Contemporary Chinese painter Luo Zhongli's representative oil painting work Father made a very deep impression on many Chinese people when it won a national prize in 1981. The large-scale photorealist portrait of a weather-beaten old Chinese farmer has a strong visual effect and emotional power.However, few people pay much attention to the small ballpoint pen that pokes out from the farmer's white turban. And even fewer people know that there was no ballpoint pen in Luo's original painting.
Father is currently being exhibited at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. At the exhibition site, Li Xu, the deputy director of the venue, told visitors the story behind the pen.After Luo finished his original version of Father, many of his friends, who were painters, teachers or professors in China's fine arts circle at the time, reminded Luo that it was better to depict the farmer he painted as representative of farmers in the new, modernized society of post-1949 China.
Therefore, after reflecting on it, Luo added a small ballpoint pen tucked behind the farmer's ear in order to show that he was a "literate (youwenhua)" farmer.Soon after that, in 1981, the painting was awarded the first prize at the second China Youth Art Exhibition, arousing a huge response from the public.
For people today, the story of the pen probably sounds a little absurd, and indeed, the pen looks rather incongruous in the otherwise highly realistic portrait of an old farmer. However, it demonstrates that in that era of China, the desire to adhere to Mao-era political correctness was still deeply ingrained in many Chinese people's minds, even in the circle of fine arts.That is probably the significance of Luo's Father appearing at the retrospective exhibition titled Portrait of the Times: 30 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art at the Power Station of Art.
The ongoing exhibition features about 117 Chinese artists and 300 works of art. The works span from the late 1970s, the era of reform and opening-up, until today and include various forms including painting,oil painting reproduction, installation, video and photography.Li is the curator of the exhibition. He told the Global Times that during the past 30 years, China's economic and cultural development, as well as Chinese people's growing self cognition and social involvement, are reflected by Chinese artists' works over these years.
"Through this retrospective exhibition on the past 30 years of Chinese contemporary art, not only can visitors have an overview of the development of Chinese contemporary art, but more importantly, it shows the huge changes that China and Chinese people have experienced in the past 30 years."In 1993, the 58-year-old Shanghai-born artist Gu Wenda launched his worldwide art project, the United Nations Project, to make a series of installation artworks using human hair and cryptic calligraphy.
The United Nations - Human Space, one of the art works from the series, is currently hanging on the top of the exhibition hall on the first floor of the Power Station of Art. It is a huge installation work consisting of various national flags made from human hair from different countries.
"The hairs could be regarded as a metaphor for the mixture of races," Li said, "and the artist gathered them together to show his idea about the internationalized evolution of human identity."Gu, who studied and worked in the US, Canada and Australia after leaving China in 1987, has achieved recognition on the global stage. The British art historian Edward Lucie-Smith called Gu "the most celebrated of a new generation of avant-garde artists who emerged from China in the very late 1980s and early 1990s."
"I always remember my first solo exhibition held in Xi'an in 1986 was shut down by the local authorities," Gu told the Global Times. The exhibition, which featured paintings of fake ideograms on a massive scale, was thought to carry subversive messages. "But now, almost 30 years later, my works can be displayed in a State-owned art museum." The Power Station of Art is the first State-owned contemporary art museum in China."When I left China in 1987, there were no private art galleries here, but now, the whole country is practically covered with art galleries," Gu said.
The works of Xiao Quan and Lu Yunmin, two well-known Chinese photographers, are also on display at the exhibition. It is not often that an art exhibition in China will include photography works.Xiao's portrait works, Our Generation, focus on the elites in contemporary China's culture and art circles, who were mostly born in the 1950s and started their careers in the 1980s. His subjects include the celebrated film director Zhang Yimou, the pioneering rock star Cui Jian and the well-known contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang.
Xiao's photos make an interesting contrast with the portrait photos that are hanging on the opposite wall, taken by Lu. Titled Shanghainese, the photos record vivid moments in the daily lives of Shanghainese families.Before she got angry, local artist Elizabeth Berry’s watercolor and oil paintings reflected snapshots of stunning colour and pastoral beauty around the world. Vivid poppy fields in France. Pretty East Coast fishing coves. Strutting, scarlet-crowned roosters in the Carribean.
But then came the morning after the Victoria Day long weekend in May.Her regular, early morning walk on the waterfront brought her to a scene on Woodbine Beach that got her so mad, she immediately beetled back to her home on Neville Park Blvd. (a 6.5-kilometre round trip), picked up her paint gear and returned to the scene of the grime to immortalize what she saw.
It’s evocatively titled Woodbine Beach Litter, a 15-by-22-inch watercolour that took her about four hours to create on site, with a return trip the following day at which she added one of the litter’s few fans, a seagull, and waves.The garbage depicted in the painting — pizza packaging, coffee cups, pop cans, cigarette butts and more — was all real and on the scene — and repeated in various clumps throughout the beach.
It’s nothing new, but it’s getting worse, says Berry, who’s in her late 60s and walks the boardwalk every day. She sees all sorts of litter — from food-related to personal, like abandoned diapers — continually along the route, although the quotient goes up as soon as the good weather arrives and stays high until after the Labour Day weekend.
When the historic Annapolis Market House reopens in the next couple of weeks, patrons will walk underneath Jean Tyson's bright red hollyhocks and Dixie Sangster's Cubist rendition of a vase of flowers.The two women are among 16 artists who contributed artwork for banners that will hang near the ceiling of the Market House. Eight banners, each more than 8 feet long, feature works from the Annapolis Senior Center's corps of art students, one on each side.
All of the artwork features brightly colored flowers. The idea is to give a vibrant pop of color to the interior of the Market House, even when it's dark and gray outside in the winter, said Sally Wern Comport of ArtWalk, the organization that linked the senior center artists with the Market House.
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2013年8月26日星期一
2013年8月14日星期三
Visalia Senior Center hosts art exhibits
Residents of Visalia may not realize the Visalia Senior Center is host to talented oil and watercolor painters. There are also photographers, ceramicists and tole painters. One such artist, Bill Dillberg, loves to travel with his wife, Jan, and take photos as they go. Their most recent trip was to Ireland, starting and ending in Dublin with stops in Kilkenny, Cork, Killarney, and Galway. His goal in retirement is to travel and take photographs.
The photographic result of their trip is currently on exhibit at the Visalia Senior Center. The photographs depict the essence of Ireland from the quaint villages, pubs and cottages, as well as castles. The seniors love the color photographs of the sights from Ireland. In fact, four women from the oil painting class taught by Debbie Navarro asked to paint Bill’s images.
Pauline Hesse says she fell in love with a photo of an older gentleman with his donkey, dog and a goat by the side of the oil painting reproduction. “He is so neat to look at, he looks like a leprechaun,” she said.
Marlene Singleton chose to paint Dillberg’s photo of an Irish cottage because she’d love to go to Ireland. “It’s so beautiful and I love to paint flowers.” She plans to paint another photograph, a street scene in Kinsale.
The Visalia Senior Center shows works in the activity room at the Visalia Senior Center. Art by the watercolor class is also currently on display. The exhibits are ongoing, and rotate every six weeks. The oil class will show in September. Oil instructor Debbie Navarro and her students will also show their works at Taste the Arts in October.
The Visalia Parks and Recreation Department offers several art classes for seniors. The watercolor class will start Sept. 18 and oil painting starts Sept. 4. Other art classes offered at the Senior Center include ceramics, tole painting, digital photography, photo editing, basic and advanced drawing, in addition to fitness and dance classes. The fall/winter brochure comes out soon and will be mailed to Visalia homes.
