Inexpensive Art for Your Home

Your homes can be your refuge from the world. You want it to be comfortable yet stylish no matter what your home décor budget. If you watch home make-over shows or talk to an interior designer they might tell you that one great piece of art can be the focal point for the entire room.

The problem with great art is that it is usually not inexpensive. If this has stopped you from hanging anything in your home you may be surprised that beautiful paintings don’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. There are great places to look for inexpensive art and even ways to make your own.

Friends and Family

Do you have an artist in your family? Do you have any friends who paint? Ask them if they’d paint something for your home. They may do it for little money or even for free. My dad is an artist and almost all of the paintings in my home are his work. You could offer to buy the canvas and some supplies in trade.

Friends and family may have art they don’t have up and would be happy to let you use it. You might be surprised what you can find in your parent’s attic. Have a look around in storage areas for forgotten items. If you find something they most likely have forgotten they even own it.

Thrift Stores

Once in a while I like to go around to the thrift stores in my area and have a look at what inexpensive art they have. I often find unique items that can be restored or used as-is for home décor. I have a painting in my living room I found at a thrift store. It looks like an unfinished water scene and I fell in love with it when I found it. It cost me one dollar!

Neighborhood Sales

Don’t forget to check out the rummage and garage sales in your area for inexpensive art. People’s taste in art varies tremendously. People may be trying to get rid of a painting they don’t like but that doesn’t mean you won’t love it. Even if you don’t find a great work of art you may find a beautiful frame you can use later when you do find something you like. Don’t stress out thinking, “What do I like?” You’ll know when you see it. When your eye falls upon something you will either want to grab it and take it home or you barely give it a second glance.

Poster Prints

There are companies that make poster prints of famous paintings. These posters cost the same as any other poster you may have hung in your room as a teenager. I have a great print of a Picasso called “Old Man With Guitar” hanging above my couch. You can go to any retailer that carries frames and find a poster-sized frame. It’s not the same thing as a painting but if you love the picture you’ll feel great every time you look at it.

Along the same lines you can find art on the Internet and print it out. How good they will look will greatly depend on your printer and the quality of the picture you find. I have two prints of my dad’s paintings framed in 8 X 10 frames hanging in my home. You can see the brush strokes and they both look great! Remember when you are searching online to be aware of copyright issues. In most cases if you are printing something out just to hang in your home you are fine. Never reproduce and sell someone else’s artwork without their permission.

Make Your Own

This is something you can do even if you think you don’t have an artistic bone in your body. You may not be able to create a breathtaking landscape but you will be able to produce something pleasing to hang in your home.

Any craft store carries canvas and paint supplies. Decide what colors you want and go get your supplies. You can use brushes or your own fingers if you’d like. When choosing colors choose five or six that you find appealing and that go well together. Look around on the Internet or in magazines for inspiration and have a go at it. Perhaps the hardest part of making your own art is knowing when to stop. If it looks good stop! Over doing it can ruin a great look. Frame it, hang it and enjoy.

You can also leave the artwork up to your young ones. You could make it a fun family project. Spread out an old sheet to protect the floors and have everyone paint with their hands or even their feet. If that doesn’t appeal to you there are other alternatives. Cut potatoes in half and carve a design in them and allow your child to stamp the paint and designs onto the canvas. You can dip strings into the paint and hit the canvas with the wet string. You may end up with a fantastic piece of art as well as a memory to hang on your wall.

You may already own great art that is just waiting to be framed. My daughter loves to finger paint and I have a stack of paintings that is at least six inches thick. I am often surprised to find out how beautiful some of them turned out. You can pick out some of your child’s work and frame them singly or as a collage.

Art and Religion

Art is an important element of a society’s ability to translate its religious belief to its members and to the world. Religion uses verbal arts, music, and pictorial arts in order to preserve its traditions and messages.

Verbal arts, such as myths, are used to explain why a religion has certain beliefs. These beliefs often stem from religious theories of creation and existence. Other verbal arts used to maintain religious timelines and storylines are legends. Legends are stories told and passed down as true accounts of what happened. (Haviland, 2002, pp.394-399). They are intended to support the greatness of a group’s heroes or god. In Ancient Greek society legends about heroes such as Hercules, were told to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of mortals.

Music is also a very important element of religious systems. It is used to unite and identify its members. Music is a very important element in African American religious groups and has developed into a unique style, gospel. The incorporation of traditional African rhythms and harmonies, helped unite this group of people in the south during times of slavery, and gave them a unifying force and power. Gospel was used further to transmit information long distances in the fields, and thus again it was being used as a unifying and communication system. Lyrics in songs also could be used as a way for religions in non-literate cultures to preserve oral histories and mythologies. (Haviland, 2002, pp. 403-406).

