Week Three

Art

Street Art Utopia

Street art utopia is a website where people can post images and links to amazing works of art done in the street. My favorite are the illusions of giant caves or cliffs in the middle of the street. Overhead of the image, it just looks like random color or designs, but when you walk or drive up to it from a distance, at a certain point, the image comes to life and makes sense. I have seen them with my own eyes before, and it reminded me of another type of street art, the garbage bags. Walking by a vent or air duct, it appears as just a pile of trash, but when heat or pressure is released, it fills the bag and becomes an amazing sculpture held up by only air. Soon, I will be trying to create my own street illusion using chalk, I will post pictures of it, assuming it is successful. I will view more images from Street Art Utopia before I venture out and attempt, and I hope it can be of some use or inspiration to anyone reading this.



Social Issue


Mystery Illness

I came across this story a few weeks ago when preliminary reports of multiple children coming down with a mystery sickness. Their symptoms were seizure-like and resembled tourettes syndrome. Recently, famed environmental activist Erin Brokovich has attempted to obtain soil samples from around the school to test and determine what the illness could be, however, her team has met stiff resistance to the proposal, and the school grounds were closed. I have also read that around the time the school was under construction, a train derailment contaminated a large area of ground near where the school was constructed, and some of it may have been relocated to the foundation of the school. None of this has been confirmed, but given the circumstances, it doesn't seem out of the scope of possibility. The issue with the entire story is that there has been no testing done, at least to public knowledge. If it was a local outbreak from contact between the teens, or even if it was released by the soil, something needs to be done to prevent this from happening to more kids in the area. Stonewalling and trying to cover it up by the school and county officials only digs a deeper hole for the entire situation.

Thinking

Nassim Haramein

I've been familiar with Nassim for many years now, and have off and on, followed his work. He is a researcher trying to find a fundamental pattern in physics. Instead of searching for smaller particles, he has been looking for a pattern between the division of space. He talks through his education while he was growing up, all the way to his current research, how he has reached his current conclusions and ideas. I am very interested in understanding what makes us exist, what holds everything together, and the Universe in general. Nassim was a doorway for me back in high school, and inspired me to research Sacred Geometry and metaphysics myself, and how it has incorporated art over the brief history of mankind. His work has been met with a lot of criticism because he does not have a physics degree, but I don't believe having a title means you are not qualified to talk about advanced subjects such as metaphysics or astronomy. I think he is brilliant and his ideas deserve more credit and need to be looked into by mainstream science, but swaying the current system has been difficult to do so far.


Artwork

This is a piece of work I did in high school, not very recent, but I really wanted to share it. A lot of people hate doing stippling because it is so tedious, but I have been working more on this kind of art which I will share later.

Week Two

Art

Gibbs Rounsavall, a local artist

One of my favorite artists in the Louisville area, Gibbs Rounsavall. I had the privilege of having Gibbs as a mentor and teacher during my high school days and have been following his work since I met him. His work is mostly abstract, focusing on line and color, but he has quite a bit of drawings too. He has had many group exhibitions, one recently I was able to attend at the Zephyr Gallery where I met his parents (who were quite lively and extremely encouraging of Gibbs' profession). The work he displayed there was mesmerizing, his paintings have a way of pulling at you, and giving you some weird feeling of tunnel vision. His drawings are quite remarkable too, my favorite one, called Be Idle in the Face of Nature (title picture) has so many interpretations, check it out!


Thinking

Quantum Communication

Quantum Communication is a video I came across a few months ago. I have always been interested in understanding the world around us, the Universe, why we exist and all of that good stuff. The video offered an alternative explanation to everything I understand about it, and thats what makes me want to share it with you all. Whether you believe in a God, a flying spaghetti monster or nothing it all, this documentary by David Sereda attempts to explain how communication works all the way from the quantum level, and what it has to do with the Laws of Attraction. Overall it was a very enlightening film for me, and maybe it can open some new doors of thinking for you too.



Social Issue

Unarmed People Killed by Police: Who's keeping Count?


This link focuses on stats and statistics of how many police officers that were killed in 2011, noting that it was up 13% from the previous year, however I wanted to cover the drastic rise in fatalities caused by police officers on unarmed people. Who is keeping track of that? What is being done to prevent this? The truth is, the data probably does not even exist, but we hear about it in the news almost all the time. Unarmed suspects killed.  The International Chiefs of Police, a police organization, tried in the 1980's to collect such information, but "the figures were very embarrassing to a lot of police departments," said James Fyfe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University who is a former New York City police lieutenant. Why is this data not made available to better our police forces?

Week One

Social Issue

Iranian Scientist Assassination

Recently, amid all of the current tensions with Iran, a nuclear scientist (Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan) was assassinated by a small explosive device placed on his vehicle in Tehran. The blast also injured two other people, the driver of the vehicle died later of injuries sustained in the blast. TIME cites an unnamed source that Israel's Mossad was behind the assassination, and has been performing these types of murders out for two years now. The reason I chose this for my social/political issue, was because this eventually may affect us all. Our economy is crippled already, and as tensions between the United States and Iran escalate, I fear it will erupt into the third world war. Russia has openly stated that any attack on Tehran (Iran), will be viewed as an attack on Moscow. The implications of that are very severe, and I admire Russian officials for trying to deter the escalation by such a bold statement. An interesting point to think about is that absolutely no US presidents have lost a secondary election during war time, and I view this whole Iran situation as a larger agenda. How far will the United States and Israel push Iran until a war breaks out? As far is it takes, but hopefully I am wrong. The US cannot afford any more wars, its time to take a back seat for a while and rebuild our own nation from the inside out. Maybe people have too much pride for that to happen, but pushing ourselves to the brink of collapse is not a better alternative.


Current Art Scene


Elfwood

Elfwood was something I happen to come across a few years ago while browsing the web. Its a website dedicated to fantasy and science fiction art, something I enjoy creating from time to time. The site is full of inspiring and creative material contributed from people just like you and me, just looking for a place for feedback and criticism. It was founded by Thomas Abrahamsson in 2007, and although the website DeviantArt.com is more popular and well known, Elfwood is an excellent alternative, or you could use both as I do. The website itself isn't the most advanced by any means, and is sometimes confusing to navigate, but once you figure it out, it can become a valuable tool in your development as an artist. I mainly use it for inspiration and themes other artists present. The website has over four hundred thousand works, and over thirty thousand members, and is growing every day. Its free to join and easy to use, and hopefully some of you will find some use out of it in your career's as artists.

Ethical Issue


Flouridation of Tap Water

 

Have you ever thought twice about fluoride? We know its in most of our drinking water, and in toothpaste, but why? It prevents tooth decay, but are there any side effects we should be concerned about? Fluoride is considered a level 4 poison by the CDC, defined by their rating chart as “life-threatening; major or permanent damage may result from single or repeated exposure”. Based on this very basic data about fluoride, do you think its right to force citizens to drink fluoride with their water? I think we should have a choice of the water we drink. While most of us do have a choice because we can buy filtration systems or buy bottled water, but what about those who cannot afford these alternatives? Another source of fluoride is toothpaste, but you're not constantly ingesting toothpaste. I don't deny fluoride doesn't have positive effects for your teeth, but to jump from having it in toothpaste that you are meant to spit out, to just dumping it in our water supply is not at all ethical in my opinion. People of all socioeconomic backgrounds deserve a choice of the water they drink, and what that includes, even if it is provided for free or from the government. I don't believe water, an essential part of our lives, should be laced with a poisonous substance in the guise of preventing tooth decay.