Tag: Rogers poem

S_V_H Shape of my Heart

Published on by Scott Von Holzen1 Comment
Shape of my heart

My next project is Shape of my Heart, written and sung by Sting. The above image shows an artwork plan that will accommodate over forty pieces of this music. My note size is 2 3/4″ (64mm). In this image I have lined up 22 of these notes along the bottom area to make sure there was enough length for them. As mentioned before, to fit in our Toyota for traveling, I need to keep the individual length of these artworks under 72 inches, and even less if the artwork is wider than 24 inches. Although the two side 16×16 speaker boxes will be elevated above the supporting frame, right now the look of this artwork is reminiscent of the previous project. To give the artwork more depth, I am looking at adding curved 6 inch wide steel sheets, like in Crazy, this time attached to the speaker boxes.

Here is a YouTube video of a live performance of Shape of My Heart by String.

Shape of my heart – Sting

The plan for each new music box project starts with the creation of the cover music. That audio is below and although it is not finished, this cover music has all the structure that I want.

That means the music starts with an introduction that is followed by a combination of melodies that captures the sound and the emotions of the original music while staying close to a minute. The escape ends the music, hopefully leaving a listener happy and surprised, while keeping the music box music under one minute thirty seconds. Already from this cover music, I have selected the measures that the artwork will be sampling.

These are the lyrics from the cover that I will sample:

“I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that’s not the shape of my heart” – Sting

Draft Music box audio for shape of my heart project.

This rough cut of the cover music is all I need now to plan the artwork.

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This is the first four sections of the fifteen section poem I wrote on the passing of my brother. A new section will be added in each new blog entry. 

  
Roger’s poem

The sun in winter
is all too short.
Who knew as you move through our lives,
that yours would follow the winter sun.

Winter arrests time
for thought and reflection
that February afternoon.
Dressed for warmth
we venture out,
Into the soft light,
surrounded by stillness,
not an oak leaf stirring. 

The cold of that yesterday
 is heard in the crackling crunch
 of fresh fallen snow, 
 as I straddled previous steps
 along a well-worn path,
 deep into the woods.

Although I think
we are alone,
Zelda knows better,
her actions are telling. 
Life and the deer are about. 
Stopping with her tail up,
head sharply flipping, 
to-and-fro sensing something_, 
curious,
I also pause,
feeling a stirring in the air.
With her nose to the snow, 
Zelda looks to turn off the known path, 
to explore another trail, 
far less traveled. 
Her interest, I cannot foresee,
or know where it leads. 
....to be continued.


Sadly, for most of our lives, Roger and I lived many hours' distance away from each other. Reading a small part of his story and editing it for this blog site, I recalled that when together I cherished those moments, although I now realize that I never fully appreciated all of his wonderful achievements. I have those regrets, and like all brothers that are separated, I wished I would have found more ways to have been a part of his life.

Here is background information detailing my brother's education and employment.

Roger Von Holzen graduated in 1971 from High School where he was
was a high achiever, including Track and Field, where his running record stands to this today.
Roger attended and graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, with an education degree. He then returned to his graduating High school to teach history and computer science for 10 years. 
Roger then received a horticulture degree from Gateway Tech in Kenosha, WI.
Furthering his education, Roger obtained his Master’s degree in Computer Studies from
North Western Missouri State University in 1987.
He then taught Computer Science at Northwest Missouri State.
In 1993, Roger received his Doctorate in Instructional Technology
from Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, in 1993.
Roger enhanced his career by being extensively involved in various technology initiatives undertaken by the University. These efforts of his lead to his appointment to the Director of the campus Faculty Technology Center, in the spring of 1999.
He retired on June 30, 2020 from Northwest as an associate professor of
computer science.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H One Thousand years Final

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This is the final image of the commission work, One thousand Years. Although this is not a favorite choice of music for me to paint, it is understandable that the lyrics and the music together have created a very popular wedding song.

I started to create the cover music for the artwork on July 18th and finished today which is August 11th. That adds up to three weeks and three days. My days in the studio have always been morning to evening.

For this summer I have a basic routine of in the Studio by 10am, a half hour lunch, a studio break at 5-5:30pm then maybe back in the studio until dinner. After which I return for another hour or so with my evening deadline in the studio being 9pm. I only do one artwork at a time, but not all my time is spent on current project. Some of my studio time is needed to write these blog entries, practice my instruments (should do more), educating myself on the different software, updating my prints sites (now in jeopardy) updating and maintaining my .com website (don’t do it enough), and a new alternative artist’s website, EmptyWallsArt.

One Thousand Years final thoughts.

Next up I plan to return to the larger format. These small works are cute. But, I like big. I like music that fills the room, I like art that makes an in-your-face statement.

Scott Von Holzen

__________________________________________________________________________

This is the added third section of fifteen sections that is my poem dedicated to my brother who left all those who loved him one year ago this last August 9th.

Roger’s poem

The sun in winter
is all too short.
Who knew as you move through our lives,
that yours would follow the winter sun.

