Art Spirit

'A Serious Man' and The Scarifice of Isaac

The Coen brothers give you, the viewer, and every opportunity to over think their films. We, my boyfriend and I, are thankful for this eccentric, layered filmmaking. Each film the Coen brothers create is immersion into the culture, the world view the perceptions of the characters. It is always in a way that they, the characters struggle and laugh at themselves in a human and at times, painful way --- the pain isn't present, it is deep and we watch this 'living ' unfold. In the film Fargo we are as pulled in and confused as the characters as they move through investigations and murders.... in their first film Raising Arizona the characters are comical and human in their battles with themselves and their own titled realities. There is much to say about the slowness and subtle overlay of culture upon the suburban 1960’s Jewish family in 'A Serious Man'. As the early teen son prepares for his Bar Mitzvah and the culminating visit with the wise senior Rabbi --- the child walks through the Rabbi’s office with all of the accoutrements of religion, humanism, faith and intellectualism piled around the ancient cleric. We are walking and looking with the young man, our eyes pass over books, Darwinian specimens of frogs in bell jars and over the image of Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac. This is possibly a parallel model of images set up to illustrate human experience, faith and religious structures. We are human, we breathe, we have bones and ideas and we hope to be like Abraham--- operating in faith, in spite of his knowledge of the physical natural world still follows God’s command and God’s redirection. The image of Abraham and Isaac in Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac is an image that is flashed on for a moment. It is beautiful in the gentle turning away of Abraham by the angel sent by God. The startling redirection of Abraham to follow the opposite path that he came to fulfill that day. Is this the core of the film? Never sure with a Coen brother’s film. It is a haunting image --- an image that with in it speaks to the faith in following God’s direction, our influences that surround us always and the beauty of the human experience.
Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravaggio 1614

# 38 October 29, 2009 - Medieval Pattern, stained glass #17 Grammar of Ornament

# 385 October 27, 2009 - Medieval Pattern, stained glass --Grammar of Ornament

In process ...4th grade Chalk Pastle Representational Self Portraits

The artists in the 4th created are exploring Representational and Non Representational Art making. They've started with a Self Portrait --- learning the proportions of the face, then drawing from their image in the mirror the students continued on to paint in the image with chalk pastel. Enjoy :)

a drawing a day : # 384 October 20, 2009 - Medieval Pattern, stained glass #11 Grammar of Ornament

6th grade ---Exquisite Corpse Drawings --- Surrealism Studies

 In the 6th grade classes we are studying Copyright Laws as well as Surrealism ---Having not as yet found a way  to combine these two  ---We study  them individually. Today we took  the class period to create these  truly imaginative Exquisite Corpse  drawings. The students got into groups of 5-6 students. Folded their paper into 3 parts--- then made their drawing in one portion of the paper  for 5 minutes--- when the 5 minutes was up they passed the paper on --- and worked on the next section for 5 minutes. The students loved this--- it was a very intense working time --- when we had completed the paper sections the folded drawing was passed to one more person --- this was the end owner of the drawing --- they could add color or whatever they wanted  but no erasing . It was a very cool and very explicit use of Surrealism and automatic drawing --- very fun !

a drawing a day : # 383 October 19, 2009 - Medieval Pattern, stained glass #7 Grammar of Ornament

a drawing a day : # 382 October 18, 2009 - Medieval Pattern, stained glass #12 Grammar of Ornament

Dia de los Muertos --- artwork created by the students in the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades.

After reading about Jose Posada and looking at many beautiful examples of art work created for Dia de los Muertos the students in the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades created their own versions of sugar skulls and calaveras.The horse calaveras are created with marker and the skulls and human calaveras are created with construction paper and oils pastel. Beautiful!

a drawing a day : # 380 October 13, 2009 - Medieval Pattern, stained glass #11--Canterbury Cathedral--The Grammar of Ornament