looking out in the the valley. When you pan to the right or left you'll see the grasses in the foreground are bent over.

Place your cursor in the image and drag to the left or right to scroll.

First Place award at Orange County Fair

My photograph, Crystal Cove Sunset #011, has won First Place for the "Seascape" Class in the Professional Photography Division at the 2008 Orange County Fair.

Division 530: Professional B&W or Color Print
Class: 04 - Seascape

A link to the photo on my website can be found here.

Festival of Arts 360° Panoramic

A digital stitch of 16 source images into a 360-degree QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) image.

Place your cursor in the image and drag to the left or right to scroll.

Artists' Preview Night at the Festival of Arts

Tonight was Artists' Preview night at the Festival of Arts. It was a great night to kick off the season and extremely busy. Hopefully a sign of things to come!

Link to OC Register Story

Well it was a busy holiday weekend, with fireworks and all, but I managed to make it out to the opening of the Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach.

The 76th annual festival had its preview party Saturday (7/05), with 150 artists showcasing their work to friends and family for the first time this summer.

I viewed some art and had some pleasant conversations with various artists, including Mia Moore, Troy Poeschl and Sandra Jones Campbell. Sian Poeschl and Marsh Scott from the Sawdust Art Festival were also in attendance. Oh, and so was Sharbie Higuchi (of course), director of marketing and public relations for the festival.

I didn’t buy anything, but I’ve got my eye on a couple of pieces. The festival continues daily through Aug. 30. And the 75th Pageant of the Masters officially opens this week, with the first tickeded performance at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday (7/09).

Final presentation at the FESTIVAL OF ARTS

After several weeks of preparation, my space is finally complete at the FESTIVAL OF ARTS (Laguna Beach, CA).

Festival of Arts artists website update

My information has been posted to the FESTIVAL OF ARTS artist's website.

Let Buffalo Roam

At the FESTIVAL OF ARTS I will be donating 10% of the proceeds of any images of the Yellowstone Buffalo to the Buffalo Field Campaign. The Buffalo Field Campaign attempts to stop the slaughter of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo herd, protect the natural habitat of wild free-roaming buffalo and native wildlife, and to work with people of all Nations to honor the sacredness of the wild buffalo.

The Yellowstone herd is both genetically and behaviorally unique, being the only herd with continuously wild ancestry from the days when 50 million buffalo migrated freely across the Great Plains. At the end of the 19th century, after tens of millions had been slaughtered, only 23 wild buffalo survived. Taking refuge in Yellowstone's remote Pelican Valley, this remnant herd ensured the survival of the species in the wild. Today there are a little more than 3,000 buffalo living in and around Yellowstone, comprising America's only free-roaming and unfenced population.