Intro

The Crafton Hills (Underground) Student Gallery
At Crafton Hills, Yucaipa, CA

Curators:
Stefan Feather
LeRoy Reynolds
Berlin Abeyta
Kyle Tossetti
Rene Nicholas
This Gallery features many types of art. Many are photographs, while others are recreated photographs done by artists. There are also many paintings in many styles that are masterfully crafted by several artists!

Exhibition

Welcome!! This is our exhibition, Portraits of Many Design!
All Artists shown:
Steve McCurry
Sergey Bratkov
Joel Meyerowitz
Shepard Faire
Gween Seemel
Al Davison
David Barton
Collaboration of Salvador Dali and Philippe Halsman
WBK (workbyknight)
Stephen Colbert

Each artist has created a portrait using either their great talent with a brush or by using tools to create the image they created. The theme is based portraits that capture a person or thing and over power the viewer with an idea presented by the portrait. Some portraits may be disturbing, while others may be heartwarming! All we ask is that you enjoy what our group has put together and hope you gain interest in our artists.

Portrait 5, Stephen

                                                                   Portrait 5, Stephen
                                           Stephen Colbert, Shepard Fairey, Andres Serrano
                                            Oil on Canvas with spray paint and Sharpie marker                                                                  
                                                                     March 8, 2011

               Piece that was done for charity by Stephen Colbert, comedian and writer on Comedy Central. The painting is of Stephen Colbert standing with 4 other portraits represented behind him. The words OBEY are spray painted to the right side of the piece, and Stephen Colbert's face is written on with horns and a mustache.
               Stephen Colbert was very comical about the piece from the start when he had Steve Martin look at it on his show, The Colbert Report. His focus was to donate it for charity by promoting it himself and was right next to it when it was auctioned off for $26,000. The added work to the piece was a joke by Stephen and the other artists, and it ended up benefiting in the end.
               In the piece, there are multiple illustrations of Stephen in the background. This resembles his other 4 paintings that he has already sold for charities in the past. The charity he donated to this time was Donorschoose.org, which is an online charity for student in need.
               This piece is a great portrait with a strange twist. It is shocking to some due to the fact that the changes done by Sharpie show Stephen as evil, and due to the fact that Stephen is saluting. It is a change that shows how little changes can change the message of an art piece.
(LeRoy Reynolds)

                                 
                                                 

Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain

Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain

WBK (workbyknight)

Digital Art, Photomanipulation

Digital Photo

2012

The artist who remains anonymous as WBK (workbyknight) is an Australian underground artist who has been posting his work online for some time now. He uses photos of famous celebrities or important political figures and changes it by creating the same image out of keyboard keys and other types of old typing sets. He makes very realistic images using these tools and that are now out dated. 

The artist grew up using technology his whole life and began to witness how everything is changing by using different types of technology. Using keyboards and phones when he was younger, he began to think of how the world has changed and how he can illustrate how. He began to show this by creating the pictures out of items from the "analogue past" and began to use these items as to show how they are not obsolete at this day and age. 

The piece is a photo of two celebrity music stars who both committed suicide at a young age. Kurt Cobain ( the front man and song writer of Nirvana) is shown with a gun, which resembles the way he committed suicide. Amy Winehouse is shown with a bottle of alcohol, resembling how the singer passed away from a drug overdose. Both celebrities are shown through the keys and buttons from various types of keyboards and typewriters.

This piece shows how this underground artist has crafted a picture using tools that one would think odd. The creativity and time are what show his dedication to capturing the power in the image. The portrait is a great example of how a person can create a picture of two people and have alot of factors that make it artistic. 

(LeRoy Reynolds)

Juvenile Detention

Artist: Sergey Bratkov
Title: Juvenile Detention
Media: Photograph
Dimension: 120 x 90 cm
Date: 2001

Russian-Ukrainian photographer Sergey Bratkov (born in 1960, Kharkov) considers himself firstly as an artist, even a sculptor. The artist seems to have turned to images from his Soviet childhood for inspiration, specifically photos of camping and other outdoorsy activities popular in the ’70s in magazines such as Ogonek, the Russian equivalent of Life magazine.

