Social Work Logo Ideas

In January of 2003 my mom took this photograph of Jeri and myself holding our son Arthur's hands as we stood on the beach at Santa Cruz, California, facing the sea and the late afternoon sun. It's a nice image, and my mom uses it as a sort of logo for her counseling service. She let me use it as a sort of logo for my social work classes as well. (the image is copyrighted by Virginia Ives). I like how we are silhouetted so we can be almost any couple with a young child. And of course, the sea and the sun are two powerful images. The sea representing vastness, potential, possibility, and depth. The sun representing life-giving energy, power, glory, warmth, and vision. And the beach is a border, a place where two different realms come together, the land, which is known and understood, and the ocean, a place more mysterious, where we are guests, not residents.



I took the image and used it to play around with ideas for artistic designs to use with our social work club at the University of Illinois. Here is one where I try to place the image in a context of written words. On the left we have a list of social workers and people who did social work and can be claimed as honorary members of the profession, even if they were not actually trained as social workers. I didn't include the comedian Martin Short on the list, although he is a trained social worker and was considering that career before he got into comedy. On the lower level and right the words represent issues, concepts, and tasks that are associated with social work and social workers. I'm not entirely satisfied with this design. I need to arrange the text in a more artistic way according to some design, rather than just using this columns of text.


The green lettering design is in fact one the students in the social work club chose to use for their T-shirts this year. The lettering was a bit tricky to do. I'd really like to just create some fonts and then use Illustrator and Word to position the letters. I actually drew these letters (using iWork 08's Pages application) and arranged them using Adobe Photoshop. Too time consuming. But I did achieve the home-made do-it-yourself look that I was striving for, and the letters are supposed to be friendly and free-spirited, and I think they are.

Hero of the Ebro

I'm going to post three art images I want to share with the world through this blog.

The first one is a scan of a diagram given to me by Andrew Irvin. The artists are C.A. and J.W., but I don't know exactly who they are. They must have been students at the Johnston Center in Redlands in the mid-1980s. Anyway, the letter from which I scanned the image has this note: Enclosed is a diagram CA & I made to illustrate "Irvin's Theory of Reciprocity," which he stole from me in the fall of '83 - JW










The next image is a painting by Miguel Viladrich (1887-1956) called Hero of the Ebro (El héroe del Ebro). It shows a handsome young Spanish soldier, naked except for his helmet and a towel across his left leg, rowing a tiny boat, presumably in the Ebro River. In his boat are large artillery shells. The soldier has a pensive and placid expression on his face. I'd like to know more about this painting.





The third image is some commercial art from a signboard advertising a seaside aquarium attraction in Oregon. The sign, which was photographed in 1985, asks readers to:
Visit the
AQUARIUM
LIKE A WALK on the OCEAN FLOOR
Showing the
HIDEOUS OCTOPUS
WOLF FISH
SEA ANEMONES...
"Beautiful Flower-like Animals
From the Ocean Depths"
And MANY MORE OREGON SPECIMENS!
ALL ALIVE
Displayed in 35 Glass Front Tanks
Simulating the natural habitat of marine life!

New Orleans 2009

A few weeks ago I went to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research. I have finally finished making a couple web pages that show some photographs of people I met and things I saw (especially the Prospect 1 art show). So, if you want to see the photographs, follow this link.

Prospect 1 in New Orleans

Although I spent most of my time in New Orleans at the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) meeting or hanging out with other social work researchers, I did have a couple hours on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday to check out some of the Prospect 1 art exhibits, including the ones at the New Orleans Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center, and the old U.S. Mint.

I want to write about some of what I saw.

