ART and the SMARTPHONE:#1 -PHOTOS

Sure you know that the smartphone is more than just a cellphone but it can also open an incredible world of art exploration.

CLICK. With the camera, you get an instant digital picture. But wait, it’s not quite what you wanted. You’re thinking the colors are wrong, lighting could be better, and, well, boring in many ways. STOP. There are apps to simply enhance or dramatically transform your photos. Go from color to black and white with a touch of the screen, blur edges and opacity, choose your favorite color and paint with your finger, put your favorite person on a faux cover of PEOPLE magazine and much more.  It feels like a magical world of Photoshop tools on a miniature palette and there is a plethora of apps that can make this happen.

You can take a photo and work on it right away, choose one that is already on your phone or often just use one from the app site.  It can be remarkably simple or more complex depending on your needs, skills and time available to delve and experiment. The following apps are FREE, Compatible with Android & iPhone and recommended by many users although I also encourage you to explore additional offerings online.

PICSART 
Comprehensive photo editing program includes drawing, magical effects, photo sharing and much more.

SNAPSEED
Another excellent photo editing app. Google owns it so photo sharing is given a big push thru Google+

PIXLR EXPRESS        
Lots of editing options and with over 600 effects, you can even whiten your teeth in a photo!

PHO.TO.LAB  
I love the hilarious photo options offered in this app. Easily and quickly, you can place your photo inside a magazine cover or a hat on a friend. On the other hand, just beautify a photo for fun.

SKETCHBOOK 
Developed by the giant Autodesk software company, this app offers lots of sketching tools to replace those urges to draw on paper napkins. 
Check out Eric  Molinsky’s portrait drawings. He uses this app and only his finger to create wonderful caricatures of people he sees as he travels the New York City subways!

It’s important to know that:
• While some apps are free and others cost just a few dollars, many try to engage you in upgrades for a fee. For example, pho.to.lab is free but if you want to use the animal morphing feature to merge your face on an animal, that will be extra.
• Not all apps are available on all platforms so it’s important to read whether it is available on your Android, iPhone or Windows phone.
• Be prepared to see advertisements because if your app is not charging you then they may be selling their traffic to advertisers.
• All these apps encourage photo sharing and engaging in an art community. It is interesting for the user and his/her circle and also is a soft promotion for the app.

Post photo editing suggestions in addition to sharing them digitally:
• Use a greeting card template to create a card. Some apps may offer this option.
• Place it alone or as part of a group in a calendar
• Create “wallpaper” for your smartphone; some apps have this function available 
• If you have a wide format printer, tile your photo and create wrapping paper
• Print on specially treated paper or fabric to utilize in a craft project
• Upload it to a website that will process it on a plate, cup, etc.


It’s a new mobile world of photo transformations on the fly. So spread your creative wings and get moving!

“ You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” - Ansel Adams

Innovative Technology Revolutionizes Prosthetic Legs

Hugh Herr was a young expert level climber when, in 1982, he became disoriented during a blizzard on Mount Washington and suffered extreme frostbite necessitating both legs to be amputated.

Aimee Mullins was born without fibula bones which required her legs to be amputated below the knee when she was one year old.

Amy Purdy, an avid snowboarder, survived bacterial meningitis at the age of 19 but consequently lost hearing in one ear, kidney function and both legs.

Adrianne Haslet-Davis a ballroom dancer and instructor, was injured in the Boston Bombing and lost part of her left leg.

Mike “Monster Mike” Schultz lost his left leg above the knee in an accident during a snowmobile race.

Gregg Stevenson lost both legs as a soldier in Afghanistan.

 

All of these individuals have augmented their experience of being able bodied. New technology has empowered them in ways that provide not only independent movement but extreme movement and flexibility. They can jump higher than the average person and run, dance and move with natural grace.
 

Prior to his accident, Hugh Herr was not a focused student but he took the accident to propel himself forward. Initially it was to develop new feet for himself to better enable climbing and then he advanced his technical work parallel with his academics. He says "Nature is driving design and design is also driving nature. Bionics explores the interplay between biology and design; my legs are bionic and bionics has defined my physicality."


These are the three bionic interfaces integrated in design:
1.Mechanical: how things are attached to the body-eg.for Hugh's legs they are attached using synthetic skins and robotic tools.
2. Dynamic: building bionic limbs to lift person in to a stride. Exoskeletons being built will relieve the physical body demands and therefore allow for extreme physical feats that will not impact metabolism.
3. Electrical-explores how it interfaces with the nervous system. Information is imbedded in the chips of the bionic limb and is then under neural command.

Today Herr is Assistant Professor at MIT and head of the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab where he develops “wearable robotic systems that serve to augment human physical capability” and has Extreme Bionics as its center to advance the physical changes with the changes in the brain. He no longer focuses on designs for himself but for those who have difficulties that he can understand and possibly find a solution. Herr has published widely, holds many patents and has received numerous awards for his remarkable work.