Over the past decade, the Ukrainian-born, Moscow-based artist has exhibited his documentary-style photographs throughout Europe. They are often portraits of young children exploring “forbidden” behaviors such as smoking cigarettes or sniffing glue. Photographer Boris Mikhailov, with whom Bratkov studied, introduced him to this kind of antihero with his own photographs of the destitute of the post-Soviet economy.

Bratkov's Statement: "One could say that I want to make painting from the photography. But really I want to do rather a sculpture which has a shape, volume, mass. The scupture is closer to the photo I think. I shoot really different. Traditionally the photography is emotional, especially amateur shots. But I do not shoot emotionally and my composition is also different. For example I almost don’t use the central focus. In addition the light and shadow are very important for the traditional perception of the photography but for me it doesn’t matter."

The image, Juvenile Detention, shows a young child, who is obviously rather rebellious. He has a broken arm, with a cast that reads,"X 2.03 OF UTES". All of this, with a lit cigarette being held between his lips.

I found this photograph to be quite intriguing, in a sense that I have never seen anything like this before. It is so unique because of how raw and how real it is. Although, no matter how real this photograph may be, I feel intense coldness, blandness, and uneasiness in it. The immense lack of emotion involved in this picture is what makes this picture absolutely brilliant; how Bratkov is capable of capturing such an emotionless, and cold image into something the viewer can look at, and feel uneasy about it. Art is something that is usually filled with emotion, and the fact that Bratkov can turn art into something like this, is just absolute sheer genius. This piece is fitting to the overall portrait theme of this exhibition because it is a portrait.

(Stefan Feather)

NewYork City, Time Square, 1963

Artist: Joel Meyerowitz
Title: New York City, Time Square, 1963
Media: Photograph
Dimension: -
Date: 1963

Joel Meyerowitz (born in 1938,the Bronx New York City) is a street photographer who began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. In the early 70′s he taught the first color course at Cooper Union[citation needed] where many of today’s renowned color photographers studied with him. He made a significant change to large format color photography in 1976, and along with Stephen Shore and William Eggleston became the first group of young artists to use color exclusively.[citation needed] Their work, seen and published in America and Europe, influenced the next generation’s, particularly the young German artists’, turn toward using color in photography. He is the author of 16 books including the seminal[citation needed] book, Cape Light. Meyerowitz often uses an 8×10 large format camera to produce luminous photographs of place and people.

Meyerowitz's Statement: "It's just sky and water, but on any given day at any given moment, it changes and becomes a different color and atmosphere  I am caught up in it as an artist. Photographing is about the process of being in the present. We tend to sleepwalk through our lives. What inspires me is a response to that sharpened sense of being here and now and that is the underpinning of my work."

The image New York City, Times Square, 1963, shows a theater cashier,  her face obscured by a round ticket window speaker.

I chose this photograph because of how the "nowness" of that moment in time is so perfectly portrayed and captured. The title of this photograph, New York City, Time Square, 1963, describes it incredibly aptly. With me having prior knowledge of Meyerowitz being universally known for his color photography, this one caught my eye, being a black and white. Even though this picture is considered to be a portrait, it really is not a portrait at all. I look at it as more of an abstract portrait, if anything, because of the way Meyerowitz captured this picture. He focused in on the speaker in the glass, rather than the ticket teller's face, which portraits are regularly images, focusing on a person's face. It suits this exhibition's theme.


(Stefan Feather)

Hope                 Rene Nicholas

Artist - Shepard Fairey

Title - Hope

Media - Poster

Dimension - 18 x 12

Date - October 2008

Frank Shepard Fairey was(born February 15, 1970 is an American contemporary graphic designer and illustrator. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama "Hope" poster.

Shepard Fairey statement -  “The first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment."

Fairey created a series of posters supporting Barack Obama's 2008 candidacy for President of the United States, including the iconic "HOPE" portrait. The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called the poster "the most efficacious American political illustration since 'Uncle Sam Wants You'". 

