Tuesday 3 July 2012

SUMMER SCHOOL


As I said in my earlier post - Summer School is well and truly here! I am almost through the 2nd week now with 2 weeks to go. The heat is definitely rising here in Abu Dhabi reaching highs of 42-45ÂșC lately!

Just starting to grade the first project for ART251 (Basic Graphic Design) were they show their abilities in Illustrator (example below).



Some of the girls are really talented and can really express themselves through their work and it is great to see this in class.

I only wish there was more time between each class that I have with them as we are fitting in 20 week courses into 4 weeks! and there is just no time to reflect and refine work between classes.

Anyway - back to Blighty in 3 weeks when I will be enjoying sun, rain, snow and tennis ball sized hail stone all in 1 week!

Monday 2 July 2012

THE SILENT EVOLUTION - Jason de Caires Taylor


Not been on here for soooo long now - and as I was sat in class teaching Summer School with a few minutes to spare, I decided to have a browse on some of my favorite sites. I came across the images above and it really reminds me of the work at Crosby beach - the installation by Antony Gormley. This is a great continuation of his work and it is great to see how the sea interacts and manipulates Jason de Caires Taylor's work and makes it their own. I really admire artists that create works like this. They bring a whole new "living" dimension to the work and it is constantly changing giving the audience something new to see each time they visit it.

The installation is located under the sea off the coasts of Mexico, Grenada, and the West Indies, Jason de Caires Taylor’s realistic sculptures of people morph and evolve over time with the proliferation of colorful sea life that inhabits them. Stony human faces are obfuscated by coral, barnacles and seaweed; fleshed out and breathing with new life, the resulting ecosystem textures and transforms these ever-changing, ephemeral bodies.

Created with environmentally friendly materials that promote coral growth, the sculptures contain inert, ph-neutral properties designed to last hundreds of years, and to house the creatures that distort and transform them.

Taylor’s magnus opus, The Silent Evolution, located in Cancun, Mexico, consists of 400 life-sized casts and forms a permanent artificial reef. Taylor’s body of work provides both an artful method for addressing environmental concerns and the spectacle of witnessing true buried treasure.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Steve Jobs Tribute Artwork

I have just read a really great article in designmag regarding the life of Steve Jobs and tagged onto the end is tribute artwork from various artists which I couldn't help but show on here.

A wonderfully supportive and peaceful tribute to the man who has revolutionized the digital industry. What he has left behind is both legendary and forever immortal in time.

I hope you like the ones I have selected as much as I do - well done to all...







The artists I have listed are as follows (top to bottom: Alfredo Caceres, Ben Vista, Seto Buje, Greg B, anonymous)

Convocation Day at Zayed University

I have been a little quiet of late on here in terms of posting up things that I like or are happening in my life so I felt the need to throw in a few images of my new place of work (Zayed University - Abu Dhabi).

The ones below were taken before students actually started at the brand new facility.

It is an amazing campus with state-of-the-art facilities. I wish my University was like this when I was studying those many years ago!

The library images here are for Danny (I know your love and appreciation of a good library!)





Enough said!

Thursday 6 October 2011

R.I.P. Steve Jobs


Steve Jobs, the demanding visionary who understood before anyone else how deeply we would live our lives through our devices, died today at the age of 56, only weeks after resigning as chief executive of computer giant Apple Inc. as he battled pancreatic cancer.

THE NEXT GREAT GENERATION R.I.P. Steve Jobs
“The world has lost an amazing human being,” wrote Apple chief executive Tim Cook in a message to employees. “Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

Jobs was “among the greatest of American innovators,” said President Obama in a statement posted on the White House blog. “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

Jobs revitalized Apple by transforming smartphones, computers, and media players into objects of desire. He insisted the company put the human experience first, focusing on design as well as technological prowess. Fifteen years ago, Apple flirted with bankruptcy; today, it is one of the most successful companies on earth.

Jobs’s rival, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, issued a statement saying, “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had.”

Gates closed his statement by writing, “I will miss Steve immensely.”

John Sculley, Apple’s chief executive in the mid-1980s, and the man who once had Jobs kicked out of the company he’d co-founded, said Jobs “taught all of us how to transform technology into magic.”

After he was ousted, Jobs endured a decade of exile. But the experience taught him lessons that would, once he returned, help him lead Apple to unimaginable heights of achievement.

“Steve’s big contribution to the computer industry was to take it away from the nerds and give it to the people,” said Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet networking technology and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, to Syrian immigrant Abdulfattah John Jandali and Joanne Schieble, both graduate students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

It was brought home to me over the weekend how fundamental he was in my career as when I spoke to a very close friend of mine we reminisced about how we made the transition from CS10 and drawing boards slowly to using the Mac - I commented that "we were his test pilots" and without us "long in the tooth" designers learning the trade in a totally new way (using the mac - a II Ci to be precise) who knows were Apple would be now?

Without people like Steve Jobs the Design world that I live in today would not be as happy a place thats for sure.

Thank you Steve for your vision and passion for what you believed in - you will be sadly missed but your apples will be a constant reminder of your short existence on this earth.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

CHRISTO IS COMING TO UNIVERSITY!!

On November 16th 2011 Christo the "Wrap" artist will be visiting our University (Zayed University, Abu Dhabi in the UAE).

Christo (born Javashev Christo) is best known for producing enormous packaging projects: he wraps parks, buildings, and entire outdoor landscapes. Christo has collaborated with his wife Jeanne-Claude for over 40 years on these projects. The two earn the huge amounts of money required to execute their monumental works by executing and then selling preparatory drawings to collectors and dealers.

Believing that people should have intense and memorable experiences of art outside the institution of the museum, Christo typically creates temporary wrappings -- generally lasting several weeks -- on a vast scale. Borrowing land, structures, and spaces used and built by the public (and, therefore, already laden with a history of associations and connotations), he momentarily intervenes in the local population’s daily rhythm in order to create "gentle disturbances" intended to refocus citizens' impressions. Such disturbances force each local participant/viewer to examine the way that social interaction becomes entrenched in routine and is consequently deadened.

In such installations as Wrapped Coast -- One Million Sq. Ft. (a 1969 fabric covering of Little Bay in Sydney, Australia), and Wrapped Floors, Wrapped Walk Ways (a 1971 intervention onto and into a house designed by Mies van der Rohe), traditional aesthetic criteria such as line, shape, form, and color are coupled with the immediacy of nature. Some wraps such as Valley Curtain (Rifle, Colorado, 1972), and Running Fence (California, 1976) are titans of dramatic effect, while others such as Wrapped Walk Ways (St. Louis, 1978) exude a romantic, bucolic, and elegant feeling. Regardless of effect or locale, the extensive lines of fabric running along sidewalks, across lawns, and over walls give the environments a renewed sense of intimacy. Although the sense of enclosure and specificity is temporary, it permanently alters the way people experience a given locale.

You can get more info on the artist and more of his work here...
http://www.christojeanneclaude.net

Below are some of his art works...