Charles Parks was a well known and much loved sculptor familiar to many in the Brandywine Valley area of Delaware and Southeastern Pennsylvania. His works grace public buildings and spaces in the region and across the country.

Parks was originally from Virginia, moved to Delaware with his family when he was young, and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

He produced a body of over 500 sculptures, many of them in his studio in Wilmington overlooking the Brandywine River. The sculptures, primarily cast in bronze, range in size from a few inches to monumental public works almost 40 ft high, such as “Our Lady of Peace”, seen above in progress in his studio, outside the studio and in place in Santa Clara, CA (above, second and third from bottom).

I was delighted a few years ago to have the opportunity in my role as a website designer to create a new website for the Charles Parks Studio. In the course of working on the site I had the pleasure of visiting the studio and meeting the artist and his wife, Inge, both completely delightful.

Having grown up in Wilmington, I was of course familiar with Parks’ work; it can be found in many public spaces in the city and the state of Delaware, even more so since 2011, when the Charles Parks Foundation donated a large body of work to the state.

Parks was a steadfast defender of realism and naturalism in sculpture in the midst of the tides of Modernism that swept through the art world in the mid 20th century. His direct and unpretentious evocations of people, nature and fantasy subjects resonated with the public, and carried forward in many ways the traditions of imaginative realism embodied by the Brandywine School of painters and illustrators.

His statue, Boy with Hawk (above, bottom) stands outside the entrance to the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA.

Charles Cropper Parks died last month on October 25, 2012 at the age of 90. (See the Studio’s News and Information page for links to obits and articles.)

There will be a public memorial service tomorrow, Saturday, December 1, 2012 at the Chase Center on the Waterfront in Wilmington, DE.

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, Henri Fantin-Latour.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Click on Fullscreen and use zoom or download arrow.

I’ve written before about the superb series of Superman cartoons done in the 1940′s by the studios of Max and Dave Fleischer.

These are beautiful examples of hand drawn animation, essentially film noir adventure stories with great design, rendering and animation; and, as far as I’m concerned, the best film adaptation of the character ever.

The cartoons are in the public domain and have been available on the Internet Archive and YouTube for some time in various versions, but they have been remastered from the original negatives by Warner Brothers and recently released on their YouTube channel for all to enjoy.

All nine of the original series are linked below.

Super!

[Links and announcement via Cartoon Brew]

[Please note: the images above are just screen captures, not embedded videos. Use the links below.]

Sometimes I wish that flying from the east coast to the west coast was more convenient; if it was, I might be tempted to fly out to San Francisco just to see this show of small works by two painters I’ve featured previously on Lines and Colors, Erik Tiemens and Terry Miura.

I’ve commented on Tiemens’ beautiful gouache paintings. I also particularly enjoy his obvious enthusiasm for the great landscape painters from the 16th through 19th centuries, and his skillful use of dark tones in landscape, the striking qualities of which are often missed in tendency of many modern landscape painters to draw their inspiration mostly from the French Impressionists forward.

Tiemens has recently been working in oil more than in the past. I have to say that I was surprised to read the dimensions on some of his recent small oils, as they appear in reproduction to be larger in scale than they actually are.

Terry Miura’s lineage is more directly in the vein of the California landscape painters of the turn of the 20th Century. His vibrant portrayals of the California countryside and seaside are rendered with a painterly economy of notation and keen attention to atmosphere.

The show, titled New California Landscapes, is at the Holton Studio Gallery in Emeryville, CA. They gallery has provided a nice Picasa set of included works.

Unfortunately, other than that the gallery does a poor job of promoting the show, or the gallery itself for that matter, on their website, which is focused instead on their primary role as frame makers (I will say, however, that the frames look exceptional). There in no dedicated information page about the show or even notice of how long it runs, only a brief mention on the gallery page with a link to the Picasa set.

I do know that the show opens this Saturday, December 1, 2012, with a reception for the artists from 4 to 6pm.

