01.31

dwayne mastercopy

final stuff

sculpture

Landscape

Choose your own 8-bit adventure!

spot paintings

Egon...how do I hate thee?

(Mine's the one on top.)

Photo montages

I had kind of a hard time finding photo montages that I actually liked. I chose these because they're mostly nature-related, and I really like nature photography.

Photos

I was drawn to these images for lots of different reasons. 

Some of them are purely sentimental; two photos were taken by a friend (one is the eye, and I'm a huge fan of macro photography), and another of these is mine. I want to learn what I can do with my photos beyond simple retouching.

A close friend lives in Tokyo, and I envy his view of the skyline at night (top picture). I'd really like to learn how to mimic the long exposure, which you can see when you look at the streams of light the cars leave. 

I love the dreamlike quality that Degas' paintings always seem to have, and I want to learn to play with color and noise and focus to achieve that kind of visual texture. As far as the Kandinsky, he's another artist I've always loved, and I want to learn more about creating shapes and using color to create depth and space.

The photo of Michael Jackson as an angel is by David LaChapelle, whom I've admired for a long time just because his fantastic creations never fail to be totally over-the-top. It's sort of like Vegas on a screen. I guess it could be categorized better as a photo montage?

The other photos aren't just randomly selected; the photographers all mean something to me personally, but I liked those works specifically for the way they play with light/dark, contrast/exposure, and reflection. 

Damien Hirst

You know, from the little bit I knew of him before reading this review, I really wanted to write Damien Hirst off as a pretentious charlatan toolbag. Or as an evil genius who uses diamonds and formaldehyde to fool a great number of people into changing their collective definition of "art." Then again, what do I know about contemporary art? Damien Hirst has obviously got something unique. I'm thinking that the photos of his installations really must not do them justice, that I must be missing something utterly essential and attention-grabbing by not being in the same room as a series of dots. That's the only thing I can believe, unless I want to keep shaking my head in bewilderment.

The only work of his that I really admired was this chess set, made of medicine bottles, entitled "Mental Escapology":

I like it because of its even ratio of form to function, and I think it also presents a pretty witty metaphor for mortality.