Also on display at the Senior Center are historic images of Visalia provided by historian Terry Ommen. The images provide memories in retrospection for seniors as the photos reflect history a lot of them remember. There are scenes of the 1945 flood, opening of the Fox Theatre in 1930, the Palace Hotel, which was located to Court and Main Streets and several more line the hall.
Stop by the Senior Center’s Open House from 4-7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25 to tour the facility and see all of the great art works. This event connects seniors, families and caregivers with community programs, classes and resources available for older adults.
The concept of displaying visual art and poetry is not new to Don Seybold and Jeff Smith. They have exhibited together once before and have outdone themselves with their current exhibit in the Northwest Gallery in the Tippecanoe Arts Federation.Many times in this small gallery, artists have achieved a complete visual overkill by hanging far too many works much too close together.
Seybold’s poems on white paper are the perfect buffer separating Smith’s paintings. They become a visual palate-cleaning element that helps refresh the eye before continuing inspection of the abstract paintings. Due to my less-than-adequate knowledge of poetry, the focus of this review will be the recent paintings of Smith.It is such a delight to see the creative evolution of an artist. Over the past several years, Smith’s surface complexity, coloration and mark making skills have truly expanded.
The majority of the work has a searching energy of layering and over-painting that completes the artist’s intent to create a balanced composition, which contains both line and coloration. The artist has presented the viewer with several approaches to abstraction.
A few of the paintings, such as “Impact,” echo the artist’s early work. The breaking up of space by lines or geometric shapes has been a constant for Smith. These paintings present a feeling of all that is urban: a mix of shapes, lines and color that take on the visual sense of tall buildings clustered together.
As well done as these pieces are, it was even more interesting to see Smith’s approach to color field painting, which consists of large fields of solid color, usually rectangles of squares floating above a solid background.
Of great interest to me were the three pieces, “Street Poster #1,” “Street Poster #2,” and “Mist,” that contained absolutely no representational subject matter. Perhaps these paintings were the artist’s answer to Seybold’s poems.
Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.
The photographic result of their trip is currently on exhibit at the Visalia Senior Center. The photographs depict the essence of Ireland from the quaint villages, pubs and cottages, as well as castles. The seniors love the color photographs of the sights from Ireland. In fact, four women from the oil painting class taught by Debbie Navarro asked to paint Bill’s images.
Pauline Hesse says she fell in love with a photo of an older gentleman with his donkey, dog and a goat by the side of the oil painting reproduction. “He is so neat to look at, he looks like a leprechaun,” she said.
Marlene Singleton chose to paint Dillberg’s photo of an Irish cottage because she’d love to go to Ireland. “It’s so beautiful and I love to paint flowers.” She plans to paint another photograph, a street scene in Kinsale.
The Visalia Senior Center shows works in the activity room at the Visalia Senior Center. Art by the watercolor class is also currently on display. The exhibits are ongoing, and rotate every six weeks. The oil class will show in September. Oil instructor Debbie Navarro and her students will also show their works at Taste the Arts in October.
The Visalia Parks and Recreation Department offers several art classes for seniors. The watercolor class will start Sept. 18 and oil painting starts Sept. 4. Other art classes offered at the Senior Center include ceramics, tole painting, digital photography, photo editing, basic and advanced drawing, in addition to fitness and dance classes. The fall/winter brochure comes out soon and will be mailed to Visalia homes.
Also on display at the Senior Center are historic images of Visalia provided by historian Terry Ommen. The images provide memories in retrospection for seniors as the photos reflect history a lot of them remember. There are scenes of the 1945 flood, opening of the Fox Theatre in 1930, the Palace Hotel, which was located to Court and Main Streets and several more line the hall.
Stop by the Senior Center’s Open House from 4-7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25 to tour the facility and see all of the great art works. This event connects seniors, families and caregivers with community programs, classes and resources available for older adults.
The concept of displaying visual art and poetry is not new to Don Seybold and Jeff Smith. They have exhibited together once before and have outdone themselves with their current exhibit in the Northwest Gallery in the Tippecanoe Arts Federation.Many times in this small gallery, artists have achieved a complete visual overkill by hanging far too many works much too close together.
Seybold’s poems on white paper are the perfect buffer separating Smith’s paintings. They become a visual palate-cleaning element that helps refresh the eye before continuing inspection of the abstract paintings. Due to my less-than-adequate knowledge of poetry, the focus of this review will be the recent paintings of Smith.It is such a delight to see the creative evolution of an artist. Over the past several years, Smith’s surface complexity, coloration and mark making skills have truly expanded.
The majority of the work has a searching energy of layering and over-painting that completes the artist’s intent to create a balanced composition, which contains both line and coloration. The artist has presented the viewer with several approaches to abstraction.
A few of the paintings, such as “Impact,” echo the artist’s early work. The breaking up of space by lines or geometric shapes has been a constant for Smith. These paintings present a feeling of all that is urban: a mix of shapes, lines and color that take on the visual sense of tall buildings clustered together.
As well done as these pieces are, it was even more interesting to see Smith’s approach to color field painting, which consists of large fields of solid color, usually rectangles of squares floating above a solid background.
Of great interest to me were the three pieces, “Street Poster #1,” “Street Poster #2,” and “Mist,” that contained absolutely no representational subject matter. Perhaps these paintings were the artist’s answer to Seybold’s poems.
Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.
2013年8月5日星期一
Picture Frames Are the Art
At a gallery in Long Island City, Queens, Diego Salazar displays his unique collection of art, which is as lovely as it is peculiar. About 250 pieces hang in his main gallery, stacked one inside the next like Russian dolls. Some are covered in cherubs or crosses, others are gilded, and a few are more than 400 years old.
They are picture frames, but nearly every one of them stands empty. The frames themselves are the art.“Sometimes I buy a painting because I fall in love with the frame,” Mr. Salazar said, gesturing to a lonely portrait banished frameless on the floor. “Then I put the picture up for auction.”
Mr. Salazar spent many decades manufacturing frames out of Brooklyn and Queens, and today he is a collector and dealer of frames that are antiques, and can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars each. But as one might imagine, the market for such treasures is limited, so happily for Mr. Salazar, he does not just own that elaborate and varied collection of frames, but also the 40,000-square-foot building in which they hang. When he bought the building, according to his tenants and his wife, the place was a dump.
Mr. Salazar has a sharp eye for things most people briskly overlook. The outlet for this skill that has brought him the most satisfaction, he says, are his antique frames, a collection of about 1,000 pieces that he describes in tones usually reserved for beautiful women. The outlet that has brought him the most money, however, has been real estate, a collection of three buildings in neighborhoods that were long disregarded.
“When he first took me to see the building he bought in Greenpoint, it looked like somebody had dropped a bomb and then left for a year,” his wife, Gladys Salazar, said. “He said, ‘Look at this wonderful place.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God!'”Large two-bedroom apartments in that building now start at $3,650 per month.
Antique picture frames can generally cost anywhere from $8,500 to $500,000, depending on the age, rarity and quality. But even enthusiasts like Laurence Kanter, chief curator at the Yale University Art Gallery, says those with an interest in the frames themselves are an uncommon breed, and have been for centuries. Asked to put Mr. Salazar’s collection in context, Eli Wilner, a frame dealer who restores antiques and sells precise replicas from his collection of 3,500 pieces, said he could think of only one other person, a client of his in Florida, who collected frames for their own sake.“Almost always, people buy a frame because of the painting,” Mr. Wilner said.