[Addendum: Tim Holton has been kind enough to let me know that the show runs through January. Also the Holton Studio website is being rebuilt, and promises to showcase both the gallery and future shows to much better advantage.]

There is also, to the gallery’s credit, an additional selection of works from both Tiemens and Miura, as they are both represented by the gallery on an ongoing basis.

You can find additional images by the artists on their websites and blogs (listed below).

Tiemens has highlighted a selection of his work from the show on his blog. The images are linked to even larger versions that show some of the wonderful brushwork and textural qualities in his small oils and the one gouache piece that appears to be in the show (above, fifth down).

Miura has featured works from the show in two posts on his blog, here and here, the images for which are also linked to larger versions in which you can see Miura’s crisp paint handling and rich color. In Miura’s images you can also see the custom framing by Tim Holton, that is, according to Miura’s comments, crafted specifically to suit each individual work.

Either of these painters would be interesting enough to recommend a show of their work, together this should be a treat.

(Images above: Erik Tiemens, top five, Terry Miura, bottom six)

ACME Product Catalog, a Flickr set by Dystopos.

[Via MetaFilter]

An alternate Jimi Hendrix album cover by Jean Giraud (Moebius), who was fascinated with Hendrix and portrayed him multiple times.

Hendrix would have been 70 today.

That makes me feel weird for some reason, but I can’t remember why…

The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, Carlo Crivelli.

In the National Gallery, London. Use the fullscreen and zoom tools to the right of the image.

There is also a large image on Wikimedia.

The early 15th century saw both linear geometrical perspective construction and the medium of oil painting come into common use in European painting (see my post on Jan van Eyck).

Here, Crivelli has a field day with both, and despite his apparent struggles with the proportions of hands and the shape of eyes (see my post on Rogier van der Weyden), creates a striking image of the Annunciation.

I love the cornucopia of little details, the fanatical attention to texture, the luxurious use of color and the nifty way the composition has the ray of divine inspiration reach the figure of Mary through a portal in the building wall. (You buy it, even though the angle is completely wrong; but hey — master of time and space, right?)

And then, of course, there’s the apple and the pickle…

Another example of my assertion that these painters were the special effects wizards of their day (see my post on Antonello da Messina), creating stunning visuals that wowed the faithful in altarpieces that in themselves were reason enough to attend church services.

Wowza.

First of all, if you’re not familiar with Paul Madonna’s wonderful All Over Coffee, you may want to read my previous article on All Over Coffee, or my subsequent post on the second collection, Everything is its own reward, in which I struggle to find sufficient superlatives to describe the feature.

Though ostensibly classified as a comic strip, the weekly feature, which has run for years in the San Francisco Chronicle, is part beautiful ink and wash drawings, part poetry, part wry observations, part story, and part I-don’t-know-what-but-I-really-like-it.

The good news, for those of us who are familiar with the feature, is not only that All Over Coffee has continued and flourished, but it is now available in at least two more forms. In addition to Madonna’s own site and the Chronicle’s SF Gate site, All over Coffee is now available on The Rumpus (where it is perhaps easiest to browse), and the second collection, Everything is its own reward is now available as a free iPad app (iTunes link).

The iPad app, rather than just offering the collection in book format, is actually linear, stepping from image to image with the words slowly revealed, adding an element of time and contemplation. (Ideally, you would want both the app and the printed version.)

The Rumpus also hosts Madonna’s Small Potatoes, a more traditional and less extravagant comic strip, as well as an interview with the artist in which he discusses his recent (and very different) book, Album.

The Rumpus also features an eclectic collection of other comics, and Paul Madonna serves as the Comics Editor.

I’m delighted to see Madonna continuing All Over Coffee and broadening its reach in addition to pursuing other projects.

All Over Coffee, in any of its available forms, is simply a treat.

[Addendum: Reader MJ was kind enough to let me know there is a KQED video interview with Paul Madonna.]