Aimee has had a lifetime of wearing prosthetic legs. Since a congenital defect left her without bones in her legs, she adjusted to what was available as she grew up. And she grew up to be a fashion model, actress and athlete where she first received worldwide attention.  An honor student, Aimee was one of three US students selected to receive a full academic scholarship from the Department of Defense and was the youngest person (at age 17) to have a top-secret security clearance at the Pentagon. As an athlete, she became the first amputee in national history to compete in the NCAA and also became the first person using woven carbon-fiber prostheses that were actually prototyped after the hind legs of a cheetah. She set World and the basic design of those cheetah legs became the global standard in sports prosthetics. Then the media discovered her and she went on to become a fashion model as well as a spokesperson on beauty.

Aimee’s engaging talk on TED explains the dynamics of her prosthetic legs as well as the choice of wearing any one of 12 different legs outfitted with different shoes or artful extensions on any day.


Adrianne was with her husband who had just returned from Afghanistan, walking around and watching the Boston Marathon when the bomb went off only about 4 feet from where she was standing. She lost her foot and part of her leg. Recovery was grueling but then she heard from Dancing With The Stars which was exciting and gave her hope and focus to dance again. She performed at the 2014 TED Conference which was her first time dancing in front of an audience since she was injured. Hugh Herr had designed her bionic leg specifically for dancing after he visited her in the hospital.

Amy Purdy ignited Dancing with Stars when she danced with Derek Hough in a steamy choreographed session. Twirling and slithering around each other, Amy’s permanently pointed rubber toed feet were initially designed for swimming but magically brought grace in her dance movements. Her success is not limited to dance. As a competitive athlete, she won a bronze medal in snowboarding at the Sochi Paralympics. “If I can dance, I can walk. And if I can walk, I can snowboard. And I can live a great life,” says Purdy.


Monster Mike, a professional athlete, is a multi X Games Gold Medalist. During a snowmobile race while pushing ahead of a competitor, his snowmobile turned over and severely damaged his left leg.  As necessity is known to be the mother of invention, he created a prosthetic leg for himself. Without any engineering training, Mike used mountain bike parts to build his first prototype and then enhanced the design so it would be adaptive to extreme sports. Using it while racing in adaptive divisions of Moto X and the X Games, he won Silver and Gold medals respectively. With the formation of his company, Bioadapt, he builds and sells a variety of tough prosthetics that can withstand the demands of extreme sports.

Gregg returned from Afghanistan to his home in the UK as a double amputee. His extraordinary prosthetic limb has a Bluetooth remote control to switch from different action modalities such as walking, jogging, cycling or golfing. It’s amazing features such as being able to automatically sense and react to his movements and being waterproof (think shower or beach). Recently he received a new £70,000 Genium X model knee that is programmed from a laptop and also uses Wii-style sensors to anticipate his action and adapts appropriately as a human leg would.

To be clear, these prosthetic limbs are not mass manufactured. They are elegantly customized to the user with sophisticated instruments and calibrated with extreme accuracy. To engineer a fit,  the amputated limb extension is measured externally for its physicality and imaging of the neuromuscular interior is assessed for the best support design. And then there is the assessment of the height and size of the user as well as specific needs. In the case of  Adrianne, a dancer's movement was studied so the foot prosthetic can move fluidly with the ankle to allow for unusual movement. As a mountain climber, Dr. Herr has enjoyed the benefit of using different prosthetic feet to climb different terrain.

Bionics are making profound differences in people's lives. They are bringing ability to lives that were previously disabled and shining a bright light for a fulfilled future where there were only dim thoughts. Going forward, wearing exoskeletons will not be relegated to bionic needs but will also become universally adapted as an advantage for the able bodied. We are building a future of transparent adaptive technology for everyone.

We must accept the proposition that humans are not disabled, a person can never be broken, our built environment and our technologies are broken. We the people need not accept these limitations but can transcend disability through technological innovation.
-Dr. Hugh Herr

 

 

 

 

Three Living Holocaust Survivors and their Creative Success

World War II ended almost 70 years ago but the impact of the Holocaust still lives with over 200,000 survivors worldwide. Although it is difficult to accurately capture exact data on the number of survivors, it ia estimated that their average age is 79. And although so many brilliant and talented individuals were killed in camps. fortunately there are individuals who, despite incredible obstacles, are alive and have experienced successful creative lives. The following is a brief story of three of these individuals.

SAMUEL BAK, 81: Painter and Writer

An exceptional artist, who some acknowledge to be the greatest living painter of the Holocaust, has developed his art from a young age. He was born in Lithuania/Poland where, at the age of 9, he had his first exhibition inside the confines of the Vilna Ghetto. Survived with only his mother, after the war they eventually settled in Israel where he studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
A collection of his works is on permanent display at Pucker Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts and many exhibitions of his art have been in prominent museums and galleries worldwide.