Today, Mr. Salazar owns the rental building in Greenpoint, once a commercial laundry facility that is now packed with skylights and exposed brick walls, as well as two buildings in Long Island City. One of those, which looks a bit like an abstract Lego creation, he developed himself. The third, on 44th Avenue, houses his gallery. (Mrs. Salazar said that when they bought that building 20 years ago, they welcomed themselves to the neighborhood by making daily calls to the police to complain about a constant parade of prostitutes and their patrons.)
Even the tenants that the Salazars have chosen for their building on 44th Avenue display their tendency to look where others might not. More than 40 of the building’s 49 spaces are occupied by painters, sculptors and other artists who use the brightly lighted spaces as their oil painting reproduction.
There is Elinore Schnurr, a painter who rents a room down the hall from Mr. Salazar’s main gallery, and who has been in his buildings for the better part of 30 years. There is her next-door neighbor, Christina Zuccari, who is third generation in a family business devoted to restoring oil paintings. And just upstairs, there is Robert Jon Badia, an architect and painter who admits that Mr. Salazar’s enthusiasm for frames has rubbed off on him.
The Japanese owner of a Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting, which was stolen from his home in 2000, was surprised to discover that Sotheby’s in London sold it for more than $1,000,000 in February.The oil painting, “Madame Valtat” -- completed and signed by the famous French Impressionist in 1903 -- was taken, along with five other works from a Tokyo man’s home, in August 2000, according to investigative sources cited in a Japan Times report.The art collector -- who has not been identified -- informed Japanese police after noticing in March the piece had been sold at auction for $1.6 million.
Japanese investigators have not yet identified the thief, who also nabbed works by Russian-born French painter Marc Chagall and Japanese artist Ikuo Hirayama from the man's home.
The Renoir had not appeared on a list of lost or stolen artwork on an international database, so Sotheby’s did not catch it before it went on the block. The Japan Times reported that the owner notified police in Japan after the heist, but neither he nor the authorities contacted the stolen items database to have the works listed.The painting’s owner intends to get the piece back, but may have trouble identifying who bought it because Sotheby’s keeps client information confidential.
Sotheby’s told Japan’s Kyodo News that the seller of the Renoir had acquired it legitimately in 2000 and was able to prove rightful ownership with representations and warranties on the painting.Investigators believe the painting was probably sold to the seller shortly after it was stolen. Sotheby’s said it has been looking into the possibility the work was stolen and is communicating with the parties involved.
Read the full http://artsunlight.com/.
They are picture frames, but nearly every one of them stands empty. The frames themselves are the art.“Sometimes I buy a painting because I fall in love with the frame,” Mr. Salazar said, gesturing to a lonely portrait banished frameless on the floor. “Then I put the picture up for auction.”
Mr. Salazar spent many decades manufacturing frames out of Brooklyn and Queens, and today he is a collector and dealer of frames that are antiques, and can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars each. But as one might imagine, the market for such treasures is limited, so happily for Mr. Salazar, he does not just own that elaborate and varied collection of frames, but also the 40,000-square-foot building in which they hang. When he bought the building, according to his tenants and his wife, the place was a dump.
Mr. Salazar has a sharp eye for things most people briskly overlook. The outlet for this skill that has brought him the most satisfaction, he says, are his antique frames, a collection of about 1,000 pieces that he describes in tones usually reserved for beautiful women. The outlet that has brought him the most money, however, has been real estate, a collection of three buildings in neighborhoods that were long disregarded.
“When he first took me to see the building he bought in Greenpoint, it looked like somebody had dropped a bomb and then left for a year,” his wife, Gladys Salazar, said. “He said, ‘Look at this wonderful place.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God!'”Large two-bedroom apartments in that building now start at $3,650 per month.
Antique picture frames can generally cost anywhere from $8,500 to $500,000, depending on the age, rarity and quality. But even enthusiasts like Laurence Kanter, chief curator at the Yale University Art Gallery, says those with an interest in the frames themselves are an uncommon breed, and have been for centuries. Asked to put Mr. Salazar’s collection in context, Eli Wilner, a frame dealer who restores antiques and sells precise replicas from his collection of 3,500 pieces, said he could think of only one other person, a client of his in Florida, who collected frames for their own sake.“Almost always, people buy a frame because of the painting,” Mr. Wilner said.
Today, Mr. Salazar owns the rental building in Greenpoint, once a commercial laundry facility that is now packed with skylights and exposed brick walls, as well as two buildings in Long Island City. One of those, which looks a bit like an abstract Lego creation, he developed himself. The third, on 44th Avenue, houses his gallery. (Mrs. Salazar said that when they bought that building 20 years ago, they welcomed themselves to the neighborhood by making daily calls to the police to complain about a constant parade of prostitutes and their patrons.)
Even the tenants that the Salazars have chosen for their building on 44th Avenue display their tendency to look where others might not. More than 40 of the building’s 49 spaces are occupied by painters, sculptors and other artists who use the brightly lighted spaces as their oil painting reproduction.
There is Elinore Schnurr, a painter who rents a room down the hall from Mr. Salazar’s main gallery, and who has been in his buildings for the better part of 30 years. There is her next-door neighbor, Christina Zuccari, who is third generation in a family business devoted to restoring oil paintings. And just upstairs, there is Robert Jon Badia, an architect and painter who admits that Mr. Salazar’s enthusiasm for frames has rubbed off on him.
The Japanese owner of a Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting, which was stolen from his home in 2000, was surprised to discover that Sotheby’s in London sold it for more than $1,000,000 in February.The oil painting, “Madame Valtat” -- completed and signed by the famous French Impressionist in 1903 -- was taken, along with five other works from a Tokyo man’s home, in August 2000, according to investigative sources cited in a Japan Times report.The art collector -- who has not been identified -- informed Japanese police after noticing in March the piece had been sold at auction for $1.6 million.
Japanese investigators have not yet identified the thief, who also nabbed works by Russian-born French painter Marc Chagall and Japanese artist Ikuo Hirayama from the man's home.
The Renoir had not appeared on a list of lost or stolen artwork on an international database, so Sotheby’s did not catch it before it went on the block. The Japan Times reported that the owner notified police in Japan after the heist, but neither he nor the authorities contacted the stolen items database to have the works listed.The painting’s owner intends to get the piece back, but may have trouble identifying who bought it because Sotheby’s keeps client information confidential.
Sotheby’s told Japan’s Kyodo News that the seller of the Renoir had acquired it legitimately in 2000 and was able to prove rightful ownership with representations and warranties on the painting.Investigators believe the painting was probably sold to the seller shortly after it was stolen. Sotheby’s said it has been looking into the possibility the work was stolen and is communicating with the parties involved.
Read the full http://artsunlight.com/.
2013年7月22日星期一
African American Victor Hall Discovers
Hall says that he has discovered a signed painting worth millions of dollars at a local flea market. He blames corruption within the art world for the fact that art galleries familiar with the work of the artist, Martin Johnson Heade, refuse to authenticate the find. He has submitted the painting to a well-known art restoration and conservation center in Atlanta which confirmed that it is an original oil painting and that several features of the work are consistent with works known to have been created by Heade.
Hall said, "The painting is the epitome of pre-Raphael works and shows the influence of John Ruskin throughout. It is unquestionably a masterpiece with direct historical connections to John J. Audubon's, The Seaside Finch." Hall says that this may be the greatest of all Heade's works, as it is stunning and "the essence of who this great artist was. The work is of iconic importance to American art history, yet it is stagnated by a fickle authentication system that disregards the forensic science that supports its authenticity. The work is signed, and there is a comparative signature circa 1900 available."
Hall said that a prominent art dealer in New York City did contact him with an offer of a huge amount of money but nowhere close to the true value, which was puzzling as to such a proposal in light of stagnation. "I have been researching and reading about the art market for many years now and have come to a conclusion that it is a place of great corruption, filled dogmatic elites that dominate it as despots do in contradiction with American values," stated Hall.
