Lauren Bon ( Research Artist) and My Experience to Farmlab

Lauren Bon was born in Los Angeles, California in 1963. Lauren has a bachelors and a masters degree in architecture. In 2005, Lauren Bon created her most important project called "Not a Cornfield". The project " Not a Cornfield" is a 32 acre of land between Chinatown and Lincoln Heights.  Lauren Bon has also created Farmlab. Farmlab is committed to the preservation of living things. Farmlab was born out of Not a Cornfield and the South Central Farm. Last Friday, I got the opportunity to go to Farmlab to experience and see everything myself.

The South Central Farm was there between 1992 and 2006. It was a 13 acre community garden. It was an urban farm and community garden. The south central farm was considered the largest urban farms in the  United States. However, the South Central Farm started facing money problems, so Lauren Bon worked behind the scenes to come up with a sustainable solution to the immediate South Central crisis.

In 2006, the Annenberg Foundation decided to move the remaining trees off the South Central Farm to Farmlab in order to save the trees as the developer clears the land upon the Farm operated. Farmlab has helped keep living plants, and everything is due to Lauren Bon. Lauren Bon goal is to keep nature alive and not let the earth destroy all the living trees, plants, flowers, and seeds. 

Lauren Bon has created at Farmlab four Junker Gardens. These transformed vehicles combined automobiles with agriculture in order to produce contemporary sculptures. In these vehicles, they grow vegetables, herbs and flowers in the engine cavities, cabs, flatbeds, and trunks of scrapped rides. Fountains and fish sometimes appear. This Mercedes Benz car was exhibited at Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2008. Farmlab has also created more cars as if you went to farmlab, you can see the newest car by the entrance. When I went to Farmlab there was only one car by the entrance as you can see in the picture on the bottom. I think this is a very creative way of preserving live. However, I couldnt take pictures of me with the car because I went by myself and no one was there to take me a picture.

Farmlab is located in a warehouse acroos the street from the former Not A Cornfield project site on the grounds of the Los Angeles State Historic park known as the Cornfield, and next to Los Angeles River. High above farmlab Baker street entrance, a neon sign quoting renowned sociologist Manuel Castells reads, " Another city is Possible". This is a picture of me on back of this quote.

The northern side of the state park is called Conherenge. This anabolic sculpture was created in 2006 by Bon and was made from a combination of Not A Cornfield bales, native seeds, water, natural process and some human tending. Has you can see, these are the most recent pictures of the Northern side of the park. This was the most fascinating view at farmlab because for me it had two views. One view was Los Angeles City, but the other view was the view of the plants and flowers.

One of Farmlab projects involves collecting run off water from industrial warehouse roofs, cleaning it, and then using the water various urban interventions. The picture on the top shows a bag full of water being conserved from the rain.  One of the ladies incharge of farm land explained to me that they have this big containers where the water fall down too, they cleaned it and then they use it wisely to fresh the plants and trees from farmland.

Lauren Bon also uses solar energy to give sun energy to the plants. As you can see in the picture in the top, Bon has this blue solar energy that reflects sun energy back to the plants.

                                         Strawberry Flag Project

Lauren Bon and Jonathan Sherin have created a project at the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration Health Care Center. The purpose of this project is to fundraise, the project has created a raised strawberry field in the shape of the American Flag. Veterans tend the strawberries, transplanted from abandomed fields, and sell preserves they make from second harvest fruit.The purpose of this project is to promote recovery and reintegration for the veterans. It also is helping revitalize a campus that housed recovering Civil War soldiers and now serves the more than 500,000 veterans in the Los Angeles area.

The flag is about the size of a football field, holds red-berried plants growing in rows of raised white pipes in a ground coconut mixture. Reclaimed trees and other plants outline the flag's blue upper left corner, creating an open-air teahouse, where visitors can sit and drink tea, relax or meditate. Bon says that this sculpture is to promote resources that support patriotism. This project was created in June 26, 2010.



                                  (This is a video that talks about the The Strawberry Flag Project.)

This are Lauren Bon two most important projects she has created all her life. Lauren Bon Bon created Farmlab to preserve all living things and keeping them from dissapearing from the planet. Lauren Bon is inspiring because it not only inspires us to care for nature but to take actions to preserve plants. Going to farmlab was a great experience because I realize that there is people that care about the preservation of living nature.

Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Nogushi is famous for garden design and sculpture. He is also one of the most famous designer of Bauhaus and Modern Classic Design Furniture. When Nogushi was in Japan for six months, he use to work with clay and study gardens. In Japan, Nogushi realized land could be scultured and the public could see it. One of Nogushi famous furniture is the coffee table. This is a coffee table where any person can have a cup of coffee together.

To create this coffee table, Nogushi used two identical wooden elements, one that is reversed and theother one is pointing down. The color of the table is a natural brown, and it used wood from the trees planted from the earth to create this coffee table. In the top, it has a glass tabletop resting, where people can put their coffee. This coffee table is an average size, it can be for two people at the most. Nogushi describes this furniture table as one of his best furniture design. He also says his furniture ranging around few hundred dollars. Not only public can see Nogushi furniture, but they can also sit, and touch his furniture.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin is famous for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Lin was 21 years old when she attended Yale University in 1982 and created the Veterans Memorials Wall. Lin was studying to become an architect and as a project she decided to design the Veteran Memorial Wall. This is one of Lin's most memorable earth works involving architecture and many different designs to construct this wall.