I think this poster was to inform of there generations of the election and show who is running. It wasn't made to be an add it was just a form of art, where the artist showed his opinion in the election of 2008. This portrait fits with the overall theme

  

Portrait Artist

Gwenn Seemel

Portrait Artist

Acrylic on Canvas

17x21

2005

Gwenn Seemel is a French-American artist who was raised part time in Brittany, France and part time in San Francisco. She attended Willamette University and now resides in Oregon with her sweetheart as a full time artist.

“Every portrait is a portrait of mortality and, subsequently, a portrait of a life consciously lived.  That’s the idea anyway.” –Seemel

This piece was created for a show titled Private Masks, Public Faces. It was a show that paid respect to people who worked in jobs relating to death, including mortuary workers and military (Private Masks). The Public Faces portion relates to a king’s portrait being commanded as deserving as much respect as the king’s flesh and blood. In other words respect to those who deserve it, but don’t get respected each day.

I chose this portrait because Seemel’s use of color and brush strokes really grabbed my attention. The use of color makes it seem as though the image is alive. The bright red jumps off of the page. There is such passion in this painting and it is contrasted with the simple smirk that is on the subject’s face. The brush strokes also really add to the intensity in this piece. I was amazed when I first saw this painting.

(Kyle Tossetti)

From Muscle Memory

Al Davison
From Muscle Memory

Oil on Canvas
18x12

2009

Al Davison is an Englishman who is not only a great painter and artist, but he also writes comics and graphic novels. His most famous novel is called “The Spiral Cage” an autobiographical graphic novel, which describes his lifelong struggle with spina bifida.

“Muscle memory in the context of this collection of work refers to not only the physical aspect, but to the whole idea of learned responses. We learn from the media what ‘beauty’ is supposed to be, how we are supposed to feel and think about our bodies. These works explore a different aesthetic through the supposedly ‘disabled’, & ‘deformed’ via the classic nude.” –Davison

In other words, this painting was created to alter our perception of beauty. Beautiful no longer means what is idealized in pop culture, media, and even historical culture and ideology. Beautiful is reinvented in this piece.

I chose this work because I found it to be quite beautiful. Even though it is most everyone’s perception of a deformity, it has some real beauty in it. The attention is taken away from the subject’s face and is drawn towards the “deformities” of the body, which is painted softly and remarkably. And even though the attention is drawn towards the missing limbs, Davison still makes the work absolutely stunning without having to spruce up the other parts of her body. The subject’s arms are painted in shadows in the background. I thought this was a great spin off of a classic nude painting. 

(Kyle Tossetti)

Marge Simpson

Artist: David Barton
Title: Marge Simpson
Media: Drawing/Photoshop
Dimension: -
Date: December 2009

David Barton a.k.a Limpfish, from the United Kingdom, is an artist on Deviantart.com.

Artist statement: "All this rubbish has been created by yours truly (that’s me!)."

http://www.limpfish.com

The piece was made by an old version of Photoshop, a less old coral painter, and a crayon. David Barton illustrates fantastic series of portraits that paint Simpsons characters into some of arts most famous portraits. He has re-imagined Marge Simpson as the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer. Instead of wearing a pearl earring, Marge wears her infamous necklace, just stringed with pearls.

This Portrait is very fun and imaginative! I think remastering very classic paintings with unusual & humorous icons like this one gives a fresher perspective on the piece. This painting connects to our portrait theme and everyone else can connect with the painting because they can relate to might have seen the iconic Simpsons show. So this old painting is turned to new!

                                                                                                                                                    (Berlin A.)

Self Portrait as Mona Lisa

                                                                     
Artist: Self Portrait by Salvador Dali
            Photographic Elements by Philippe Halsman
Media: painting/photography
Dimension: 77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in)
Title: Self Portrait as Mona Lisa
Date: 1954

Salvador Dali, from Spain, was a skilled technical drawer best known for the striking & bizarre images in his surrealist work. his painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. Dali's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture  & photography, in a collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. His eccentric manner & attention grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork.

Salvador Dali's statement - " I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait."

