Making Art

If you read the Make magazine blog, you'll see a lot of folks making stuff. Lots of technologists and craftsmen are putting together neat stuff and setting up maker spaces. For instance, there's the folks at GRMakers who have set up the maker space in my hometown Grand Rapids, MI. This is also the home of Art Prize.

And then there's Pablo Picasso. Of all the folks you'd call modern artists, I respect him the most. He was a prolific artist and he did a lot of it. I heard that he did a lot of doves. He said that he refused to draw their feet, because he'd had to draw so many of feet when he was younger. Why would he be forced to draw a lot of bird feet? Because that was the way he was taught.

Before Pablo Picasso produced abstract modern art, he had to master his artistic technique.

When I experience the various entries in Art Prize, I see several Taxonomy of Art Prize Entries. Each entry manifests a separate mastery of some technique. Whereas the Old Masters knew how to put paint on canvas, nowadays artists are also glueing seeds or wine corks to a substrate, or welding, riveting or bolting together bits of metal. Or any of a zillion other techniques.
sorts of work I've described in my

The ones that get me excited generally involve wires and electronic components. And most exciting include some logic switching electrons around.

And this puts a great stress upon the artist, because folks can conceive art works that exceed their inherent skill sets. Some art pieces require a fusion of artistic vision and technological craftsmanship.

This is why some of the neat stuff you see on the Make magazine blog are art projects. You'll also see in maker spaces an easy marriage of the technologists' expertise and the artists' vision.

In fact, one of the leading entries is a dragon from a Detroit maker space. Gon KiRin is awesome.

I figure that maker spaces are going to become a key contributor to culture. If you can hook up with one, or with the maker movement in general, by all means do so.