PJH Studios

Category: Art

Fine art, painting, photography, mixed media, sculpture

  • Modern art as a weapon

    During the Cold War, the CIA supported artists such as Rothko, de Kooning and Pollock, all in the name of defeating Communism.

    Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

    And the next time someone snarks about elites, consider:

    The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.

  • Andrew Shaylor’s Hells Angels Motorcycle Club

    Andrew Shaylor a United Kingdom based photographer released a book entitled, Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. It attempts to document the life of the club beyond its image as rough, gritty bikers. Given access to meeting rooms, Hells Angels events and pictures of members’ bikes, it humanizes the group as a bunch of guys, hanging out and riding motorcycles.

    Most members are over 30 and appearances are world weary. Shaylor comments that the group prefers new members have life experience before joining, and for a lot, it shows. Leathered faces, deep creases and graying hair. Toothy grins and countless tattoos.

    The tattoos. The death head varies from chapter to chapter and can only be worn by a member in good standing. Many get the death head, in some form, tattooed on their body–signifying their commitment for life.

    Interspersed between the portraits, Shaylor showcases life as a member. These shots mostly come across as snapshots or vacation photos. Hells Angels life is just as candid as a drunken frat party, too. At the end, and it seems random and I’m not sure if they add context, but Shaylor included portraits of members’ families–wives, sons, daughters, girlfriends. I suppose, they’re normal too.

    The subjects all reside in the UK. If you expected the more famous California Sonny Barger Hells Angels, you’d be disappointed. But would those portraits be any different?

  • Light painting with an iPad

    To do light painting well, it takes , planning, coordination and patience. Achieved with long exposures and a bright, glowing source of light moving in front of a camera, cool things can happen. But what if you could program your light source to emit patterns of light? That’s about what you get below.

    Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

  • Lost World’s Fairs

    Lost World’s Fairs show cases how damn awesome HTML5 is in the hands of a capable designer. Initially, the project came about when Microsoft asked the designers to showcase Internet Explorer 9’s support for WOFF.

    Says Jason Santa Maria:

    Today marks the beta launch of Internet Explorer 9. To celebrate the release, Nishant Kothary from the MIX Online team at Microsoft reached out to me to help showcase its support of WOFF.

    Atlantis is the most clever of the trio, using page scrolling to the effect of traveling down, down, down to the ocean floor.

  • Paper Arts, Dallas, TX

    Tucked away in a small strip center South of downtown Dallas (Peak and Elm), Paper Arts offers a mind boggling selection of papers from all over the world. One of a kind, hand crafted, exotic, off beat, special purpose–they have it or can get it. In my own impromptu tour, I was told that “we have access to 8000 different kinds of paper, but only have 1500 in stock” at the store. In a sense, if you like paper, you’d be like a kid in a candy store with the ceiling high cabinets full of brightly colored offerings.

    In meandering the store, looking at what there is to offer, scrap bookers have options with patterns and brightly colored stock, but the heart of the store is for those that need a unique feel, beyond what the paper aisle at Hobby Lobby or Micheal’s offers. Wedding invitation designers can find elegant and contemporary stock for the occasion. Collage artists can find one of a kind (literally, there’s only one sheet with that pattern), hand marbled papers and papers with various thicknesses, translucence and tension. Origami folders can find wet and dry folding stock. Book makers can find cloth papers with special backings to prevent glue from seeping through. Papers are sold in half sheet or whole sheet options, sizes ranging from 8.5″ x 11″ to 32″ x 40″. Prices vary from $1.99 a sheet (basic papers) to $20 a sheet (specialty, exotic paper).

    The owners are friendly, extremely knowledgeable and willing to help you find what you’re looking for. Mention you want something like XYZ but in a different ABC or 123, and they’ll guide you to a cabinet with suggestions.

    Paper Arts is open Tuesday through Saturday and can be reached by phone at 214-828-9494


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  • Words

    Follow along to the Words. Excellent use of transitions and word association.

  • Ones and zeros are free

    On the plane this weekend, I watched David Hobby’s photo lighting seminar from his Lighting 102 material for Strobist.com.  At one point he’s explaining that you don’t have to get the right exposure, and sometimes it takes some fiddling to get the proper combined flash and ambient exposure.  You may need to take more than one shot, he says. With this digital stuff,

    Ones and zeros are free.

    So true.

    Take as many pictures as you can.  Often, I see people take a picture, look at it, and not be totally satisfied with what they took and accept mediocrity.  If they took a few more shots, they might take one they actually enjoy.  Digital photography and cameras these days are limited by two things: the size of the memory card and the person taking the picture.  The former is a scarcity of space for those ones and zeroes, and the other is a scarcity of effort.

  • Detroit Art City

    Economic collapse means you can build a lot for your buck amongst the rubble, especially if you’re an artist in Detroit.

    But its particular brand of civic and economic decay has also drawn something unexpected: a small but well-publicized movement of artists and other creative types trying to wring something out of the rubble.

    TED, Banksy and Make Magazine are some of the big names, and the mayor has hired a special position to help coordinate art events.

  • Dennis Hopper – Bucharest Nights

    Eccentric and edgy Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper avidly collected art, and photography was a lifelong active hobby. In 2005, he published Bucharest Nights, a collection of “digital paintings” at night with a digital camera. The majority of the images are ghostly and ethereal. Stark figures in golden tones against a black backdrop, light trails down a street, neon glows from a casino. A few are stunning but for the most part the book contains good pictures that work better on a whole as a body of work. The random photos of naked women taken with film, jarringly contrasts the preceding 30 or so pictures as if you were listening to soft trance music and someone turned on a buzz saw.

  • Click: The Ultimate Photography Guide for Generation Now

    Charlie Styr published Click: The Ultimate Photography Guide for Generation Now using pictures from the Flickr Teenage Photography group. It’s aimed at the beginner or wanna-be-a-little-bit-cooler-by-by-taking-cool-pictures photographers. It’s balanced covering all the essential photography topics-exposure, aperture, shutter speed, light, composition, etc. It goes a little further with the example photos and includes camera settings. This comes in handy when wanting to figure out techniques specific to certain situations, such as macro, low-light, creating light trails or portraits.