What I like: Visual art

This was originally done on Feb 11 for my Fine Arts online course at school.  Now, I know that I said that I was only going to post these kind of things on Mondays (art interests) and Fridays (art history), but now I'm not so sure.  I have obligations with school that have to be met and the crunch is really on to get things done as the year is rapping up, so it will have to rest at a basis of "post when ever I can afford to" until school is done.  


Section B: Visual Art

Title: Like An Artist

Medium: Comic Strip

Artist: Ida Eva Margrethe Neverdahl

Link: http://jellyvampire.deviantart.com/art/Like-an-artist-197147822

In a few sentences, describe this piece of work and what it expresses (its theme).  Include a sentance telling the message that this piece expresses to you:

In this comic page, the girl tells her story of what it was like for her to take the path of an artist.  It expresses the common problems that most artists feel they have when they think that they have reached their artistic limits.  However, this story gives hope to those who feel that way because it states that this feeling is often something you get before you reach another level of your abilities that you never knew existed until then.  This comic speaks to me, telling me never to give up hope; when I think that I have come to my end, try another route and see where it leads me.

In a few sentences, explain what it is about the piece that causes you to like it:

The story and its images reminds me of myself.  There are a lot of parallels between the author’s life and my own.  I love how the artist chose to use the panels in the comic as an artistic metaphor of the normal boundaries that each person, no matter what the dream or reason for perseverance, sometimes feel they have.  Ida, the girl in the story, shares the same goal as me “to become an artist.”  Seeing that she continues to walk her path and does not give up so easily makes me look up to her.  I suppose that I would like to be where she is today in her career, perhaps even further if I give it a good go! 

Atomic Bomb: the beginning

How the Atomic Bomb came to be:
According to Dictionary.com, an online resource for finding the meanings of words or phrases, defines an atomic bomb as being the following:

Google and Dictionary.com sometimes do funny things!   Just look at
what I discovered while searching for this definition on the net'! 

A nuclear reaction occurs when a nucleus of an atom is altered in some way, either trough fission, fusion, or radioactive decay, that causes it to release its mass-worth in energy as the atom flies itself apart in a massive explosion.

Radiation was first discovered back in 1895 when Antoine Henri Becquerel, the inventor of x-ray technology and the first man to photograph an x-ray image, just so happened to place a packet of photographic plates in with a small amount of the element uranium before closing his office one night.  He had originally believed that a radioactive material’s energy had to come from an alternative source such as the sun.  He felt that this energy was only stored in the material and that the material’s slow release of the energy was what he had first been picking up in his initial tests on fluorescence.  But when he got the photographic plates developed, he was surprised to find that they were showing that they had interacting with radioactive material that had not been out in the sun!  His discovery in the properties of uranium marks the beginning of the nuclear age.

Becquerel’s research later held the interest of German scientists in high regard.  Right before the start of WWII, Germany began looking into the possibilities in the implementations of nuclear energy in warfare.  The information about their theories was kept quiet, only disclosing it to the number of people involved.  However, there were those among the group who feared that the research was too malicious in nature to be kept secret, and thus pasted it on to others in seeking to hear their opinion of it.

Albert Einstein, who had good ties to the United States and their people, was one of the first individuals to relay the message of what the Germans had come across in their research to the continent of North America.  On August 2, 1939 in a letter to the President, who at that time was F.D. Roosevelt, he said…

Einstein had immense knowledge about the make-up of the Universe, so if he was concerned about this new discovery, then so too should the United States.

The USA then went on to undertake what was known as The Manhattan Project, in which their main goal was to produce and test a viable atomic bomb.  On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb, whose codenamed was Gadget, was detonated in Northern New Mexico, at a safe distance from any residential homes.  However, the light from the explosion was so large that people in a faraway community swore the sun had risen twice that morning.  It was so intense that even a blind girl who happened to be facing the direction of the explosion said she saw a glimmer of light in her dark field of vision.

After the Manhattan project had been successful, there was nothing to stop the USA in their race to produce more nuclear warfare and as much as possible.
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"The Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima"
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Announcement: Serialization Begins

NO, WAIT!!!!!  Don't get all hyped up for nothing!  It's not one of my comics that's getting serialized in a magazine or anything (although I wish it were...), its my blog post here at Lonely Totem Pole!  