Pictorial arts are used as physical representations of religious themes and accounts. Religious art takes on many forms and styles, and reflect the ideologies and mythologies of a society. (Haviland, 2002, pp.406-414). Christian art is based on stories told from the Bible, usually depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, his resurrection, or the Madonna. However pre-Christian symbolism has also been incorporated into these types of paintings that preserve European religious beliefs that pre-date Christianity. These pagan symbols, however, are applied to Christian mythologies. Islamic art, unlike Christian art, does not use figurative themes based on people or animals. This is because portraying humans and animals is seen as a form of idolatry. Therefore they developed a style of art that had an abstract and geometric motif. Words from the Qu’ran are deemed sacred and very important to calligraphy was developed as a beautiful art and used to transmit religious ideologies.

References

Haviland, William A. (2002). Cultural Anthropology. (10th ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers.

Lee, Valerie L., and Searles, Richard T. (2002). Study Guide for the Telecourse Faces of Culture. (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Comparing Cinema and Film with Painting, Literature and Other Arts

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Film and cinema have always been compared to other types of art such as painting or works or literature. Film writer James Monaco makes a clear distinction between films and “other recording arts” while film critic Manny Farber contrasts this view by saying that film is no different than other representational art. 

In James Monaco’s book How to Read a Film, he compares film and cinema with other types of arts such as photography, painting, literature, theater, and music. Monaco makes the argument that film has combined the works of the older arts and is able to create certain images or impressions due to its technology in which the older arts struggle to measure up. While painting and photography are able to capture one moment in time that can captivate a viewer’s attention, film is a reproduction of many images throughout several scenes in the film. Painting had tried to keep up with motion picture of cinema through Cubism, but as cinema developed newer and better technology, photography and painting were never truly able to capture the concept of motion in the same way film has succeeded. As Monaco states, “In a sense, movies simply fulfill the destiny of painting (44)." Movies have been able to make scenes or images come alive and appeal to the viewer through motion and connecting with real situations and feelings in a way in which painting cannot. 

Monaco also goes on to compare film to the world of literature and the novel. He states that while novels are told through the perspective of authors and films through directors, a film’s image can generate views and opinions different than the original intent of the film director. Novels on the other hand are generally shaped by the words, details, and plot that the author has chosen for the novel or work of literature. In addition, Monaco states, “It would be an absurd task for a novelist to try to describe a scene is as much detail as it is conveyed in cinema” (45). Monaco posits the idea that film and cinema stand above and beyond the traditional representational art forms because of its ability to shape the different arts in various way. For example, painting was shaped by film in that it immersed itself more toward the design of the painting and novels focused more on its unique language. 

Theater is the one traditional art form that Monaco compares most closely with film. Film and theatre share many common attributes like the ability to express emotion and make the viewer react to what they are seeing. However, where theatre is only able to use a couple or only a few different sets for different scenes, film is able to rapidly go from one scene or location to another. In addition, film can capture a scene or action in real life and bring it to the projector for an audience to view. Theater can only recreate a scene that has already occurred. The final traditional art form that Monaco discusses is music. Monaco states that music’s advantage over the other arts is that it has the ability to control time. However, as the technology of cinema has progressed, music has become an essential part of film. Music started out in the silent film by being played with a screen of dialogue on it such as in “Birth of a Nation.” This was used to indicate a rise in the action, suspense, or to portray a certain character as good or bad. As cinema got more advanced, music was integrated into film as the director saw fit. The concepts of melody, harmony, and rhythm are able to be successfully expressed in today’s films. Music throughout a cinematic production is now very common as it is used for sound effects, background music, speech, etc. 

Film critic Manny Farber, on the other hand, treats film like any other art. He categorizes film into termite art and white elephant art. Farber desired and preferred termite art over white elephant art because of termite art’s ability to create a moment in time without glamorizing it (Farber 02). Farber enjoyed looking at film for its simplicity and without dramatizing it. Farber preferred termite art for its ability to allow the viewer to interpret the scene or picture for itself without leaving a certain message; leaving it up to the viewer what he or she wants to take away from the film. He has particular distaste for films he categorizes as “white elephant art.” Farber describes these types of films as ones in which they are impersonal and try to be masterpieces that break away from common films. 