"I have also come to believe that this great work by Martin Johnson Heade may cause problems for the art markets in his hummingbird line as it is the only known work of the great American-only Dusky Seaside Sparrow and trumps all others intellectually and in beauty, thus problematic and at the sacrifice of true American art history," added Hall. "This is an American disgrace and certainly not the American way. There was a time in this country when virtue was better than gold, but it now appears to be about egos and greed."
Hall said, "There is much to be learned in accepting forensic science as the main focus in authenticating art as we should not be remiss in our recognition of a new book on forgeries that is on the market that provides examples of Heade's work which have been successfully forged!"
Hall plans to continue publishing articles and keeping the press informed about the status of this Martin Johnson Heade masterpiece, possibly his greatest work of a now extinct species that now seems to be caught in market that it intimidates.
Hall, as well as many he has spoken with on this oil painting reproduction, have come to realize that federal regulatory is a must in order to save national treasures from being exploited and caught up in a place where second markets are pervasive at the denial of history. "This painting will one day find its way into the great American halls of art and justice."
"I know that the painting was upside down, so I did the upside-down dance," Nina said. "The grass is upside down."Nina was among those taking part recently in the first week of Lively Spaces, an art, poetry and dance camp for children at Colby's museum. The dance portion of the camp is conducted this year in front of two large paintings by Alex Katz in the museum's Schupf Wing.One of the oil-on-canvas paintings, "Black Brook," was completed in 1995 and is a gift to the museum by the artist.
After viewing the painting, Nina proceeded to demonstrate her dance -- an inverted, arms akimbo, twist that goes in several directions at once to the finale.The dance instructor is Jeni Frazee, a Waterville elementary school teacher.Lauren Lessing, Colby's Mirken curator of education, said Nina's observation was right.
"The image is reversed by the fact that it's reflected," Lessing said. "She's perceiving something there about orientation that I think is really central about this composition. It's exactly what we're hoping that kids learn from this program."Lessing said children are learning to look and see and to understand art by responding creatively to what they see.She said this kind of learning, which is slowly being eliminated in public schools as funding to the arts is cut, is crucial to creativity, problem solving and language skills.
"We're hoping with programs like this we can come in and supplement what the schools are losing," Lessing said.Matt Timme, Mirken education and public program coordinator at the museum, said the summer camp for youngsters in second to fifth grades was started by Lessing seven years ago. He said it was cobbled together with discretionary funding the first couple of years, then began to take shape in its third year with a partnership grant from the Maine Arts Commission.
For the past three years, the summer camp has been funded by Karen and Jeff Packman, both members of the Colby Museum Board of Governors. The camp runs five days a week on about $12,000, which includes staff, art supplies and busing for children at the childcare program at the George J. Mitchell school.
There is room for about 30 students for the three-week camp, which closes with a big performance for family and friends Friday, Aug. 2, at the museum. Enrollment is first-come, first-served."Everything is free," Timme said. "All our educational programs are completely free, including this camp."
He said the 30 students split into small groups for poetry, dance and drawing so every student can receive attention.The drawing class concentrated on a scattered pile of summer shoes and the children were asked to draw the outline of the pile without taking their colored pens off the paper. The poetry class was based on objects the children observed in sculptures they saw at the museum.Frazee said the dance program this year is based on the two Katz paintings, "Black Brook" -- the one that appears to be upside down -- and "Tan Woods."
"They had amazing ideas about them; they were noticing patterns," Frazee said. "They were noticing words like straight, curved, square, reflections, so they are going to use those words in their dance. I'm guiding their ideas."
Read the full products at http://www.artsunlight.com/.
Hall said, "The painting is the epitome of pre-Raphael works and shows the influence of John Ruskin throughout. It is unquestionably a masterpiece with direct historical connections to John J. Audubon's, The Seaside Finch." Hall says that this may be the greatest of all Heade's works, as it is stunning and "the essence of who this great artist was. The work is of iconic importance to American art history, yet it is stagnated by a fickle authentication system that disregards the forensic science that supports its authenticity. The work is signed, and there is a comparative signature circa 1900 available."
Hall said that a prominent art dealer in New York City did contact him with an offer of a huge amount of money but nowhere close to the true value, which was puzzling as to such a proposal in light of stagnation. "I have been researching and reading about the art market for many years now and have come to a conclusion that it is a place of great corruption, filled dogmatic elites that dominate it as despots do in contradiction with American values," stated Hall.
"I have also come to believe that this great work by Martin Johnson Heade may cause problems for the art markets in his hummingbird line as it is the only known work of the great American-only Dusky Seaside Sparrow and trumps all others intellectually and in beauty, thus problematic and at the sacrifice of true American art history," added Hall. "This is an American disgrace and certainly not the American way. There was a time in this country when virtue was better than gold, but it now appears to be about egos and greed."
Hall said, "There is much to be learned in accepting forensic science as the main focus in authenticating art as we should not be remiss in our recognition of a new book on forgeries that is on the market that provides examples of Heade's work which have been successfully forged!"
Hall plans to continue publishing articles and keeping the press informed about the status of this Martin Johnson Heade masterpiece, possibly his greatest work of a now extinct species that now seems to be caught in market that it intimidates.
Hall, as well as many he has spoken with on this oil painting reproduction, have come to realize that federal regulatory is a must in order to save national treasures from being exploited and caught up in a place where second markets are pervasive at the denial of history. "This painting will one day find its way into the great American halls of art and justice."
"I know that the painting was upside down, so I did the upside-down dance," Nina said. "The grass is upside down."Nina was among those taking part recently in the first week of Lively Spaces, an art, poetry and dance camp for children at Colby's museum. The dance portion of the camp is conducted this year in front of two large paintings by Alex Katz in the museum's Schupf Wing.One of the oil-on-canvas paintings, "Black Brook," was completed in 1995 and is a gift to the museum by the artist.
After viewing the painting, Nina proceeded to demonstrate her dance -- an inverted, arms akimbo, twist that goes in several directions at once to the finale.The dance instructor is Jeni Frazee, a Waterville elementary school teacher.Lauren Lessing, Colby's Mirken curator of education, said Nina's observation was right.
"The image is reversed by the fact that it's reflected," Lessing said. "She's perceiving something there about orientation that I think is really central about this composition. It's exactly what we're hoping that kids learn from this program."Lessing said children are learning to look and see and to understand art by responding creatively to what they see.She said this kind of learning, which is slowly being eliminated in public schools as funding to the arts is cut, is crucial to creativity, problem solving and language skills.
"We're hoping with programs like this we can come in and supplement what the schools are losing," Lessing said.Matt Timme, Mirken education and public program coordinator at the museum, said the summer camp for youngsters in second to fifth grades was started by Lessing seven years ago. He said it was cobbled together with discretionary funding the first couple of years, then began to take shape in its third year with a partnership grant from the Maine Arts Commission.
For the past three years, the summer camp has been funded by Karen and Jeff Packman, both members of the Colby Museum Board of Governors. The camp runs five days a week on about $12,000, which includes staff, art supplies and busing for children at the childcare program at the George J. Mitchell school.
There is room for about 30 students for the three-week camp, which closes with a big performance for family and friends Friday, Aug. 2, at the museum. Enrollment is first-come, first-served."Everything is free," Timme said. "All our educational programs are completely free, including this camp."
