Anatomy and Art

So for the most part, I’ve been in a work haze lately.  Between the store where I’ve been working part time, and picking up almost every other hour I have on that 3D anatomy graphics gig lately, it’s been like one big cyclone of work work work.  But, in the midst of that haze, I was afforded one particular Tuesday afternoon to relax with a visit from The Delightfully Wicked Elmo Martin.  While he was in town, we took the opportunity to peruse the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.  Now, I hadn’t previously been there, and in part that’s because I tend to have less appreciation for modern art than I do a lot of it’s predecessors.  But I have to say that going with someone who does have a greater appreciation for more high concept art projects was indeed enlightening.  One of the expressions that kept coming up is that “It’s all about the frame.”

But no, the frame isn’t just a physical frame on something, but more the overall framework in which the work is presented.  For a lot of the pieces we saw there, the whole room and the conceptual explanation was the frame.  I can get into that to an extent, but there is still a part of me that wants an artistic piece to stand on it’s own merit.  When I create fine art, I want people to be taken by it on it’s own right, and not just because they know the backstory, or because they studied really hard to get it.  And in taking this idea of calling all of that the frame, I couldn’t help but be amused with the introspection that I have, for years, gone out of my way to paint the edges of my paintings so that they do not require a frame.  And yes, as my friend pointed out, no frame is a kind of frame.  Sure.  But it got me thinking about what my frame of no frame means. If the frame is the packaging, the story, really if you think about it, the sales pitch even, then what does it mean that I’m always choosing to frame my work framelessly?  Or maybe being frameless in it’s most literal sense is fine, but it does make me think about the other ways in which I frame my work.  Sometimes I show things on this very blog.  I also have the gallery pages of all of my paintings.  These aren’t especially fancy presentations.  So maybe that’s something I should be paying more attention to.  The lack of bells and whistles has always felt more honest to me, but is it really?  And maybe presentation in general is something that I could work on in other aspects of my art, and even my life as well. Whether it’s a proper setting to display my paintings, or a clean lab coat in the clinic, it probably wouldn’t hurt for me to work on presentation a little.  Or maybe I should just make my own gallery where the only frames are on the benches where the patrons can sit.  I mean, they’re a part of the art experience too.  And maybe if I ever have my own anaplastology clinic, I’ll have extra lab coats for the patients to wear, so that we might all collaborate as experts working toward a common goal.  Now that’s my kind of frame.

Now there is just the kind of anatomy and art awesome Halloween pictures I was looking for.  Thank you, Heidi Klum!

Happy Halloween, Everyone!  I’d make a card here or something fun, but I’ve actually been working pretty intensively on a new job lately.  I came in on a rush to finish a 3D illustration that features a sagittal view of a woman’s anatomy.  I am getting a glimpse into the new changes with 3DsMax 2012 in the process too, and there is a lot that I’m enjoying about this one.

This is that time of year when lots of people get a little anatomical with the zombie costumes, and the skeletons, and the science gone mad – oh my!  May all of you reading, truly enjoy the season.

Well it’s been an interesting week, between the new phone contracts and some new endeavors I’ve been pushing through to facilitate taking payments from people.  I am literally fried with new passwords, paranoia, and learning how all these new tricks work.  I’ve been terrified for days of all the ways I might be handing over the keys to my bank account or credit to what forces may be in these here wily internets.  It’s been a real leap of faith.  But the functionality I’m getting for that leap is certainly promising.

Up from last week, I am once again connected on the go.  Yes, I finally rejoined the ranks of cell phone owners.  And not only have I reconnected to a mobile network, but I’ve upgraded substantially into a modern smart phone.  I picked up the iPhone 4, recently marked down with the new release of the iPhone 4s.  It’s amazing.  There is still so much I haven’t figured out on it yet, but already I am amazed at everything that I can do.  And over the weekend I signed up for an account with Square.  Square is a company that is quickly making a name for itself amongst merchants.  Basically, you sign up, and they send you a credit card reader in the mail that connects to your smartphone and allows you to run a credit card via your phone.  You have to connect it to your bank account, but then you have the ability to directly deposit money from a card into your account with just your phone and that little plastic piece.  The only fees are a small percentage that gets taken from each transaction, and it’s about the same as you see for larger credit card readers like businesses use.  It’s really a pretty sweet deal.

And then today I also set up a PayPal account so that I can sell pieces online.  With all the hassle I’ve been experiencing with the post office out here, I finally let my fears of direct 3rd party involvement in my bank account go by the wayside.  So now, if you see something of mine here that you would like to purchase (other than the Cafe Press site that is), you can do so with an online payment directly to me.  All I will need is your email address to send an invoice, and your mailing address where I can send your purchase.  Pretty neat, eh?

So it only seems fitting that I should follow that all up by highlighting a few pieces that are presently available for purchase…

If you’re looking for prints, I still have just a couple left from a very limited edition printing I ran on “Red Woman.”  The painting itself is no longer available, but the individual prints sell for $100 each, plus shipping if you’re not in the area to pick it up.)  They are done with archival quality ink and paper, and there were only six made in total.

I have also been considering making prints of the blood vessel scene if anyone is interested.  I don’t anticipate making a limited run out of these so I would have to charge a little less.  If someone is interested, let me know and we can talk sizing and prices.

If an original painting is more your thing, I still have several of those available.  You can peruse them all at my gallery page, and any individual image will let you know when you click on it if it is still available.  But while I’m doing this, let me highlight a couple that I know to be available right now…

Of course, there is still the most recent, “Feel,” which is a 6″x6″ acrylic on canvas piece.