• 2001 Publication of his book Painted in Words: A Memoir, (printed in four languages).
• 2002 Received the Herkomer Cultural Prize in Landsberg, Germany






JUDITH (PETO) LEIBER, 93: Handbag designer

Born in Hungary, Judith was preparing for university matriculation in London when she returned home to be with her family despite the new restrictions for Jews. “Hitler put me in the handbag business” Judith says because Jews were not allowed to study so she had to learn a trade. Met and married Gerson (Gus) Leiber , an American GI, in Budapest and they settled in New York City.  She worked for various handbag companies when in the 1960s with encouragement from her husband, she began her own company. Judith Leiber’s worldwide success is an extraordinary story of hard work, smarts and enormous technical and visual talent. Her handbags are on permanent display at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and her own museum, The Leiber Museum, in Springs, New York.
• 1973 Coty American Fashion Critics Award
• 1980 Silver Slipper Award from the Costume Institute of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
• 1994 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America
• 2010 Visionary Woman Award from Moore College of Art & Design






YORAM GROSS, 87: Animation artist of stories for children

Born in Poland, he loved music above all and says "All I wanted to do was play Chopin". But he and his family were on Oskar Schindler’s famous list, but they decided to take their own risk escaping by moving and hiding places 72 times. He later moved to Israel where he worked and learned about documentaries and films and then moved to Australia where, with his wife, he honed his animation skills and created experimental films. Well known for his series of Blinky Bill and Dot and the Kangaroo, he tells the stories to the hearts of children that are rooted in the holocaust experience and laced with lessons of survival, kindness and triumph.

• 80+ international awards for various films
• 1995 Order of Australia
• 2011 Autobiography, “My Animated Life”














The University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation and the University’s Institute for Creative Technologies are working on an extraordinary project to create holographic interviews available at museums worldwide. Designed to be an interactive exhibit, it will inform, educate and create a permanent remembrance for many many years. After the remaining holocaust survivors have passed on, their legacies will remain visible and audible in perpetuity and the lessons shall never be forgotten.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

-Winston Churchill

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Winston Churchill

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/survival.html#fWACbY1KzbgRXRp3.99

An Interview with ISAIAH ZAGAR: Mosaic Muralist; "Mirror, Mirror on the wall....."

photograph by Judith Zausner

 

Isaiah’s Peace Corps roots and his art training at Pratt Institute are the subtle influences of his city wide mosaic murals in Philadelphia.  His most famous project, Magic Gardens, is a mosaic space created with broken mirrors and other recycled elements that surface walls and floors and are indeed magical.

I’ve learned that your first creative awareness, perhaps explosion, was when you were three years old. You were taught to color within lines in your coloring book but then promptly took the crayon off the page, to move it along the table, wall, and refrigerator. So from a primary lesson on boundaries you immediately pushed outside the boundaries. Perhaps this was your first mural of memory?

I don’t even know if I would consider that a mural.  Just feeling the textures of everything and being excited by the visual quality that was presented and that it was different than what was there already. It changed the paradigm and changed the way things looked.  Could you call it a mural? I don’t think you could call it a mural.  You could call it a place where empty spaces were filled with ideas and rituals. But in my case it was just a child scribbling, a graffiti process, a naming that said “I’m here … I’m doing this thing”. And of course it changed everything.  And of course my mother flipped out; she was appalled at what I had done and that was a fantastic eye opener for me. I saw the amazing changes that went on in her from seeing what I had done.

You can’t call it art but it was a creative experience.  It was to color … what I call total embellishment … the continuing and continuing without borders.

It was a moment in time that was very powerful to me and continues to resonate … I have very strong visual memories of the actual event.


After graduating from Pratt Institute and subsequently working as a Peace Corps Craft Developer, you had a personal crisis. You had a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide. Yet you turned this around when you began putting discards on the wall with cement and began your mural art. It is ironic that you have rescued these broken bits of mirrors ("My favorite material to use is mirrors because mirrors reflect the present") and pottery (began with his wife’s imported pottery and Eyes Gallery retail store) and elevated them to a new status and purpose just as the process of doing so brought you out of your mental health problems. Do you have thoughts on this?

I wasn’t broken a bit … I was broken a lot.

Your description of it is very clear.  I don’t know what more I can add.
 
I was given a scholarship to take a class with Emanuel Bromberg, an artist and a painter. He saw something in my work and took me to visit the work of Clarence Schmidt.
Clarence Schmidt was an artist who was not an artist; he was a man who just created with discards. I was brought to see the folk art environment or the vernacular environment of Clarence Schmidt and it knocked me for a loop, my heart began to beat very rapidly.  The way I tell the story … there were no young women around so what does a 19 year old man say about his heart palpitating so fast at seeing something that was outrageous and different from anything that I had ever seen.  I just wanted to be there for a while.  I immediately climbed the fence and I went inside the structure and I was just knocked out by its insanity … its absolute insanity of what I had known to be art.  In fact I couldn’t even call it art … I didn’t call it art … I was just knocked out.  

After the nervous breakdown, I had to rebuild myself as an artist. How could I be an artist after a nervous breakdown? That was in 1969 and I was 28 years old. I needed to find a place where I can be a Clarence, not worried about the marketplace, but living the life of the artist. I needed to find something so devastated that I can build it up from scratch and that became South Street. 

I only wanted to create art … I didn’t want to deal with the real world.  I created a fantasy world – an art object that I created a la Clarence Schmidt with the same kind of impetus – using found objects, derelict materials, free materials, materials that I scavenged the world over. 

