Wall art can add character to any room in a house, room, or office. Wall art can be traditional, such as sculptures, emblems, paintings, pictures, or mosaics. They can also be contemporary such as an artful display of lights projected to a wall. There are also other wall decors that are totally spectacular. For example, in a hotel in Las Vegas, the wall behind the front counter is virtually an aquarium with all colorful fishes swimming around.
Some of the best wall arts are three dimensional. The wall art has depth, length, and width, making it viewable in all three dimensions. An example of a 3D wall décor would be real or artificial flowers carefully arranged and hanged on the wall.
An example of a good contemporary décor is a good 3D wine arrangement. This is especially nice if the homeowner is a wine enthusiast. A wall picture or a painting of a bottle of wine, wine glass, and flower arrangement does not even come close with a 3D wall décor.
Here is how to make such beautiful wine wall art décor.
1. First find a nice empty wine bottle. This is the centerpiece of the décor. Although a clear one would suffice, a colored bottle usually looks better. Look for a bottle with a nice, dainty, unique design; it will add more character to the decoration. It is up to you if you want to remove the label or not; however, it would give your wine bottle its own identity if you include the label.
2. Clean the wine bottle thoroughly with cool water. Do not worry about the label; the adhesive is tough and doesn’t dissolve easily. Dry the bottle completely.
3. Using water that is dyed with a dark color, fill the bottle halfway. This water represents the wine. Of course, it is perfectly okay to leave the bottle empty. Place a cork stopper to seal the water in. Set the bottle aside.
4. The next step is to prepare a flower arrangement. It is important to note that you should only use artificial flowers; real flowers wilt after a short time. Artificial flowers can be readily brought at a home improvement shop.
Arrange the flowers and the plants in an artful way, spreading out the blooms. The center area, from the top to the bottom of the arrangement, should be clear; this is where the side of the bottle is glued. You can have the flowers arranged yourself, or you can have a professional florist do it for you.
5. Glue the side of the bottle carefully to the flower arrangement, making sure it is centered. You should use epoxy or cynoacrylite; these adhesives are impervious to heat and water.
6. For this wine wall art décor, you may want to add other items, such as plastic grapes, artificial previous stones, and any accessory you can think off. Just be sure that they are firmly glue through the use of cyanoacrylite glue or epoxy.
7. Wrap a piece of wire around the neck of the bottle and form the remaining length to a hanger. Lift the arrangement on top of a soft surface to see if the wire can hold the entire arrangement’s lift. Wrap the wire with florist tape. Hang the bottle-and-flower arrangement on the wall.
By: Alyssa Davis
How to Make a 3D Wine Wall Art Decor
February 8th, 2010 by admin No comments »J Art – Japanese Pop Art
February 7th, 2010 by admin No comments »
What is Pop art? Pop art as a movement started in the 1950s in Britain and the U.S. which takes its art from popular mass culture as opposed to the elite art world. Today the term can still be used for art as an expression influenced from the mainstream culture of the masses.
While Andy Warhol was making his Soup Cans famous in the U.S., a new and exciting art in Japan was starting to form and take on a course of its own.
Tanaami and American Influences
One of the first and most important of the Japanese pop artists is Keiichi Tanaami. He was educated at the Musashino Art University, and would take a designer job after graduation. It wasn’t long before he left the company he worked for due to his busy schedule with outside activities. These creative activities included experimentations with animation, lithograph, illustration, and editorial design.
By the late 60s, Tanaami traveled to the United States where he had an influential meeting with Andy Warhol in his legendary Factory in New York. He was very happy to have met Andy while he was doing his silkscreens, and much of his work was inspired by Andy’s style. Later, after moving to San Fransisco, the Japanese artist’s work became very colorful and psychedelic. He even designed a cover for Jefferson Airplane.
Much of Tanaami’s work comes from dreams and memories. He remembers as a child squeezing goldfish that were about to die, until their guts came out. You can see this in some of his goldfish sculptures. Gruesome and interesting stuff.