Skylar Fein's installation about an arson attack on a bar that killed 32 guys was especially disturbing, mainly because he included huge blown-up photographs of charred corpses from the scene. That was horrific. Another disturbing spectacle was the installation by Stephen G. Rhodes. I somewhat enjoyed certain aspects of the energy and anger and spookiness in his piece, but it was hard to take, and one doctoral student from USC who was with me had to get out of the room quickly; she could only take a few seconds of the experience.
Thought provoking? I think I was especially moved to contemplation and reflection by Yasumasa Morimura's photographic tableaus based on Goya works and his film of himself behaving and acting like Charlie Chaplin's immitation of Adolf Hitler from "The Great Dictator" along and making odd observations ("we are dictators to stones, to tiny animals," etc.). Kalup Linzy's surrealistic soap opera featuring himself as a female character was also hard to believe, but it seemed to cover the basic problems of jealousy, love, and lust with detachment and ridicule.
Inspiring or fun? I liked Candice Breitz's wall of video monitors (Legend) featuring people from Jamaica singing Bob Marley songs. Fred Tomeselli's paintings and Beatriz Milhazes' untitled installation (both at the Mint), Shawne Major's colorful abstract tapestries and Pedro Reyes' Leverage seesaw (both of these last two in the Contemporary Art Center) were among my favorites. I even got to participate in some playing on Leverage, as a bunch of adults balanced one tiny kid for a few minutes up going up and down.

Putin and Arnolfini, Separated at Birth?

It it just my imagination, or does Vladimir Putin bear a strong resemblance to Giovanni Arnolfini? Putin doesn't have the cleft chin, and his eyes aren't so hooded, but look at these images and see what you think.

Two movies available online.

I've put two rather large movie files online for people to enjoy.

The first one I'll mention is the video I took at the World Expo 2008 in Zaragossa, Spain. This is an 18.5 minute film of the large multimedia presentation made each night on the Ebro River. You can watch it here (.mov file 45.1 MB, will stream in most browsers). I found it profoundly moving, like Gorecki's Third Symphony. It contains a good collection of images, and offers some interesting combinations of music and visuals. I believe the people shown from about 5 minutes to 6.5 minutes into it are victims of diseases brought on by environmental contamination.
We saw the show on a Thursday and a Friday night, and there were tremendous crowds of all ages present. I was somewhat impressed that all sorts of families from all over Spain and Europe, even from all over the whole world were coming to see this program. I wonder if a show like this could be presented at one of the Disney theme parks as an evening program before the nightly fireworks. Somehow I can't imagine that sort of thing happening just yet.

The second film I've put up is a sort of slide-show with readings and music I made in 2006 to express my feelings about war. Rather than watch it on-line, if you have space for a 206 MB file on your hard-drive, I suggest you download the film as a .mov file [205.8 MB], which means you should right-click (or hold down the control key as you click, Mac users) on the link to the film. That will bring up a little window in your browser and you can tell the browser to download the linked file). If you try to view it in a browser you'll need to wait about four minutes for it to start playing if you have a fast connection. If your connection is slow I can't guess how long it would take to load it into a browser to play it. It's a 43 minute film.
This film about peace and war tries to create a strong feeling by using music, images of war, and writing about war and peace, some of it from a religious or idealistic perspective about how horrible war is. I used quotations from various books that have informed my opinions about war and combined with images of war. I used many color photographs from World War I and II. You can also see many of the "Disasters of War" sketches by Goya. Most of the quotations are taken from a talk that 'Abdu'l-Baha gave during the summer of 1914, just before/as World War I was starting. The film is certainly PG-13, as there are many scenes of corpses. Some of the stories remind me of the stories my Great-Grandfather told me about his time in France in 1918.

- Eric

Family Art

In our undergraduate program at the university we try to encourage students to take a couple upper-division art courses. When I was in college I can't remember taking any courses that were specifically about art. I had components of art and popular culture as significant topics in many of the courses I did take, but I never took courses like ceramics or photography (I did learn to use a dark room in high school and did some black & white photography then).

Over the past years I've put up some web pages with images of art created by myself, my wife, or our children. There are five pages up now. These are:

A page with some works by myself and Chun-Chih.
A page with some of Arthur's early work (and an abstract oil painting I did in high school)
A page with Sebastian's early drawings.
A page with Arthur's third grade work.
A page with some assorted works by Sebastian, Arthur, and me.

