Contrasting Ship Series by Feininger & Dean

Recently investigating the artwork of Lyonel Feininger, I was struck by recurring theme of ships in his pieces held here in San Francisco. He seems captivated by the image of a ship at sea, coming back to it numerous times over at least 24 years from Hanseatic Fleet (1918) to Peaceful (1942). These works are essentially studies of composition and shape relations and, though they vary in energy, err on the side of stillness and permanence, emphasized by the frequent use of woodcuts. Though also of ships, Tacita Dean’s 2002 piece “Chere Petite Soeur,” could not be more different in nearly every way from Feininger’s studies.

The overall mood of Dean’s piece is intensely dramatic, and it instantly involves one as both a viewer of art and the reader of an unfolding story. The blackboard as a base layer literally establishes the foundation of a dark, ominous mood, that plays through the entire piece. The rendering of the ship(s) at sea is done so convincingly in chalk that the viewer is teleported to the scene, immediately involved in the danger taking place. The presentation of the piece as a diptych involves the viewer even more, creating a sequential story left for the viewer to complete.

The overall composition of the piece is powerful in both parts of the diptych, with dramatic contrasts of light and dark, chaotically varied use of line evocative of the storm the drawing depicts, and a strong horizontal orientation that accentuates the left-to-right reading of the two panels as a story. As the viewer moves closer, the technique and the medium become more apparent and are, in fact, quite surprising. Reading from a distance almost like a painting, the drawing itself is actually chalk on blackboard. In addition, the sweeping movement of the composition as a whole seems contradicted by the realization that each panel is actually a set of four smaller frames, meticulously delineated from one another.

Indeed, this closer investigation of the piece almost makes the initial intensity and drama of it recede as the viewer begins to question the essence of what exactly s/he is looking at? Perhaps this is not a story at all; perhaps we are not to have been “transported” to another place and time.

Perhaps, as Vitamin D suggests, the piece is about memory. Memory, like each panel of the diptych, is pieced together as we live our lives. In many cases, these pieces are disparate and not logically associated, like seeing your spouse in a dream about your childhood. However, particularly dramatic memories can be unforgettable, and traumatic ones tend to be relived with great clarity. Oddly, the small notes written into the piece create a technical sensibility, as if we are looking at the blueprint of a memory methodically reconstructed in all its intensity.

Finally, there exists the great irony of the piece, that it is drawn upon a blackboard that, while essential to the piece’s dramatic mood, is a surface meant to be erased. It leaves the thoughtful viewer with the notion that, after all this methodical reconstruction, the piece will simply disappear, as if it never was. What then, was the true purpose of it in the first place?

Emerging Artist: Tony Maridakis

"Lone Tree II" is one of Mr. Maridakis's recent works and is on display at 95 Third St. in San Francisco.

In the first of the Dead Dog Cafe’s Emerging Artist series, I will be discussing the background, inspirations, and motivations of the thoughtful surrealist painter Tony Maridakis of San Francisco.

Mr. Maridakis would have you think he has only recently discovered his talent for painting, but this guy has been a prodigy from the start.  Most people can lay claim to having some lost talent for drawing, painting, singing, or magical instrument playing from yesteryear, but few actually had their art exhibited publicly, much less in as well-trafficked a locale as the San Francisco International Airport.  Indeed, Mr. Maridakis’s groundbreaking painting using found objects (sponges) was so displayed when he was a kid.  Not only was the medium cutting edge, but the topic was sharp and contemporary: a quizzical exploration of the Miss America pageant.

Such talent is hard to come by, and even harder to contain, so what is it that took Mr. Maridakis decades to return to such an apparent love for art?  Like many of us, the soul-crushing mores of society distracted him from the truth and dragged him down a path beckoning money, security, and approval.  Despite the clear signage–promotions, success, raises–along this path, Mr. Maridakis began to feel increasingly lost and muddled.  His mind tormented with too much left-brain-driven thought about work, he sought refuge in the right side of his brain, which had somehow had the presence all along to surround Mr. Maridakis with a fine collection of artwork and artist friends.  From this foundation, he took his first steps just over ten years ago to reclaim his calling as an artist by taking a painting class.

Like any artist ascending the shambles of a crumbling past unsupported by the glories of art, Mr. Maridakis has been cautiously methodical, lest he slip and fall into the abyss of his formerly droll life.  Though his intent all along was to paint abstractly in oil, he began with watercolor, seeing a progression from watercolor to acrylic to oil; and with paintings true to life, with another progression in mind from realistic to surreal to abstract painting.  Initially just exploring the medium, Mr. Maridakis eventually lay the foundation for his current painting through this important phase of his work, as I described in a previous post.