He said the 30 students split into small groups for poetry, dance and drawing so every student can receive attention.The drawing class concentrated on a scattered pile of summer shoes and the children were asked to draw the outline of the pile without taking their colored pens off the paper. The poetry class was based on objects the children observed in sculptures they saw at the museum.Frazee said the dance program this year is based on the two Katz paintings, "Black Brook" -- the one that appears to be upside down -- and "Tan Woods."
"They had amazing ideas about them; they were noticing patterns," Frazee said. "They were noticing words like straight, curved, square, reflections, so they are going to use those words in their dance. I'm guiding their ideas."
Read the full products at http://www.artsunlight.com/.
2013年7月9日星期二
Nancy Purnell purifies Vineyard landscapes
"I never go anywhere without my sketch pad," painter Nancy Purnell told The Times. Her favorite Island spots are Long Point, Stonewall Beach, Zack's Cliffs, and Moshup's Trail, and they are all represented in her current exhibit, The Preservation of the Island on Canvas, on display at the Vineyard Haven Library through July.
This artist has been coming to the Vineyard since 1970, summering or living year-round at her home in Vineyard Haven from 1978 to 2003. Her attachment to the Island is deep, and while she is now based in New York City and her visits are less frequent, she makes a point of seeking out her favorite Island painting spots when she visits.
"My source of inspiration has always been nature," explained Ms. Purnell, who started painting at age eight. The light, color, inner forms, and spirituality found in the natural world engage the oil painting reproduction. In the past, she has also collaborated three times with this reviewer, a long-time friend, to illustrate three books of Vineyard poetry, and wrote her own, "I Love You So." The latter consists of the painter's love poetry and nude paintings, in which she envisions the nude as landscape.
Over the years, her palette has varied from darker tones to vibrant, saturated blues, oranges, and yellows that celebrate the fecundity of land and water. The current group of paintings reflects a new direction, in which she has moved toward paler, more purified forms, working with yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw sienna, and Delft blue, mixing them with whites and moving toward paler, more purified effects.
"I try to simplify everything so it's almost spiritual," the artist commented. In paintings like "Stonewall Beach" and "Long Point Fog," she concentrated on subtler tones to establish a sense of nostalgia.Two of her more powerful paintings are "Ocean Up-Island I," and "Ocean Up-Island II." The ocean holds a particular fascination for Ms. Purnell, who spends days trying to understand the action of waves and get the forms right. "I want you to feel the movement of the water," she said.
Ms. Purnell enjoys painting plein air, doing small paintings on site, then bringing them back into the studio to expand her ideas onto larger canvases. "Everything comes from drawing or painting on the spot," she asserted. "West Tisbury Junipers," however, is one painting that harks back to her earlier work, using darker shades in a typically confident composition, where the windblown evergreens march left to right like sentinels behind rows of red and green grasses.
Studying at the Chicago Art Institute and earning a BFA from the University of Hartford Art School, Ms. Purnell was influenced by painters from the Josef Albers school. She belongs to the Society of Illustrators, and she draws at their Sketch Nights on a regular basis. She teaches at Cooper Union in a program for inner-city students, and one for senior citizens run by Health Outreach at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
"It's fascinating to follow what they're thinking when they are facing a two-dimension space for the first time," she said of her students. Like their teacher, they have begun to carry sketch pads with them for drawing.
The gleaming glass building of the Colby College Museum of Art not only stands out on campus – surrounded by the red brick, Georgian-style classrooms and dormitories – but now also stands out across Maine.A new addition means the museum now has 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the largest in the state. The museum’s more than 8,000 works will be on display when it reopens to the public July 14 after more than a year of renovations.
Organizers hope that the revamped museum – along with others like the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art and Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland – will put Maine on the map for art lovers across the country.“I think that Colby along with those other institutions and the new addition will raise the profile of the state in terms of being a destination for art experiences,” said Sharon Corwin, the museum’s director and chief curator.
The glass facade of the new Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion is designed to reflect the surroundings in the sun and allow the art to be seen from the outside at night. It adds 10,000 square feet of exhibition space to the museum’s four wings and serves as the new entrance.
David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire -- the fourth of five children in a traditional middle class English family. Hockney's father was an accountant an an amateur artist and his mother was a devoted homemaker who instilled in her children a serious work ethic, one that would certainly serve the budding artist well later in life.
After graduating from Bradford School of Art in the late 1950s, Hockney immediately began making waves in the art world. In fact, you can see an illustrated chronology on his website here. He achieved international acclaim through his pool paintings, done on a trip to Southern California where he met Christopher Isherwood and Kenneth E. Tyler, among other like-minded writers and artists. It was here that Hockney met his former boyfriend and painting subject, photographer Peter Schlesinger, who told the Daily Beast that Hockney “taught me that you learn painting by doing it."
Read the full story at http://www.artsunlight.com/!
This artist has been coming to the Vineyard since 1970, summering or living year-round at her home in Vineyard Haven from 1978 to 2003. Her attachment to the Island is deep, and while she is now based in New York City and her visits are less frequent, she makes a point of seeking out her favorite Island painting spots when she visits.
"My source of inspiration has always been nature," explained Ms. Purnell, who started painting at age eight. The light, color, inner forms, and spirituality found in the natural world engage the oil painting reproduction. In the past, she has also collaborated three times with this reviewer, a long-time friend, to illustrate three books of Vineyard poetry, and wrote her own, "I Love You So." The latter consists of the painter's love poetry and nude paintings, in which she envisions the nude as landscape.
Over the years, her palette has varied from darker tones to vibrant, saturated blues, oranges, and yellows that celebrate the fecundity of land and water. The current group of paintings reflects a new direction, in which she has moved toward paler, more purified forms, working with yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw sienna, and Delft blue, mixing them with whites and moving toward paler, more purified effects.
"I try to simplify everything so it's almost spiritual," the artist commented. In paintings like "Stonewall Beach" and "Long Point Fog," she concentrated on subtler tones to establish a sense of nostalgia.Two of her more powerful paintings are "Ocean Up-Island I," and "Ocean Up-Island II." The ocean holds a particular fascination for Ms. Purnell, who spends days trying to understand the action of waves and get the forms right. "I want you to feel the movement of the water," she said.
Ms. Purnell enjoys painting plein air, doing small paintings on site, then bringing them back into the studio to expand her ideas onto larger canvases. "Everything comes from drawing or painting on the spot," she asserted. "West Tisbury Junipers," however, is one painting that harks back to her earlier work, using darker shades in a typically confident composition, where the windblown evergreens march left to right like sentinels behind rows of red and green grasses.
Studying at the Chicago Art Institute and earning a BFA from the University of Hartford Art School, Ms. Purnell was influenced by painters from the Josef Albers school. She belongs to the Society of Illustrators, and she draws at their Sketch Nights on a regular basis. She teaches at Cooper Union in a program for inner-city students, and one for senior citizens run by Health Outreach at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
"It's fascinating to follow what they're thinking when they are facing a two-dimension space for the first time," she said of her students. Like their teacher, they have begun to carry sketch pads with them for drawing.
The gleaming glass building of the Colby College Museum of Art not only stands out on campus – surrounded by the red brick, Georgian-style classrooms and dormitories – but now also stands out across Maine.A new addition means the museum now has 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the largest in the state. The museum’s more than 8,000 works will be on display when it reopens to the public July 14 after more than a year of renovations.
Organizers hope that the revamped museum – along with others like the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art and Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland – will put Maine on the map for art lovers across the country.“I think that Colby along with those other institutions and the new addition will raise the profile of the state in terms of being a destination for art experiences,” said Sharon Corwin, the museum’s director and chief curator.
The glass facade of the new Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion is designed to reflect the surroundings in the sun and allow the art to be seen from the outside at night. It adds 10,000 square feet of exhibition space to the museum’s four wings and serves as the new entrance.