Some of the work is pretty interesting. I like Chun-Chih's versions of the Van Gogh Paintings.

I've just finished making a new web page to show off some of the artwork that Arthur has been doing.  I also gathered up some images from an old page I made in 2000 to show art my sons had done and put those up on the web page.  

The web page gives people access to some very large pictures that include bookmarks made by some of the pre-youth Baha'i children around here last spring. You can print out these bookmarks if you have a color printer, one page on each side, and then have your sheet laminated, and then cut out the bookmarks (or cut them out first before laminating them, or use tape on both sides to self-laminate them).  The bookmarks have quotations from Baha'i scriptures or reported sayings. Check them out.

Reading in preparation for Spain

I’ve been doing some reading in preparation for our trip to Spain, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some reflections on the books I’ve been consulting.

I found Miranda France’s Don Quixote’s Delusions: Travels in Castilian Spain (2001) at the Lincoln Library (call number 914.62 FRA). This book offers an interesting mix a few a different types of narrative. Miranda France is about my age, or maybe a couple years older, and she describes her time in Spain as a university student (in 1987-1988). This part of the book is a personal memoir, and she shares what it was like to be a young person in Spain during this time when Spain was experiencing the post-Franco exuberance. She had an interesting assortment of friends and house mates, and I think her reflections on what these people did and what motivated them is quite good. There is psychological insight and plenty of anecdotes to illustrate both the universal human condition and the particular aspects of life she had at that particular time and place. There are also many chapters about Don Quixote and its author, Cervantes. These are examples of literary criticism and philosophical musings on the meaning of Cervantes. Other chapters of the book describe her travels in Spain, both during her student days and then more recently when she returned a decade after leaving Spain. She’s a good travel writer. Finally, there are chapters and sections in which she explores Spanish history and culture. I found her views to be reasonable and intelligent, and I liked her perspective on history. She is a person who loves Spanish culture and cares about her subject, but she is at the same time critical and analytical. Her life as a student reminded me of my own experiences in many ways. However, she was probably more closely associated with the seedy and underground aspects of Spanish life than most writers on Spanish culture, and this gives her a unique perspective. I highly recommend this book.

Gaudi, a biography, by Gijs Van Hensbergen (Lincoln Library, call number 720.92 GAU) offered me some insight into one of my favorite architects. It was a fine biography, with much attention to the political and economic conditions in Barcelona and more widely in Spain during Gaudi’s life (1852-1926). I was glad to read the defense of both Gaudi as a person and also his architecture, which many people find vulgar, silly, or crackpot (it is not: it is brilliant). Two other Gaudi books were Essential Gaudi (by John Gill, published in 2002, call number 720.92 GAU) and Gaudi (by Ignasi de Sola-Morales, published in 1983, call number 720.92 GAU). The second of these is a fairly straight-forward picture book with a biography and several pages of photographs devoted to each of Gaudi’s projects. I loved the sketches by J. Matamala of what he remembered Gaudi’s ideas were for a skyscraper hotel in New York City (images 142-146, see example posted as part of this blog). The Essential Gaudi had a nice format I would probably use if I were making a book about our upcoming trip to Spain. As you opened the book each two page spread had a text article on the left and a full page photograph on the right. This was a book that paid far more attention to architectural considerations. Both these books were a delight to browse through in anticipation of going to Barcelona and seeing the originals for myself.

The book that gave me the most pleasure was Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (edited by Jerrilynn D. Dodds, published in 1992, call number 709.46). This book contained a catalogue (pages 190-391) of an exhibition given at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The first 189 pages of the book offered well-illustrated essays about the Islamic history and culture and artistic trends during the age of Islam in Spain (mostly 711-1492). I'm trying to get my history straight. The history of Islam in Spain is usually divided into six periods. The initial conquest and the rule of Umayyad Governors runs from 711-756. This is followed by the Umayyad Emirate from 756-929, the Umayyad Caliphate (929-1031), the Taifa Kingdoms (1031-1086), the Almoravid and Almohad rules (1088-1232), and finally the Nasrid Kingdom in Granada (1238-1492).

