Some incisive advice to young and emerging artists from one of the great graphic designers of our time – Milton Glaser. It may not come as much of a surprise, that it’s about hard work and dedication.

Milton Glaser is the most celebrated graphic designer in the United States. He’s to thank (or blame) for the ubiquitous “I ‘heart’ New York” logo amongst many other memorable items of iconography.

He has had one-man-shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. In 2004 he was selected for the lifetime achievement award of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. As a Fulbright scholar, Glaser studied with the painter, Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, and is an articulate spokesman for the ethical practice of design and for the value of ‘commercial art.’

Several eons ago (paleolithic era, according to my kids) I lived in a college dorm room, quite a nice one as dorm rooms go. This was in England, mind you, so I suspect dorm rooms in the U.S., are generally more spacious (and come complete with an ensuite Starbucks). While dorm rooms and dorm facilities have evolved since my days at college, see then and now examples below – I read somewhere that the Rockoff Dorm at Rutgers University features a Coldstone Creamery, 7-Eleven and an expansive gym – I believe most dorm rooms the world over share some common attributes: never enough space for clothes or hair care products, boring blank walls, dismal lighting, lousy curtains, beds made for pre-teens, shelves that hold no more than one book of dangerous ideas or bottle of something delicious … you get the idea.

Then

Image courtesy of Gettysburg College, Digital Center Art (yours truly not pictured)

Now

Image courtesy of Rutgers University, New Brunswick Development Corporation and Time Magazine, 2010

While a major remodeling project sponsored by the Home Depot via your parents’ credit card or being featured on one of the many “designer-star-remodel-color-challenge-on-a-dime-organization-remix-divine-curb-appeal-creative-closet” reality TV shows is likely to put you at odds with your dorm neighbors and the college “police”, there is indeed hope.

I’ve listed below 10 important, and simple, dos and don’ts that you should consider when making the space your own. After all, your dorm room will reflect you, your personality, your tastes, your likes, your style. You’ll want to make a winning impression with your new neighbors in the real world – think life outside of Facebook.

Don’ts

1. Don’t line your dorm room walls with empty (or full) beer bottles or cans, especially those “lite” beers. This is so 1980s.

2. Please avoid the once ubiquitous Warhol, Marilyn, Che posters. See art-related “dos” below.

3. On the subject of posters, don’t use any that include the following imagery: cars, trucks, El Caminos, parts of the human body below the neck, UFOs, Godzilla movies, wrestlers, footballers, motivational slogans with images of mountains in the background, periodic table (unless you don’t want any new friends), vegetables.

4. Don’t fashion a table from user pizza boxes. Enough said.

5. Don’t assume revamping your Facebook (or Myspace) pages counts. Hanging out on Facebook can only go so far (yes, eventually you’ll have to socialize in person!), so you’ll still need a cool room.

6. Don’t hang audio speakers (if you’re beyond ‘phones and buds) on shared walls. You will quickly spawn a rivalry with your neighbors; one that you will not win after they invest in a professional Marshall amp and speakers having a total wattage that exceeds your zipcode by a factor of 10.

7. Don’t display any dead animals or tools or pictures of your parents or your rock collection (as in pebbles) , anywhere, in your room.

8. Don’t accessorize with any of the following: glitter ball smaller than 36 inches in diameter; multi-colored floor lamps (save these for your first retro apartment or pass them down to your kids, eventually); “plug-in miniature rock garden water feature” thingy; toaster oven (its use with cause odors to permanently permeate your cool clothes).

9. Don’t lay down any rugs that have a pile deeper than an 1/8th of an inch (you’ll be surprised what may end up lurking there), and avoid any fabric colors from any Martha Stewart palette.

10. Don’t confuse a well-organized display of your personal toiletries with good interior design. So, hide your hair products, shavers, tweezers, eye-liner, deodorant, puffs etc far away from other humans.

Dos

1. Get some real art on your walls. Display a well-edited selection of quality prints and paintings that show who you are, and that engage others. My top recommendation, of course, is art251 – a great source for affordable originals, prints and art-o-mat art at an astounding $5 per pull.

2. Buy a decent set of desk and floor lamps. You may not have time or inclination to open a book (during your first 2 years), but you’ll need light to illuminate a path around and over the inevitable piles of clothes. Good lights will let you change the mood of your room quickly and cheaply.