Despite finding through watercolor the template for his current work by 2001, Mr. Maridakis did not fully release himself to explore his art until four years later.  In 2005, he found himself working at the Art Institute, where he had made sacrifices to contribute to the important work of and surround himself with artists.  At this time, he began to take classes there and traveled to locations that inspired his work, most recently spending about a year in Argentina.  He is continuing his art education right now through UC Berkeley’s post-baccalaureate program.

Mr. Maridakis counts as influences Van Gogh, El Greco, Volkov, Earhart Richter, Sonja Echart, Liberti, the latter two of which are Argentinian inspirations doing abstract landscapes and surrealism, respectively.  His work can be viewed online.

3arly 3xplorations: The Watercolors of Tony Maridakis

In Tony Maridakis’s (reviewed as an emerging artist here) early paintings, all done in watercolor, are the clear signs of a budding painter exploring the boundaries of the medium and searching for his own artistic aptitudes.  Mr. Maridakis’s work at this early stage already exhibits the tri-partite themes for which his work has presently become known.  Exploring subjects from still life to landscape and approaches from realistic to abstract, Mr. Maridakis experiments with different combinations thereof to find his strengths.  This essay discusses the two phases of his watercolor painting, their relationship to his current work, and his noteworthy watercolor masterpiece Colonia I.

• Early Watercolor: These initial efforts are exemplified in Plastic Gold Fish (1997), Tapestry (1996), and Vineyard (1996).  Here we see Mr. Maridakis experimenting with the basic elements of watercolor as a medium in three distinctly different paintings.  Plastic Gold Fish strives to be true to reality, capturing the visual character of a fish as one might see it in life, with correct proportions, a sense of shape, coloration, and depth.  In contrast, Vineyard is a more playful articulation, paying more heed to vibrant color and active gesture than holding to a crisp, realistic form.  Although this latter work becomes more abstract, that abstraction comes in through the act of simplified painting rather than in the selection of the image or the actual content of the painting.  An entirely different type of abstraction is apparent in Tapestry, a painting based on extremely simplified forms that seek not depict a unified landscape scene but rather strive to carve out their own space in this broad array of color and shape.  Flat in its depth, Tapestry brings the viewer’s attention to the relationships between the shapes and colors.  It builds a vaguely realistic object from the variety of semi-realistic forms and abstractions, but the point is clearly not to depict a work of woven art in painted form.  Here, Mr. Maridakis has taken his watercoloring from realism to abstraction within the course of his first year of handling this medium.
• Late Watercolor: Mr. Maridakis’s work progresses over the next few years, taking similar scenes but pushing them in the opposite direction of how he had painted them before and laying the foundation for his current paintings in acrylic and oil, as can be seen in Baccus (2001), Vineyard II (2001), and Landscape I & II (2001).  As if to demonstrate his aptitude for all varieties of style, Mr. Maridakis takes the gestural and colorful Vineyard I scene and renders it more delicately with muted colors.  The forms themselves are placed and shaped similarly; the hill for example remains a simplified form comprised of three straight lines for the horizon and serving more as a palette upon which the Mr. Marikdakis paints the patterns of the earth rather than an indicator of depth or shape.  However, the painting seems entirely different in its mood on account of the changes in color and gesture.  Baccus can perhaps be associated with Plastic Gold Fish as straight-forward still life renderings, but again Mr. Maridakis takes the style in the opposite direction.  Where Plastic Gold Fish showed subtle depth and form, Baccus focuses boldly on simplified, flat, pattern-like shapes of the glass and grapes.  As with the earlier Vineyard I, the gesture in the painting is clear, and, though the palette is limited only to black and white, the use of these colors is bolder.  Finally, though the association might not be apparent at first, the Landscape I & II pieces can be seen as a progression of Tapestry.  Although the scene is clearly based on life and the viewer can sense the implied depth, the painting is not about creating a sense of space but rather showing vibrant and colorful shapes, each bearing its own weight in the composition and coming to the fore in its own right, just as in Tapestry.  This relationship is made even more apparent through observation of the lower portion of the painting where a patterned, tapestry-like segment has been directly pasted over the original and least vibrant section of the original painting.
• Relationship to Current Painting: Although Mr. Maridakis discusses only two groups of paintings in his Artist Statement, it is generally accepted by the art world that his work today falls into three categories, each of which is an outgrowth of the distincts areas of exploration during his watercolor phase.  The “Lone Tree” series is clearly a continuation of “Vineyard I” and “Vineyard II,” taking the image of trees on a hill, paring it down to one simple tree, and imbuing the painting with symbolic meaning through the surreal coloration and nearly archetypal imagery.  His “Estudio” series–including “Estudio en Azul,” “Estudio en Amarillo,” and “Estudio en Divinidad“–is an extension of “Bacchus,” which might have been called “Estudio en Negro y Blanco.”  In these, Mr. Maridakis again makes color, contrast, and fluid brushstrokes the focal points of his canvas, but this time the art is seemingly devoid of any basis in reality.*  Finally, Mr. Maridakis’s “Landscape I & II” serve as ample prelude to his noteworthy “Océanos Imaginadas” series, all of which show a landscape with limited foreground and divided near the middle of the painting by a horizon.  Although the elements of tapestry and patterning are less apparent, they are still present in these surreal paintings in a number of ways, including the repetition of the oblong oval shape, the patterning effect of the stones on the ground, the disconnection between the light between the sky and the earth, the separation of the paintings into smaller scenes, and finally the overall organization of these paintings as a tryptich.
• Culmination of Watercolor Painting: I would be remiss in discussing Mr. Maridakis’s watercolors without calling attention to Colonia I, his singular masterpiece of this era in his painting.  In this painting, we see all of the themes and styles of his prior watercolor coming into balance.  Depicting a colorful building running along an inviting avenue, Colonia strikes an interesting balance between still life and landscape.  Certainly, the outdoor scene with trees, buildings, and marked depth perspective can be considered a landscape, but the building itself consumes so much of the painting that other traditional elements of landscape painting, such as the sky and the foreground, are given very little space.  Indeed, the painting might also be considered a still life of a building, despite the lack of fruit and tablecloths in the scene.  The painting also strikes a balance between the realistic and the abstract.  The viewer does not question the scene’s “realism” overall, as the composition itself depicts this street scene quite realistically: the building recedes to the horizon correctly; the trees seem to arrange themselves in the right places around the facade; and the lighting seems consistent across the painting, creating a sense of depth that makes the painting sit well from a distance.  However, each element taken alone becomes abstracted and has more in common with Baccus than Plastic Gold Fish.  The trees are spherical clouds of painterly dabs within which in branches are nearly if not entirely lost.  The building itself is like a colorful painter’s palette cut into the shape of a building and placed on the page, such is the variety of brushwork and playfulness of the stroke.  Finally, the cobblestone street defies the rules of perspective, falling away before the viewer as it is painted as a flat array of rectangular blocks of muted color.  It is in this latter segment that the tapestratic approach of both Tapestry and Landscape I & II is most apparent, but the painting overall also possesses the same overall sensibility, placing simplified but individually vibrant shapes next to each other.

