Vogue, acrylic on three canvases, with aluminum and wood features, 64 1/4″ in length by 22 1/4 in height.
Vogue, what the Hell are we looking at here? For the first time viewers of this blog they probably see a mixed media abstraction, minus fabric and beads.* To returning quests Vogue’s style (stripped of emotion) is that of a three dimensional representation of a flow of music that is the theme Vogue. Looking at Vogue I can see this artwork in either way. Together that means Vogue shifts from the main purpose of the background which is to physically support the music. With Vogue this is a return to the blending of the music into the artwork as seen in these early examples.
Joy to the World – 2006
Mood Indigo – 2007
Aspects of how Vogue blends the music into the background can be seen in comparison with In The Mood, the current header image of this blog site. The obvious difference with Vogue is the amount of decorative design, and the overall use of the same colors for the music and the background, not seen in In The Mood.
A notable physical change with Vogue is the spacing of the music which is purposely tight, to create more tension between pieces. In comparison the music from In The Mood spreads across the background as if to take up space, resembling sheet music. Another blending technique is in the stem design. The stems used for In The Mood are all standardized, similar to their appearance in sheet music. With Vogue the sheet music look is broken by the varying depth of the stems across the artwork.
I consider Vogue a major work because of its size, complexity, and the time required, over three weeks, to complete. Vogue is the third original artwork completed this year. That means a possible total of only twelve new original artworks for 2018. That is not much output, that became startlingly obvious when the local gallery took seven of my current artworks. This left the number of newest works for other venues, very thin. That is where the development of my mini-artworks, that average each a day or less to produce, will help the production numbers.
(This video like all my videos starts out great for the first few seconds, and then quickly deteriorates into a lot of mumbling and incomplete sentences. What saves this video is the self deprecation of the lyrics discussion near the end. It is a laugh.)
Scott Von Holzen
*reference to a local artist genre
art IN music 