Five not 5

Here's a somewhat new abstract painting on paper, actually a combination of painting and drawing on paper. All of the shapes and lines in this abstract composition are made from a template of the number 5. The title is "Five not 5". See more of my artwork at george-mckim.com.

I haven't done any art in about a month, I was very productive from December 2007 through last month, but I took a short break and that turned into a longer break! You know, it's easy to stop and hard to start back, just the opposite of drinking :-)

Couch made from 6,400 welded Nickels!

Been looking for that hard to find $50,000 couch made out of 6,400 nickels for your living room or maybe the back deck or the pool area? I know I have! Well you're in luck because I know a sculptor who makes them named Johnny Swing. I went to school with Johnny Swing at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine back in 1986. Johnny was a sculpture student and was working mainly with welded steel and paint. Recently Johnny has used his welding skills to make Art Furniture in all manner of unusual combinations of objects. This is not your parent's furniture by any stretch of the imagination. Swing takes common, everyday materials and re-purposes them, and has created practical art that is as stunning to view as it is stimulating to use. His Nickel Couch, made of over 6400 welded nickels, is a magnificient piece of work that is contoured for the body. Swing spent more than 200 hours welding 6,400 nickels into a 110-pound metallic couch. Swing's creative use of his Class 1 structural steel-welder license brings new meaning to the term value added. Attaching each nickel took as many as five welds--a total of about 30,000 welds to fashion the coins into furniture. His Jardelier, a chandelier made of glass jars, evokes a feeling of early 20th century invention with its illumination. These are but two examples of an exceptional art furniture line. The difference is in the art. Each is a unique example of beautiful and functional sculpture. Here's a photo of the sculptor relaxing on his art furniture.

Jewelry - Custom Designed by Betty McKim

Betty McKim is a fantastic jewelry designer, and I'm not just saying that because she's my wife, I swear! Betty has been creating awesome Jewelry for over 30 years and it shows in her design sensibility and her craftsmanship.
Here is Betty's profile:

Education and Experience -
Graduated with M.F.A. degree in Metals/Jewelry - East Carolina University
Attended selective Jewelry Workshops at Penland, Wild Acres and Revere Academy
Teaches and Directs the Jewelry Program at Pullen Arts Center in Raleigh, NC

Has her work featured -
Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor, NC
Rebus Gallery, Raleigh, N.C.
Grovewood Gallery, Grove Park Inn, Ashville, NC
Lark Books Series - 500 Earrings

Participates in -
The Larkspur Garden Show, Raleigh, NC
Boylan Art Walk, Raleigh, NC
Art In The Park, Blowing Rock, NC
Carolina Designer Craftsmen Show, Exhibitor, Raleigh, NC 2007

Visit Betty's Website at: http://www.bettymckimjewelry.com

Vacation - Mixed Media Collage

This collage is one of my favorites from my own georgemckim etsy shop. It's from my series of collages called "The Vine Series" and the curving and twisting red line that runs throughout the picture is like a red vine. The rest of the picture has dark gray clouds, blue clouds, pink and purple cloud outlines, yellow sun, circles and splatters of paint. The piece is titled "Vacation" just because I get a sort of cool and breezy vibe from the picture. The process I use starts with acid free colored artists paper and I splash watery acrylic paint on the paper in a random and free flowing pattern. After drying overnight, I cut and tear the painted papers into imagery that is simplified and somewhat abstract. I try many different compositional arrangements before I finalize the design and glue the papers down with acid free glue. Acid free materials ensure that the artwork will be permanent and artists grade acrylic paints are light fast and will not fade. See and buy my art at georgemckim.etsy.com. See a more complete selection of my work and a bio at george-mckim.com.

Diamond Encrusted Human Skull - Is it Art?

Article By
By WILLIAM SHAW
Published: June 3, 2007

It’s particularly fitting that the title of artist Damien Hirst’s new headline-grabbing work came from an exasperated exclamation of his mother’s: “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?