Patterning, shape relationships, vibrant color–all of these components that are to become signatures of Mr. Maridakis’s work are apparent in balanced form in Colonia I.  It is no surprise that he came back to this painting in Colonia II, but it is a surprise that the original is not up for sale on his online store.  This painting marks not only a culmination in his early watercolor paintings but also a turning point as he subsequently begins to explore acrylic and oil painting as noted above.

* For those who question the relationship between such “abstract” art and “Bacchus,” clearly derived from life, Mr. Maridakis’s “Comet” serves as an adequate middle ground, showing his transition between realism and abstraction in this strain of his work.

Top-25 Cities for Singles & Outdoors (in the United States), Part II

In my last post, I discussed some cities that are good places for both singles as well as outdoors and the method I used for selecting those cities for my list.  Here, I examine cities that are rated even better than those previously discussed by Forbes’ various rankings.  If you are willing to move and want an “upgrade” in the singles scene and your outdoor life, then one of these cities is probably an excellent choice for you.

• Tier II – Huge Cities, Vegas & Tampa: You can’t go wrong with any of this group of seven cities, as all but two logged a top ten ranking for singles at some point in the last three years, and all are in the top 25 for outdoors.  Las Vegas and Tampa-St. Petersburg get into this tier with #8 and #5 rankings for outdoors.  Both cities expend more than $100 per resident on parks and experience a lot of sunshine each year, but can be relatively hot, especially Vegas.  Tampa is ranked higher for outdoors overall due to its exceptional #5 ranking in Forbes’ “Recreation Index,” but Vegas has been in the top 25 for singles in each of the last three years.  With less impressive but still relatively good outdoor experiences, big cities like New York, Atlanta, LA, Dallas, and Chicago are even better bets for singles than Vegas and Tampa, with all but LA and Chicago scoring two top ten rankings in the last three years.  In the 2008 study, New York, LA, and Chicago stood out for their culture, number of singles, and top-ranked nightlife (#1, #2, and #3, respectively), but suffers from lower ranks in job growth, online dating, and relatively high cost of living (ranked #34 or lower out of 40).  Atlanta and Dallas, ranked #1 and #3 overall in 2008, rate well (top 15) across the board for singles, with the exception of online dating for both cities (#24 and #20) and the actual number of singles for Dallas (#34).
  

