Tag: Music

S_V_H JS Bach BWV 974 Adagio final

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
J S Bach BWV 974 Adagio
≈H79 x W29 x D3.5 inches

I have a few other vertical artworks, including Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Schindler’s List, and an early Patsy Cline artwork titled Crazy. On this project, I increased the tempo (no longer Adagio) of this Bach piece to give it a more upbeat modern sound. Doing that allowed me to go vertical so I could cascade the music. Turning around from my computer screen and seeing this vertical artwork for real is a different experience. In the studio, its depth is obvious. In print with a white background, everything looks flat and 2 dimensional. That is an ongoing display issue that I feel I can now change because other things have changed.

Since 2013 I have been selling prints of my artwork on Etsy. I have also sold prints until recently on Amazon. What that required me to do is to cut the artworks out of their original backgrounds to print them on a white canvas matte. That was easier to do when my artworks were simple, all-inclusive rectangles. Over the years, the time spend cutting them out grew to many hours when I started working with wooden notes and metal frames. Those newer artworks happened because I wanted to add more depth. I wanted to better represent the width and depth that is music. But that change did not sell on Etsy.

What became obvious over the years with my Etsy sales was that my older, simpler, and rectangle-painted only artworks were the only images that sold. Lately, I have quit adding my newer works to my Etsy Catalog, because these works, with their ever-increasing depth, do not show well on a flat print. Until recently with Shenandoah, I still was cutting them out of their original background when displaying them on websites and applications, which still required a white background. Now, I have found, with the help of just the right shade of background gray and with the help of Photoshop, a better way to image my artwork. What I am doing is keeping the original background. That means the photos of my artwork now include the original background along with the artwork shadowing. This then improves their three-dimensional presence.

I do not think I am going to start another vertical artwork similar to this one. Instead, I see this project as offering me a new direction, moving away from my so-named, by another, boxy look. The problem with that is with the use of all these rectangle canvases, besides reducing my inventory, they easily added outstanding depth to my artworks. Their use allowed me to create large works that are strong and sturdy, making them easy to store and travel with. Right now I have no clue what direction this new direction will affect my direction forward. What is known is that I will continue to take this art from here to there.

But that is enough of that. Below is a 9-minute video that I even found interesting and fairly entertaining. It tells a little more of the story of this Bach project and the artist as well.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H J S Bach BWV974 Adagio image 3

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Near finish JS Bach May 2nd
≈ W29 1/4x H74.5 xD3 inches
Image was taken on April 30th of the laying out plan for the notes

I have here a near-finish audio for the music box. This audio will play a lot louder on my Bose speakers than what will be heard coming from the artwork. Of course, the reason it will sound different is that I have, once again, returned to using the simpler 2-watt Stereo System to power the two 4-inch 4-ohm speakers. Actually, for it is easy to accommodate when displaying these artworks, the host’s concern always comes down to this: “How loud is the music? Can you turn it down?” Some day that reaction will be the opposite, but I probably will not hear that in my lifetime.

I will sign this artwork tomorrow and shoot an Instagram video and a longer detailed video to go along with this project’s final thoughts, along with some added comments on where this art is heading. The plan then is to take a few days off before starting my next project. I think I will be returning to larger works (I’ll explain) maybe starting with the song One by U2. But, there is a big but, for I will have to see what mood I am in, and what other music I may stumble onto.

“Stuff coming out, stuff going in. I’m just a part of everything” Peter Gabriel

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H J S Bach BWV 974 Adagio 2nd image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This image of the Bach project shows it sprawling out on the studio floor. At the top is the 16×24 inch canvas with a pallet painting after Van Gogh. This canvas will be hung on the wall. The rest of the music that drops off that canvas will then zig-zag its way down to the floor, to my canvas print of Van Gogh’s Olive Grove 1889 from the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands.

On Amazon there are several commercial available framed images of this olive grove on Amazon. They all seemed dark to me. Looking on line I found a public download of a higher pixel image of this Van Gogh artwork. Both previous artworks, Wildfire and then Shenandoah, contain purchased commercial prints of Van Gogh art. Having access to a higher quality image of Van Gogh’s Olive Grove artwork allowed me to adjust the colors and contrast. Whether I am accurate at less my print feels more like what I expect I would see if I could see this artwork in person.

Amazon commercial print looking dull.
My canvas print of a public image of
Van Gogh’s Olive Grove 1889 that appears bright and cheerful.

My thinking about this project started with what can I do differently from what I have been doing, while still using up my stocked canvases. That wonderment was reinforced by my friend Jeff Nelson who lately has been encouraging me to get out of my box. He does not realize I still have a lot of stretched canvases to use. Since he is a professionally trained artist, I have found it difficult to explain the goals of this art to him, even though I have tried. It is not his fault; it is just that my approach differs from his. I will explain those differences in a later post. And yet, I was a little bored with the current design of my latest artworks.

That lead me to a change. My original plan with this artwork was to start with a small frame canvas hung on the wall that would never accommodate all of Bach’s notes. The extra notes would then drop off the canvas, falling alongside the wall to a piling up of Bach’s notes on the floor with a Van Gogh print laying among them. Instead of a pile of Bach, I will now mount my the print on a small, stretched canvas. Then, like I have done many times before, I will deepen the frame to hold what will become the artwork’s right-side speaker box, placed upright on the floor, below the wall-hung canvas.

UPDATE: 4-28 4:45PM

a better plan worked out on the studio floor

Every idea for a new project starts out fuzzy and optimistic that all problems, all issues, and all hurdles will eventually be resolved. That reasoning works for I will, as I have always done, complete what I started. My biggest issue with zig-zagging the music down from the top canvas was how to support it or not, and would that work? The final decision became I needed to support my falling notes. That is where the angled aluminum comes in.

Scott Von Holzen