ALEX ERICKSON

 

ART EVENT

 

On April 24 through May 22, 2009, the Evergreen Artists Association is hosting The Evergreen Art Open 3, a multimedia Colorado art show with juried submissions by artists from all over Colorado. The opening reception is on Friday, April 24th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. at the Center for the Arts in Evergreen, The artists find the community of Evergreen and its residents to be great art appreciators and are delighted and intrigued  by the interest shown in their work at the Festival. There is much art culture to be appreciated and vibrant live entertainment provided by performing arts professional and a select group of food vendors show off their culinary skills with creative dishes.

The juried art show held in the Foothills community of Evergreen offers a variety of mixed media presenting  visual and audio experiences that explore the properties of wood to soft plastics, metal to colorful fibers. The mixed media shows off Colorado’s finest talent in an array of sensual designs and imaginative collaborations. Content ranges from conceptual to political and from realistic to surreal, a montage of invoking images and sounds. The Evergreen Fine Arts Festival is entering its 43rd year and is rated as one of Colorado’s finest art fairs. Approximately 120 local and national artists participate in this annual show sponsored by the Evergreen Artists Association, a 50 year old organization uniting the many artists of Evergreen. The dates of the event this year are 29th and 30th of August and amenities include monetary artist awards. Local community groups join together loading-in and loading-out artists to their locations.

Alex Erickson

AIGA Event

“The Psychedelic Experience”

 

 

“The Psychedelic Experience”: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71,” which opens Saturday and runs through July 19 at the Denver Art Museum. The Bay Area of the 1960s, Hash bury and Haight neighborhood had a sound and culture all its own: tie-dye, day glow,LSD and the Grateful Dead. The music gave the community of artists a way to express themselves, to celebrate, to come together; a counter-culture energized and inspired by the transcendence of eastern philosophy of Zen and Buddhism. Graphic artists such as Wes Wilson and others, at that moment in time had its own culture of design, a montage of extravagant colors, vibrant images and a chaotic yet flowing, formless font that provided a psychedelic illusion used for design elements for the rock posters used for advertisement.

 

The San Francisco music scene was stirred by multiple musical influences. The exhibit features more than 300 posters promoting Bay Area concerts from that time, from Airplane, Santana and Jimi Hendrix. Artists featured in the exhibition include: Wes Wilson, Bonnie MacLean, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Lee Conklin, David Singer, and design duo Alton Kelley and Stanley “Mouse” Miller, among many others. Designs were influenced by the art of the past, Art Nouveau movement and the bright, eye-popping intensity of ’60s pop Art.

 

 An Insightful book to read about the interesting times is the: The Electric Kool laid Acid Test  written  by Tom Wolfe, is about the infamous Ken Kesey and “The Merry Pranksters.”  Wolfe documents Ken Kesey author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who leads a group of people dubbed “The Merry Pranksters” on a psychedelic journey across America. The story begins with Kesey’s first experiences with drugs. He volunteered to take part in a study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. The study dealt with the effects of psychoactive drugs on humans such as LSD,  psilocybin,  mescaline, and IT-290(AMT).

                Dressed up with stars and stripes on there jeans, face painted with fluorescent dyes and colors. The Merry Pranksters wanted to share the idea behind the tie die, the revelation of the “further? “To these individuals this revelation of LSD needed to be shared by the masses not just shared by the kids on Perry Lane.  The Merry Pranksters devised a plan to set up a series of “pranks” or  “Acid Tests”.  These “pranks”  were giant congregations of people that included black lights, day glow paint, and massive amounts of LSD.

Marketing the non marketed PBR

I have never in my life seen a PBR commercial on television, I rarely see them advertising on billboards or at major sporting events. I have to say it is refreshing to not be bombarded with a slew of advertisments that include half naked women telling us to by PBR; unlike PBR’s competetors who spend a reported estimate of one billion dollars a year (if not more).PBR’S choice to remain as the underdog is an intelligent move, there “strategy” if u can call it that, is cohesive to the consumer. Beer drinkers dont like to be told what beer they like or why they should drink a diffent beer, they like what they like. PBR has found its market, they may not admit it; but there beer has a specific audience. PBR is taking the route that many local and microbrewies are doing following their folly and letting the consumer do the rest. They are appropriated not by there acceptance in to mainstream rather there opulence roots from the people who drink and enjoy the beer for the beer, not the image that goes along with the beer.

PBR is light in taste, cheap, and affordable to many young people who may not have much money to spend on beer but want to drink until their face is numb. The first time I came across pbr was in highschool it was easy to drink and appealed to us because it was cheap. There is many different classifications of beer which are based on their inherent quality and process regulated by their price.   PBr has a simple taste reflective of thier marketing strategy, it may be frustrating to graphic designers whos exsistence relies on corporations who need attractive ads and logos but to the brewer its all about the beer. But here is something that is difficult to ponder how do you make good beer that is unique? And how do you dictate the way your beer tastes? This is why were all not out brewing the greatest beer because either you tell them to like your beer and presuade them to drink it (hence budwieser, coors, ect). Or you let the consumer decide what they like and go from there now here is the question do you make adjustments to your beer, or do you take the pbr route and appeal to the small crowd who already like it.Beer is just beer people are just people, who want to just drink beer they dont want be bombarded with comparisons and clever ads, at the end of the day they just want to have a beer that they can drink.

Design can simply be described as a process. But questions have arose during the digital age of design (the 21st century).Prescribing a new diagnosis for design and art. Art can be transcribed to a consumerism based level of consumption. A design based on the principle of manufacturing and mass Media. A process that involves an end result that can be duplicated to satisfy a sustainable standard of consumerism. A simple design for a doorway or the architecture of the Denver Art Museum can be qualified as type of design that occupies a function; that fits the Bauhaus credo: “Form follows function.” A simple painting can hold the elements of design with line, color, space, and texture.  A process that involves the manipulation of these certain principles inton a rational thought process that involves reasoning and creativity. What Is Design? Is a good question because design seems to qualify as an umbrella term to cover the basics of artwork.

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