3. Check out online design resources to help you plan your space, organize your furniture. A great one is: DesignYourDorm.

4. Visit IKEA and/or Craigslist – probably two of the best sources for affordable furniture and accessories and even room mates (the latter only for room mates).

5. If you must make pictures of your family visible, display these randomly intermingled with a vast assortment of other random photographs of random objects. This will ensure suitable anonymity and distance.

6. Invest in a good set of sheets, blankets, pillows and comforter, and, for that matter, bring your own bed. You’ll need to insulate yourself from what has gone before. Better still, find someone to give you a new futon as a gift.

7. Buy storage bins that fit under your bed, which will allow you to instantaneously hide all the clutter that you will find the need to hide from people who don’t yet wish to know all about you.

8. Find an interesting potted plant and challenge yourself to keep it alive for more than one semester.

9. Buy a couple of white boards, one for inside the room, one to post messages outside your door. Yes, this is like your Facebook wall, and will add color and creativity to your non-digital persona (yes, you do have one and you may be surprised to find that others will wish to meet it).

10. Do have fun (and learn) – you’ll discover that it will be one of the best times of your life!

Cortes Distortion, Oil on Canvas by Michael Longhofer.

If you’re like me then the heat of summer in Texas requires respite, or better still, an antidote. Well, an antidote to the heat we cannot offer but there’s plenty of respite here inside art251.

Recall when you’re on vacation, the weather turns miserable, it’s pouring with rain? You need something to do despite the inclement weather, right? It’s not uncommon for many of us to seek out a museum or an art gallery when the heavens open. Well, you can do the same when the sun is blazing as well. What could top a visit to a gorgeous gallery when the elements are conspiring to damage your hair, your skin, your clothes and your mind.

So, remember there’s no need to wait for it to rain for you to visit your cool, local gallery. We keep the thermostat reasonably low and the art on the walls will take your mind off the sizzling temperature. This summer we are pleased to welcome several new artists to the gallery. James Brandon a photographer based in Ft.Worth adds his stunning HDR photographs; Renee Hanson from Austin displays her new abstract works.

Also, three of our established artists – Melissa Ayr, Michael Longhofer and Marie Maines refresh our walls with some bold new paintings. Melissa Ayr displays a collection of 6 new vibrant abstract canvases that will enliven any wall; Michael Longhofer envelopes us in his ever-evolving style; Marie Maines takes a bold step with her cool pastels with 2 new works in subtle shades of grey. And, we have lots of shimmery new jewelry by Jean Storm, Katy Fenley, Diana Casabar and Noelle.

A battle royale is brewing between Keller and Dallas. Oh, and this is much bigger than the collegiate rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma; stronger than the cultural rivalry between Ft.Worth and Dallas; and even more deep-rooted than the historic rivalry between Dallas and Houston.

Make no mistake, the situaton unfolding between Keller and Dallas eclipses the legendary rivalries between Road Runner and Wile E Coyote, Mac versus PC, Federer versus Nadal, Man U versus Chelsea, Boston Red Sox versus New York Yankees. Yes, this battle is on a par with Batman versus The Joker, and Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader.

I’m talking about the battle of the Art-o-mats.

You see, almost two years ago art251, right here in Keller, installed the very first Art-o-mat in North Texas. Now, the Big D is imitating it smaller, cuter neighbor to the west and playing catch-up by unveiling a rival Art-o-mat in North Dallas. On Saturday, May 15, only the second Art-o-mat machine in North Texas premiers at the new Whole Foods Market on Park Lane.

To honor this event art251 is hosting Mr. Clark Whittington on May 13, 6-9 pm, during our monthly Keller Gallery Walk. Clark is artistic impresario, chief-innovation-officer, head (TPB) supervisor of Artists-in-Cellophane, and the all-round creative spark behind the Art-o-mat. Then on May 15, Clark heads east to officially unveil the “rival” machine in Dallas.

I’ll let you decide which of the 2 Art-o-mat machines is the classiest. By the way, ours has been on the Rachael Ray Show.

