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Adam Niklewicz
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Adam Niklewicz is a Polish-American sculptor who earned his BFA in graphic communications in 1989 from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MFA in sculpture from SUNY Purchase in 2006. His work has featured and discussed in ARTnews, CNN Sculpture Magazine, Modern Painters, Art New England, The New York Times. Public Art, Preparing for the New Chapter, il graffit che compare con lacqua. ART, A Largely Traditional Show at Silvermine, official website Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY EBK Gallery, Hartford, CT Ignant. de - Rain Activated Art Ignant. de - Adam Niklewicz Connecticut Artists Collection An Interview with Adam Niklewicz
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Visual arts
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The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, literature, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design. Current usage of the visual arts includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes, training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. Visual arts have now become a subject in most education systems. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used, the main techniques used in drawing are, line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman, drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture, drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC. Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier, like drawing, painting has its documented origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet, in shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer. Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt, in the great temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis. The Greeks contributed to painting but much of their work has been lost, one of the best remaining representations are the hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits. Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting. Apart from the manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages
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Work of art
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A work of art, artwork, art piece, piece of art or art object is an aesthetic physical item or artistic creation. The term objet dart is reserved to describe works of art that are not paintings, prints, drawings or large or medium-sized sculptures, the term oeuvre is used to describe the complete body of work completed by an artist throughout a career. A work of art in the arts is a physical two- or three- dimensional object that is professionally determined or otherwise considered to fulfill a primarily independent aesthetic function. A singular art object is seen in the context of a larger art movement or artistic era, such as. It can also be seen as an item within a body of work or oeuvre. The term is used by, museum and cultural heritage curators, the interested public, the art patron-private art collector community. Physical objects that document immaterial or conceptual art works, but do not conform to artistic conventions can be redefined and reclassified as art objects, some Dada and Neo-Dada conceptual and readymade works have received later inclusion. Also, some architectural renderings and models of projects, such as by Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci, Frank Lloyd Wright. Legal definitions of work of art are used in copyright law, Marcel Duchamp critiqued the idea that the work of art should be a unique product of an artists labour, representational of their technical skill or artistic caprice. Artist Michael Craig-Martin, creator of An Oak Tree, said of his work - Its not a symbol, I have changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. The actual oak tree is present, but in the form of a glass of water. Some art theorists and writers have made a distinction between the physical qualities of an art object and its identity-status as an artwork. For example, a painting by Rembrandt has an existence as an oil painting on canvas that is separate from its identity as a masterpiece work of art or the artists magnum opus. Many works of art are initially denied museum quality or artistic merit, works by the Impressionists and non-representational abstract artists are examples. Some, such as the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp including his infamous urinal Fountain, are reproduced as museum quality replicas. Contemporary and archeological indigenous art, industrial design items in limited or mass production, the term has been consistently available for debate, reconsideration, and redefinition. The classic philosophical enquiry into what a work of art is
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Textile
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A textile or cloth is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, hemp, Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or felting. The words fabric and cloth are used in textile assembly trades as synonyms for textile, however, there are subtle differences in these terms in specialized usage. Textile refers to any material made of interlacing fibres, a fabric is a material made through weaving, knitting, spreading, crocheting, or bonding that may be used in production of further goods. Cloth may be used synonymously with fabric but is often a piece of fabric used for a specific purpose. The word textile is from Latin, from the adjective textilis, meaning woven, from textus, the word cloth derives from the Old English clað, meaning a cloth, woven or felted material to wrap around one, from Proto-Germanic kalithaz. The discovery of dyed flax fibres in a cave in the Republic of Georgia dated to 34,000 BCE suggests textile-like materials were made even in prehistoric times. The production of textiles is a craft whose speed and scale of production has been altered almost beyond recognition by industrialization, however, for the main types of textiles, plain weave, twill, or satin weave, there is little difference between the ancient and modern methods. Textiles have an assortment of uses, the most common of which are for clothing and for such as bags. In the household they are used in carpeting, upholstered furnishings, window shades, towels, coverings for tables, beds, and other flat surfaces, in the workplace they are used in industrial and scientific processes such as filtering. Textiles are used in traditional crafts such as sewing, quilting. Textiles for industrial purposes, and chosen for other than their appearance, are commonly referred to as technical textiles. Technical textiles include textile structures for applications, medical textiles, geotextiles, agrotextiles. In all these applications stringent performance requirements must be met, woven of threads coated with zinc oxide nanowires, laboratory fabric has been shown capable of self-powering nanosystems using vibrations created by everyday actions like wind or body movements. Fashion designers commonly rely on textile designs to set their fashion collections apart from others, armani, the late Gianni Versace, and Emilio Pucci can be easily recognized by their signature print driven designs. Textiles can be made from many materials and these materials come from four main sources, animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic. In the past, all textiles were made from natural fibres, including plant, animal, in the 20th century, these were supplemented by artificial fibres made from petroleum. Textiles are made in various strengths and degrees of durability, from the finest gossamer to the sturdiest canvas, microfibre refers to fibres made of strands thinner than one denier
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Paper