David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire -- the fourth of five children in a traditional middle class English family. Hockney's father was an accountant an an amateur artist and his mother was a devoted homemaker who instilled in her children a serious work ethic, one that would certainly serve the budding artist well later in life.
After graduating from Bradford School of Art in the late 1950s, Hockney immediately began making waves in the art world. In fact, you can see an illustrated chronology on his website here. He achieved international acclaim through his pool paintings, done on a trip to Southern California where he met Christopher Isherwood and Kenneth E. Tyler, among other like-minded writers and artists. It was here that Hockney met his former boyfriend and painting subject, photographer Peter Schlesinger, who told the Daily Beast that Hockney “taught me that you learn painting by doing it."
Read the full story at http://www.artsunlight.com/!
2013年5月28日星期二
In Search of the Elusive Zero-Percent Interest Rate Credit Card
Take down the information on the back of each card you have and then visit your issuers' websites. See what deals they're advertising to new members and then start dialing.
Ask reps if they'll extend to you -- a loyal customer -- the same 0 percent offers they're making available to those who aren't yet paying a monthly bill. You might be surprised by the results.
Earlier this year, my wife's work computer was suffering serious issues. I knew we'd have to spend upward of $2,500 for a newer Mac to replace her machine, which neither of us was eager to do. A quick call to an account rep at Barclays got us a 0 percent deal to purchase new equipment that night. We'll pay off the loan months before interest kicks in.
If your knives aren't quite cutting it these days, perhaps you’re thinking of getting the Edge of Glory infomercial sharpener. It claims to make your knives like new.
To check it out, a Consumer Reports tester rounded up pairs of knives: one expensive, one inexpensive, and one serrated, and then he dulled one of each pair. Then the tester used the Edge of Glory to re-sharpen the dulled knives. He then sliced and diced all kinds of food, including oranges, dried sausage, tomatoes, and oil painting reproduction.
He also checked this clai—that Edge of Glory is so precise, it can turn a plastic credit card into a precision-cutting instrument. Though that wouldn’t be recommended for the average chef, the tester was able to cut up a tomato with it.
But depending on how you slice it, Edge of Glory isn’t so glorious. It left rough edges on the knives. And though it did sharpen the inexpensive and expensive knives, it did a better job on the inexpensive one.
The Edge of Glory actually sharpened the cheaper knives better than the more expensive ones, because cheaper knives are made of softer metal, which sharpens more easily. Bottom line: Skip the Edge of Glory unless you want to wow your guests by using a credit card to slice a tomato!
Consumer Reports says a little bit of TLC can keep your more expensive knives in good condition. Always hand wash and dry them right away. And store good knives in a wooden block—never loose in a drawer, where blades can get nicked. Also use a sharpening steel frequently. If the knives do become dull, then it’s time to consider taking them to a professional.
Do you go over your credit-card statement at the end of every month, checking whether you made every single purchase on it? If the answer is no, you’re not alone. According to the Israeli startup Billguard, 90 percent of people never even look at their credit-card statements. At best, they go over the large purchases they made. But all those little impulse buys, the dollars and cents of daily life? They hardly give it a second thought.
As a result, consumers fall victim to fraud. Billguard’s officials say that the average user loses $300 per year from unwanted charges that they don’t know about.
To protect you plastic-wielding shoppers, Billguard developed a platform that allows people to keep track of their bank accounts and credit cards via a website or application. They can look at a list of recent charges and even receive automatic updates any time a suspicious charge shows up.
Billguard says that the most commonly-spotted frauds are credit-card fraud, monthly subscription fees and terms of service that change once a person has signed up for a service. Company officials believe Billguard’s platform has saved users $50 million, in tens of millions of bank and credit-card accounts, in the year since its launch.
When account owners are “stung,” they mostly fall victim to common kinds of fraud. To combat this, Billguard uses crowd-sourcing. When its system spots a suspicious charge, it alerts the account owner. All customers who find a hidden or fraudulent charge on their account report it to the service, which immediately finds and alerts all other users who have the same charge.
Among Billguard’s customers are banks and credit-card companies who use the service for their customers. Raphael Ouzan, co-founder and CTO of Billguard, says that the company gives banks a threefold value: better protection, better end-user experience and a cost savings in the number of customers who contact them to clarify charges. The service is provided for free to the end-users while the banks and the credit-card companies pay for each customer. Billguard also collects a fee from merchants who owe customers their money back.
At Google’s I/O conference earlier this month, it was announced that Billguard’s technology would be integrated into Google Wallet, Google’s virtual moneybag for in-store and online shopping, and that it will also be integrated into the new version of Gmail. Billguard’s platform will serve as an additional layer of protection for users who make online payments by spotting irregularities and “gray” charges. Google’s goal is to make it easier for users to adopt Google Wallet and use it safely. Besides the prestige in working with Google in the security field, Billguard’s larger user base will enable it to improve the quality of its service.
Billguard was established in 2010 by Yaron Samid, the CEO who manages its work in New York, and Raphael Ouzan, who manages its development work in Israel. So far, the company has raised $13 million from a series of prominent investors from Silicon Valley including Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, the Founders Fund of Peter Thiel and Sean Parker, and Israeli angel Yaron Galai.
Ask reps if they'll extend to you -- a loyal customer -- the same 0 percent offers they're making available to those who aren't yet paying a monthly bill. You might be surprised by the results.
Earlier this year, my wife's work computer was suffering serious issues. I knew we'd have to spend upward of $2,500 for a newer Mac to replace her machine, which neither of us was eager to do. A quick call to an account rep at Barclays got us a 0 percent deal to purchase new equipment that night. We'll pay off the loan months before interest kicks in.
If your knives aren't quite cutting it these days, perhaps you’re thinking of getting the Edge of Glory infomercial sharpener. It claims to make your knives like new.
To check it out, a Consumer Reports tester rounded up pairs of knives: one expensive, one inexpensive, and one serrated, and then he dulled one of each pair. Then the tester used the Edge of Glory to re-sharpen the dulled knives. He then sliced and diced all kinds of food, including oranges, dried sausage, tomatoes, and oil painting reproduction.
He also checked this clai—that Edge of Glory is so precise, it can turn a plastic credit card into a precision-cutting instrument. Though that wouldn’t be recommended for the average chef, the tester was able to cut up a tomato with it.
But depending on how you slice it, Edge of Glory isn’t so glorious. It left rough edges on the knives. And though it did sharpen the inexpensive and expensive knives, it did a better job on the inexpensive one.
The Edge of Glory actually sharpened the cheaper knives better than the more expensive ones, because cheaper knives are made of softer metal, which sharpens more easily. Bottom line: Skip the Edge of Glory unless you want to wow your guests by using a credit card to slice a tomato!
Consumer Reports says a little bit of TLC can keep your more expensive knives in good condition. Always hand wash and dry them right away. And store good knives in a wooden block—never loose in a drawer, where blades can get nicked. Also use a sharpening steel frequently. If the knives do become dull, then it’s time to consider taking them to a professional.
Do you go over your credit-card statement at the end of every month, checking whether you made every single purchase on it? If the answer is no, you’re not alone. According to the Israeli startup Billguard, 90 percent of people never even look at their credit-card statements. At best, they go over the large purchases they made. But all those little impulse buys, the dollars and cents of daily life? They hardly give it a second thought.
As a result, consumers fall victim to fraud. Billguard’s officials say that the average user loses $300 per year from unwanted charges that they don’t know about.