The answer, pictured here, is a life-size platinum skull set with 8,601 high-quality diamonds. If, as expected, it sells for around $100 million this month, it will become the single most expensive piece of contemporary art ever created. Or the most outrageous piece of bling.

(Photo: Courtesy Science Ltd. and Jay Jopling/White Cube - London)

At home in Devon, Hirst insists it’s absolutely the former. “I was very worried for a while, because if it looked like bling — tacky, garish and over the top — we would have failed. But I’m very pleased with the end result. I think it’s ethereal and timeless.”

For Hirst, famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, all his art is about death. This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”

The dazzle of the diamonds might outshine any meaning Hirst attaches to it, and that could be a problem. Its value as jewelry alone is preposterous. Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.

“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”

The piece is not exactly the stuff of public art, but Hirst says he hopes that an institution like the British Museum might put it on display for a while before it disappears into a vault, never to be seen again. Whether the piece is seen or not, Hirst will likely go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most extravagant artist.

“I hadn’t thought about that!” he suddenly snorts with laughter. “I deal with that with all my work. The markup on paint and canvas is a hell of a lot more than on this diamond piece.”

Giant Spider Sculpture

Do you have a 12-year-old boy who thinks spiders are really, really cool? Here’s an introduction to art that will get his attention. The National Gallery of Canada recently acquired Maman, a 9.27 metre (30-foot) spider sculpture, which is now on display at the Gallery’s Plaza. The gargantuan bronze spider, by Louise Bourgeois, weighs 8,165 kg (or 18,000 lbs) and carries a sac of 20 pure white marble eggs under her belly. Spiders, with their ability to fabricate complex and calculated webs, serve as a natural metaphor for creativity. This artist intended this sculpture to be an ode to the artist’s mother, who was a restorer of tapestries. Called "Maman", it is the last of six spiders cast by renowned Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois as a tribute to her mother. It was created in 1999 and cast in 2003. Bourgeois was born in France in 1911 and has been working as an artist for nearly 70 years. She immigrated to the United States in 1938.
Maman's $3.2-million price tag could raise a few eyebrows. Rather than being concerned about gallery-goers turning into Miss Muffets, Franklin says the giant spider is already doing what it's supposed to do – inspire people to talk about art. "The very elegant structure of the spider will certainly enhance the entrance and hopefully draw people to the entrance who maybe have not come to the National Gallery before, but who will be fascinated by this piece," he said. Maman joins several other Bourgeois sculptures in the gallery's collection. The 93-year-old artist – whose work is featured in institutions such as the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Florence's Uffizi Gallery – is considered among the world's most important sculptors living today and will be celebrated with a retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2007.

Increase your traffic with BlogRUSH.

Let me introduce you to a new system that will increase the amount of relevent traffic to YOUR Blog! The name of the system is BlogRUSH and here are a few simple steps you can take to get started. First, locate the "FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE" BlogRUSH widget located on the left side of my blog in the sidebar (see the picture on the right with the red arrow pointing to the BlogRUSH widget). Just scroll down until the widget is visible. You'll notice there are 5 blog posts links listed in the widget and they are all active links. These are blog sites that have similar content categories as my site, that category being Art. After you sign up your blog post link will be listed in hundreds or thousands of these widgets on blog sites all across the internet. Next step is to click on the phrase "Add Your Blog Posts - FREE" which is located in the blue border of the widget at the bottom of the widget (see the red arrow in the picture on the left). This is a link to the BlogRUSH home page where you will see a video presentation on how the BlogRUSH system works and it will explain in detail the levels of traffic that are possible with this system. This is a system that is free so what do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose and traffic to gain, so go ahead, give it a spin. The sign-up process is fast and easy, however there is one part of the sign-up process where you will need to list your "Feed URL" which for Blogspot users will be http://georgemckim.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
and of course you will substitute the name of your blog where I have georgemckim.