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Paper is a thin material produced by pressing together moist fibres of cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets. It is a material with many uses, including writing, printing, packaging, cleaning. The modern pulp and paper industry is global, with China leading its production, the oldest known archaeological fragments of the immediate precursor to modern paper, date to the 2nd century BC in China. The pulp papermaking process is ascribed to Cai Lun, a 2nd-century AD Han court eunuch, with paper as an effective substitute for silk in many applications, China could export silk in greater quantity, contributing to a Golden Age. Because of papers introduction to the West through the city of Baghdad, in the 19th century, industrial manufacture greatly lowered its cost, enabling mass exchange of information and contributing to significant cultural shifts. In 1844, the Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty and the German F. G. Keller independently developed processes for pulping wood fibres, before the industrialisation of the paper production the most common fibre source was recycled fibres from used textiles, called rags. The rags were from hemp, linen and cotton, a process for removing printing inks from recycled paper was invented by German jurist Justus Claproth in 1774. Today this method is called deinking and it was not until the introduction of wood pulp in 1843 that paper production was not dependent on recycled materials from ragpickers. The word paper is etymologically derived from Latin papyrus, which comes from the Greek πάπυρος, although the word paper is etymologically derived from papyrus, the two are produced very differently and the development of the first is distinct from the development of the second. Papyrus is a lamination of natural plant fibres, while paper is manufactured from fibres whose properties have changed by maceration. To make pulp from wood, a chemical pulping process separates lignin from cellulose fibres and this is accomplished by dissolving lignin in a cooking liquor, so that it may be washed from the cellulose, this preserves the length of the cellulose fibres. Paper made from chemical pulps are also known as wood-free papers–not to be confused with paper, this is because they do not contain lignin. The pulp can also be bleached to produce paper, but this consumes 5% of the fibres, chemical pulping processes are not used to make paper made from cotton. There are three main chemical pulping processes, the process dates back to the 1840s and it was the dominant method extent before the second world war. Most pulping operations using the process are net contributors to the electricity grid or use the electricity to run an adjacent paper mill. Another advantage is that this process recovers and reuses all inorganic chemical reagents, soda pulping is another specialty process used to pulp straws, bagasse and hardwoods with high silicate content. There are two major mechanical pulps, thermomechanical pulp and groundwood pulp, in the TMP process, wood is chipped and then fed into steam heated refiners, where the chips are squeezed and converted to fibres between two steel discs. In the groundwood process, debarked logs are fed into grinders where they are pressed against rotating stones to be made into fibres
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Wood
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Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees, and other woody plants. It is a material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers which are strong in tension embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees, in a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up by themselves. It also conveys water and nutrients between the leaves, other growing tissues, and the roots, Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber. In 2005, the stock of forests worldwide was about 434 billion cubic meters. As an abundant, carbon-neutral renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a source of renewable energy, in 1991 approximately 3.5 billion cubic meters of wood were harvested. Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction, a 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick discovered the earliest known plants to have grown wood, approximately 395 to 400 million years ago. Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in species by dendrochronology to make inferences about when a wooden object was created. People have used wood for millennia for many purposes, primarily as a fuel or as a material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks. Constructions using wood date back ten thousand years, buildings like the European Neolithic long house were made primarily of wood. Recent use of wood has changed by the addition of steel. The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the climate at that time. This process is known as growth, it is the result of cell division in the vascular cambium, a lateral meristem. These cells then go on to form thickened secondary cell walls, composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose, if the distinctiveness between seasons is annual, these growth rings are referred to as annual rings. Where there is little seasonal difference growth rings are likely to be indistinct or absent, if the bark of the tree has been removed in a particular area, the rings will likely be deformed as the plant overgrows the scar. It is usually lighter in color than that near the portion of the ring. The outer portion formed later in the season is known as the latewood or summerwood. However, there are differences, depending on the kind of wood
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Found object
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Pablo Picasso first publicly utilized the idea when he pasted a printed image of chair caning onto his painting titled Still Life with Chair Caning. The most famous example is Fountain, a standard urinal purchased from a store and displayed on a pedestal. Found objects derive their identity as art from the designation placed upon them by the artist and this may be indicated by either its anonymous wear and tear or by its recognizability as a consumer icon. The context into which it is placed is also a relevant factor. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a challenge to the accepted distinction between what was considered art as opposed to not art. In this sense the artist gives the time and a stage to contemplate an object. Appreciation of found objects in this way can prompt philosophical reflection in the observer, there is usually some degree of modification of the found object, although not always to the extent that it cannot be recognized, as is the case with ready-mades. Marcel Duchamp coined the term ready-made in 1915 to describe an object that had been selected. Duchamp assembled Bicycle Wheel in 1913 by attaching a common front wheel and this was not long after his Nude Descending a Staircase was attracting the attention of critics at the International Exhibition of Modern Art. In 1917, Fountain, a urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, in the same year, Duchamp indicated in a letter to his sister, Suzanne Duchamp, that a female friend was centrally involved in the conception of this work. As he writes, One of my friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture. Irene Gammel argues that the piece is more in line with the aesthetics of Duchamps friend. Research by Rhonda Roland Shearer indicates that Duchamp may have fabricated his found objects, exhaustive research of mundane items like snow shovels and bottle racks in use at the time failed to reveal identical matches. The urinal, upon inspection, is non-functional. However, there are accounts of Walter Arensberg and Joseph Stella being with Duchamp when he purchased the original Fountain at J. L. Mott Iron Works. The use of objects was quickly taken up by the Dada movement, being used by Man Ray. A well-known work by Man Ray is Gift, which is an iron with nails sticking out from its flat underside, jose De Creeft began making large-scale assemblages in Paris, such as Picador, made of scrap metal, rubber and other materials. The combination of found objects is a type of ready-made sometimes known as an assemblage