Last year over 60 thousand people visited Magic Gardens and more have traveled through the city to see the other mosaic murals. 

Your flagship mural, Magic Gardens on South Street in Philadelphia, is an extraordinary and large assemblage of many broken and recycled elements plus your own poetic and artful expressions ("I built this sanctuary to be inhabited by my ideas and my fantasies.") How do you maintain it? Does the weather impact it?

Yes the weather does majorly impact it.  The piece changes rapidly from year to year.  It has intrinsic in it a death knoll and whether we can stave off the death knoll forever is not clear because I was not and am not a structural engineer.  I worked with intuition and worked without much regard to the longevity of the project … always thinking that it was like abstract expressionism … that I could keep changing it – that it was ever changing. A project that could be continually reinvented – not only by myself but also by other people … that it could be kept moving and changing rather than a piece of art that was static.  I’m not sure about that anymore, whether the soul of it can remain intact with so many other hands involved in it.

Your art gives purpose to the recycled movement. As an honorary Dumpster Diver, you have inspired artists and aspiring artists to view trashed objects in a different way. Though you don’t go in the dumpsters yourself, your network of dumpster diver donors keep you actively sourced. How do you store all of these pieces until they are used?

Well I have a garage here that is useful and I have a big building in South Philadelphia that I have been working on for the past 7 years and it is a useful place to store a lot.  I’ve also run out of the energy to do reconnaissance missions to get materials.  I have essentially slowed down to a non-work stop, basically because I have so much that I have done.

I thought that I was skirting the problems of storing art because I was making the art in the street and when I was doing paintings on canvas I didn’t use stretch bars so that I could roll them up or I was even doing paintings on rice paper … that was as easy as pie … I would paint a big painting with several pieces of paper and I could roll it up and store.  However, no one was seeing any of these things … they were made and stored … even I didn’t look at some of them again.  I was having this tremendous problem – although I didn’t know it – of over producing.

The amount of work I have done is staggering. I was able to give one of the larger pieces to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) because it related to Anne DD’ Harnoncourt. I made this piece called ‘The Futurist’ because she was very involved in a show of the futurists. I made a big 10 x 12 feet mosaic that was accepted by the PMA as a gift.   I thought this would be the beginning of the possibility of moving these big panel mosaics, some as big as the wall. 

 

And your work is all about exploring boundaries on different levels. In creating mosaic murals, you use lots of broken mirrors and glass; those pieces have changed from their original state to one with broken boundaries. Then these pieces are placed in assemblage to create a mural where the boundaries merge and disappear with other elements and they radically challenge conceptions of what a building wall should look like. Do you consciously explore boundaries in making art?

Well the art that I make in the City on Walls have boundaries now. They actually didn’t have boundaries when I was able to do complete walls, the complete building … then I never thought about boundaries in fact.  In this case, where we are sitting in my studio; any place where I looked out onto where I had control over I embellished and they didn’t have rectangular boundaries.  But when I do the murals in the City or on panels they do have boundaries and they do have themes.

I just finished one for a fitness center on between 7th & 8th on Reed Street and it’s a long mural – about 200 feet long by 7 feet high and it has its boundaries, it doesn’t go all the way up through the building,  it just has its boundaries on one level.  Although it has figures that begin at the feet sometimes and only end at the middle of their bodies … you can imagine that it could go to the next level.

Magic Gardens is in the center of a big city and it’s on a street that is known for its idiosyncrasy, it’s movement of hippies and how they changed the way people looked at things.  It has an identity that people want to see before they even know about Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.  They want to come to the street so they do happen upon the garden and if it was in some outlaying area that didn’t have that reputation then it wouldn’t have the power that it has … the environment … the placement of an art object is so important.

You have completed over 130 outdoor murals AND, in doing that, covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia. This is an enormous art legacy. Now at 74, have you scaled your art to less physical installations? What’s on your horizon?

I’ve just completed small pieces for a show of small pieces but I’m not enamored of the challenges of small pieces.

I don’t know what the future will bring at all.  I have rebounded several times from complete breakdown failures [mental that pushed into the physical]. Now I’m in another one; I’m not whole yet and I don’t know if I can get whole.   And so I can’t prognosticate about the future without the feelings of the present.  That is how one thinks about the future. 

An Interview with JUDITH LEIBER: From Survivor to Artisan to Fashion Icon

As a young Hungarian immigrant, Judith brought her skills, tools and passion for making handbags. Now over a half century later, her extraordinary handbags are in the  collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian Institution, The Victoria and Albert Museum and also in their own unique museum on Long Island.

In Hungary, as a young adult during World War II, you and your family struggled to stay alive. Now many decades later, you have achieved remarkable success both professionally through your business and personally with a marriage to Gus (Gerson)spanning more than 60 years.  Do you reflect on those very difficult years and your life journey?

 I try not to think about those days because it was really very difficult. We went through so much in five years of war but we are happy that we got over that and achieved success in the handbag business.  I was very lucky that Gus brought me here.
 

Since Jews were forbidden to study in a Hungarian university and you could not return to King’s college in London where you had just begun matriculation, you stayed in Budapest to be with your family and learn a trade.  You said “Hitler put me in the handbag business” and so your career started in Hungary. Can you imagine that your creativity, drive and technical acumen could have been channeled successfully at that time in a different profession?

