Category: pop music

S_V_H Closer image 1 update

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
This is what I now believe is the final look of the artwork layout with a disheveled Metaphorphsis2 in the background.

I posted what I thought was the final layout for this artwork in the previous blog entry. After returning to this layout a few days later, I did not like what I saw. It reminded me too much of the 2022 artwork, Metamorphsis2. The similarity concerned me. I wanted an updated look. I believe this current is a move in the right direction. It opens up the work but still leaves enough canvas to fill with the words “We ain’t never getting older.”

This is a late draft of the cover music for Closer.

This art is not about prettiness or technical excellence. It is about presenting a professional image both visually and in its performance that grades a very good (looks near mint until looking closer). That is the sweet spot for me. I put in my time, detail, and design in each artwork. Being concerned with aesthetic beauty, or the spectacular finish of near-mint fine-art craft would put me over the top. Anyway, a high-quality finish plagues much of today’s so-called art. I don’t underestimate the beauty, skill, and effort required to create a finely tuned and executed craft. Such art certainly has value and a big edge in today’s exhibition jurors. That may be why so much of today’s art I see as kitsch with a token hook to stand out from the crowd, or simply a piece of craft created by an artisan. See, this Washington Post article confirms some of my thinking about craft art. I am concerned with this art is will it fit in the car and will it store? Finally, does it reflect the person I see in the mirror? In the mirror, I see a face of a person who is all about what is art. When I look at my music boxes, I want to see that reflection in the workmanship and the music.

The image of Malevich’s Black painting seen below in the upper corner certainly is art, but not finely crafted. Below is a work by Jeff Koons that is also considered art. But is it art or just an expensive craft? One version sold for over five million dollars.

“It just seems to me seems to me, that only a really low IQ population could have taken this beautiful” form of expression that is art, ” It looked pretty good. It was pristine. Paradise. Have you seen it lately? Have you inspected it lately? It’s…… embarrassing”. It is all high craft and without curiosity, without imagination. Art with no purpose other than to look perfect on a stranger’s wall, or a vaulted investment. It just seems to me, in today’s contemporary art, the drive is not to create something original but to use a “hook,” that becomes a highly crafted ordinary.

MA section of Suprematist works by Malevich exhibited at the 0,10 Exhibition, Petrograd, 1915
Kazimir Malevich, 1915, Black Suprematic Square
Jeff Koons artist’s proof, on display at The Broad

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H For No One first images

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This next project’s music came into the light on a morning walk with my trusted companion, Zelda. It is on my Like Songs list from Spotify, so I have heard this music before, but that day was different. What I was listening to was a cover version of The Beatle’s song, For No One, from the 1966 Beatle album Revolver. It was the soft assuring voice of Anne Sofie von Otter, and the music’s simple and flowing melodic sound that caught that morning mood. The music lasted long enough in my head so that it then became this new project.

Here are the three stages of this artwork’s design:

Once I have my cover music notation, I than grabbed the Soprano Saxophone part of my sheet music that I would like to display on the artwork

The highlighted notation will be a part of the visual artwork.

Next, I decided on the size of the notation. Since my selected saxophone part comprises a small number of notes I knew I could go large. The biggest note I can cut from a 1/4″ thick aspen wood that is 3.5″ wide is 3.25.” I then chose two 15×30-inch canvases that were long enough to display 8 notes spaced. The two smaller 10×10 inch canvases will become the speaker boxes. The last addition was a piece of loose gesso canvas. It is on this that I will paint the words from the music.

I do not know what colors I am going to use for the music. I also do not know what colors or how I am going to handle the words on the loose canvas. Last, I do know this is going to be the 2nd in a series of three artworks where I am experimenting with ChatGPT. I am curious to see how much better of a poem I can coax out of it. I may even try different methods of handling the music’s lyrics to see what different rhymes that it may come up with. We shall see.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Everyglow image1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
This first image shows where I am laying out to music to see if most of it will fit on these size canvases.

I am planning to incorporate two framed 12 x 16 Vincent Van Gogh wall prints into the artwork. I will build my speaker boxes around them. Here are the links to information about the original artworks.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0144V1962

https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/vase-with-lilacs-daisies-and-anemones-1887

Updated image of the artwork with notes and two Amazon framed Vincent Van Gogh prints.

The reason I am using two wall prints in this artwork, is to raise their status from cheap household wall art to art. It is the surprising quality of cheap wall art that I can see where your average kitchen table artist will eventually find it impossible to compete with. Even without Van Gogh’s raised textures these inexpensive Amazon wall art pieces would look decent or even nice in your average living room. If they were framed, they would certainly gain increased prestige. Even on the internet site Etsy, where flower prints are handmade, these two $14 framed prints hold their own in look and price.

Here is the final draft of Everglow’s artwork’s cover music before moving it into my finishing software StudioOne. I have edited my cover down to 30 seconds in length because of copyright restrictions, that I actually put on myself. Really, who in the music industry actually follows me, or actually reads these blog posts? I do this because it is the right thing to do.

Scott Von Holzen