Art-o-mat, art251, Keller

Art-o-mat, Whole Foods Market, Dallas

In case you don’t know what an Art-o-mat is read on. Art-o-mat is a machine. It’s actually a retired and lovingly restored cigarette machine that’s been converted to vend art. In 1997, Clark Whittington used a recently-banned cigarette machine to create the first Art-o-mat. He used the machine to showcase his own black & white photographs which he sold for $1 each. The concept proved so popular with the host of the first machine and other artists that the project soon took on a life of its own. Art-o-mat, the organization, has now grown to around 90 Art-o-mat machines featuring over 400 contributing artists from 10 different countries.

I love art in all its guises. I’m also a computer geek and avid follower of big science. Strange, I know. Thus, when these 3 elements collide metaphorically, though better still literally, I sit up and take notice.

Over the last week the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) finally began its quest to refine our theories of the fundamental constituents of matter and energy. The machine began this journey, perhaps rather inelegantly, by smashing together tiny, innocent particles at unconscionably high velocities. Indeed as I write, there are hundreds of millions of such collisions taking place beneath Swiss and French soil (and despite the doomsayers, I’m still here).

From it’s inception at CERN, the LHC has taken around 20 years to plan, design, construct and test. So for the geeks among us, March 30, 2010 was a very special day. It signaled the start of years of record-breaking, high energy proton collisions and the dawn of a revolutionary era of fundamental research. Over the coming years, scientists aim to use the LHC to test, uncover, extend, validate or refute many of our fundamental theories on why things are the way they are. What makes up elementary particles? How forces behave as they do? Why the universe looks the way it does? Whether there are hidden dimensions? What conveys mass? Do undiscovered particles swim all around us? Is there dark matter and dark energy out there? What were conditions like just an instance after the Big Bang? Do I have a supersymmetric twin? You get the idea.

The LHC is a huge scientific and engineering effort. In fact, the superlatives seem never to end: a collaboration of 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, and hundreds of international laboratories and educational institutions; the most complex and largest machine ever constructed; the fastest, the coldest, the hottest, the emptiest environment on the planet; the quickest and most sensitive detectors of energy and motion on earth; the most powerful collection of supercomputers collecting and analyzing the most data anywhere.

And, yet for all the mighty engineering, mind-boggling technology and extreme science, the LHC finds time to give us art as well. Artists Christian Skeel and Morten Skriver in collaboration with physicists Clive Ellegaard and Troels C. Petersen bring us the Colliderscope.

The Colliderscope is an interactive LED-light sculpture wrapped on the front of the Niels Bohr Institute building, in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s directly connected to one of the LHC’s detectors, known as ATLAS, at CERN. So, as particles collide in the LHC, their tracks and collisions are choreographed on the Colliderscope. The colors, tones and speed of the LED flashes are tied to the events at CERN making the particle accelerator a kind of vast visual musical artwork. Who ever said science is dull and art useless.

Residents of Keller take note. The suburbs awaken from their (winter) slumber! Adventure awaits!

You make your home in the 7th best place to live in the United States, as ranked by CNN Money Magazine. You welcomed your first commercial art gallery – art251 – in September 2008. Now, you are home to a superb new restaurant. City Hall officially opened its doors on March 22, 2010. It’s located in the Arthouse development in Keller Town Center and is only a 2 minute stroll from art251.

So, what’s so special about City Hall?  Two things. First, the restaurant has first class ambiance and service and an original chef-driven menu led by nationally recognized Chef Otto Borsich. Second, the restaurant is adorned with original art from art251. The walls feature abstracts by Dana Blanchard, Fil Booth and Michael Longhofer.

City Hall is an upscale contemporary American fare restaurant. It’s the first restaurant in Arthouse, a mixed-use community that features multifamily apartments and an eclectic mixture of retail tenants, including art251. The restaurant has a sophisticated urban feel complete with an open kitchen, rich woods, leather booths and contemporary lighting. The space also has a friendly bar and a private dining room, and thoroughly attentive service.

And, then there’s the menu. Real food in the ‘burbs: Maple Brined Pork Tenderloin Wild Mushroom Risotto Cake; Cedar Scented Grilled Salmon, Herbal Orzo; Pan Seared Sea Scallops, Leek & Potato Risotto style, Orange Reduction; Lobster Ravioli with a Light Fennel-Vanilla Cream Sauce. Fresh, original, artfully prepared, mouthwatering – just like art251’s art.

Yes, you read all of this correctly, you’re in the suburbs, surrounded by the culinary wastelands of the mega-chain, processed “food” franchises, and now you have access to lobster, scallops, risotto, and art all in the same evening, and all in your neighborhood!

