≈ H45xL31xD9.5 inches
On an online video with Jimmy Fallon Taylor Swift mentions ” personnel favorites.” Her favorite on the Taylor’s version of the Red Album is the ten-minute long All too Well. I can relate to that in that of the 29 Taylor Swift songs on my Spotify Like playlist. five of them are different versions of All too Well. This music has a controlled driving beat, rhythm and harmony. It also comes in different versions, which also is appealing (video below). But it is not just the new ten-minute version of this music that finally caught my attention, it was the lyrics.
The lyrics for this music are exceptional (like “dancing around the kitchen in the refrigerator light.” But it is these specific lines that sparked my interest: “And I left my scarf there at your sister’s house, and you’ve still got it in your drawer, even now.” And then the much later circle back that convinced me: “But you keep my old scarf from that very first week ’cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me…….” These words sound honest and real life like to me, feeling genuine compared too much of pop music I listen to. Finally, I am always hesitant about choosing a fairly current piece of pop music, but the timing was right for this music to be a part of a first application attempt at a new exhibit.
It was a disappointment when I looked to apply for a major art show and realized I was a few days past the deadline. The Hopkins International takes place this January at the Hopkins Art Center in Hopkins, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. I was fortunate to be chosen for their juried members’ show this fall, but The Hopkins International is a much larger exhibition that I last exhibited in 2019. Also, I was hesitant, which slowed my timing, to apply for this show. The drop off is only two days in early January, with the reception a week later requiring four winter drives through Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Missing this show made me think to pay closer attention to exhibition in the future. Encouragingly, my focus is now on three other open art calls to apply for in 2025 over the next couple of weeks.
I also have one current last opportunity for our remaining EmptyWallsArt group in a month long show at a wine and art bar this coming March. This project will be interesting, if this actually happens, for the theme that was agreed on was the four seasons. This takes me back to the thirteen Antonio Vivaldi artworks painted but never shown that I am still wishing to offer free to a public location and display. Ever since I added music, I have wondered about updating these artworks for a show that plays and lights up the music from the four concertos. The difficulty is that this would be a very large and expensive project to give away art so I can free up space for the future storage of art. But this bar exhibit allows me to test the idea.
My pilot plan opportunity is to build one artwork that will contain four canvases and the music from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. When pressing the music button, the first canvas, Spring, will light up and play a short piece from that concerto. Once finished, the next canvas will light playing the music from the Summer Concerto, followed by the Autumn and Winter canvases and concertos. I would like to keep the entire music cover around the minute and half goal I set for major artworks. I believe I can technically accomplish this build. If so, it will be interesting if there is any reaction or better interest that merits further development of the Vivaldi Four Seasons canvases.
Finally, here are my thoughts on All too Well. It is difficult to take a 10 minute song and trim it down to one-minute thirty seconds, without a lot of comprise to the music. This I regret. I respect each of these music box covers, and therefore I do my best to represent the music’s fullness. This requires following the songs flow from beginning to end and arranging the intro, verse, and chorus and ending accordingly to fit the demands of time I have set. I feel good about the growing quality of these artworks and of their cover music. I am unsure about the music owners, but I pay them anyway, even though the money value of this art is questionable. So it goes.
Scott Von Holzen
aRT iN mUSIC 