Art on Sunday #10

Self-Portrait, ca. 1911, Oil on panel, Morton Livingston Schamberg,
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,
Bentonville, Arkansas, August 1, 2015

Morton Livingston Schamberg
BORN: October 15, 1882, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DIED: October 13, 1918, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Morton Livingston Schamberg, a painter, sculptor, and photographer whose brief but innovative twelve-year career ended with his untimely death at age thirty-seven, personifies the image of young genius who was ahead of his time. Schamberg was the first artist to use industrial and mechanical images as the basis for geometric art, which developed into the early Twentieth Century style known as Precisionism. Following his graduation from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1906, Schamberg and friend Charles Scheeler traveled to Paris. Returning to Philadelphia, they set up a studio and did commercial photography for a living. By 1912, Schamberg began incorporating cubist elements in his paintings, showing “the prismatic shattering of light into its component colors”. Schamberg and Sheeler participated in the first Armory Show and were influential in bringing the first exhibit of these paintings to Philadelphia. By 1916, Schamberg’s style changed dramatically, with more emphasis on line and structure, fitting to his central topic, the machine. He shared the dadaists’ attitude towards technology, but emphasized the formal beauty of machines. Other painters, including Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and Elsie Driggs elaborated upon Schamberg’s mechanical theme in their work. Schamberg died prematurely during the 1918 Philadelphia influenza epidemic.

Michener Art Museum

Country scene, cows in a hillside pasture on a foggy day,
Benton County, Northwest Arkansas, April 23, 2011

Garden Pavilion at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, May 8, 2009

Monticello Vegetable Garden | Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

The vegetable garden evolved over many years, beginning in 1770 when crops were first cultivated along the contours of the slope. Terracing was introduced in 1806, and by 1812, gardening activity was at its peak. The 1,000-foot-long terrace, or garden plateau, was literally hewed from the side of the mountain with slave labor, and it was supported by a massive stone wall that stood over twelve feet in its highest section. One contemporary visitor remarked on the dramatic “sea view” across the rolling Piedmont countryside.

Perched atop the wall, at the half-way point of the garden, is the garden pavilion with its double-sash windows, Chinese railing, and pyramidal roof. The pavilion was used by Jefferson as a quiet retreat where he could read in the evening. It was reputedly blown down in a violent wind storm in the late 1820’s. The pavilion was reconstructed in 1984 based on Jefferson’s notes and archaeological excavations. It overlooks an eight-acre orchard of 300 trees, a vineyard, and Monticello’s berry squares, which are plots of figs, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries.

Young Mature Bull Elk, Moraine Park,
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, September 2, 2009

Snow, West-Central Arkansas, March 4, 2008

Prickly Pear cactus, Canyondlands National Park, Utah, September 25, 2011

Highway through Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, October 9, 2011

Art on Sunday #9

Memories; sculpture by Ken Payne.
Bronze of a Cowboy and Young Boy on a Horse,
outside of Mountain Trails Galleries
on corner of Center and Deloney in Jackson, Wyoming
July 16, 2010

Vic Payne (bio) has bee sculpting for over 35 years

Memories

Study – Edition of 100, Approx. 28.5″H x 26″L x 14″D, Created 2005
Monument – Edition of 7, Approx. 13’H x 12’L x 7.5’D, Created 2005

“Where have all the years gone? It seems like yesterday that I was running with my granddad at the ranch. We did every thing together. The mornings started off at five thirty breakfast prepared lovingly by my grandmother. She was the kindest of ladies of the old west and had been married to my grandfather for over sixty years. She had married him when she was fifteen and had followed him and stayed by him through all troublesome seasons.

Texas was young then and granddad had always made his living looking down the back of a horse. His father told him of his long rides up the Chisholm Trail in 1881 and his brief stay with the Texas rangers. Our family was full of western history and it was being hand down from generation to generation. The stories were vague in his mind as he reminisced of the stories that his dad had told him and now he handed them down to me

Hunting season was a special time for our family as uncles and cousins filed in from all over the country. It wasn’t just killing a deer but to build memories that would make our family stronger. The hunt was great even when we came back empty handed. Funny how my granddad’s cowpony Old Blue, could always spot deer before any one else.”  (Vic Payne Studio)

Teton Range viewed across Antelope Flats
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming,
October 19, 2010

The Teton Range is a mountain range of the Rocky Mountains in North America.

A north-south range, it is mostly on Wyoming’s eastern side of the Idaho state line. It is south from Yellowstone National Park. Most of the east slope of the range is in Grand Teton National Park.

Early French Voyageurs used the name les trois tétons (the three breasts).It is likely that the Shoshone people once called the whole range Teewinot, meaning “many pinnacles

The principal summits of the central massif, sometimes referred to as the Cathedral Group, are Grand Teton 13,770 feet (4,200 m), Mount Owen 12,928 feet (3,940 m), Teewinot 12,325 feet (3,757 m), Middle Teton 12,804 feet (3,903 m) and South Teton 12,514 feet (3,814 m). Other peaks in the range include Mount Moran 12,605 feet (3,842 m), Mount Wister 11,490 feet (3,500 m), Buck Mountain 11,938 feet (3,639 m) and Static Peak 11,303 feet (3,445 m). (Wikipedia)