In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and they began to collaborate in the late 1940's.Obviously referring to Duchamp's Mona Lisa parody, Dali's replaces Duchamp's understated additions with the artist's elaborate signature mustache; Mona/Dali looks out at the observer with decidedly non-Leonardesque eyes while holding an avalanche of gold currency in hands that must be the photographic simulacrum of Dali's own. To this observer it seems as if the purpose of this picture is to paint Dali as both creator and self-created; playing on the notion that the artist is his own subject. Halsman & Dali also released a compendium of their collaboration in 1954 book, Dali's Mustache, which features 36 views of the artists mustache. 

I think this portrait is very attention grabbing & humorous. i believe that this picture was not to be taken very serious, and somewhat poking fun at the original "Mona Lisa" painting. The way this self portrait was painted makes me enjoy the original piece just a little more. :)  This uniqueness & sort of iconic piece connects to the theme overall.


                                                                                                                                                  (Berlin A.)                          

  Afghan Girl                                   Rene Nicholas

Artist - Steve McCurry
Title - Afghan Girl
Media - photography
Dimension -120 x 90 cm
Date - December 1984


Steve McCurry was born on February 24, 1950 in Philadelphia attended Penn State University. He originally planned to study cinematography and film-making, but ended up getting a degree in theater arts. He became interested in photography when he started taking pictures for the Penn State newspaper The Daily Collegian.
After working at Today's Post for two years, he left for India to freelance. His career was launched when, disguised in native clothes, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel controlled areas of Afghanistan just before the Soviet Invasion. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes. Those images, which were published around the world, were among the first to show the conflict. His work has been featured worldwide in magazines and he is a frequent contributor to National Geographic. Steve McCurry focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war does to the landscape, but rather, on the human face.

An artist statement given by Steve McCurry was that " If you wait people will forget your camera and the soul will drift into the view."

Steve McCurry took his most recognized portrait, "Afghan Girl", in a refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan. The image itself was named as "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the National Geographic magazine and her face became famous as the cover photograph on the June 1985 magazine. The photo has also been widely used on brochures, posters, and calendars. The camera used was a with a Nikon FM2 camera and Nikkor 105mm F2.5 lens.

The reason why I chose this amazing piece was because I recognized it in a National Geographic magazine when I was a kid, and the girl's eyes really popped out to me and made me want to read the magazine. The way this photo connects to the theme is that its a portrait and the theme is portraits.

Conclusion

(Stefan Feather) The overall process of putting together a themed exhibition was difficult at first, but once the theme was decided, the five of us contributed different works of art, approaching this exhibition with different perspectives, tastes, and preferences; but all came together with a central theme. This was both fun and exciting. The making of this exhibition, though challenging to find which portraits that would accurately portray our theme, came naturally. Being able to create the feeling of both a distinct beginning, and distinct end to an exhibition is truly an art in itself. Each of our five minds came together to create one big work of art.
(Kyle Tossetti) In conclusion to our show, what we have learned is that putting together an art exhibit can be a lot of work, but at the same time a lot of fun. When a topic is chosen, it is exciting to research and discover what works can fit into that topic and how. Any work of art can fit into any topic, with an explanation and a little research. Being able to incorporate what we thought would fit nicely into our portrait themed show, and how each person came up with interesting ideas and works, was exciting and entertaining. Thank you.
(LeRoy Reynolds) As I worked through this project, I noticed that I have an interest in art and that I now understand how to see the difference between many styles. Finding artists for this project was very fun and it took time to find art pieces that everyone would find interesting. The best part for me was the fact that I discovered portraits that are artistic and have people think and ponder the piece. Everything came naturally to me, the only challenge was making sure everything fit in the right place and making sure the information gathered was accurate. I believe our group put together a great gallery and I  found being a curator was very interesting. The theme was the catalyst to finding such great pieces, because finding portraits can be both simple and difficult. It had a focus on how an artist can make an image of a person and add their creative touch to the person's picture. This allowed for a lot of creative art pieces to be shown due to the theme. Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed our gallery presentation.