Yes, Jews were forbidden to study in Hungarian University. And so my parents sent me to King’s College in London to learn chemistry with the thought that I would work in cosmetics because I had an aunt and uncle in Romania who made an enormous success with a cream called Flora Cream. 

But funnily enough, I never got to really study at King’s College.  I just passed the matriculation and then returned to Hungary in the summer so that I wouldn’t waste my father’s money for the time that I wasn’t there.  I never returned to England because of the war.


You created a vast collection of the most exceptional artful handbags over many decades. Growing up did you realize that you had a creative flair? An entrepreneurial soul? Were you interested in fashion?

Well, I had a creative flair I suppose, but I didn’t really know anything about business although my dad had been in business all his life. He worked for a big bank and was very successful there. And he taught me how to handle things when you get into business; what you have to do in order to make a profit.  I learned that from him. 

I always liked fashion but in Hungary there weren’t that many things that you could worry about with that.  My sister and I had two Lenci dolls that my parents got us in Italy.  And, when we were little, we even had paintings of each one of the dolls.  They were both girl dolls, and they were just wonderful.  But after what happened during the war, either they got lost, or we never worried about it after that.  You didn’t have the time to worry about things like that.
 
When I came to the States, I was, of course, very interested in what people were doing in the clothing business.  In the very beginning, I made bags right away that I thought would be successful to wear with clothes.  That was very fortunate. 


You worked for different handbag companies until your husband, Gus, persuaded you to open your own business in 1963. First ladies and royalty have enjoyed wearing your bags as a fashion statement of status.

I worked for the most expensive handbag company.  When I went there, I went to the head of the pocketbook makers’ union, and I said to the guy “Whatever, you’ll send me up there, you’ll see.”  He said, “You’re not going to make it.”  But, you know, I thought, well, if they send me there, I’m going to stick there.  I’ll be all right.  And they had a pattern maker, a sample maker, who was the head of it.  And I was his assistant when I got there.  But after a while, he got very sick and couldn’t work anymore and they gave me the job. So I was doing everything.  First, I was just making all the patterns and the pieces.  And then, I even ran the floor at the end.  

I worked there 14 years until 1960.  Then I went to work for Morris Moskowitz for a couple of years.  And my husband said, “You’re not going to work for these schnooks anymore.  You are, we are, going into business.”  Of course, I was scared to death, and we were scared to death about every problem that we ever had.  But, on the other hand, we made some wonderful bags, so we were a big success.  It was a small business, but we were very fortunate.  It took a lot of work, but we did it.  We worked very hard. 

I also used a lot of antique frames that I copied and made animal bags: dogs, cats, bears and many shapes that were just somewhat classical.  And I made a very wonderful Tiffany style bag from one of the Tiffany windows in the Met and some other little bags that were also based on Tiffany which were very nice looking. One of the original Tiffany bags that I made was for Laura Bush for her second inaugural. The Pop Art I did was very successful; we sold a lot of them. 


Which handbags or styles are you particularly happy with and do you wear them?

One of my favorite bags is a chatelaine, its a little purse shape which started me on making bags with rhinestones in 1967.  It’s still my favorite because it put me into the rhinestone business. 

I have a very small collection at this point but you know if I ever wanted to wear a bag, we have a lot of bags upstairs.  We keep bags in cases very nicely put away, and I could always borrow one of my bags from the collection if I wanted to wear it. 

I designed over 3500 bags and own about 1600 of them.

Your bags span a vast range of extraordinary styles in elegant materials from leather to satin to metal (and rhinestone based) and a unique range of styles from classic to formal to Pop Art. Which designs have been the most challenging to implement?

All the designs I ever made started with an idea and then I made all the patterns for them.  I used all leathers: alligator, lizard, snakes, calves, suede, satin, oriental, obis, Indian ribbons from Mumbai. The Indians had these black robes that had colorful borders and we bought those borders.  And we put the silk or leather in between each ribbon and made it up like that.  They were absolutely wonderful after we finished them.

When I started out, we had four people.  Then we got a little bigger and had 32 workers in the factory.  After 1967 we started to make fully beaded bags, not just the one that was originally done.  I had a man who used to do the rhinestones for us and when that company went out of business, I took the best girl they had and she taught a lot of the other girls how to work on things like that.  We taught them how to do the beading and it worked out very well.  We had 100 girls just doing beadwork. 

Were you ever interested in designing for men?

I never tried to do designs for men.  I had my hands were full with the handbags and the belts and the jewelry that I made. 

 
Did you design costume jewelry or precious jewelry?

Yes, I had a small costume jewelry business when we started out but I said to my husband that we don’t earn any real money on it.  We stopped making it, even though he felt we should have kept it up, but we didn’t.  Then Harry Winston’s son, Ron Winston, came to see me and said I should design real jewelry.  So we did quite a bit in that, but once I sold the business, the man who bought it wanted the license.  So we told him “Fine, you use the license.  It’s yours.” 


