Cool Careers: Graphic Designer

This clip is taken from the ‘Get a life’ DVD. It explains the journey undertaken by entrepreneur Jeremiah Desmarais on his quest to succeed in developing his own graphic design business ‘Extremely Graphic Associates’. It explains the process by which he developed his passion in graphics into a career. He discusses the setbacks and challenges he has faced, along with the different inspirations he has used as motivation.

The movement of the camera and the attempts at humour distract from the overall messages in the clip. The information provided throughout the clip gave an insight into the implications of starting a design business. The music playing in the background made it difficult to understand and follow the explanation on the development of the business. The messages being portrayed to the viewer, during the second half of the clip, were positive and demonstrated the important roles enthusiasm and attitude play in achieving success in the business world.

You Suck At Photoshop

THE BEST..

Ron Mueck - Wild Man

Well known for his hyper real sculptures of humans, Ron Muecks Wild Man is a larger than life sculpture currently being displayed at the McClellend Gallery which was purchased by the Elizabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation and The Balnaves Foundation. The sculpture is made from polyester resin, silicone, horse hair, polyester menofilament and fibre glass. Mueck pays very close attention to every detail of the human body, replicating to perfection every aspect of the Wild Mans body- veins, pores, blemishes, wrinkles and skin tones.

Muecks sculptures are never life size, they are either gigantic or miniature in dimensions to emphasise the discontinuities between portrayal and reality. Standing at 285 x 162 x 108cm, Wild Man happens to be one of the gigantic sort. This sculpture is quite confronting yet outstanding. Wild Man has a fearful expression on his face - a sense of vulnerability - which made me feel a little uneasy. I couldn't get over the detail of everything. From the texture of the finger nails to the colour of his toes scrunched up tightly, It was bloody amazing.

I have seen one of his sculptures before Wild Man. Pregnant woman 2002 a few years back. That too was fair awesome.

Photos From McClelland Gallery

The Dwelling

The Dwelling is an exhibition that has been curated by Juliana Engberg for this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival. Bringing together 10 works, each an interpretation on the idea of haunted spaces and all that lies within them. A key to grasping the exhibition's intention is to simply understand its title; dwelling is a word often associated with a sense of shelter and comfort, but in old English ''to dwell'' was also to lead astray, hinder and delay.

In the American Gothic house that dominates David Haines and Joyce Hinterding's video installation, House II The Great Artesian Basin Pennsylvania, no one is home. Instead, as water gushes in waves from the mansion's windows and doorways, the house itself seems possessed.

In Chantal Akerman's The Man with the Suitcase, someone inhabits the space that shouldn't. It's a film about a woman who comes back from a trip to find a man in her apartment. He's not supposed to be there, and to avoid him she retreats into a single room of the flat. In a sense, her every movement is orchestrated in terms of avoiding 'the other', and all the pieces in the exhibition have been influenced in a way by this work.

In Sofia Hulten's Familiars, a series of photographs depicts domestic scenes, although with a twist - a chair sits in a room by a desk piled with books, a circle of smoke left from a just-smoked cigarette lingers in the air. The inhabitants are short-lived. In another image, a wooden chest of drawers sits in the corner of a sparsely furnished bedroom, a disembodied pair of hands hanging limply from the second drawer - is evidence of the splintered self.

One of the exhibition's more intriguing pieces is Canadian artists' Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's Opera for a Small Room. Inspired by a collection of opera records the artists discovered in a small-town record store in British Columbia, each marked with the name ''R. Dennehy'', the installation is the creation of an imaginary identity - his living room. Stacked with records, lit by chandeliers and crowded with furniture, it presents a window onto the intimate space of another life.

The Dwelling invites its audience to consider how closely the architecture of the spaces we live in reflects the architecture of our minds. It's a translation of space and it has a real relevance to people and the way we live now. We need to think about how we dwell, beyond the realm of entertainment.

My favourite was the film with that guy stuffing a doona up his shirt and letting it slowly creep out again. Cool.

The Offering - Robbie Rowlands

The Offering is a sculptural intervention created by Robbie Rowland’s. Rowland’s transforms a run down, soon to be demolished, church into a piece of art. He doesn’t try to glamour it up, refusing to alter the obvious signs of decay. Rowland’s explores the nostalgia and raw emotion hidden in the walls and floors of the church. He achieves this by carving into the walls and floors, peeling back layers of walls and ceilings that have been put down by previous owners to form sensuous shapes, revealing various social and historical functions - good and bad.

Rowland’s method of work involves sawing into surfaces, creating long strips, which are then coiled and placed to form curved sculptures. Rowland describes the cutting process as ‘incredibly tense’ as it demands full attention. When sawing through floorboards he would staple lengths of calico to keep the pieces in tact. He takes this structurally sound form of a church and turns it to liquid.

Coming from a churchy background, Rowland’s felt that he was possibly pushing the boundaries and doing something quite dangerous by cutting into the church. It was a huge decision for Rowland’s to cut the cross bar out from a cupboard, wondering, “What would mum think?” Ultimately, cutting out this cross highlighted the symbol of the crucifix and this cut out was used to form an organic sculpture in another room. Rowland created his own doors and pathways to lead you around the church, controlling the way you view his work and making you view it his way.

In previous works, Rowland would rely greatly on floors. It came to a shock to him that this church was without any, just dirt and the remains of wooden stumps. Rowland’s uses this to his advantage, shaping his splices and cut outs around these stumps to lead your around the abandoned area that was the floor. A floor which once supported a whole community.

The Offering is an emotive experience. It’s a reflection on the site history and how similar we are to the built environment that is the church. Rowland’s forces you to take a stance. To become part of the demolition process and to look at this building in a new light. Realising spaces mean something.

I know that most of you thought it was a joke. "How is this art?" But i got right into it. I enjoyed it.

Theo Jansen - The Art of Creating Creatures

Theo Jansen’s clip is based on a project detailing ways of creating new life. His designs are created using electricity tube and take the form of ‘animals’. These animals eventually need to be able to sustain themselves in a beach location.

This clip outlines the stages of development of Theo Jansen’s animals. It demonstrates how the animals get their energy from the wind. The energy from the wind allows the animals to be able to walk. It is amazing to watch the animals move. The intricate design of the animals allows them to move in a smooth and steady process on a sand surface. He likens the development of the movement to that of the invention of the wheel. The animals are able to move heavy loads easily across the beach. Each new generation of animal progressed in design. The next stage involved storing wind to use as energy later in small bouts when the animal faces a dangerous situation. Theo discusses some of the important design elements in creating these animals such as the proportions of the tubes in making the animal walk. The animals have feelers to sense obstacles and adjust their travel direction to avoid collisions. They also have noses that allow them to recognise when they have approached the water. I found this clip intriguing to watch. An amazing design concept!