7 Boundaries

7 Boundaries

Life is about boundaries

At times we see them
Like prisoners on the other side
Barbed-wired see-through lattice

Other times they are so far away
Like peaks of mountain tops
Encased in clouds
We know its a distance away
Yet we can only imagine
The height of that wall
We have multiple boundaries
Some close, some far
Each their own kingdom
7 kingdoms

21 Steps

21 Steps

Hi, I wonder what you will make of this? I call it 21 Steps

21 STEPS
We crawl in steps
In trepidation
In hope
Moving forward
Moving away
When we don't want to stay

We walk in steps
Eagerly
Gingerly
Legs move even when eyes
Can't see
Won't see

We run in steps
Even a leap is a step
Can't deny the physics
Sound metrics
We fly in steps
Each flap of the wing
Spin of the turbine
Twist of the piston
We drive in steps
Sleep in steps
Eat in steps
Grow in steps
Die in steps
Love in steps
Hate in steps
Hug in steps

Each step making up lost ground
Stepping on steps that steps us closer
Intimacy
With fear or care
We step near or step back
Impartial steps
Yes; 21 STEPS

The Rain Is Gone!

hi,
this is sunflora
you see it after the showers
this is sunflora
it is all about sunshine

Sunflora

the snow is melting
spring is coming
flowers starts blooming

About My Happy New Year Africa Loaf-art

hi and happy new year!!!
As always my happy new year Africa loaf-art came about not deliberately. as usual i was loafing and doodling about with paint and stepping back to look at it, i saw Africa! I wonder what you see...

Happy New Year Africa

                  

  

The Interview

 The interview is back. Today it is on the latest art work that has just been posted.
how are you doing today?
Fine.
Great Britannia...that is an interesting title...?
Yes it is.
How come the name Great Britannia?
The first thing is that at some point the picture looked like a lady sitting on a throne... a queen perhaps.
What is the implication of that name...is it talking about past glories?
Good question...now the name would seem to point to the past in terms of past glories but in actual fact it is talking about the future i.e. the hope of the future in the light of a past that was glorious...so to speak. There was a time the British empire arguably ruled the world. What the art work reflects is that time of greatness with regards to a future hope of coming greatness.

                                                 Great Britannia

What about the present.....does it not then imply that the present is not filled with as much hope or is not as rosy as one would want it to be?
True...but the thing with the present is that it doesn't it is in the eyes of the beholder.....things may not really be as bad now and they might even be swell but the future should always paint a picture that is brighter than the present...no matter how beautiful the present is now.
So the artwork doesn't necessarily say that the present is gloomy?
Exactly...it points to a better tomorrow without casting any shadow on today...it is all about hope and betterment...that is the essence of Great Britannia.
Let's talk about the colors.....is there a particular reason for the colors?
Not really...but the thing is the colors do speak even when you don't want them to.
What are they saying?
It depends on what the viewer is hearing...it is very subjective....what you hear may not be what I'm hearing... this is why i don't what to say anything that will distort the purity of your own interpretation.
Thank you.
Thank you.(end of interview)

NB...I kind of like how this blog is shaping up. I never thought I would have gone this far with it but I think i might just stick to i as a hobby of sorts...we still need more viewership though. But i love it...it's relaxing.

A RUSHING WAVE

It is going to be a beautiful September month! Don't ask where i've been all this while.....my art is loaf-art...haven't had much time to loaf lately. But the good news is that last month was filled with music! I didn't do much with my last art posting.....it talks about 2the connection between the old and the new. It was the gramophone that bridged the divide and changed the way music was distributed hence appreciated forever. Without the gramophone there would be no ipod...think about that.

                                                                      gramophone

There are so many things we can say about it but that will be for another time.
I just had this idea....i want to put up all the art works we have posted here on freelancer (being a member). They have this new addition which seems to be really cool. It is like a market where members buy and sell from each other. I want to see what the response would be like and i will keep you posted on how they are faring......that would add to the reasons why i have to remember my loaf-art. they call is freemarket.

The error Interview

Hi....did you create this art work by ...mistake?
Not really...but come to think of it...all of my loaf art has been by mistake as it were because i have never really set out to do anything.

How do you mean?
That is one of the thing about the art....it started by me just playing around the Paint program (just doodling about ) and then it suddenly started taking form and shape......at that point of consciousness, i followed after the form it took and I've never stopped.

So was it the same way with error?
Yes...basically the same way..

                                                     error

What made you to give it the name error?
 It really looked like a computer error to me (at some point in  time).

You didn't use your primary colors this time around....
Yes....that added to the error i.e. the name.

Does this picture say more to you than it looking like a computer error?
Not just to me but as an artwork that aims at reflecting  life, experience has shown that at times lovely things have come out of mistakes and even when they are not so lovely....they have at times turned out to be preferable even though they were not planned.

When did it stop being a mistake?
I don't know exactly...


But looking at it closely...it seemed to have definite...even human forms...
That is you...the viewer creating the forms...to you they look human, to another they might look like something else...maybe aliens...that is just one of the perks of abstract art.

Thank you.
Thank you.