The Veterans Memorial Wall is a V-shape wall made out of black stones. The Veterans Memorial Wall is in the shape of an open book ready to read the names of the 58,000 dead soldiers. The names of all the dead soldiers are inscribed in polish black granite. The wall itself was made from black granite from Bangalore, India.The walls also reflect the images of the trees, people visiting the walls and more.  In order to read the names of all the soldiers that died in the Vietnam war, people have to stand below the horizon which is around six feet under. The wall is 246 feet and nine inches long. The walls are sunk into the ground with the earth behind them. The color of the trees are green mix with some yellow. The walls look like they are surrounded around a circle of trees.

The other picture of the Veterans Memorial Wall taken from the satellite. The Veterans Memorial Walls are surrounded by the landscape of the earth. There is a total of 58, 267 written names in the wall. The names of all these soldiers are alphabetically in order, the size of the letters of the soldiers names are .53 inches and .015 inches in depth. All the names of the soldiers were written by a computerized typesetting process. This is a earth project that captured my attention by Lin because it combines nature with memory together into a piece of art.

Quyn and Dee Video

 

On Wednesday April 6, 2011 me and my new best friend Quin went to Huntington Beach to do some exploration. We explored the color of the water, the sand, the things around the beach. The color of the sky, the movement of the birds and the colors. It was exciting to record this video because this was my first time recording the beach. I was so into it that I lost my keys. The most important part I got from this video was, I was able to explore the planet in which I live on and I was able to take a deep look at the colors. I felt to relaxed, and not in a rush. I was able to see all the different things that exist around the planet and the real colors inside. For example, we all think the sand is brown, but in reality the sand has many mix colors in it. I saw black, brown, gold, white, and all these different colors. The water of the ocean is not blue, I saw brown, green, white, gold. This water is so polluted, it makes me sad to see how were destroying this planet with our own chemicals. The sand also had oil in it. We should go to the beach and take a look on how were destroying this planet. That is why it is good to take an exploration around the earth, that way we wont ignore what we want to ignore. I learned a lot on Wednesday and I hope some of you go to the beach and explore the deepness of everything.

New Artist to Research ( Scott Blake)

Hello everyone my name is Dellanira Castaneda and I would like to talk about an artist that really interest me and I definitely understand its work alo't better. As you all know, I wasn't very interested in Toni Dove, I just thought her work was a little bit to confusing and I didn't really admire her. So, Glenn has giving me a second chance to present someone of my interest and that is Scott Blake.



Scott Blake is famous for creating a series of artwork that involve the use of bar codes to create artwork. His work as been shown in many galleries around the world. His work as also appeared in magazines such as The New York Times, FHM, and Adbusters. Blake uses everyday images to create his art. Blake uses bar codes as tools to create images. Blake has made more than thirty digital portraits using bar codes. Blake has created the images of Elvis using the bar codes from Elvis music CD's. He has used Bruce Lee and Marilyn Monroe bar codes from their movie DVDs to create their portraits.

As you can see, this is one of Scott Blake's portrait using bar codes from Elvis CDS. It is very interesting to see all the bar codes Blake used to create this portrait. I tried doing some research on how many bar codes he has used a total of 940 bar codes to create this portrait.

This is Marilyn Monroe portraits using bar codes. This portrait was created in  August 22, 2003. It uses a total of 1,944 bar codes to create this image. You can click on the bar-codes and can see and hear Marilyn Monroe video and CDDs clips.

 This is Bruce lee portrait involving the use of bar codes from Lee's DVDs to create his portrait. You can also scan Lee's ba rcodes to see some clips form their videos. This is an 8 feet portrait of the Chinese artist. The mosaic titles are arranged in a zig-zag pattern to break focus like a shock wave from a punch.This portrait was created in May 23, 2007. It uses around 2,560 bar codes to create this portrait.

 This is Madonna portrait. For this portrait Scott Blake used the cover images instead of the bar codes from her music CD's.  This image was created in  December 3, 2001. Blake used about 10,000 CD covers to create this portrait.

This portrait was created in September 27, 1999 using a total of 7,776 bar codes. This portrait was composed from all the books Oprah published. Oprah Winfrey is an American television host, and has a talk show. She is one of the richest African American from the 20th century.

Scott Blake created this portrait of Jesus using his first refined bar code program. The titles look like real bar codes, but the half tone goes beyond regular density patterns. He also created a scannable bar code signature in the left side in the corner, using the UPC lines from a Pepsi two liter. This portrait was created in  April 9, 1999 and he has used a total of 940 bar codes to create this portrait.

Unfortunately, Blake does not make enough money to pay his bills. He also has a part time making shirts and other accessories with the images of bar codes. This is a way he could make so extra money to pay his bills. His art work can cost from one dollar to one hundred dollars. Lately in the 2011 Blake has created symbols that also scanned.

Blake as also created landscapes using real bar codes cut from packaging to depict flowers.

If you people are interested in knowing more about Scott Blake work, you can visit his page at
http://www.barcodeart.com/artwork/netart/index.html.


I would like to show my audience some video that shows how bar codes can be readable just by using your i phone.
http://www.barcodeart.com/artwork/videos/index.html


It's very interesting to see how you can use bar codes to create images. Scott Blake work should be recognized everywhere because bar codes are part of our daily life. These portraits were the most important portraits I found because they were one time important in the past and they are also important in the present. I believe that Blake creations are considered art because their a creation using something so simple. I want you people to look at his portraits and see the patterns of the bar codes.
                                              Thank You