Winter arrests time
for thought and reflection
that February afternoon.
Dressed for warmth
we venture out,
Into the soft light,
surrounded by stillness,
not an oak leaf stirring.

The cold of that yesterday
is heard in the crackling crunch
of fresh fallen snow,
as I straddled previous steps
along a well-worn path,
deep into the woods.

S_V_H One Thousands Years image 1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

One Thousand Years,
with the notes turned incorrectly to the right

This is a commissioned work requested by my brother for his son’s wedding later this August. I will not say anymore about this beginning of this project, for there is an interesting technique I stumbled carelessness into.

The music for this project was written and sung by a Christina Perri that I have never heard of. It has over 2 billion views on YouTube. Watching and listening to it I number of times did not change my opinion of the song. For me it falls into the category of ordinary love song. I song I would never have painted.

Even though I could have had many artwork sales for wedding songs, I have chosen not to. Songs like this are the reason. I chose and paint songs I am, at the time, emotionally connected to. That is my choice. My art. My way.

This art has never been about money, no matter the cost of time and monies of the last sixteen years painting music. This art is big. How big I do not know, nor can I grasp its true meaning or value. I do know it is part of a personal challenge to accomplish something special that started early in my life. Through the creation of these music artworks I am seeing an opening to an eventual self awareness. Back to reality, and out of my comfort zone, this commission work from my brother is a worthy and appreciative challenge. To quote the poet and philosopher Coldplay ” Nobody said it was easy.”

Well, that is the background of the music. Once I had a decent start for my cover music, I switched over to producing the pieces for the artwork. Now, I am going to lose everyone not into music notation rules. I broke a big one. Strange, I thought I had already demolished all the rules of notation accept the up down movement. I will explain.

In music notation generally and individually, the notes from B down the musical staff face left with the stem to the right. Notes above B than are turned and face right with the stem to the left. As you can see in the image provided. All the notes from my cover music were turned to the right with the stems to the left. That is wrong. All the notes for this music are lower than the B position and therefore should have been turned to the left. I have always obeyed this notation rule in the past, thinking the left-to-right and back-en-forth of the notes added interest to the artwork.

At first I could not believe I made such an error, but this project is rare, in which every note of the cover music faces the same way. I got in a note putting together rhythm that ended up with every note pointing the wrong direction. I thought I could easily solve this issue by flipping top to bottom. That did not work, everything was off. I also noticed that when turning the notes correctly to the left, I did not like that look.

The music flow felt blocked by all those stems, one after another. My solution was an easy mix solution. I decided for multiple reasons to leave most of the cover music notes pointing in the wrong direction. The change I made was to take a few notes that are below the music staff, remove the notes from the stems, and replaced them turned to the left.

Example of notes turned the correct notation direction.
Final note setup with a mixed of upper right facing
and lower left facing notes.

Three attempts at the background canvas.
Final, in the middle

In the above image the 24×36 inch scratch off canvas on the right is my first attempt. The plan for that canvas was to use the colors from the YouTube video of the music. Then my wife, Barbara, informed me that was a no no. I had forgotten the bouquet image. Even though I tried to repaint that first scratch off canvas was beyond a simple recovery. My next attempt is the 24×36 canvas on the left.

This time after trials, the plan was to use the Golden Acrylic colors of Permanent Violet Dark, Alizarin Crimson Hue, Permanent Maroon, Titan Green Pale and shades of Neutral Grays, along with Titanium white to mix whatever that other color is.

Starting with the base color design based on the banquet image on a new 24×36 inch size canvas, I tried to figure out what would look the best with the color Maroon and its various tints and close relatives. After I did the scratch off, I decided my plan for the base did not turn out as I wished it would have. Out of desperation and thinking in terms of wedding pretty, I glazed the entire canvas with Iridescent Pearl Fine. That move ended up covering everything, which luckily included the scratch off that displayed my crappy base paint layer.

I liked to look, and so did Barb mentioning the gray color that she could see in the base coat. The problem was that the base coat was actually shades of Maroon and Violet Dark that I had partially covered with a coat of Pearl. Her comment got me thinking. In the banquet flower image, strangely, there are gray flowers, so I thought I would go with shades of gray and a little of the other colors for the base, once again on a new canvas. That solve another problem I finally noticed: the 24×36 canvases I started with were too large for the music notes I had created earlier. I chose a smaller 16×40 inch sized canvas which better balanced with the size of the music.

Scott Von Holzen

Roger’s poem, dedicated to the memory of my Brother Roger who passed away a year ago this coming August 9th. In each new blog post I will add another section of this poem. Here are sections 1 & 2 of 15.

Roger’s poem

The sun in winter
is all too short.
Who knew as you move through our lives,
that yours would follow the winter sun.

Winter arrests time
for thought and reflection
that February afternoon.
Dressed for warmth
we venture out,
Into the soft light,
surrounded by stillness,
not an oak leaf stirring.

Scott Von Holzen