Before selling your business and retiring in 1998, you received numerous prestigious awards and the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums have your bags in their collections. Do you still design for your own pleasure?

I got a tremendous number of awards.  My first award was the Swarovski Award, which was a little glass piece, very pretty.  The Metropolitan Museum has 88 of my bags, not all of them are from me.  Some ladies gave them bags too.  And then I got the Coty Award in 1973, ten years after we were in business.  And then in the last year that we owned the business, I had the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award.  And I also got a Lifetime Achievement Award a few years before from the Accessories Business.  And I had all kinds of other awards including a very beautiful award from the Moore College. 

I don’t do any more work. You cannot make handbags without the factory.  You need people to put the stuff together right.  So you decide what you do and you can make the patterns wonderful, and then you have to have a shop to work on it. 


You established The Leiber Museum in the East Hampton hamlet of Springs, New York to primarily showcase your work and the art work of your husband. Has this new venture been an exciting chapter for you?

Six or seven years ago, my husband built a museum.  He had a little help from an architect, but the bulk of the work, the ideas were all his.  The building is sort of Palladian and looks very nice. 

We are showing not just my handbags.  There is a part of my work that is displayed permanently, but this year we also had a very large display of different kinds of bags, about 500, in the big room that usually is used for paintings. 

It’s really a great little building and Gus is going to show some of his work next summer.  He’s working very hard this winter, making lots of paintings. He’s also going to have a show at the Carter Burden Gallery which only shows older artists who didn’t have large success with their work in the market.   


Now at age 92, having had a remarkably long career, long marriage, long life and having built a large estate, what dreams do you still have?

As far as the future is concerned, we are now hoping to live long enough to have a 70-year marriage anniversary; on February 5th we will be married 68 years. We want to be able to enjoy our life and carry on for many more years.  And once we go, this museum is going to be endowed enough so that it will go on for a long, long time after we are gone. 

An Interview with NELSON SHANKS: Extraordinary Realistic Painting with Humanistic Depth

Nelson is an extraordinary realist painter whose collections are cherished all over the world. He has generously shared his skills and interest with others by  founding, Studio Incamminaiti in Philadelphia to teach the rigors of realistic painting.

 

Your sensitivity and inclination to art showed itself in your early childhood years: “I started painting when I was 5.  Did your parents encourage your passion for art? Were they creative individuals?

My mother was a pianist, so I was listening to great music all day long as a child and even now.  And my father left for World War II, and in preparation for coming back, he bought an oil painting set for himself. I, at age five, promptly used it up.

And so, I would have been 5 when I did the first oil painting. Maybe not exactly what the average child would do because I was very interested in space and light and shadow and a few other things. 

He also bought my mother one of the better coffee table books of that time; of course, they’re nothing like the ones now.  It had illustrations of some of the great artists from the Early Renaissance on through the Impressionist, maybe even Post-Impressionist.  It was about an inch-thick book, and I pretty much wore it out--just fascinated by the paintings. My favorites were, at that time, a certain early Renoir and then Rembrandt and Ingres and art like that.  Even at age 5, I was captivated by this book and by art. 

When you were using that oil painting kit, were you looking at pictures at that time—or in the mirror—or at your mother? 

Actually at 5 years old, needless to say, I had no experience.  I had no formal education, no education at all.  

And my aunt who I think was working in Los Alamos on the nuclear projects couldn’t send any postcards from there, so she sent things from Albuquerque, New Mexico.  And so I received this Albuquerque postcard—I didn’t, my family did—and it was an Indian adobe house with these poles sticking out of the front and cast shadows running down the front of the adobe.  And I found that fascinating, and that’s what I painted—not normally what, as they say, a five year old would paint. We still have that silly little picture. 

As far as encouragement is concerned, I don’t think I received any negative response.  But my parents certainly were not cheerleaders, so it was something sort of in between.  I would run to my parents, every five minutes and say “Look, look.  This is the best thing I’ve ever done.”  They didn’t ridicule me at least.
 

Your father must have particularly had some art sensitivity. How many fathers from World War II, having been away, or not even away, would buy an oil painting set and this particular book? 

True, he had even done a pastel or two.  Although he was a very busy businessman, he did have interest there.

As a teenager you demonstrated not just incredible talent but also a strong sense of independence. You began studying at the Art Students League in NYC at 18 and managed to earn your own tuition through work at the school.  Do you ever look back and wonder about being so young with such drive and focus?

It is kind of remarkable; I honestly can’t account for it. I did go to college for a couple of years and I was thoroughly bored.  I would find myself on weekends running to museums and studying various paintings, particularly among which was Rembrandt, of course.  By the time I got to New York, I was completely captivated by the idea of being a painter and so I dedicated my whole life to it. Beginning then work was something I enjoyed.  Work—if painting is work—why, then I was working.  But I feel a little guilty calling it “work” because I am so involved in it.  It’s a compulsion, and it’s gratifying at the same time—very gratifying.  
 

With prestigious grants you studied in Italy returning later to teach in Memphis, Chicago, New York (Art Students League, The National Academy of Design) and then Bucks County, Pennsylvania. During the years that you were strengthening your skills as a realist painter, were you also reflecting on your next move to art education?

