This work, by Randy Hand, is titled Need A Lift. (It’s called The Lifting Bench at the artist’s site.) According to the placard, it was installed in 2009 and was made possible by donations from the Fountain Hills One Percent For Public Art Fund and the Fountain Hills Cultural and Civic Association.
It’s a piece of functional art in that it can be used as a bench.
This sculpture is Joy of Music by George Lundeen. It was donated in 2007 by Jackie and Jerry Miles to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
This sculpture, titled Good News, was created by George Lundeen. It depicts a paper boy in the company of his faithful and loving dog. It was donated in 2012 in honor of L. Alan Cruikshank, celebrating his 65th birthday, by numerous family and friends.
The Enduring Family was created by sculptor Jeff Laing. It can be seen at the east side of the community center courtyard. It was donated in 2003 by The Fountain Hills Civic Association, The Sunridge Foundation, and eight other contributors (see below).
Here is a close-up of the placard, showing all of the donators.
This work, The Great Arrow by sculptor Michael Jones, is just outside of the Community Center, which is the building to the left. The Fountain Hills Library is the well lit building off in the distance. The Great Arrow was donated in 2004 by Mayor Wally and Sheila Nichols.
This is my second edit of this photo. I had inadvertently used too much noise reduction on the first edit, leading to a lack of sharpness. In the second edit, shown above, I chose to deemphasize areas of the photos that are less important. The scene shown in these two edits appears to be differently lit, even though I used the same set of RAW files. The scene was lit by ambient light only.
In this new edit, there’s an exhibit that appears to be lit much better in front of the library. The sculpture depicts a mother cat carrying her kitten. I have edited the photo to make it appear that there is a spotlight on this exhibit. In my opinion, nearly all of the exhibits in the area would benefit from additional lighting.
In The Great Arrow exhibit, the end of the arrow with the fletching is very dark when viewed at night. The exhibit would be much more appealing, in my opinion, if it were lit in a manner similar to that depicted in the photo.
This work, titled “Fusion” by sculptor Shannon Owen, can be seen to the right immediately after driving into Cutillo Civic Plaza via the entrance nearest to the Town Hall.
I tried to get this shot on Sunday night. When I got home and processed it, I really liked the colors, but the focus was really off. I returned on Monday night and took greater care to get the focus right. I also used a grey card to ensure that the colors were accurate within the immediate vicinity of the sculpture. I think there are other light sources with different color temperatures nearby, however.
“Ceremonial Dance”, by Alan Hochman is next to the Town Hall. Water can be heard bubbling in this exhibit. When I looked closely, I could see the barest sheen of water running down the lowest panel to the left. There may have been water running down the other ones too, but I could not tell in the dark.
When I took this shot, I had no idea that the panels were that colorful. It’s possible, of course, that I didn’t account for the color temperature of all of the light sources and that some of the colors are off. I have not yet seen this sculpture during the daytime. The colors of the rocks, tree leaves, and agave plant all look reasonable though.
Another Teen Zine entry.
The picture was actually drawn last summer during the Olympics. It is based on one of the rhythmic gymnasts. Regrettably it was drawn on lined paper, so I did quite a lot of editing to take the lines out, and to color out the white paper. On one the edges, there is still some white visible.
Marie performed with the 8th grade band at the Arts in the Courtyard event at the Fountain Hills Middle School. There were also exhibits showing some of her artwork and that of your classmates as well.
Marie studies some work done by one of her classmates.
This is Marie’s perspective drawing from that area:
A cropped version showing just the drawing:
Marilyn and Marie together:
This cartoon tells the story of how we came to have cats:
Marie also took a 3D art course. Here are four of her projects:
The eighth grade band played at the end of the evening. Below are two photos of Marie playing clarinet.
This is Marie writing…
I heard that Grandma wanted to hear about the art award I won.
My art teacher emailed me a short list of art contests around the beginning of the school year. I think I was too late to start the other contests she suggested, so the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards ( http://www.artandwriting.org/ ) was the only contest that was actually available. I was busy with other things during school and had no clue what to enter in the contest, so I didn’t dwell on it until my winter break. Even then, I only worked on my entry for about 3 days before it was due. I was still undecided as to what I would submit as my entry, so part of that time was just playing around with ideas.
Finally, I decide to sift through my old artwork and see if there was anything I could redo (my older work, as it was, was not an accurate representation of my ability and certainly not contest-worthy). I found this:
This drawing (September 2010) was drawn on lined paper, then edited on GIMP. It is of a still from a video trailer for the video game Halo: Reach, “Deliver Hope”. I really liked that video and the whole story surrounding the game, although the video only makes sense if you know the story. Concerning my picture, the significant part of the video was when a soldier is injured by a grenade explosion. The soldier falls to the ground, and the camera shows her eyes mirrored in her cracked visor. ( http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/haloreach_trailer.jpg )
This drawing, I decided, had potential in the contest if I did an adequate job updating it. I started from scratch and redrew the basic picture before I began adding color. I was frantic to meet the deadline, so I worked after breakfast into the night on the day before it was due. The day it was due I finished it up. This was the first Friday of 2013.
I finished submitting and uploading my entry on the contest website. All that was left was the release form. I signed it, and my mother and teacher’s signature were needed on it. This form had to be mailed to them in a few hours, and getting my teacher to sign this was out of the question. I assumed that my submission was invalid, because the release form was a necessary step in entering the contest.
I forgot about the contest after a while, but in late February I received an email notification that I won an award for the contest. I was confused and busy, so I ignored this. Then, my mother got an email, too. I was still a little confused, because that release form should’ve prevented me from getting in.
Winners of the contest are required to send in a photo, and a separate audio and video greeting. I recently uploaded those. An awards ceremony is being held at the end of May in Carnegie Hall. I’ve decided against going, but I’ll watch the webcast.
Marie told us, in her usual understated way, that she was a regional winner in the Lions Club Peace Poster Contest. She did this by handing her Mom a permission slip for proceeding further into the contest.
Marie tells us that she will probably be ineligible to proceed much further in the contest due to being too old by about a month.
Here, below, is a photo of her contest entry. It’s actually a fairly sizable poster that she drew using colored pencils.