Manga and Anime
Perhaps the best known contemporary Japanese artist today is Takashi Murakami. He is attributed with the modern art style known as “superflat,” for a blending of traditional art with newer concepts deriving, in part, from manga and anime. These artworks are known for their flat planes of colorful images.
While Andy Warhol in the 1960s was turning consumer products into art, Murakami is now turning art into consumer products. He says he knows how much the Japanese people love art, but very few can afford the upper class art. So he creates affordable art anybody can afford. His art comes in the form of toys, paintings, sculptures, dolls, and mannequins, T-shirts, videos, and any other type of product readily available for consumers. He also designed a Louis Vuitton handbag.
His art is often colorful and imaginative, such as the painting entitled “727.” Some of his art is daring, such as his “My Lonesome Cowboy.” The “Cowboy” shows an obvious reference to American culture with the lasso made from the, uh, fluids.
Graffiti and Childlike Figures
Like Murakami, Japanese artist Yoshimoto Nara derives his style from manga and anime. His work is usually done in graffiti-type painting and the characters are often cute and childlike, but which also possess dark characteristics. These characters come from a meshing of childhood memories and an input of contemporary style. What you get is a unique consumer art product.
There’s an excellent British miniseries called Japanorama, which chronicles the host’s seeking of Japanese culture in general. One of the episodes is all about J-Art and has the above artists and much more. So check it out, and don’t forget to watch it with a nice hot bowl of Ramen.
By: Daniel Kretschmer
CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) And Art Therapy For Depression
February 3rd, 2010 by admin No comments »
If you are suffering from depression there has been a tremendous amount of research that suggests that Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is an effective form of treatment. The recent research on positive psychology that suggests it may be complementary to CBT interventions as it relates to depression. Moreover, how can we use art therapy to reinforce these theories and interventions?
Garratt, Ilardi, and Karwoski (2006) offer a compelling article on the integration of cognitive behavioral and positive psychology for the treatment of depression. The authors present the two primary goals of cognitive behavioral therapy, modifying dysfunctional thoughts and creating long-term cognitive skills to reduce relapse. The meteoric popularity of CBT as a treatment modality arose with Beck’s research of CBT and depression. However, studies suggest that long-term recovery is sustained in less than half of the clients who receive CBT for treatment of depression. It is the implication of long term success with clients that leads the authors to explore the principles of positive psychology as it relates to cognitive behavioral therapy.
The article suggests the conceptual overlap between CBT interventions and positive psychology approach, including a strong therapeutic alliance, focus on distinct goals, here-and-now focus, cognitive reappraisal, and client collaboration. Moreover, the authors suggest there is an overlap in techniques that are congruent in both CBT and positive psychology. Both encourage pleasant activities scheduling, identifying and reviewing success experiences, mood monitoring, relaxation training, and problem-solving. The authors suggest that positive psychology can provide CBT with the opportunities to move beyond removing negative affect, consequently moving the client towards positive affect, influencing quality of life. The positive psychology constructs that could blend with CBT to reduce depression and enhance over all well-being include: capitalizing on strengths, instilling hope, flow (being absorbed in the moment while engaged in an activity), mindfulness (being fully present), addressing unsolvable problems, optimism training, meaning, physical exercise, and humor.
The aforementioned interventions blend well with art therapy. Using art the art therapist can capitalize on the inherent creative strengths of the individual. Creating a picture of what the individual can imagine as a possible positive outcome can instill a sense of hope and provide a tangible road map to achieve their goals. Flow and mindfulness occurs when the individual is fully present in the creative process and is often accomplished in an art therapy session. The art making process can be used to explore choices for problems that appear unsolvable, and create meaning and purpose for the individual. Therefore, art therapy offers a bridge to CBT and positive psychology by the process of using therapeutic art interventions that reinforce the tenants of these two theories.
By: Laura Dessauer