Quite frankly, at that point, I was consumed with learning all these skills myself and gaining capability.  I was aware that it was just completely incredulous that the teaching level was so pathetic that I just felt challenged to try to do something about it in my own way.  And I’ve had a compulsion to do that ever since, for the last 50 years. 

You have continued to teach. You generously established an art apprentice program in your home studio at no cost to the student and then considering the high demand for developing skills in painting realism; you founded Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia.  That was a huge investment of your time and energy. What support did you have to make that happen so successfully?     

Well, the students who came to me pleading that I teach in Philadelphia were my biggest, let’s say, fan club, and they were the most encouraging because they were very, very excited about the idea of something being created.  The first few years, I was the sole teacher, and so I was there teaching two or three days a week, all day.  And it was sort of holding back my own work.  So, as the years have gone by, I’ve had students whom I have trained become the teachers.  And this is part of the philosophy—that the students become teachers and start doing a little bit of teaching rather early on in their education.  Now we’ve developed some absolutely superb teachers and painters who are going around this country and the world teaching.  This is only the beginning of what will definitely be expanded. 

That’s sensational.  It’s really giving back. 

It’s working big time. 

Your portraits are rich in realistic life details and also carry a depth of soulfulness.  Who was your first well-known commissioned portrait? How did you receive that project?

Oh wow, I can barely remember.  I know that a businessman, an associate of my father’s, asked me to paint a portrait, but it was way too early.  I didn’t have that kind of confidence when I was about nineteen.  Then when I was in New York studying, I was asked to paint the head minister of the All Saints Unitarian Church on Madison Avenue in New York, and I painted Dr. Walter Donald Crane.  Right about that time, I also went to Europe—to Italy for a couple of years—so I painted a lot of friends and a lot of things but not high profile commissions.  So let’s see, oh gosh, it’s very hard to remember.  It's just been a question of slowly going up a staircase.  And it’s hard to know if there’s any one point where the light starts flashing and suddenly, oh boy, I’m painting some important people.  I don’t put that much into the celebrity status, because I’ve come to the conclusion that all people have depth, and all people have something that I would love to extrude and put into a painting.  And so, it’s not just kings and queens and princesses that I go into with depth.  It’s virtually everything I paint, frankly. 

Then again getting to know these people—some, I have become very good friends with.  Perhaps the deepest relationship might be with Diana, but I also had a wonderful relationship with Margaret Thatcher.  I painted her twice, so I spent many, many hours with her—both during the paintings and other times.  We were great friends. 

Generally speaking, we make friends.  And because I’m painting friends, their humanity is very much in the forefront.  It’s very gratifying that way because I don’t hide what I’m doing and then sort of flash it to them at the end.  They are part of the process, and they see what I’m doing the whole way.  And I think they really, really gain from it.  People I never would have expected would get excited and interested in the project do become interested and excited about the project.  So, that’s very gratifying.  I’m not just painting an object.  So, it makes a big difference. 

Now that you are famous and in museums, galleries and collections all over the world, do you have an agent(s) for your art or do commissions come to you directly?

Well, they normally come to me directly.  I run across so many people and so many people are aware of my work that I don’t need someone out there peddling it.  But often I’ll get, for example, a recommendation—someone will be sent to me by a museum director or museum curators or people that are in the art world or that kind of thing—or just because of connections that have somehow or other been attained over the last half-century.   But selling paintings—I just run across people that really want them, and that’s very gratifying. 

Occasionally, I will have a show with an exhibition, for example I just had two very, very important exhibitions in Russia.  I was invited by the Russian Academy of Art to have a major exhibition there, and I did, two years ago.  And then the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg wanted the same show and got it.  So, I showed at the two very major Russian Museums.  And that was I guess word of mouth, people heard about me, or whatever, and they approached me. 
 

You have said that “You cannot make a major difference doing things in a minor way”. Has that belief driven you to succeed?

With the major things in my life, my painting, and therefore my teaching—and of course my family—there is no element of complacency as I approach these things, and that might be represented by calling it in a minor way.  So for example—the teaching—I could teach a few students or have a few apprentices here living with me around the house, but actually I think reaching a greater number of people and influencing art worldwide is my ambition. I think we’re well on the road.  I think art needs some major changes.  And what they call modern art is just ridiculous.  I think it’s time to reset the clock and reset the direction of art, and we’re doing that.   But it’s a big responsibility to teach people not just talk about it. 

Words almost become meaningless.  But I think we can change some things, but there has to be better art out there for people to grasp on to.  And with great hope and luck, I and some of these students will provide that.  So that’s what I mean by doing something in a big way.  But I don’t mean that you should make—when you fix breakfast—spend a lifetime on it.  I think you do have to select the most important things to address your time with. 
 

At 75, you remain very active by painting almost daily and continuing to teach at Studio Incamminati. Do you have daily routines? Do you still have any unfulfilled goals?

I have exactly the same routine I think I’ve always had, but maybe it’s more of a routine than it ever was.  I get up early, often its dark and I’ll come to the studio very early in the morning, and I will paint without sitting down often for ten or eleven or even twelve hours. 