I've decided on a whim that I want to serialize some of my blog post: that is, that the bulk of my content will have some sort of progression within a theme.  The themes will be chosen based upon the time of year, events that happen in the news and what's going on in my life.  So, in a way, my blog will begin to reflect what's going on in the world around me and what you guys will see is how I come to internalize it.  To sum things up, its art.  (Will you soon come to understand that art functions in the same way in my upcoming series, hehe!)  

There are a number of contributing factors that have lead me to come to this kind of conclusion that I need to radicalize the way I do blogging or just abandon the whole idea, but I guess that the past couple weeks have been like hitting a brick wall for me.  Nothing seemed to be allowing me to do things in any sort of logical order, and I hate having that feeling that I'm not in control.  But I'm not here to complain to you all, if anything, you will get the just of how I felt last week when I publish some of my art that became products of my madness (some of the things I made really do scare me!)   Anyhow, I've been working my butt off at school with co-teaching Poetry alongside another student for three days straight and I feel wiped!  I am realizing now that there are a lot of school documents that could be serialized here and many of them actually fit into themes very well.  Hmm, I'm flexible (or at least I try to be) with my blog, and because I have no one telling me what I can and can't do with it, I really have no limits, however, I also don't have anyone setting deadlines with it, so there are many incidents where I don't post anything at all for long periods of time (over a week!) and that's not very good.  Not attractive at all.  So I have made myself a blogging calendar in hopes of clearing those messes up.  

I declare this month and the first of next to be "Fine Arts-Themed"  that is "art for the sake of art."  I have been getting behind lately in my assignments with my Fine Arts 110 online course and I feel that this would be a good way to spice things up and encourage me to keep going, pushing my way through the final stretch of highway, my destination being summer vacation.  You may see the regular sorts of posts in between, but I doubt that there'd be much extra.  Not until summer break at least.  (You may see me rant and complain every now and again, however...) 

This is a rough sketch of how it will be:

• Mondays will be art interest days: this is where I will be reviewing works of art I personally find amusing or that I enjoy.  
• Fridays will be art history days: this is where I we will explore art as it appeared throughout the ages (I'm kind of excited for this one!) It will be a journey you won't regret taking...

*One quick note before you go; as I am nearing the milestone of receiving my 1000th blogger view, I am now readying myself for the 'Big Shift' to YouTube.  If you follow me now, I hope that you will join me as I venture into new territory on the 'net (gosh, I sound like a Viking!)  Len, concur!  Len, destroy!  I know that it's nothing special for those of you who are already receiving a thousand views, daily, but for rookie like me, this is something really special!   

P.S. {I decided to throw in a picture of my cat so that it would catch your attention...

         If you are reading this, then I know it worked!} ~Harhar!!!

Table of Contense: Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima

Whew!  I'm done!  That's right, I just got finished doing a-not-so-big-gone-really-big project for my Fine Arts 110 online course for school, and man!  Am I ever glad to have that behind me...  Well, not yet exactly; I still have a couple of things I want to do with it here on my blog before I call it quits.  To tell you the truth, I was very moved by it.  I found that the content surrounding the fatal dropping of the two bombs in Japan was so disturbing, I just felt that it deserved more than just a glance.  (I still, however, found myself going in a little too deep.  I think that I even lost some sleep over this, but in order to make sense of what I was reading and learning about I just had to deal with it.)  Oh, the sacrifices I make for you guys~!!

 

Anyhow, like I said, I am going to post this here and I am not all that sure how I'm going to go about it.  This introductory post is bound to be edited several times before the whole thing's said and done, but here's the names of the sections it contains:

1. Atomic Bomb: The invention that wished it wasn't made!
2. The Setup (a look at both sides of the war)
3. The Dropping of the Bomb
4. The Great Inferno (a look at what happened inside of Hiroshima in the hours the fallowed the massive explosion through eyes of those who saw it firsthand. Plus, a look at art created by a-bomb survivors.)  
5. Effect it had on the world in the years after WWII 
6. Effect doing this project had on me
7. Further Reading

*Some of these are likely to be grouped together within a single post.  I will let you know more about what I'm doing with this in the days that follow.

 

 Series:

"The Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima"

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I have so much computer work from school that I know would work great with my blog, it just requires the commitment and interest needed for me to get it out there.  I want to... just not enough, apparently.

Expect me to do more of this kind of work in the summer, that's when things will really start taking flight with my blog.  I have few doubts.