To protect you plastic-wielding shoppers, Billguard developed a platform that allows people to keep track of their bank accounts and credit cards via a website or application. They can look at a list of recent charges and even receive automatic updates any time a suspicious charge shows up.
Billguard says that the most commonly-spotted frauds are credit-card fraud, monthly subscription fees and terms of service that change once a person has signed up for a service. Company officials believe Billguard’s platform has saved users $50 million, in tens of millions of bank and credit-card accounts, in the year since its launch.
When account owners are “stung,” they mostly fall victim to common kinds of fraud. To combat this, Billguard uses crowd-sourcing. When its system spots a suspicious charge, it alerts the account owner. All customers who find a hidden or fraudulent charge on their account report it to the service, which immediately finds and alerts all other users who have the same charge.
Among Billguard’s customers are banks and credit-card companies who use the service for their customers. Raphael Ouzan, co-founder and CTO of Billguard, says that the company gives banks a threefold value: better protection, better end-user experience and a cost savings in the number of customers who contact them to clarify charges. The service is provided for free to the end-users while the banks and the credit-card companies pay for each customer. Billguard also collects a fee from merchants who owe customers their money back.
At Google’s I/O conference earlier this month, it was announced that Billguard’s technology would be integrated into Google Wallet, Google’s virtual moneybag for in-store and online shopping, and that it will also be integrated into the new version of Gmail. Billguard’s platform will serve as an additional layer of protection for users who make online payments by spotting irregularities and “gray” charges. Google’s goal is to make it easier for users to adopt Google Wallet and use it safely. Besides the prestige in working with Google in the security field, Billguard’s larger user base will enable it to improve the quality of its service.
Billguard was established in 2010 by Yaron Samid, the CEO who manages its work in New York, and Raphael Ouzan, who manages its development work in Israel. So far, the company has raised $13 million from a series of prominent investors from Silicon Valley including Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, the Founders Fund of Peter Thiel and Sean Parker, and Israeli angel Yaron Galai.
2013年5月26日星期日
Charitable contributions make bingo legal
All of the ashes he flicked off his cigarette hadn’t fallen to the ground before he dashed across the floor again. It was clamped between his ring and pinky fingers because he held a wad of cash for payouts between the middle and index.
“The bigger the crowd, the faster the pace is going to be,” said Matt West. “Everything kind of comes naturally; you treat people like people, you take their money and you pay them out.”
The 30-year-old has been a runner and caller at bingo parlors for nearly a decade. He said he has worked as an employee at Mr. Bingo, located at Old Business 98 and Tyndall Parkway, since it opened six years ago and has learned the game is “something people do in their spare time.”
West is right. Most bingo parlors are open seven days a week, mornings and evenings. Just about any “spare time” available could be spent playing at the halls — including playing instant winner pull tab games for those who have only one second to spare.
All cigarette smoke and high hopes aside, while state lawmakers have created laws to curb the expansion of gambling, there remains obvious loopholes and little oversight for Air purifier.
Florida laws prohibit a gaming establishment from operating for the sake of gaming. But for bingo, this rule calls for each game to be sponsored by a nonprofit organization that has been in existence for at least three years.
And, because state law requires all proceeds from bingo games to be allocated to sponsoring organizations — minus operating costs — local parlors have donated hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to charities.
Chief Assistant State Attorney Gregory Wilson said bingo owes its legal status to past times, when churches would host bingo games as fundraisers. He said because bingo was established before state gambling laws were created, lawmakers wanted to make sure some exceptions were made to let bingo continue. The caveat was that bingo proceeds must be donated to charity.
However, the state statute that regulates bingo, FS 849.0931, does not require parlors to submit a financial report — to the state or any oversight agency — that shows operating costs and donation amounts.
“We work from trust,” said George Hughes, sponsor’s representative at Bingo Paradise. “We do our thing and they do theirs. We take our (money) to the lodge and then give it out to the people.”
Hughes’ lodge, Ira Lindsey Masonic Lodge 365, has used bingo money to make donations to local causes since 2000.
He said sponsoring games has allowed his lodge to make “sizeable donations” to the community, from giving money to help Franklin County men hit by the oyster crisis to helping fund the late Kayte Karen Taunton Hollingsworth’s trip to India for a life-saving surgical procedure.
“There was a need for my lodge to arrive at some way to make some money, so we can put the money back out on the street,” he added.
However, the quid pro quo relationship operators have with charitable organizations has led some bingo halls to take advantage of what State Attorney Wilson dubbed the “very general guidelines.”
State law requires “no charitable, nonprofit or veterans organization serve as a sponsor of a bingo game or instant bingo conducted by another, but such organization may only be directly involved in the conduct of such a game. …”
In other words, bingo games must be run by the charitable organizations that get the proceeds. However, all five bingo halls in Bay County hire their own paid employees, while the sponsors often watch without direct involvement. This means customers pay to play games and some of the money goes toward paying employees, rather than to supporting charities.
State Attorney Wilson said he interprets the section of law as meaning “they don’t have to be the one calling out the bingo numbers, but there has to be a representative from the civic organization or charity present at the game, doing something.”
Within the general guideline concerning who conducts bingo games, volunteers play bingo and other games — Wilson plays pull tabs — but are not required to operate the games in any way.
State Attorney Wilson: “the vendor has to provide to the charity, a portion of the proceeds. … The exact amount that they have to provide is not specified. But they have to provide some proceeds …”
“They are authorized to deduct all the expenses associated with (playing the game),” he added.
Though the amount of the jackpot is displayed for all to see, how much each game has raised is undisclosed.
And, you can’t determine what the actual overhead is without doing a forensic audit, Wilson said.
“The charities will sometimes ask law enforcement to look and make sure (the law) is being complied with correctly,” he said. “It’s when you have multiple charities that are taking part in (bingo parlor games) and you’ve got one facilitator that’s rotating them out that you have to look a little more closely about how the operation is funded.”
If local law enforcement receives a complaint or perceives fraud, a forensic accountant is assigned in order to verify the parlor is complying with the law.
“The bigger the crowd, the faster the pace is going to be,” said Matt West. “Everything kind of comes naturally; you treat people like people, you take their money and you pay them out.”
The 30-year-old has been a runner and caller at bingo parlors for nearly a decade. He said he has worked as an employee at Mr. Bingo, located at Old Business 98 and Tyndall Parkway, since it opened six years ago and has learned the game is “something people do in their spare time.”
West is right. Most bingo parlors are open seven days a week, mornings and evenings. Just about any “spare time” available could be spent playing at the halls — including playing instant winner pull tab games for those who have only one second to spare.
All cigarette smoke and high hopes aside, while state lawmakers have created laws to curb the expansion of gambling, there remains obvious loopholes and little oversight for Air purifier.
Florida laws prohibit a gaming establishment from operating for the sake of gaming. But for bingo, this rule calls for each game to be sponsored by a nonprofit organization that has been in existence for at least three years.
And, because state law requires all proceeds from bingo games to be allocated to sponsoring organizations — minus operating costs — local parlors have donated hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to charities.
Chief Assistant State Attorney Gregory Wilson said bingo owes its legal status to past times, when churches would host bingo games as fundraisers. He said because bingo was established before state gambling laws were created, lawmakers wanted to make sure some exceptions were made to let bingo continue. The caveat was that bingo proceeds must be donated to charity.
However, the state statute that regulates bingo, FS 849.0931, does not require parlors to submit a financial report — to the state or any oversight agency — that shows operating costs and donation amounts.
“We work from trust,” said George Hughes, sponsor’s representative at Bingo Paradise. “We do our thing and they do theirs. We take our (money) to the lodge and then give it out to the people.”