  Denver probably belongs in Tier II, as its ranking for singles is inflated by including Boulder with Denver in the 2006 study. However, I personally like the mountains, and Denver is really the only option in the Rocky Mountains, so I left it in Tier I.

• Tier I – West of the Mississippi, DC & Boston: If you want to choose from the best of the best in cities for singles and outdoors, then you’re going to Boston, DC, or west of the Mississippi.  At the bottom end of this tier, Austin, Boston, and Denver all had a top-ten ranking for singles at some point in the past three years and are in the top 15 for outdoors.  Boston’s singles scene is comparable to to the megalopoles (NYC, LA) as described above but with better online dating (#15 in 2008), while Austin is notable for top-5 rankings in the number of singles, online dating, and job growth.  Edging these cities overall are Seattle and Washington, DC, both remarkably in the top ten for singles every year of Forbes’ ranking, making them the most consistent cities in this area, while ranking a solid #11 and #12, respectively, for outdoors.  Both of these cities are great for online dating but have relatively high living costs.  DC is better for the number of singles (#7 to Seattle’s #22), but Seattle is better than DC for job growth (#9 to DC’s #19).  While not as consistent for singles as Seattle and DC, San Diego and Phoenix have all jumped into the top seven for singles in one of each of the last three years and are all in the top six for outdoors.  Thanks to 20% of its land devoted to parks and comfortable temperatures year-round, San Diego ranks #2 for its outdoors, but it’s been outside the top 15 for singles each year except 2006 since it has a relatively high cost of living (#36 out of 40) without ranking in the top third in any other area for singles.  Phoenix might not be as spectacular and San Diego for the outdoors, but it is still relatively affordable (#13 cost of living) and is in the top fifteen in 2008 for culture, night life, and job growth.
  

  A testament to the limitations of rankings, Washington, DC is rated among the best cities for singles and outdoors but inexplicably remains one of the last cities in which I would actually want to live in the United States. I just don't like it.

• Runner-Up – Minneapolis: Minneapolis numerically tied with San Diego and Phoenix, but this was probably due to St. Paul’s inclusion in the 2006 and 2007 Forbes’ rankings, which brought Minneapolis’ ranking down to #14 and #13, respectively.  Analyzed separately from St. Paul in 2008, Minneapolis jumped to #3 overall for singles, with a huge improvement in Forbes’ “online dating” ranking, “determined by the number of active profiles in each city listed on dating site Yahoo! Personals.”  Minneapolis is in the top 20 in every category for singles except for cost of living, but even there its #28 ranking handily beats all of the best cities for singles other than Dallas and Atlanta.  Meanwhile, Minneapolis ranks a solid #7 for outdoors, with a stellar $150 spent per person on parks and a tiny 2.3 days with unhealthy air, both measures in which Minneapolis is rated second among all cities ranked.  Residents have to put up with almost three months of noticeable precipitation, but this is still less than Boston, Portland, and Seattle and on par most East Coast and Midwest cities.  The real stinker is five months of sub-freezing temperatures, an amount only Denver beats among ranked cities.  Minneapolis is 11th for Forbes’ “Recreation Index,” which measures “the number of ball diamonds, tennis courts and pools” in a city, but even without the cold it would be tough to beat the #1 city for singles and outdoors…
  

  If you can brave five months of below-freezing temperatures, Minneapolis is hard to beat for its singles scene and outdoor activities.

• The Best – San Francisco: If you’re willing to pay for it, San Francisco has seemingly no weaknesses in its singles scene or outdoor life.  It has been ranked #4, #1, and #2 for singles the past three years.  Despite an astronomical cost of living (second only to New York City among ranked cities, based on Forbes’ calculations) and relatively middling job growth (#24), it is quite good for online dating (#13) and nightlife (#12), excellent for culture (#4), and tops (#1, for those aren’t sure what I mean by “tops”) for the sheer number of singles, and these rankings are fairly consistent over the course of the last three years.  As for outdoors, San Franciso blows away the competition with over $250 spent per person on parks and recreation and featuring just one day over 90 degrees and zero below freezing, a climate rivalled only by San Diego and Los Angeles.  A good 20% of the city is parkland, and only about a week has “unhealthy air.”  It’s wetter than San Diego and LA, with two months (instead of one) of noticeable precipitation, but this is still less than all but desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Of course, rankings, with their perfectly even weighting of various “objective” factors whose very objectivity is questionable in first place,* are not the perfect guide to anything, including where to live, and averaging those rankings together does nothing to address their inherent limitations.  Innumerable factors like family, jobs, and networks keep people in one place despite supposed enhancements to their life that other cities might be able to deliver.  I, for one, lived most of my adult life in and enjoyed Philly (a “Tier III” city here), would never choose to live in Las Vegas (“Tier II), and have lived in and can’t stand Washington, DC.  However, this assessment gives me an additional appreciation for Minneapolis, where I currently live, and grounds that appreciation in some interesting facts about the city.