And, it’s no more difficult for me to do that now, in fact perhaps easier than it ever was because it’s become quite a habit.  I do know that many of my students fall on the floor in exhaustion after about an hour, and I’m like the little battery that keeps on going.  And I feel I have every bit as much energy and a whole lot more experience and ability than I had when I was much younger. 
 

Do you work out?  Do you do some physical exercises that help you maintain this incredible routine? 

A little, but I have little, little ambition to become an Arnold Schwarzenegger. 
 

Do you possibly have any unfulfilled goals at this point? 

Just more and better paintings—I think my paintings are almost becoming more ambitious in the last five or six years than they’ve ever been—and more complicated.  I think they’re more competent.  I think they have greater appeal visually, and I think they’re more exciting.  I think they have greater depth, and so this is all an accumulation of knowledge that I’ve gained over all these years.  And I’m enjoying the heck out of being competent.   

But, there is nothing like knowledge, and one of my statements that I would make, unsolicited from you, is that “show me somebody that is self-taught, and I’ll show you someone who is incompetent and ignorant.”  Because there is such a vast, vast, vast resource in art history and those paintings and painters that have come before, that somebody who has not seen those—because if they’ve seen those at all and studied them at all, then they’re not self-taught—they’re getting it from—self-taught means total ignorance, and I’m not for that at all.  I think the more you know, the greater the creativity. 

 

An Interview with BENNETT BEAN: Creating a Continuum of Art

 

 

I understand that you migrated to art as a college student. I assume that there were early creative experiences that paved the way. Was your artful spirit hibernating, were you aware of it?

First, it was the way I was brought up and given a sense by my mother that I was astonishingly wonderful. This is a perfect gift to give a child. Second, third grade was amazingly important.  I went to a university experimental school where their experiment was to provide a project then point to the back of the room where there were plenty of books and materials to find a solution. I still approach my art that way; I have a project and then I search for the solution. So much is about curiosity.

I was dyslexic before they invented dyslexia so I was considered stupid; but, I was so well armored by my mother’s spirit that I could not be crushed. I think of dyslexia as an advantage, and I feel sorry for artists who think in linear terms; I enjoy thinking in terms of a relational field of elements spun in space.

Becoming an artist was not a very popular thought when I was growing up in the 50s. In any event, my mother said that I could be an artist but had to finish school first so in that way she gave me permission and restrictions.

 

It’s interesting that your mother was the one to encourage you to take the leap in Art studies since often most parents place an emphatic push on traditional careers.  She must have been a very intuitive person with good instincts.

My mother was fabulous with great instincts and very smart. I had a great childhood with only standard suffering such as occasional bullying. It was idyllic to grow up in the Midwest in the 50’s.

 

You traveled through initial career journeys as an archaeologist then an architect to solidly planting yourself as an artist. How have these studies shaped your thinking in making your art?

I was really shopping for a way to make a living. I was very lucky to have gone to Grinnell, which was a liberal arts college where I was forced to explore a variety of studies. Their core curriculum was really good. I was just trying to figure it out and then I received permission from my mother to study Art and left Grinnell. I enrolled in the University of Iowa which was like a huge art factory and a wonderful place to be; an ideal situation with many types of students.

 

You write:“The things I make influence what I buy and the things I buy influence what I make…..  It’s a dance where ideas are applied in different ways depending on the medium.” This integrative approach must trigger a whole inner circle of visual and intellectual thought. When did you become conscious of this unique way of relating to the objects around you?

 

It is kind of a circle; each feeds the other. We’re making rugs in Nepal and using images of pots in the design, and as the rugs change it goes back and influences my pots again. Now I am making a new line of furniture which is taking imagery from both the pots and the rugs. It is a kind of interior discussion based on curiosity of what happens if I take this thing from here……stealing one thing from one place to see how it may fit in another . It’s an approach of transforming one thing to another.

 

Your approach to creating art is dynamic. You respond with flexibility, shifting your initial values to embrace a more complex view that hosts many elements of thought to bring down barriers of distinction among those elements. Do you consider yourself a flexible open person in life as well?

 

I have been a practicing Buddhist for many years; one of the things this leads to is that one becomes less interested in the distinctions between this and that.  I’m not interested in barriers, so I can move between things that others may find think of as very different. And a lot of what I do is to show up to the problem with whatever point of view I have and apply it.

I probably consider myself more open and flexible than others do. 

 

Also I may be more open than flexible because the way I do things requires discipline so it means that I may have to say “No” to people who want me to do something else.

 

Having created in many mediums (clay, paint, steel, fiber) and produced many objects/items, what do you still yearn to do now at 72?

I have way more ideas than I could ever actually physically execute. I would like to have a big pile of money so I could hire a bunch of people to do them. And what I would really like to make is big sculpture, monster steel things with gold inside. That would be fun. Also it would be interesting to revisit utilitarian ceramics because it is where I started.

It’s almost a continuation of all things and of course there is an economic piece to all of it since I stopped teaching 40 years ago and now I am focused on sustaining my studio.

As I get older, I clearly have less energy. I am slowly deteriorating physically although I still suffer from attacks of euphoria.