City Hall images courtesy of City Hall Restaurant. Featured paintings: Teratogenesis by Dana Blanchard, Urban Energy, Hunting Art Prize 2009 finalist, Michael Longhofer.

Artist Caleb Larsen seems to have the right idea. Rather than relying on the subjective wants and needs of galleries and the dubious nature of the secondary art market (and some equally dubious auctioneers) his art sells itself.

His work, entitled “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter”, is an 8-inch opaque, black acrylic cube. But while the exterior may be simplicity itself, the interior holds a fascinating premise. The cube is connected to the internet. In fact, it’s connected to eBay, where through some hidden hardware and custom programming it constantly auctions itself.

As Caleb Larsen describes,

Combining Robert Morris’ Box With the Sound of Its Own Making with Baudrillard’s writing on the art auction this sculpture exists in eternal transactional flux. It is a physical sculpture that is perptually attempting to auction itself on eBay.

Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the ebay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself.

If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.

The purchase agreement on eBay is quite rigorous, including stipulations such as: the buyer must keep the artwork connected to the interent at all times with disconnections allowed only for the transportation; upon purchase the artwork must be reauctioned; failure to follow all terms of the agreement forfeits the status of the artwork as a genuine work of art.

The artist was also smart enough to gain a slice of the secondary market, by requiring each buyer to return to the artist 15 percent of the appreciated value from each sale. Christie’s and Sotheby’s eat your hearts out.

Besides trying to put auctioneers out of work, the artist has broader intentions in mind, particularly when viewed alongside his larger body of work. The piece goes to the heart of the “how” and the “why” of the art market. By placing the artwork in a constant state of transactional fluidity – it’s never permanently in the hands of its new owner – it forces us to question the nature of art in relation to its market and the nature of collecting. The work can never without question be owned and collected since it is always possible that someone else will come along, enter the auction and win. Though, the first “owner” of the piece states that this was part of the appeal. Terence Spies, a California collector attests,

I had a really strong reaction right after I won the auction. I have this thing, and I really want to keep it, but the reason I want to keep it is that it might leave… The process of the piece really gets to some of the reasons why you might be collecting art in the first place.

Now of course, owning anything is transient. The Egyptian pharaohs tried taking their possessions into the “afterlife” but even to this day are being constantly thwarted by tomb-raiders and archeologists. Perhaps to some the chase, the process of collecting, is the goal, rather than owning the art itself. As I believe Caleb Larsen intended, he’s really given me something to ponder. How different, really, is it to own this self-selling art versus wandering through the world’s museums and galleries to “own” a Picasso or Warhol or Monet for 5 minutes? Ironically, our works live on, and it is we who are transient. So I think Caleb Larsen’s title for the work should be taken tongue in cheek, for it is we who are deceiving ourselves.

I am constantly reminded of the unceasing creativity of artists, both those that adorn our gallery walls with their art and those who I admire from a distance. I’m also reminded of the level of ingenuity of many artists as they seek, probe and push alternate media and different forms of expression. I’ve lost count of the types of visual art and media that I have seen – encaustics, scratchboard, oil on glass, glass on panel, horsehair in ceramic, engravings on copper, photographs on metal, watercolors on masa paper, sculptures on manhole covers, polychromic polymer clay, fiber on fabric, to name but a few.

Interestingly, I’ve been recently seeing more artworks based on recycled materials. In fact, making art from, with and on recycled materials and media is more popular than ever thanks to our growing ecological sensitivity, and perhaps increasing thriftiness. So, what a beautiful surprise it is to see art appearing on one of nature’s most ubiquitous substrates – portraits carved into fallen leaves.

The intricate process of carving leaves seems to have begun in China and is spreading across the globe. There is even a Leaf Carving Art association in California. Apparently, the best leaves for this endeavor come from the Oriental Plane tree, which is native to much of Asia. The leaves are first dried, cured and prepared in a complex process. Then, the artist carefully removes the outermost skin of the leaf to reveal the inner translucent layer. Slowly and skillfully the artist scrapes away selected areas of the leaf revealing the final work of art within. The entire process is lengthy and intricate, but the results, as you can see here, are exquisite. Some artists even take commissions. Perhaps these leaf portraits of Marilyn and Mao will one day be as valuable as their Warholian counterparts.