Post-Baccalaureate Programs in Fine Art

For those who maybe regret not finishing off a major in Art, want to switch careers, or simply solidify or formalize a potentially lifelong passion, attaining a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Fine/Studio Art could be a viable path ["More than Bachelor, Less than a Master," New York Times]. While I’m sure many colleges and universities can easily accommodate adding a fifth year onto a four-year BA program to allow students to double-major in art as well as their original area of study, individuals who have been out of school for a while need to figure out how to start new, probably at a different institution. Unfortunately, no web page summarizes the programs available, so I’ll do my best here to post what I found in the first hundred results of a Google search for “post-baccalaureate” and “art”. The dollar amount in parentheses after each institution’s name is the annual tuition.

1. Top Tier MFA Programs with Post-Bac Options: Both the Art Institute of Chicago ($33,000) and the Maryland Institute College of Art ($32,000) offer post-bac certificates while also being highly-regarded in the US News and World Report rankings of graduate programs in fine arts. Say what you will about the rankings, but if you are set on getting into a “top” school, making art into a profession, and are willing to pay the premium tuition, then attending one of these schools could be a good move. Although admission to MFA programs is not guaranteed and credits do not transfer from post-bac programs to graduate study, making connections and involving yourself in the art community at the schools can only enhance your ability to attend them full-time as an MFA student. Just to be sure, I dug into the other top-ten programs and did not find post-bac opportunities at any of them.
2. Affordable Post-Bac Options: Brandeis ($17,500), Berkeley ($5,700), and the Lyme Academy ($19,000) all offer post-baccalaureate certificates for considerably less tuition than most of the other programs available. If you aren’t going to a top program or just want this to be a formalization of a lifelong passion, I’m hard pressed to come up with a reason why you would not consider one of these options. Brandeis’ program might be more affordable because it only offers 2 and 3 courses per semester, though it is a full-time residency program. At just $455 per class, Berkeley could be the hands-down best deal, but its program is run by UC Extension, the continuing education branch of Berkeley.  Therefore, classes meet once a week during evenings and weekends; these would be considered casual audits and not worthy of any degree or certificate at another program.  In addition, as a non-degree continuing education program, Berkeley classes are not eligible for federal student loans, so you will have to find private loans or pay out of pocket.  I’m not sure why someone would pay more to attend the Lyme Academy in Connecticut; to me, it seems like urban culture is central to a vibrant arts community. It is, however, more affordable than the following options.
3. Other Post-Bac Options: The San Francisco Art Institute ($32,000), Minneapolis College of Art and Design* ($28,000), and School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston ($31,000) all offer post-bac certificates, but at the premium prices of top-ranked options without the supposed prestige of a high ranking in US News. Unless you are specifically tied to a particular area, I’m not sure why you would attend one of these schools instead of the options in 1 and 2 above. Then again, I’ve barely put a pen to paper, much less brush to canvas, in about ten years, so I’ll likely be a beggar rather than a chooser should I go this route. These three programs could be my only recourse.

Having just dissed three post-bac programs, it would do me well to remember that posting ancient drawings to DeviantArt.com is about all the "artwork" I've done in the past ten years.

Post-bac programs like these are the only recourse for people who definitely want an MFA but don’t have the undergraduate degree or portfolio to get into a graduate program. However, for someone who is just trying to reinvigorate a lost-lost passion or right a past wrong, diving into even $15,000 (Berkeley) of debt can be an expensive way to go. On the other hand, what’s all the money from lucrative professions for INTJs supposed to go toward anyway? The worst thing that happens is that I take a year, decide I don’t want to do this, exorcise my prior regrets, and easily pay off my loans after an MBA. The upside is that I rediscover an old passion and am then able to continue to pursue it with an MFA program.

* Note that the application instructions state that you must submit 20 slides.  My correspondence with their admissions department has revealed that their online information is dated and that they actually prefer digital submissions.