Hughes’ lodge, Ira Lindsey Masonic Lodge 365, has used bingo money to make donations to local causes since 2000.
He said sponsoring games has allowed his lodge to make “sizeable donations” to the community, from giving money to help Franklin County men hit by the oyster crisis to helping fund the late Kayte Karen Taunton Hollingsworth’s trip to India for a life-saving surgical procedure.
“There was a need for my lodge to arrive at some way to make some money, so we can put the money back out on the street,” he added.
However, the quid pro quo relationship operators have with charitable organizations has led some bingo halls to take advantage of what State Attorney Wilson dubbed the “very general guidelines.”
State law requires “no charitable, nonprofit or veterans organization serve as a sponsor of a bingo game or instant bingo conducted by another, but such organization may only be directly involved in the conduct of such a game. …”
In other words, bingo games must be run by the charitable organizations that get the proceeds. However, all five bingo halls in Bay County hire their own paid employees, while the sponsors often watch without direct involvement. This means customers pay to play games and some of the money goes toward paying employees, rather than to supporting charities.
State Attorney Wilson said he interprets the section of law as meaning “they don’t have to be the one calling out the bingo numbers, but there has to be a representative from the civic organization or charity present at the game, doing something.”
Within the general guideline concerning who conducts bingo games, volunteers play bingo and other games — Wilson plays pull tabs — but are not required to operate the games in any way.
State Attorney Wilson: “the vendor has to provide to the charity, a portion of the proceeds. … The exact amount that they have to provide is not specified. But they have to provide some proceeds …”
“They are authorized to deduct all the expenses associated with (playing the game),” he added.
Though the amount of the jackpot is displayed for all to see, how much each game has raised is undisclosed.
And, you can’t determine what the actual overhead is without doing a forensic audit, Wilson said.
“The charities will sometimes ask law enforcement to look and make sure (the law) is being complied with correctly,” he said. “It’s when you have multiple charities that are taking part in (bingo parlor games) and you’ve got one facilitator that’s rotating them out that you have to look a little more closely about how the operation is funded.”
If local law enforcement receives a complaint or perceives fraud, a forensic accountant is assigned in order to verify the parlor is complying with the law.
2011年3月20日星期日
Lilburn Garage Sale Succeeds
Hundreds of residents from Lilburn and surrounding communities came out to support, peruse
and do a bit of shopping at the Lilburn Annual Garage Sale Saturday.
Dozens of vendors arrived at 8 a.m. or earlier Saturday to set up shop for the event's 9 a.m.
debut in a large parking lot in Old Town. Dressers, blouses, comic books, bar stools, garden
flowers, shoes, cell phones and fur coats were just a few of the different items up for
purchase in this year's sale, and they were all a bargain. As the first truly good-weather
weekend of the year, big crowds were expected, and they came.
"They couldn't have picked a more perfect day," said vendor Joe Patula, who was there with
his wife, Robin. Joe Patula explained that he has had garage sales in his Lawrenceville
neighborhood before, but they've been unsuccessful. So when he heard about the one in Lilburn
this year, he decided to grab a spot, making it his first time ever at the annual event.
"It's been really good. And we've been making money, which is even better. ... We'll probably
come back."
Like the Patulas, many vendors were not only from outside of Lilburn, but it was their first
year here, too. Kathy Wilson of Snellville took the vendor spot next to the Patulas with
items such as oil paintings done by her mother, a toaster and mason jars. Wilson agreed that
she loves the idea of a community garage sale because vendors get more traffic for their
goods. "It's better access to everything," Wilson said.
Ms. Easton of Loganville, who had items such as glasswares, candlesticks and books, said she
enjoyed the garage sale as a vendor, too. "This is my first year," she said. "I saw it
advertised in The [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], so I decided to do it. Now I might do it
every year!"
Many items at the garage sale were homemade, too. In addition to her different knickknacks,
vendor Ann Fletcher also sold items from her business, Stampin Up, which makes artsy,
handmade greeting cards. One creative item that a vendor had was homemade magnets, made out
of bottle caps and decorated with miniature Hello Kitty, Georgia Tech and other cute designs
(the writer of this article picked up one designed with a logo from "True Blood," the HBO
vampire series).
Even a non-profit organization called New Beginnings from Ashe County, N. C., came down to
Lilburn to raise money for helping children in foster care with clothes, food, toys and a
place to stay. Run by a group of women, the organization's booth was filled with glass
bottles that had Christmas lights inside, used as decorations.
As with garage sales in general, many showed up early to get first dibs on the best items.
The Patulas were able to sell their air hockey table, which was one of their largest items,
and many others had sold their furniture in minutes. One vendor was constantly slammed
because they had a number of unopened kids' toys up for sale, and passersby were eating them
up.
Customers were still coming into the lot after noon to see what items were still up for sale.
As many left for the day, they carried bags stuffed with goodies to their cars and seemed to
be content with their treasures.
There were definitely some steals at this garage sale. Make sure to check out the photos to
see what you may have missed at this Saturday's event in Old Town.
and do a bit of shopping at the Lilburn Annual Garage Sale Saturday.
Dozens of vendors arrived at 8 a.m. or earlier Saturday to set up shop for the event's 9 a.m.
debut in a large parking lot in Old Town. Dressers, blouses, comic books, bar stools, garden
flowers, shoes, cell phones and fur coats were just a few of the different items up for
purchase in this year's sale, and they were all a bargain. As the first truly good-weather
weekend of the year, big crowds were expected, and they came.
"They couldn't have picked a more perfect day," said vendor Joe Patula, who was there with
his wife, Robin. Joe Patula explained that he has had garage sales in his Lawrenceville
neighborhood before, but they've been unsuccessful. So when he heard about the one in Lilburn
this year, he decided to grab a spot, making it his first time ever at the annual event.
"It's been really good. And we've been making money, which is even better. ... We'll probably
come back."
Like the Patulas, many vendors were not only from outside of Lilburn, but it was their first
year here, too. Kathy Wilson of Snellville took the vendor spot next to the Patulas with
items such as oil paintings done by her mother, a toaster and mason jars. Wilson agreed that
she loves the idea of a community garage sale because vendors get more traffic for their
goods. "It's better access to everything," Wilson said.
Ms. Easton of Loganville, who had items such as glasswares, candlesticks and books, said she
enjoyed the garage sale as a vendor, too. "This is my first year," she said. "I saw it
advertised in The [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], so I decided to do it. Now I might do it
every year!"
Many items at the garage sale were homemade, too. In addition to her different knickknacks,
vendor Ann Fletcher also sold items from her business, Stampin Up, which makes artsy,
handmade greeting cards. One creative item that a vendor had was homemade magnets, made out
of bottle caps and decorated with miniature Hello Kitty, Georgia Tech and other cute designs
(the writer of this article picked up one designed with a logo from "True Blood," the HBO
vampire series).
Even a non-profit organization called New Beginnings from Ashe County, N. C., came down to
Lilburn to raise money for helping children in foster care with clothes, food, toys and a
place to stay. Run by a group of women, the organization's booth was filled with glass
bottles that had Christmas lights inside, used as decorations.
As with garage sales in general, many showed up early to get first dibs on the best items.
The Patulas were able to sell their air hockey table, which was one of their largest items,
and many others had sold their furniture in minutes. One vendor was constantly slammed
because they had a number of unopened kids' toys up for sale, and passersby were eating them
up.
Customers were still coming into the lot after noon to see what items were still up for sale.
As many left for the day, they carried bags stuffed with goodies to their cars and seemed to
be content with their treasures.
There were definitely some steals at this garage sale. Make sure to check out the photos to
see what you may have missed at this Saturday's event in Old Town.
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