LOADING ERROR

Loading error (the art work) is becoming a major issue. But maybe this is a good opportunity that we can use to talk about the art work. Error seems to be an apt name for it. Mistakes can become master strokes that sets apart one work of art from the rest. Art doesn't necessarily have to be deliberate -this s one good reason why art can't be boxed in. Anything can become art and art can be anything. So art is tied to just one word....consciousness. This is the key word that defines art. Once a person becomes conscious of the art value or sense of an object or an observation, that thing at that point in time becomes art.

 

                                                                   error....
                                                     
An error can lead to art...even a masterpiece. This also reflects in life when a wrong turn as it were leads you to the right place and with hindsight we begin to appreciate those errors. Well we have finally uploaded error, till next time...enjoy.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

We have gone well into this week and we would have posted this the Monday gone by but experienced a few glitches.
This week's artwork has two main points of interests. The first is the name and the second is the work itself. Remember that this is still on my Loaf-art theme i.e. artworks based entirely on the Microsoft Paint program.
The title of this week's piece is error and we might end up spending the rest of this week and the bette part of next week on it.
The Interview segment will come up with one or two related articles.
Another interesting thing of note is that we are contemplating doing a review of art outside our Loaf-art....picking on something that may not be called art and finding the art in them. It may cover themes or issues and the interesting thing about this is us bringing out or declaring the art in them....it's something we are still looking into but more on this later. But for now, we are only posting the art work for the week  for you enjoyment...so enjoy.

NB....still having problems uploading error...maybe it has something to do with the name.......have to resolve this...and do it later...till then.

Cosmopolitan Interview Continued - the open Lines

Now you used definite shapes or completely closed shapes most of the times but there were time you used open lines....why?
Very good question, the whole shapes represents individual...individual with roots elsewhere who having detached themselves from those roots and coming to the city began attaching themselves to the sub-culture of the cosmopolitan life. This is why the shapes overlaps in some placing in varying degrees.....

                                                  cosmopolitan



But the open lines represents individuals who are seeming rootless. That is they had no previous roots as it were..

Are you saying such people really exists...born without roots?
Speaking abstractly..yes. There are people who will just tell you that they are from the very cosmopolitan city that everybody seems to have found there way to and this people when you look at them are not really traditionally from that city. But they have become so dis-entangled from the past and all there previous roots and at the same time become so entangled in that city life that they have become the true indigenous of that city. They are the open lines....the true cosmopolitan and people whom the rest are turning into even subconsciously. And because they are so open they are the ones who represent the adhesive factor that binds all the various peoples and differences together. They have access limited by the limitations of the individuals they interact with and not by anything that has to do with them. They are the ones that are the most opened minded, the ones that show consummate intelligence in their ability to entertain every other notion, culture or belief without necessarily taken to any but tolerating all.

So these open lines represents the adhesive that glues cosmopolitanism together...they are not much because unlike the other shapes it's as if you can count them...
Very true and they don't need to be that much because in reality they are not that much especially when you compare them with the other types of individualities that are represented in a cosmopolitan culture. Like i said before they are what others are sub-consciously aspiring to be as they get more and more into the city life.

 Thank you.
You are welcome.

The Cosmopolitan Interview

Your art work for this week is rather interesting....i read your article and what i would like us to start with is why you chose the name cosmopolitan for this work.
I was inspired really and the name invokes an aspect of city life that i didn't really highlight in my other art work of the same title i.e. city life.
And what other aspect is that?
City Life talked about how i city struggles against staying alive especially as it grows and all the vices of growth begins to set it. It is more or less an artwork depicting a loosing battle with the dirt and all show casing gradual systemic failure. But Cosmopolitan looks at the vibrant side of city life as it has to do with the mixing of peoples and cultures and development causes more people to troop in, dis-entangling and dis-engaging themselves from where they were coming from and integrating and engaging with the new environment they have adopted.
So while one talks about death as it were the other talks about life...like opposites...right?
Exactly.
But why didn't you depict both on the same artwork?
Good question, i believe the themes of death and life are just too massive to use one canvass or artwork to deal with. Again, since the themes have to do with the city, i felt as cities are a product of expansion and contraction that different artworks for both aspects is justified.
You still stuck to your primary colors...
In more ways than one.
The shapes didn't follow the traditional....
True but it had some traditional...in fact more of the traditional squares and all but it then included oblong curvatures and this was 'deliberate' because Cities normally develop from single homogeneous to multi-ethnic and then mixed cultures as the go along the cosmopolitan path.

Cosmopolitan (article)

Defining the word cosmopolitan from the artistic point of view could be a handful. This is my own attempt.
We already know that the world is getting more cosmopolitan by the day especially as the reality of the term global village comes to bear on us.
Cities are striving to be more cosmopolitan as they add on in years and as they expand. Now not every city is cosmopolitan but as they expand and people keep on trooping in from the nooks and crannies....they move towards cosmopolitanism.
That is the underlying current that defines the cosmopolitan city i.e. people. And it is not just people but a melting pot of diverseness. The more diverse they are, the more cosmopolitan that city tends to be.

