Believed to be one of the earliest images of Grand Rapids, according to a Monday release, the painting can now be seen in the Newcomers exhibit at the museum.The image shows Grand Rapids as remembered by painter Aaron Turner, who was 13 when he first came to the area around 1836. It is believed to have been painted in the 1880s.
The painting looks east over the Grand River from Island Number One. Three structures shown are on the land that is now home to the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, McKay Tower and Rosa Parks Circle.The painting is signed "Renrut," or "Turner" in reverse.Turner was an early Grand Rapids pioneer. He was a newspaper editor and Grand Rapids' first city clerk. In addition, he designed the city seal that Grand Rapids still uses.
The painting was given to the Public Museum in 2012 by the Harold Garter estate after being privately owned for 100 years."We are fortunate to have such an early depiction of the city decades prior to the advent of photography," Tom Dilley, Chair of the Collections Committee of the Museum, said in a statement, also saying the painting is "essential" to the museum's collection.
“They are amazing. They are something you keep forever after the horse has died,” Pink Ribbon Classic show organizer Erica Lackey said. “Oh, you are going to make me cry.”And she almost did as she talked about the paintings she has of her departed horses.In the short history of the oil painting reproduction, top prize has traditionally been a 12-by-6-inch portrait done by an artist with a very long history of painting equines in the Valley.
On Saturday morning, artist Shirley Dickerson cheerfully arrived carrying two samples of her work. Then she carefully set them beside other prizes, which were horse tack and a second-place prize that was a set of pink zebra-striped luggage.“We do travel a lot,” Lackey said, adding that the vast majority of contestants are women.
The third annual Pink Ribbon Classic, which took place at the Walla Walla County Fairgrounds this weekend, raises money for the Providence St. Mary Cancer Center Special Needs Fund. Last year it included 65 horses and riders and raised $9,000.On Saturday by noon, the number of horses entered had already reached last year’s total. By the end of the weekend, 85 horses and riders would compete in a variety of English and Western riding and showing competitions, all of them vying for top horse, top rider and top prize.
But the prize they were after was not a lump of cash, colorful ribbon or flashy saddle. What the top junior and adult riders did win were items that they will most likely treasure long after their winning horses have gone out to celestial pastures.Horse owners often have a strong bond to their horses. And for the past 60 years, Dickerson has made a small business of that bond, though she actually started with photography.
Back in the 1950s, she was in her early 20s and worked at a Milton-Freewater newspaper. On the side, she would photograph horse shows and competitions. She did it the old fashion way with film. She even had her own darkroom. And she relied on a primitive form of correspondence.As word go out, she began getting more requests for oil paintings, though she still photographed shows for a number of years.“And I don’t have a digital (camera) yet,” she said. She has her eye on one; it’s just to pricey.
As for her paintings, over the years Dickerson switched from oils to pastels. The finished product takes her up to 30 hours to complete. Cost is around $150, not including the frame. She also paints dogs and is known for her paintings of local police dogs.Besides her painting career and the 10-year stint with the newspaper, Dickerson said most of her life has been spent as a farmer’s wife.
She and her husband used to grow beets and other crops. They also raised cattle. And she was pretty handy on a horse and used to enter barrel races.
A Professor Emeritus of Speech and Hearing Science at UMass Amherst who retired 11 years ago to paint full time, Mr. Seymour, who is self-taught, works primarily with egg tempera, scratch painting, and pastels. His work depicts scenes of African-American life on-Island and elsewhere. Two of his works hang in the collection at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. He has devoted one corner of his new studio to a display of work representing President Barak Obama and his family.
"One of the reasons I've done so many pieces on them is the magnitude of the achievement," he said. "I keep returning to the theme." A news photo he saw of the Obama family at a food bank inspired "In the Eyes of Children." In it, black schoolchildren hold up a sign reading "We love our Prez!"
"For me, it's a special piece," Mr. Seymour said. "When I was in school, we really didn't have any black figure to look up to. The images in our textbooks were white people. I saw how those little faces were beaming with pride." Another work, "Obama's Little Patriots," represents the kind of coalition that put the President in office. Mr. Seymour chose children to convey a sense of innocence and included many flags because he felt they offer so many different meanings to people. Both of these paintings combine scratch painting with pastels.
"There's probably no one else in the world working in the methods I am," he said. Scratch painting, or sgraffito, entails scratching an image onto Masonite boards covered with white clay and a layer of black ink.
