A Mini Surreal Film Festival....

Another little mini surreal film festival today. I wondered who had inspired Tim Burton and after a little googling, I found Jan Svankmajer who is a surreal filmmaker from the '70's an d '80's. Here is a clip from his film, "Alice:"




David Lynch is cited as a modern surrealist filmmaker. He's known for Twin Peaks, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet but did you know he made a car commercial? I like this because it's a slick quick snippet of surrealism:



To echo Tim Burton's bit of wisdom to continue doing what you love, here's David Lynch on keeping true to your ideas.

Tim Burton Exhibit at the MoMA inspires

The weather was beautiful last November when we were in NYC.  After the Thanksgiving Day Parade, we were able to walk down the normally traffic crowded streets to have an afternoon stroll. The day after when everyone else was shopping on Black Friday, we went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to see the Tim Burton Exhibit (by the way, the Tim Burton Exhibit is at MoMA until April 26th, 2010). When you walk into the lobby, there is a large inflated sculpture there to greet you.


(Photo Credit: Submitted to Flickr Group the MoMA Project by woicik

I don't know if the mystic around Tim Burton being very dark and tortured is of his making or of the media's making. But I think a great deal of it is probably myth because if you take your time walking around the very first part of the exhibit, you'll learn that Tim Burton was a marching band geek. His very first poster was for the local marching band.

Completely dispells the "tortured artist" childhood for me. I absolutely related to the band geek I saw staring back at me - I wore a similiar uniform when I was in the high school band.  I felt like I knew him - he was the kid I played in the marching band with who had a quirky take on the world and was always drawing.  I could see how he turned the suburban life he was living on its ear with his art.  It was a true insight into how he developed his art.

As I was staring at each caption of the early band geek era, I heard one of the curators of the exhibit talking to a patron. He said they had an unprecedented number of his early works because his mother had saved all of his works (yes, I have a similiar set of boxes full of my son's work). She had presented him with these boxes and he had presented the museum with them. Tim hadn't seen or known that his early works still existed.

Very cool.  Thanks, Mom!

I once read an article on Tim Burton where he said he never drew like the art teachers wanted but that didn't stop him. He drew because he liked to draw and no one should stop drawing just because someone else doesn't like it. I remember reading the article to my son who was 10 or 11 at the time. To this day, we give each other knowing looks when someone says something we enjoy isn't up to par. It's not going to make us stop, we enjoy it. It was a great piece of wisdom. It's why we both love Tim Burton.

So here's Tim Burton on Tim Burton. See if you aren't struck by the artist spirit he has that he never let others snuff out. We should all hold onto our creative spirit as he did.



Make sure you go to theMoMA website to check out their other videos!

Let's close with a little song from one of my favorite Tim Burton movies - Beetlejuice!

Coffee Talk: Next week, Inspiration from Tim Burton

Last November, I went to NYC for Thanksgiving. We packed so much into a few days, I haven't blogged about all of my adventures. Most importantly, I didn't have a chance to blog about my visit to the MoMA and the Tim Burton exhibit. Since Alice in Wonderland comes out next week, I thought I'd do an inspiration week on Tim Burton, a modern surrealist.

Last spring, I did an inspiration week on Dada, Surrealism and Salvador Dali as part of the creative process in developing the Surreal Rhythms beads. A style of bead more in the flavor of Dali and Miro. There is a more modern take on surrealism as interpreted by Burton and his many films. Walking through the MoMA exhibit, I was really inspired to see what modern surrealism looks like in film and art and wanted to write a few posts on the entire experience.

Have you gone to an art exhibit that inspired you?

New Bead Series: Surreal Rhythm

After accompanying me on the "Bead in Search of an Art Movement" journey, you'll be the first to see my new bead series which I've entitled "Surreal Rhythm." These beads have the flavor of surrealism in their rhythmic pattern. I chose a limited color palette for the first bead because I was developing the pattern and technique.



I really liked the pattern on this, preferring to melt in the dots rather than leave them raised. I didn't want added texture to the bead. I like the two colors but decided to see if I could add more color without losing the pattern.




The high contrast of yellow and blue in "Flame" is visually exciting. So I wanted to take this another step further and try another high contrast color combination.




The blue and orange-coral are cooler and more calming than the yellow and blue yet the rhymthm of the pattern keep things exciting. I'm going to experiment with more colors to see how many I can add and keep the pattern.

And I haven't forgotten about the free bead for comments! I'll be posting a winner for the very first Surreal Rhythm bead above tomorrow. I'll take all commentors from this week and pull a name out of a hat!


Have you enjoyed this week's journey? Do you have suggestions for additional color combinations? Tell me what you think!

Miro: Sign-like Forms and an Overall Rhythm

Working at the torch on a technique, I find variations in the inspiration source. It can be a slight variation or it feels completely different than the inspiration. The beads I'm holding in my hand are completely different from what I intended but I liked the variation and went with it. They had a particular feel to them and I've spent this week taking you on my trip to discover to which art movement they belong. I've landed on surrealism.

Surrealism always felt strange rather than metaphorical. And I thought of Dali not someone like Miro. But Miro's style is what I'm reminded of when I look at the new beads. Nancy Doyle describes Miro's painting style: "In 1923, there was a big change in Miro's art, moving toward more sign-like forms (i.e., like hieroglyphs), geometric shapes and an overall rhythm".

The Carnival of Harlequin which is hanging at my local Albright Knox Art Museum, is a good example of the metaphorical use of shapes and rhythm.



That describes what I see exactly in my beads - sign like forms, geometric shapes and an overall rhythm.

Tomorrow we'll end our journey with the debut of the new bead series.

Surrealism, Dali and film

Surrealism grew out of Dadaism.When most of us see the word "Surrealism" we think of Salvador Dali seen here in a 1939 photograph taken by Carl Van Vechten. Dali is famous for his surrealist pieces and he was a "jack of all trades" when it came to creating art - he created sculpture, paintings, photographs and film.

In fact, he created what is considered his most famous and mainstream piece of surrealism in film in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Luckily, I found it on Youtube and you can watch it. I love the film noir-ness of it - black and white film is soooo cool! Leave a comment and tell me what you think!