Kusama Trees

Quinton Bemiller

Kusama Trees

September 12-October 10, 2010

Gallery Hours: Friday-Sunday, 1-5pm and by appointment

off ramp gallery

1702 Lincoln Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91103

(626) 298-6931

Contemporary Art in a Historic House

Claremont Graduate University, Second Year MFA Group Exhibition

September 20 through October 8, 2010

Peggy Phelps and East Galleries

Claremont Graduate University

251 East 10th Street

Claremont, California 91711

Gallery Hours: M-F, 10am to 5pm

(909) 621-8071

Center for the Arts presents... Fall 2010

Join the School of Visual, Performing and Communication Arts each month for a celebration of the arts, culture and entertainment in the new Center for the Arts complex at Chaffey College. During the Fall 2010 semester you will have the opportunity to enjoy workshops, lectures and performances from the Departments of Art, Dance, Music and Theatre. Each event is free, open to the public, and will be followed by a reception.


Creativity: What Is It and How Do You Get It?
Tuesday, September 28, 5:00pm, CAA-211
Workshop with Cynde Miller
How often have you been told to "Be creative?" Did anyone explain to you what creativity is, or how to do it? This participatory workshop will explain the basic tenets of creativity and will show you how to do a few creativity games that will help strengthen your creative "muscle".

Fall Dance Student Showcase
Friday, October 22, 5:00pm, CAA-206
Choreography by Chaffey Students
Artistic Director Michele Jenkins
Chaffey Collegeʼs first annual student dance works showcase will feature new student choreography in a variety of dance styles, including modern, jazz, hip hop, and creative fusions, in an informal eveningʼs performance!

Music from Broadway
Tuesday, October 26, 5:00pm, CAE-102
Directed by Patrick Aranda
Enjoy the music of broadway as performed by Music Professor Patrick Aranda and his band of student and professional musicians. And see a preview of the Chaffey College stage production of Oklahoma!

Getting into the Business of Acting
Tuesday, November 30, 5:00pm, CAA-211
Lecture by Christa Havenhill
This Seminar will cover the business aspects of acting. Topics will cover auditioning for commercials and stage productions, unions, agents, managers, headshots, resumes, monologues, musical theatre, casting agents and current casting websites.


For more information about the Center for the Arts Presents series, please contact John Machado at john.machado@chaffey.edu.

Chaffey Art Organization

The Chaffey Art Organization (CAO) will be participating in the Chaffey College Welcome Back Celebration and Club Rush on Wednesday, September 15 at 12:30-1:50 in the main Quad.
There will be FREE FOOD from Las Brisas sponsored by ASCC.

CAO will have an information table to promote upcoming art events (ART:21 screening, Wignall, Center for the Arts...) and to let new students know about the club. They will also be giving away a few CAO t-shirts. Hope to see you there.

Pyramid of Vanities

In my Art History 5 class Girolamo Savonarola was brought up and his association with the event known as the Bonfires of Vanities in history. The Bonfires of Vanities sounds sort of strange when you think about. When I think of a bonfire I see it being done at the beach with people around it keeping warm and roasting marshmallows. The word vanities is something you don't hear in a everyday conversation. So this event got my attention so I did some reading on this historical event. The historical information that is being shared is from a book called "A Crown Of Fire The Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola" by Pierre Van Paasen. Even though this is not an exact quote all credit is due to Pierre Van Paasen's book.

To give you some background Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) was a Dominican monk who begun to preach sermons against the worldiness of Florence and the Church. Savonarola started to get big turnouts whenever he preached at the church. He also looked upon the Florentines as a people with a destiny and a city that should be an example in righteous living to everyone in Italy. So individual faith was not enough it resulted in social responsibilities. Savonarola solution for being an example was to have a Bonfire of Vanities or as Pierre Van Paasen calls it a "Pyramid of Vanities". Van Paasen says the vanities "included mirrors, love philters, aphrodisiac herbs, mask, false hair, rouge pots, beauty lotions, face powders, perfumes, transparent garments, costumes used in masquerades, playing cards and dice, and certain musical instruments whose tone was deemed to be of an excitant nature, books on astrology, witchcraft, necromancy, amulets of indecent shape, obscene books such as Ovid and Boccaccio, and paintings of promient Florentine ladies in the nude by the greatest artists of the age." Sandro Botticelli was one of those artists who put some of his paintings in that bonfire. Van Paasen then describes that all the vanities were put into a octagonal-shaped pyramid 60 feet high (length of an modern day bowling ally) and 240 feet in circumference divided into 15 stories with compartments. The pyramid crossbeams had been sprinkled with gunpowder and smeared with pitch. This bonfire was not only hot but very loud. There was so much objects of luxury in the compartments from the rich peolple of Florence that a couple of days before they torch it a Venetian ambassador on the behalf of his city's merchants offered Savonarola 20,000 gold ducats. No amount of money was probably going to change his mind.

To be fair, Protestants see Savonarola as a forerunner to the Protestant Reformation and he usually get a thumbs up for wanting to reform the Church. On the other hand, I think he went out of bounds in trying to reform the whole city. Burning all the evil out of the city didn't make any real spiritual change in the people because the same people had him burned in the same spot he had his Bonfires of Vanities. The ironies of history.

Ruben Cimental
Art 5 Tues-Thu

Man Gets Wasted, Loses $1.4 Million Painting

Another reason not to drink while trying to authenticate and sell a painting.

Bloomberg:

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s 1857-58 “Portrait of a Girl” is missing, according to a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court. And the last man with possession can’t recall where it is after a night of heavy drinking, the suit says.