Mr. Seymour's technique entails a sophisticated process. He uses special microscopic medical pins that allow him a precision not possible with conventional tips on scrape pens. Many of his works combine pan and wax pastels with traditional scratchboard materials, and the specialized tools he's developed allow him to create tonal effects not otherwise possible.
"The method evolved out of my allergies," Mr. Seymour explained. "I've always been sensitive to smells. I can't tolerate perfumes or fingernail polish. They affect my nervous system." Oil, acrylic, and watercolor paints affect him the same way. After someone suggested trying egg tempera, he fell in love with the medium, which dominated European art up to the 15th century. "It preceded oil painting," he continued. "The thought that something could last that long intrigued me."
Egg tempura is exactly what it sounds like: a fast-drying medium that is mixed with a binder such as egg yolks. The precision possible with egg tempera also appealed to him, but in keeping with his interest in experimentation, he has worked to create impressionistic effects not usually associated with that medium. Mr. Seymour cut off the tops of his brushes to make a ball, so he could pat on the medium instead of stroking it on, for a less linear effect. In a small image of a dinghy, "Ready to Go," Mr. Seymour used a palette knife, not usually considered possible with egg tempera. By protecting himself with a mask and gloves, Mr. Seymour is able to work in egg tempera, scratch painting, and pastels without developing allergic reactions.
Click on their website http://artsunlight.com/.
2013年7月29日星期一
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5月8日星期日
Highgate artist Veronica Green stages new exhibition Sky and Rock with Chagan Contemporary
A RISING star artist from Highgate is staging her first major solo exhibition in London.
Veronica Green, 29, has joined forces with Chagan Contemporary, a new art gallery on the capital's art scene, for the exhibition of oil paintings.
Veronica's earlier works focused on still life jugs and bottles, and her latest canvases explore the objects that make up a landscape, showing aspects such as sky, rock, sea and beach.
Veronica said: "My latest paintings have taken me in a new direction.
"I used to work with a lot of vessels and other objects, capturing them in a type of still life on the canvas.
"But when I started drawing a small statue of the author Walter Scott, which we used as a doorstop at home, I found that laid on its side the folds of the robes and drapery resembled hills and this kick-started me in the direction of painting landscapes.
"Each painting in my exhibition either contains a patch of sky, some sea, a rocky outcrop, a beach, or buildings, and sometimes all five.
"I like to keep some things in my paintings that are recognisable, whilst abstracting others. Along with vivid colour, this excites the eye, whilst the mind is reassured as some shapes are familiar to it and form a meaning through association."
The latest exhibition follows two successful joint shows in 2008 in London and a solo exhibition in Edinburgh. Geeta Chagan, owner of Chagan Contemporary, regularly holds monthly shows, aiming to offer an alternative to traditional galleries by exhibiting in domestic settings.
Sky and Rock is open today, Sunday, and Saturday, May 14 and Sunday May 15, from 10am to 6pm, and by appointment until May 30, at 31 Clarendon Gardens, W9 1AZ.
Veronica Green, 29, has joined forces with Chagan Contemporary, a new art gallery on the capital's art scene, for the exhibition of oil paintings.
Veronica's earlier works focused on still life jugs and bottles, and her latest canvases explore the objects that make up a landscape, showing aspects such as sky, rock, sea and beach.
Veronica said: "My latest paintings have taken me in a new direction.
"I used to work with a lot of vessels and other objects, capturing them in a type of still life on the canvas.
"But when I started drawing a small statue of the author Walter Scott, which we used as a doorstop at home, I found that laid on its side the folds of the robes and drapery resembled hills and this kick-started me in the direction of painting landscapes.
"Each painting in my exhibition either contains a patch of sky, some sea, a rocky outcrop, a beach, or buildings, and sometimes all five.
"I like to keep some things in my paintings that are recognisable, whilst abstracting others. Along with vivid colour, this excites the eye, whilst the mind is reassured as some shapes are familiar to it and form a meaning through association."
The latest exhibition follows two successful joint shows in 2008 in London and a solo exhibition in Edinburgh. Geeta Chagan, owner of Chagan Contemporary, regularly holds monthly shows, aiming to offer an alternative to traditional galleries by exhibiting in domestic settings.
Sky and Rock is open today, Sunday, and Saturday, May 14 and Sunday May 15, from 10am to 6pm, and by appointment until May 30, at 31 Clarendon Gardens, W9 1AZ.
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