                                                       cosmopolitan
                                                    
And looking at the art-work, cosmopolitanism is an embedding of two "extensialisms". The first extension we are going to call dis-engagement and the second we are going to call engagement.
These two distinct functions has to take place before cosmopolitanism within a city can be achieved. This is simply because cities are made up of individual entities. But these entities usually have roots outside of the city. So they first of all have to dis-engage from those roots before they can now engage into the new environment and culture of city life. The greater the degree of dis-engagement, the greater the degree of engagement. The two must work in pari pasu (sorry i got carried away...hand in hand).
The inter-play of  dis-engagement and engagement and it building up till it reaches a critical mass that births cosmopolitan cities.
An interesting point of note here is that the more cosmopolitan  a city become the less xenophobic that city (i.e. as a single organism) becomes. This is why the art work is an interplay of colors representing a mixture of various individualities within the context of their native roots and them letting go of issues that ties them down to those roots as the move on to fully engage in true cosmopolitanism.

NB There is still much to be said about this...may be we might just extend to next week.

New week - getting my groove on

Hi there, i'm still a bit groggy following the period i was temporarily 'laid off' but  we just have to knuckle down and get on with it.
This week we will hopefully have the full compliment of the interview, the new art work to be posted and one or two other write-ups.
Today we want to start by loading and posting the art work for the week. The title of this piece is cosmopolitan and maybe you should do me the service of telling me why i gave it such a title.

                                                   cosmopolitan


I am also looking forward to the day where i would feature a work that is not mine. The work will have to be with Microsoft Paint program and your specs should be manageable (go for the small and simple).

The defense

I chose the drum to depict Life because the drum in itself paints a picture of latent energy. It is an energy that has been stored up and the thing with it is that once you strike it, it gives out that energy.
Now is that not what life with all its bustling energy is all about?

                                                                  The Standing Conga
                                                        
The standing conga(which i think is a better name for this work of art) implies that life is on its toes. That is, it is very ready to act. Now some might pick the guitar (because of it strings) to depict life but i think it is a trifle too romantic (except for the electric rock guitar).
And the keyboard too seems a bit too controlled for my liking. It is only the key you strike that will give you a definite sound.
Beyond this we must touch on how a title does the uncanny act of limiting the art and in a way boxing the viewer in to only look at it within the confines of the name. So even if the name is part of the art and indeed even more so than the canvass i.e. to some, it could be a real limiting factor as it concerns appreciating the art.
Life is beautiful and it is art.

Life's Drum

Life speaks. Life doesn't just speaks, it sings, it drums. And the art work for this week depicts life as an instrument. If life was an instrument what will it be to you?
                                                    

                                                        The Standing Conga
In my own case i used the conga drum to represent life as a musical instrument. Now this art work goes beyond my own nomenclature. Don't allow it to limit your own sense of perception. There is more to this than meets my own eye.
But still on the theme of using a musical instrument to depict life, there are various reasons why i chose the conga and hopefully in my next posting i will attempt to make a credible defense.

The Interview

Hi?
hi.

It's been quite some time now?
Well, i've been here and there; doing this and that.

The art work you posted is very interesting indeed...
Yea.. i particularly like the name.

The Box?
Yes.

Why that name?
Because it looks like a...box.


                                   Box

But it also looks like other things..like a drum...
That is the beauty of art..it can be many things and that is why the name is so apt. You can get many things from a box. A box is meant to store things, at times they are practical or flimsy but they serve one purpose or the other...as it tickles our fancy.

So what does the work tell you?
Many things...but its not what it tells me but what it says to the person that looks at it. To that person it becomes art i.e. just saying what it means to you is art in itself...get it?

I...think so...let's continue another time..OK?

NHURU!!!! We are back!

At last gmail resolved my accessibility issue and i can now access my blogger account. I used my gmail password to create this account and they forgot to tell me that i won't be able to access it if anything untoward develops between me and gmail. I bet many don't know about this.
But the good news is that we are back on track and i miss my box, miart, my Paint and everything else. Can't wait to get started (which will hopefully be later this week).
We are still going to have our interview and a write up or two on art, just stay tuned and if you have started following this blog, feel free to contribute. Thanks

New Art Work Post - B

Hi, all we are going to do today is to try and load up the Art Work. Thinking of posting just one for the week and to keep everything simple and sharp. We might talk about it in the next posting but feel free to add your comments now.
I love this work especially because of its symmetry, look and name. It is simply titled Box and please take note of the word simply.

                                                         Box

We'll do the discussions later but feel free to post even now.

Rounding Up The Week And Previewing The Next.

hi,
This week we posted two Art Works; Anotherlifespace and Bigben. We talked about them and also talked about the Canvass as part of the Art  Work and The Art of Art Critique and some of the things it does to us.
I ran out of questions for The Interview so i don't think i will be continuing with it.
But next week is going to be interesting (though i don't yet have a clue what I'll be posting up). There will  be the usual interview segment concerning the particular Art Work, a bit on the Microsoft Paint program, and one or tow topical Art themes.
All in all, it would be interesting. See you most possibly on Monday.

NB we have now posted about three Art Works (City life, Anotherlifespace and Bigben) and it is gradually building up without showing any sign of letting up because the Art Works in the kitty are increasing.....