you no longer have to suffer to be an artist

Above Digital montage poster © Roy R. Behrens 2011

 •••

Donald W. Winnicott—

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

Related Link 

Khaki to Khaki (dust to dust): The ubiquity of camouflage in human experience

Jacquie Colvin | Self-Portrait Parody

Self-Portrait Parody © Jacquie Colvin c2008

In past years, as a way of acquainting my students with the intricacies of image adjustment (and modification) using Adobe Photoshop, I have sometimes used a "self-portrait parody" problem, in which students integrate photographs of themselves into public domain images of past historic works of art. An early problem, sometimes the results are amazing, sometimes not. Shown above is one of my favorite solutions (c2008), produced by Jacquie Colvin, a student who later went on to become the graphic designer at the Grout Museum District in Waterloo IA, as well as an excellent mentor for student interns who have subsequently worked with her. The artwork of which this was a parody (the pair is reproduced below) was Self-Portrait in a Straw Hall, by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun (c1782).

•••

Eudora Welty, "A Sweet Devouring" in The Eye of the Storm: Selected Essays and Reviews (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 281—

All that summer I used to put on a second petticoat (our librarian wouldn't let you past the front door if she could see through you), ride my bicycle up the hill and "through the Capitol" (shortcut) to the library with my two read books in the basket (two was the limit you could take out at one time when you were a child and also as long as you lived), and tiptoe in ("Silence") and exchange them for two more in two minutes. Selections was no object. I coasted the two new books home, jumped out of my petticoat, read (I suppose I ate and bathed and answered questions put to me), then in all hope put my petticoat back on and rode those two books back to the library to get my next two. The librarian was the lady in town who wanted to be it. She called me by my full name and said, "Does your mother know where you are? You know good and well the fixed rule of the library: Nobody is going to come running back here with any book on the same day they took it out. Get both those things out of here and don't come back til tomorrow. And I can practically see through you."

The model (left) and the mimic

Block of Postage Stamps | Tanner Heinrichs

Block of postage stamps © Tanner Heinrichs

Above and below Proposal for a block of postage stamps for an imaginary country called the Republic of Villanella, designed by Tanner Heinrichs, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa, in a course called Graphic Design I, as taught by Roy R. Behrens.

•••

Leslie Hall, quoted in Steven J. Zeitlin, et al., eds., A Celebration of American Family Folklore (NYC: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. 88—

About a year after my grandfather died I took a trip across the country and stopped in St Louis to see my grandmother. It turned out that they had a lot of money tucked away here and there—money under the mattress, in different banks, fifties here and there. It all added up to close to one hundred thousand dollars. When I stopped again on the way back, I went into the house and my grandmother says, "Oh, Leslie, I have something for you, upstairs. I had thought about giving it to you on your way across the country." And here I was, old greedy me thinking that maybe she had found a hundred dollar bill under the mattress and was thinking of giving it to me. So I followed her upstairs, toward the bedroom where she all of a sudden makes a cut into the bathroom, and she opens the cabinet and pulls out these two huge bottles of mouthwash and she says, "Your grandfather was going to use these but he didn't get a chance."

George Carlin on Diminished Choices

Calendar page © Dana Potter (2013)

Above Layout for a calendar page (its theme determined by a quote) by Dana Potter, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

•••

George Carlin, in an interview in David Jay Brown, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 191—

We're given many choices to distract us from the fact that our real choices have been diminished in number. Two political parties. Maybe three or four large banks now. Credit card companies, just a couple, a handful. Newspapers, reduced. Ownership of media, reduced, down to five or six companies now. Big stock brokerage firms, reduced in number. In all of these important things we have less choice. Then we're distracted with these frivolous choices: 21 flavors of ice cream, 35 flavors of popcorn. You see specialty shops with 35 flavors of popcorn, like chocolate walnut popcorn. These are absurd distractions from what we are doing to ourselves…

Game Parody | Kaitlyn Cuvelier

Game Parody © Kaitlyn Cuvelier (2012)

Above Design for a game parody by Kaitlyn Cuvelier, graphic design student, University of Northern Iowa (2013).
...

From Max Eastman, Great Companions (New York: Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1942)—

[In his later life, American philosopher John Dewey] moved out on Long Island, and preserved his contact with reality by raising eggs and vegetables and selling them to the neighbors… [He received an urgent order one day] from a wealthy neighbor for a dozen eggs, and the children being in school, he himself took the eggs over in a basket. Going by force of habit to the front door, he was told brusquely that deliveries were made in the rear. He trotted obediently around to the back door, feeling both amused and happy. Some time later, he was giving a talk to the women's club of the neighborhood, and his wealthy customer, when he got up to speak, exclaimed in a loud whisper: "Why, he looks exactly like our egg man!" 

Al Capone | Jenni Lehmann

Portrait of Al Capone (2012) © Jenni Lehmann

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung, heroic or not. Jenni Lehmann chose Chicago gangster Al Capone.

•••

Saul Steinberg—

People who see a drawing in the New Yorker will think automatically that it's funny because it is a cartoon. If they see it in a museum, they think it is artistic; and if they find it in a fortune cookie, they think it is a prediction.

•••

Anon—

At a local auction, he bought an antique writing desk. When he got home, he opened it up, and a dozen people fell out. It was a missing persons bureau.