Campbell’s Soup Cans…A Heartfelt Icon of American History

Andy Warhol was a great artist in the 1960’s. A great influence on the “Pop Art movement”, his paintings of Marilyn Monroe were iconic then and are still widely recognizable now. Besides his colorful, bright, and psychedelic works, however, there were the paintings and works of art that he composed that stood out the most; simple pictures of everyday objects. This was a completely new turn on art yet a very new concept to be put forth. As writers write about what interests them, or “what they know”, Warhol put this to work on canvas by painting some of his simplest, yet most effective, unforgettable works of art: the “Campbell’s Soup Cans” collection.
As a child, Warhol ate a bowl of soup everyday. The Campbell’s company was already famous and an important, valid part of many American homes, and had been for nearly a century, by the time he decided to produce paintings of various flavors of the company’s soup cans, but the collection shed new light and focus to the soup itself, as well as to the concept of popular culture artwork. It was marveled ar that such a basic idea, with an ordinary design, could provoke such deep and intense feelings amongst people, and could become so widely renowned. A painting of a soup can could be turned into a collection of thirty-two, and set up to look like a grocery store isle, something so often taken for granted, only to still be highly famed and remembered years later, with commemoration contests, exhibits, and memorabilia set up to honor it.
When I look at any of the given Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, I feel warm inside. It’s a happy, nice, and thoughtful feeling that provokes memories of childhood and simplicity. I am not alone in my feelings, as I am sure many others feel the same as I do, judging by and explaining the popularity of the collection. It allows people to be happy, to understand, to think, and to feel, all with a basic depiction of an item that they typically would not take the time to think twice about, and it is because of this that the simple portraits truly are a work of art.

The Grand Finale...?

So...Final blog post. You know, I've wanted to start one of these things forever and just never got around to it. And I never really used it as much as I meant to. But it is pretty cool. I think I'm actually gonna keep it. It's weird posting papers and stuff on a blog, and it's extra work and effort, but I've really enjoyed posting random thoughts and stuff on here, and getting to know the class. The cool part about this is seeing people "outside" of the classroom, and getting to critique their work. It's nice to see how other people write their papers or think of topics, especially on creative subjects. It allows us to admire what people think, work on, and do. So many classes go by where you don't even know the people who sit next to you, but with these blogs, I feel like I've gotten to know a lot of people and made many new, and nice, acquaintances. And I get to admire them. The best part of it is that I know that people like Colin, Ian, and Tiffany are brilliant, and people like Jordyn and Allison and Raquel are interesting, and other people in our class are talented and really cool. I do honestly hope to have future classes with these people, or to at least keep in touch with most of them. I've seen that blogging allows people to see different sides to others they normally wouldn't expect. The shy person might be really funny and creative, and blogging allows him or her to showcase his/her talents. It's a strange phenomena, but I like it...Kind of (when I have the time for it, though it is pretty cool knowing the world can read what you write).

If I could redo any assignment it probably be the one on Facebook and teachers I did; I would go back and proofread :-P

A Spiteful Adulation

The poem at the top (which I forgot to post earlier in the semester) is one I wrote myself a few years ago. I figured nothing could be more personal to me than my own feelings, which also relate to those of my friends. While I look back, I don't know what I was thinking at the time, or what about. But it must've meant a lot to me or I wouldn't've written it down. The colors I chose related to the feel of the words, red and bold for anger, softer colors for softer or less important words. The poem is basically about love and hate and emotion, and how sometimes feelings can't be conveyed by words or simple concepts, but are dependent on oxymorons.

I believe that the colors help the emotion show even more, and convey the feelings of the words.

To view the poem, click the picture to make it bigger...

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Book Trailer

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, is a philosophical book about Quality, life, existentialism, and general thoughts. It's a very deep book, though somewhat hard to read. And of course, it does have a story behind it, of which I won't go into detail in case anyone decides to read it. But anyway, the main story basically discusses a motorcycling trip across the country that the author takes with his son, Chris, and a couple close friends, John and Sylvia. This video is one I made awhile back for a class, and as I was thinking about what kind of a book trailer I could do, I realized the video I already had was a perfect advertisement, and great for getting into the feel of the book. I obviously don't own the rights to any of the pictures or music, but did remix the songs and layout everything myself. All of the pictures are real pictures from the trip, pictures of the same path traveled by other people, pictures of the people involved, pictures of painting, books covers, parts of nature, diners eaten at, etc, that relate to the book and the trip that was taken. There are pictures of the author as he looked then and in recent times, a recent picture of his son Chris, and paintings by a woman they visited along the way (Gennie DeWeese), and many other things that make the book more enjoyable after you've read it, but that could possibly get you into the feel of WANTING to read it. It took me awhile to truly appreciate this work of literature, but when I finally learned to, it was held near and dear to my heart. When making this video, I wanted to try to do justice to the points of the book. Quotes and such don't work for me when it comes to these things, as I believe that the best quotes can come from reading the book itself, and experiencing it for yourself. I picked songs that relate to the topic of insanity that is avid throughout the entire novel, and tried to get the video to make the audience feel as though they are looking at a scrapbook or were part of these trip, or had known these people personally. I hope you enjoy it and that it will lead you into if not reading the book, at least reading ABOUT it and what it discusses.

A websites that can be helpful to research this topic is MOQ.org, which discusses the Metaphysics of Quality and has message boards devoted to figuring out the meaning and understanding behind Pirsig's story, which is now considered to be the greatest philosophy book of modern times. The constant changing of speaker and pattern tend to make the book confusing, and so reading up on it before actually reading it does work wonders into getting through it more easily and swiftly, though it does remove some of the surprise aspect.

"The Day the Music Died"

They played La Bamba on MyTv 20 today... It was nice to see it... watching movies like That Thing You Do and such always gets me thinking and makes me feel...not so much happy, but whole... and so I thought about this movie intently, especially after realizing the mention that Buddy Holly, one of my favorite musicians, as well as The Big Bopper, died along with Ritchie Valens, and wondered about how the world must have felt that day...another plane crash took place with civilians, so it was kind of overshadowed...but nowadays, we lose one semi-popular musician and are saddened for a long time to be...Imagine losing three... and it made me wonder about Donna, Ritchie's girlfriend..and what happened to her, seeing her slink into her chair while still a high schooler, hearing that the high school sweetheart she would marry (in a time when such things happened), had just died. She is the one that the song "Oh Donna" is written for, just as "Peggy Sue" was a real person as well. They all died so young but their music is still popular and influenced a whole generation... But they left behind these people, who we know somewhat through the influence popular songs, but through personal means...

And I'm rambling...

So, long story short,

I looked it up, and found a video, of the two girlfriends. And I guess it makes clear two popular sayings that need to be experienced to be understood...

"Life goes on" but "Memories last a lifetime".