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THE ART OF TWO

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  There is a quiet media revolution in advertising going on. Rooted in finding alternatives to the “super flat media viewing age.” One noted example of this is advertisers increasingly using split screens. Often one side is playing a sporting event and the other the advertisers message. On the surface not related to each other. The technical name for this form of presentation is the Diptych. Some actually feel it’s annoying, but there is mental magic at work here. Diptychs have their roots in art presentations that date back to medieval times. Painters would create different religious scenes on wood panels and then link them together. When both sides of Diptych are taken together, they illuminate different perspectives. The viewer is left wondering what the common elements are. Today’s marketing goal is to get people to pause, to think, to absorb the message fully. And most of all remember it. Banksy the street artist often uses Diptychs, perhaps the most famous one the girl reachi...
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LONG HOUSE BUILDING

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The Great Pee Dee River country of the Carolinas runs from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Small towns dot it banks and byways. The country is deep in history, lure and wildness..  To the west is the Sand Hills full of wildlife and swamps, conjuring up thoughts of a Jurassic world. It is the river though that defines the country. My camera never seems to get its fill of wandering here. There is much revolutionary war and times of slavery written in this land and towns. Slaves were transported on the river north, sold and left. Sherman laid much of the area to waste in his march south in the late 1700’s. You can almost hear the voices of the past if you stop and listen. Sometimes they’re in the wind or the still moments of a Southern Summer. You stumble onto sites like Long House Building in Darlington SC. Only a small brass plate on the corner revealing its name. You search and search for the history of the place. Like many sites here, the history has been lost wit...
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BETWEEN THE ART

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  Visiting the small town of Hickory NC, reminded me again on how important Art can be in the fabric of success for these places. The Hickory Museum of Art is a wonderful place, originally started in an abandoned high school by local visionaries that recognized the importance that art could bring. It helped that Hickory residence had a creative heritage forged in the design and manufacturing of furniture. On the day we visited the museum, the key exhibit was Virgil Ortiz multimedia art. His pottery, videos and stories of how native Americans survived and overcome is a visual feast. The link to the museum and exhibit are below. Like larger museums, Hickory incorporates the spaces between the art to engage and draw in the patron. Here there are architectural vistas and seating that rewards wandering. Even space for emerging artists is provided via their “fridge walls” where art they produce can be left. Hickory like a select number of other small towns has recognized how art can play...
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STUDY OF AN IKEA FLOOR

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 Sometimes even in the land of bland, you find small gems to keep your imagination alive. You find ways to furnish your 560 square ft. or even 360 ft apartment. It made me remember how it was to own property once. The 40 acres we called Amber Ranch. The land made you feel wealthy. I wonder what the apartment dweller feels, where nothing is permanent or real, just Ikea all around...
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A CLOSED WAREHOUSE

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  It lived many lives. Once a thriving warehouse for the textile industry, carefully maintained and grand. Then the decline. A reprieve of sorts when a large furniture store occupied it for a time. Even that swept away, leaving the three giant buildings alone. Like birds picking at the bones, a few small businesses moved in. You wondered as you walked around what the work inside was like. Were there ghosts from the past who walked with the workers under dim lights in the dark recesses of the place, whispering "be wise move on." The remains of the giant buildings too big to capture in one walk, only threads of life there and a road out…
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ODE TO JEAN- MICHEL BASQUIAT

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                                                    Opinions bad and good surround the work of Basquiat. Was he a genius with a brush or just a lucky young man made famous by wild times of Andy Warhol.  A critic once said that in the darkest corners of the art world where paintings are left to die and be forgotten, “that Basquiat’s work will only occupy one second of even that space.”  He was not a fan. Nor are a lot of other people, put off by the garish colors, inhuman shapes and the un defined nature of his whole work. Still there are many things you can learn from Basquiat. The huge number of painting he did in his short life, how he was not afraid to paint big, show what he had, along the way gaining huge following and art sales. Perhaps more than anything though, you are impressed by the free nature of his work.  How somehow he was able t...
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STUDY OF A SQUARE

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  Providence Square is one of those places almost forgotten. Houses stripped away to foundations, buildings half finished, dreams and stories left behind. 150 acres so close to the city, can't be left for long. Now new life stirs with plans for new stores and low income housing. Maybe they might find a way to make this work, tilling the acres to bring back the color of wealth there...
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