I also have “Tom Tips His Hat,” which is another small acrylic on canvas piece, 6″x9″

Or, if you are interested in my larger work, the two biggest pieces I have at present are “Scream,” which measures 24″x30″,

and “The Fall,” which measures 40″x30″

There are plenty more up on the gallery site, but sometimes I think it’s easier to just see a few at a time.  And if you are interested in making an offer on a piece, or asking for me to name a price, I can always be reached either in the comments here, or by email – sara(at)anatomyandart(dot)com.

I am all revved up and ready to make things happen!

Tonight I went to a potluck, and one of our hosts made an apple pie with skulls on it.  Yeah.  I just had to post a picture here.  Thank you, Ben.

I just thought that this was a pretty interesting and informative poster made on China’s one child policy.  I stumbled across it over at a blog called Chart Porn which is written out of D.C.  It’s a good site for those of you interested in data visualization.

In a couple more days, I’ll be a week into life without a cell phone.  Last Tuesday night I was either pick-pocketed or somehow dropped my cell phone.  And I have to say it’s been a novel experience.

We are so tied to our gadgets these days.  My phone wasn’t even all that fancy, it was an old Blackberry, but I’ve lost so many phone numbers, and I’m realizing just how integrated texting, and calling on the go has become to my way (and not just my way, but my culture’s way) of doing things.  I’ve realized that even with the spotty reception, being able to get a map up on my phone has been valuable to me, and I do enjoy taking the occasional picture, maybe even uploading it to Facebook. Sometimes I show paintings in progress online via that phone.

At the same time, it’s been peaceful in a way, not being so frequently frustrated with missed calls or bad reception.  I don’t loose so many moments to waiting on lag, trying to catch a signal, and trying to type out messages on such a tiny little keyboard.  My phone isn’t there to vie for my attention anymore.  And on some level, that’s been a nice break.

But, I have to do something.  I’ve spoken with the people who have my phone, and they keep stringing me along, but it doesn’t seem like they’re ever actually going to give it back.  And all of the resumes I’ve sent out have had my cell line as the contact number.  So, it’s time to get a new one. Which means I have to make a decision about upgrading into the high tech world of modern smart phones, or downgrading into a simpler phone.

And while this may all seem irrelevant for a site called Anatomy and Art, I think that it’s more relevant than you might think.  The new crop of smart phones have really become more like computers that get carried around than just phones.  With them come any number of potential merits in business, connectivity, and general usefulness.  One of my favorite applications available is that you can literally get a piece of plastic to attach to one’s phone and run a credit card through it.  Anyone who’s ever participated in an art show knows how utterly fantastic a capability this is.  And a lot has been put in to the anatomical references available on these new devices.

Still, are we trading our real connectivity with the world for a virtual one through our phones?  Or has such virtual connectivity become a necessity in modern society?  And specifically, as an artist, are we giving up our time to observe the world around us for these fancy tools and virtual reference materials?  It seems like the ideal is to have access to those tools which allow for greater capability and increased opportunities without becoming so tied to these little gadgets as to stop looking around for ourselves.  Maybe that’s the obvious conclusion, but I think it’s worth saying out loud (or typing on the web as the case may be).

The new painting has been scanned and posted at my gallery site.  This one is just a little 6″x6″ canvas.  I actually started her a long time ago, but had to set her aside and work on some other things in the meantime.  Well, recently in setting aside another piece I noticed her again and realized I needed to change the color structure entirely, and suddenly I had something that was working again.  So here she is.

A few weeks back, The Associated Press ran a story about computers that can record what the brain sees.  At present, they have volunteers watching movie clips on YouTube, and this scanner that they have reconstructed roughly what they were seeing by reading the volunteers’ brain activity.  It uses MRI technology.  The idea is that someday we might gain insight into people’s hallucinations and dreams with this, or improve communication with stroke victims or other patients who have lost more standard means of communication.

These images are pulled from NPR’s website and were originally provided by Shinji Nishimoto of the university of California, Berkeley.  As you can see, the images are blurry at this point, but it is working, and how amazingly cool is that?!!

If you’d like to read more about it, NPR’s article can be found here…
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/22/140710447/can-computers-reconstruct-your-dreams

or, another version of the same story can be found here through The Seattle Times…
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2016284558_apusscibrainmovies.html

I will personally feel that this has gone full circle when the volunteers are shown scenes of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World for this experiment.  But, obscure movie references aside, this is some exciting science!

Lately I’ve been giving some thought to the idea of just opening my own anaplastology clinic.  The most consistent advice I think I’ve gotten in anaplastology has been to not open my own clinic just out of school.  The wisdom being, that you don’t know enough just coming out of school to run your own place yet.  But with the job market as tight as it is, and so many anaplastologists choosing to work as single agents and not with each other, it’s starting to look like the only way may be just to put something together and hire yourself.  It’s true though, I don’t know enough.  I’m not sure that anyone ever really knows enough though until they’ve done it, maybe until they’ve done it twice even.  And so I’m thinking.

I’m thinking about things like where a new clinic is most likely to succeed.  Which states have friendlier business laws?  Would I need to hire more people?  How long would it take for doctors to start referring patients to me?  Would I want to advertise directly to the public and try to reach people that way?  Are there other similar needs that could take up some business while I am still building a patient base?  What are the odds of being able to share a working space with a collaborator of a similar lab needs?  Would I get someone to handle insurance claims for me, or could I possibly step around that all together by not accepting insurance at all?  If I did that I could probably afford to charge less.  How much would it cost to get building space and lab materials up and going?  Is this the worst idea ever or the best?

So yeah, that’s all just been on my mind lately as I look for opportunities.  And in the meantime, I get to keep in practice by helping some neighbors out with a couple of custom Halloween masks.  ‘Cuz, y’know it doesn’t always have to be medical.