Images courtesy of Daily Telegraph. Dean Prator, President of Leaf Carving Art in California.

As galleries frequently do, we’ve been refreshing our walls again at art251. New artists, new artworks to display means that it’s time to move and/or store some of our older works. While it’s a very satisfying process to see new art on our walls, especially art that may never have hung before, it’s tinged with sadness. We retire the previous works; they come down to make way for the new fresh art. Yet, I really do miss many of the pieces that we have to “undisplay”. One of may favorites, “Birds on a Wire”, a beautiful black and white photograph by Sean Fitzgerald, just suffered such as fate. I found its stark simplicity refreshing. But it had another quality too. I sometimes believe I could hear it – the composition looked like sheet music. I wonder what an orchestra would have made of it.

Go Trish! Local artist Trish Biddle was recently commissioned to be the official artist by the Westminster Kennel Club. Inspired by her interests in fashion and Art Deco, Trish created the image for the official 2010 Westminster Kennel Club poster, “Westminster. There’s only one.”  This is now the second year running that Trish has been commissioned to be the official artist.

Her oil painting depicts an evening street scene outside Madison Square Garden in New York and features representative breeds from all seven groups. The Empire State Building, aglow with Westminster’s signature purple and gold colors, sets the stage. Trish Biddle’s penchant for high fashion is evident, as stylish dog lovers stroll past a Westminster-themed Saks Fifth Avenue window, another New York City icon.

Trish Biddle’s impressive resume continues to grow. In 2009 she was named official artist of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Racing Club. In 2008, she was named official artist of the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby 134th Run for the Roses.

You can see more of Trish Biddle’s “Glamorous Women in Fabulous Places” original works and many of her limited edition, signed prints at art251.

If you’re like me, you may have recently found yourself doing a couple of strange things: one in private, the other in public. In private: you raided your closet (or your attic or basement), the place where you store all your old treasures, you found the nondescript, but heavy box, and there, after dusting off the top, you uncovered your (in)famous collection of old 12 inch LPs. Yes, LPs, long-playing phonograph records; vinyl that is, black gold! In public: you found yourself doing something rather similar. You visited a family run music store (yes, some still do exist), and browsed the aisles, as fewer and fewer people seem to do nowadays. And, there, close to the path lined with jewel-boxed CDs, ear-buds, DVD collections and Play Station games, you found them – rows and rows of LPs in their colorful art encrusted sleeves.

So, what brought me to this point? Well, I think a confluence of events. First, my teenage daughter craving “authentic” music, exploring the pre-historic caves of the pre-iPod, pre-MP3, pre-CD music scene. How refreshing it is to have the younger generation re-discovering “our” music. Second, my desire to reminisce over the grand old days of classic rock, classic disco, classic soul, classic… well, just classic music. Also, my desire to revisit the beautiful art and the rich words that once enveloped the dark vinyl of 33s, like a treasured wrapper around your favorite bar of chocolate. Sadly, the instant gratification delivered by the iPod, and to some extent the CD, crushed the art that one graced the covers of this music.

And, now I find that artists, including our very own Nix Johnson, are making art, and wearable art at that, from these very same LPs. Nix’s bracelets and cuffs are made from reclaimed and recycled vinyl records. So, while I’m not quite ready to see my classic Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Motown LPs turned to accessories, I certainly like Nix’s creative and eco-friendly mission. Come take a spin at art251 to see more of Nix Johnson’s colorful vinyl creations.

art251 joins the tweetsphere. You can find us right here. We’re certainly not the first art space to arrive on Twitter. In fact, we follow in the heavy twittering footsteps of more notable venues such as Tate Britain, MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum. And, numerous galleries around the world have been tweeting quite happily across the great tubes of the internet for a year or more. So, why did we take the plunge into twitterspace now?

Well, it’s really a technical answer. Even though tweets on twitter are limited to 140 characters, I didn’t want the added burden of having to update the art251 twitter status each time we posted new material on our website and blog. Of course, there a numerous ways to push status updates to twitter from websites, but I couldn’t find an efficient and reliable way until now. Now, that is, following a complete software upgrade of the art251 website. Hopefully you haven’t noticed any difference – we updated all the behind-the-scenes, inner-workings, and not the outer shell. So, if you follow art251 on Twitter, welcome and, stay tuned for more tweets and a little more art!