The best history book I came across was Spain: The Root and the Flower by John A. Crow. I found the third edition, expanded and updated, published in 1985, although the first edition came out in 1963. Crow mixed cultural insight and popular history with the normal accounts of the politics and kings and wars. I liked his opinionated comments on various aspects of Spanish history, and his emphasis on artistic and intellectual developments, and particularly the Spanish literature. This was available in the Lincoln Library, but I got the most recent edition from my university library at call number DP 48 C8 1985.

The book I read to learn about current events in Spain was Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past by Giles Tremlett (both the Lincoln Library and UIS library have this, and the call number at the UIS library is DP 233.5 T74 2007.) This book had some interesting details about Spanish attitudes and popular culture. There was a lot about sex. For example, Spanish men pay for sex more than other Europeans. Miranda France had also commented on the highly visible sex worker business. There were stories about scandals and corruption, and some stories about popular figures like famous Flamenco singers and so forth.

Another art biography I highly recommend is Goya, by Robert Hughes (Call number 759.6 GOY at the Lincoln Library). I like Robert Hughes, and I like Goya. This book helped me to make sense of Goya’s fascination with witches. It also explained to me much about the politics and culture of Spain in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The book is very well illustrated.

Stories of the Spanish Artists until Goya by Sir William Stirling Maxwell (published in 1938, and available in the Lincoln Library at call number 759.6 M46s) gives some background on the artists whose work we’ll be seeing in the art museums. The stories were sometimes interesting. This was a good bedtime book.

For fun, I picked out a 122 year old book from the UIS library, The Story of Spain by Edward Everett Hale and Susan Hale, part of The Story of the Nations series, published in 1886. The call number is DP 68 H16. I don’t think the history was particularly accurate, and the authors' attitudes were very dated, but the book itself offered some historical insight into what Americans or English people might have read about Spain when my great-great grandparents and great grandparents were in their prime. The book concentrates on the very early history of Spain, and legends or myths about its history. The chapter on Ferdinand and Isabella (late 15th century) doesn’t come until page 298, it’s chapter 20 out of 25. The book did offer this advice, “...the student of modern Spanish history must remember all along that Spain is the prey of unceasing partisan dissension....” That seems to be still the case, according to what I read in Tremlett’s book. I've shard a couple illustrations from this old book here in the blog.

Old doodles

I was cleaning up my office area at home, which had been threatened by a recent flood here in the basement, and I found a folder with some old scraps of art and clippings of interesting designs. This was stuff I made or collected between 1974 and 1989.

The first image is from 1974 (or 1973?), and I drew it when I was six years old. It's not really a doodle. It's a fairly serious drawing of a fish in an aquarium. The second image is an abstract doodle from 1981. I liked placing contrasting shadings and shapes around in a scene.

There are two doodles I did in 1987 and 1988. I remember drawing the one about love being true and eternal when I was in East Germany back in the summer of 1988.

The last image is an abstract I made on a Macintosh Plus back in 1986. I've added the color now. I always intended it to have color, but back when I made it you really couldn't do much color on a Macintosh Plus.

A Walk in the Park

We had a few days in late December where the weather was warm, up around 14 to 18 degrees Celsius, so we went out for some walks. The woods are pretty bare this time of year, although the buds are nice to observe. In St. Louis there are more hills than in central Illinois, which makes a stroll more interesting.

We took a hike at the Laumeier Sculpture Park on the south side of St. Louis County. I remember that Jeri and I went for a walk there within a few weeks of our wedding in 1992, so it was probably one of the first places she went for a walk in the woods in America. It had been several years since we last came here, and many of the sculptures were gone.

We stopped at a toy store on the way to the park, and Arthur and I played catch with an orange ball as we interacted with the installations and sculptures.