As a critic he treats film as just another art form because it can be categorized into termite art and white elephant art. Film can be like any other art such as a novel, newspaper column, or painting in that it too has the ability to be simple enough to capture the reader or viewer’s attention to be wrapped up in the moment. In addition, elephant art in films and other arts is common because they can both loose sight of the original intent of the art work. They become fixated on too much detail and as Farber calls it, “clogging weight-density-structure polish amalgam associated with self-aggrandizing masterwork” (Farber 02). 

Both film writers and critics James Monaco and Manny Farber write about film and cinema in its relation to the other representational arts. However they each look at film differently. Monaco treats film as a unique art head and shoulders above the traditional representational art forms of the past. By comparing film to the other arts he demonstrates the wide range of possibilities and abilities that film has and how great an impact it can have on a viewer. On the other side of the spectrum, Farber treats film as just another piece of artwork which can be separated into the distinction of white elephant art or termite art. Through this class distinction he is able to separate a truly great film as one of simplistic style and personal from one that tries to be a masterpiece but fails in the process.

How to Have a Baby Boy

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Dreaming of a blue nursery followed by many years of cars, trucks and all things creepy crawly? There is no shortage of information on choosing your baby's gender before conception, from simple dietary changes to time consuming charts and graphs. The one thing to remember as you delve further and further into the chromosome battle is that many theories can contradict one another, nothing is foolproof and all methods have yet to be proven. Every bit of advice must be taken with a grain of salt (especially when reading this article- see dietary recommendation below) and a physician's opinion should always be sought before attempting anything that could affect your body and/or health.

What dietary recommendations are there prior to trying to conceive a baby boy?

The majority theorize that in order to have a boy you should plan on following this manly menu: salty foods, red meats, pickles, olives, fish, eggs peas, sweet corn, soda bread, figs, apricots, raisons, dried prunes, beans, avocado, zucchini and mushrooms. Try to keep your diet anti-acidic and drink 2-3 cups of green tea starting the day your period is over. Get hubby involved by having him drink a strong cup of coffee about a1/2 hour before bed to make the "little guys" more active. (Nothing is mentioned if the "little girls" daintily refuse such an obnoxious push.)

What does a woman's body condition have to do with determining a baby's gender?

Many theorize gender determination has different aspects such as temperature, cervical mucus and a woman's vaginal PH at the time of conception. It is recommended that a woman record her temperature every morning (before doing anything else as this would change the results) to determine ovulation and cervical mucus every day for at least three cycles. The standard is that the most promising day for conceiving a boy is the higher the temperature (the day of ovulation) and the increased, looser cervical mucus. One thing that is supposed to help this is to drink three glasses of grapefruit juice a day from the day your last period stops and it will increase your cervical discharge. (I did not include this in the dietary recommendations as it seemed to contradict the "less acidic" theory.)

What do positions during sex and the timing of intercourse have to do with the conceiving of a baby boy?

The Y-bearing (male) sperm swim faster then the X-bearing (female) sperm, therefore it is theorized that if you attempt intercourse on the day that you ovulate, the "boys" will reach the egg first. It is also speculated that the "rear-entry" position during intercourse deposits sperm nearer the cervix because of the deeper penetration and gravity. Another age old (and sexist?) myth states that rough sex makes boys, as girls prefer to materialize from a slower gentler approach. Many also state that if a woman orgasms before the man, there is more of a chance at conceiving a boy. One popular method claims that men should refrain from ejaculation completely before the day of conception increasing the sperm count while another says that this actually increases the percentage of female sperm.

What is the "Chinese Birth Calendar" and how does it enhance my chances of having a baby boy?

The Chinese Birth Calendar is based on the Chinese Lunar Calendar. It is believed to have an accuracy of 99%. Based on your age at the time and the actual month of conception, you can supposedly predict what gender your child will be. It is said that it originated from a Royal Tomb in China with the original copy being kept in The Institute of Science in China.

There are also many other methods for gender determination that are more involved. They are based on things such as phases of the moon, astrology, the sex of your previous children etc and a few that combine many of these aspects. A lot of these resources are free and can be found listed on many pregnancy related websites.

All of the myths and tips outlined in these articles are nothing more then just that. Although trying for a boy might be serious business to some, everyone interested should not lose sight of the fact that in most cases, it still remains a 50/50 chance. When researching the different theories and methods, remember that the joy is in trying and the fun is in guessing. Keep in mind that a baby blue base-coat on your nursery walls can always be used as a beautiful accent if a pretty pastel pink needs to be introduced.