Tag: Toto

This second staged image of Africa, shows the music laid out on the background.  In the past I would build these artworks one section or piece at a time, and then mount what I had to the background before moving on.  With this artwork, similar to the Christmas painting, I am constructing and painting all the parts of the music before attaching anything to the background.  This saves time,  but doing all the construction at once can be tiresome, repetitive, and show little progress.  Having all the pieces available, does cut the stress of making sure everything fits in predefined background.  What stays the same, and is consistent from the very first music artwork,  is that I add the music to the background from left to right.

I  mention in my last blog entry, the 29th Annual Midwest Seasons exhibition,  for which I submitted this years Christmas painting.   I waited all week of December 10th, their timeline, for a notification. Finally, on Friday afternoon I emailed the CVA in Wausau to ask for an update.  Surprisingly, I receive a quick response.

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“Dear Scott,

We would like to thank you for submitting your artwork for the 29th Annual Midwest Seasons exhibit. We had an outstanding collection of entries this year with over 200 images for the juror to review. We were greatly impressed by the amount and quality of all of the submissions.

We regret to inform you that the juror did not select your entries for the exhibit. We hope you will continue to submit work for future competitive exhibits, as the juror changes every year. Each juror has a unique vision for the show and your artwork may be viewed differently by our next juror.

We hope you will join us for the Opening Gallery Gala & Awards Reception for the 29th Annual Midwest Seasons exhibit on January 18th, 2019 from 5 to 7pm.

Thank you for submitting your artwork and for supporting the Center for the Visual Arts.

Kindest regards,”

x xx x x x x x x  x

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I take all these type of rejections as a sign that I am either ahead of my time, and not understood, or that what I am doing is not art in the Juror’s mind.  I have not yet received my first acceptance, so I don’t know which way to lean.  The fact that none of rejections ever come with an explanation, makes it impossible to learn how the Contemporary Art World works.  I may eventually make my way, which will require even more determination, time, and luck to stay, for according to the Eagles there will always be a new kid in town.

Scott Von Holzen

 

This artwork starts its build from the music of Toto.  For this first image you are seeing three separate pieces stacked up.  The top and the bottom aluminum sections, with the covered canvas for print protection, is for the music.  The only lyric, the word Africa,  will be in the middle section. Africa looked to be an artwork over eight feet in length.   Another long and narrow artwork caused me to think it was time to change the elongated structure common in my artworks.   I decided to break a apart the music, and stack it creating more of a rectangle artwork.  In order to connect, and separate both pieces of the music, I choose to add a wider middle size of canvas.  I bolted two 10 x 20 inches canvases together for the background, and to be the base for the two musical sections.  For this middle background canvas, to give this area value,  I choose the Serengeti to be the visual theme.  After a lot of taping and using a squeegee to spread a number of paint colors I got the look of a grassy plain,  with a few green trees in the shape of a musical staff, that worked.

The official, music video of Africa by Toto, is awful, dated, with a poor story line and token African references.  I prefer this later live version for the first 4 minuets or so, and then the rest is filler.

 

 

Better, is this video of  AFRICA, by the Angel City Chorale.  Africa has a Gospel sound, that for me, is the emotional appeal of this music.

 

Scott Von Holzen