Wedding Day Savings

A little strategizing can go a long way when trying to cut down on spending for the big day. Invitations, flowers, and music can cost a small fortune but by making some adjustments to these elements you can have an elegant wedding without breaking the bank.

The Invitation is the first taste your guests will get of the type of wedding to expect. Formal weddings will have the formal invitation and a more laid back wedding will have an informal invitation to reflect the setting and mood of the day. When ordering the stationary you should keep in mind how many invitations you need, order half of the number of guests with an extra 10-15 to provide for the single guests and any mistakes you make and maybe a few extra envelopes just incase. It is more costly to reorder another batch rather then order an extra 10 or so, remember the minister and the wedding party receives an invitation also.

Order all of your wedding stationary together, decide if you are going to order your placement cards and thank you cards also, this will probably get you a discount and it will save on the proofing. If you have any special features on the Invitations such as shells, feathers or ribbon buy it and do it yourself ask your family or friends to help, this could save you a couple of hundred dollars on labor. Keep in mind that using different color print can cost extra contrasting colors can look good but bump up the price, you can achieve the same effect by using different shades of color of the card its being printed on, maybe a gold print on a pale gold or yellow card can be just as stunning or take a few lessons in calligraphy and hand write the invitations adding a special touch.

The Facts about Flowers

Flowers that are in season cost less than flowers that are not, Orchids cost more than roses these are general facts, but did you know that flowers cost 20 – 30% more around the holidays including Mothers day, Valentines day, Easter and Christmas keep this in mind when considering a holiday wedding date.

Also low centerpieces cost less than high centerpieces so consider using a mixture of both, make sure to add luscious foliage to the center pieces this has a stunning effect and will cut the cost of extra flowers. Take advantage of the candles and other accessories offered by the reception venue, as it is a lot cheaper than hiring candles and extras from an outside company.

Do not over do it on flowers for the church. The church is usually presented beautifully enough on its own and you will be there for less than an hour so spend your money on the reception area and center pieces, as guests will be there for up to 5 hours.

Make your own table overlays instead of renting them. Ask a sewing relative to help. You can create some beautiful effects using organza or silk. The bridesmaid bouquets can consists of several large blooms that are in season such as peonies in spring and hydrangeas in summer and add some pretty foliage, this will cut the cost of lots of expensive flowers.

This is okay for the bridesmaids but do not skimp on the bridal bouquet, this bouquet will be captured in all the wedding photos so each time the bride glances at that framed photo of her special day she should see the flowers she always wanted in her hands.

Merry Music

This will be a reflection of your own personal choice; the cost will involve the number of musicians and the number of playing hours. Obviously a 12-person band will cost more than a stringed quartet. Once you decide on the type of music you want you need to decide how long you require the musicians there is usually a minimum number of hours they will play so decide if you wand to use them for the hour long ceremony and the pre reception cocktails as well. The number of musicians you require also bump up the price so make sure you only have what you need, sometimes musicians in the band can play an instrument also and if the reception area is small or if the acoustics are good you can cut down on some of the musicians in the band, this will lower the cost.

Consider using a DJ instead this would cost about $500 – $600 compared to the band which could set you back between $1000 and $1500 depending on the amount of musicians and how long they will be playing. Don’t be afraid to shop around you can find a cheaper band in your local collage costing half the price of the pro band, be sure to hear them play first, maybe go and see them playing a gig and if you like them why not hire them.

Where To Find A Superman Returns Poster?

Since the introduction of the internet it has become increasingly easy to find posters of almost anything and with so many internet stores around you will be sure to find a superman returns poster at a great price.

Where Can I Find a Celebrity Poster?

If you prefer to go shopping rather than trying to find one on the internet a great store in the USA is called Poster Planet. You will be able to find a celebrity poster and a superman returns poster at this store and they will also be able to deliver.
Poster Planet’s available categories include that of: Audrey Hepburn, Batman, The Beatles, Bruce Lee, Buffy and Angel, Celebrity, Elvis, Harry Potter, James Bond, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Superman Returns Tim Burton, and more.

Another popular location which is a good idea to check out if you are looking for a celebrity poster is Celebrity Wonder, which offers posters of every possible celebrity you could think of. Also, their posters are available in different sizes and styles, so you can basically customize your poster to however you want it to look.

Another available option is that of All Posters which is our highly recommended choice, where you can choose from a selection of over 30,000 posters. Their online store allows you to quickly and easily browse through the incredibly vast and varied selections that they have to offer, and their most popular categories include that of: movies, music, sports, collage, vintage, photography, and film. There is also a customer service center available on their website, in case you have any questions that you would like to ask before purchasing one of their items. This can be incredibly useful, especially considering how quickly they will be able to respond to you over the internet.

Most posters come in all shapes and sizes and it has been known for posters to be custom made to fit an entire wall. They can also be framed or laminated to protect them.The great thing about celebrity posters and Superman Returns posters is that they are relatively inexpensive and can be found very easily.

A Brief History of Pop Art in Britain and America

After the Second World War there followed a huge transitional period across Europe and the United States. Major reconstruction was the order of the day across Europe and, slowly, an increasing prosperity and abundance was enjoyed by the populous in these territories. It was the dawn of a new era, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that the emerging “consumer” society gave rise to a demand in goods that were simply unobtainable until then.

British pop art can trace its roots back to the mid 1950s. A small independent group comprising notable artists at that time together with critics in the art world put together an exhibition which was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956. This exhibition was a focus on the topic of cheap consumer products and the role that they played in modern life. Although it didn’t seem like it then, the exhibition was a major step forward in the art world and a huge departure from what had gone before it. The erstwhile critic, Lawrence Alloway (1926-1992) hailed it as the birth of something new and in 1958 he christened this distinctive style of art as “Pop Art”.

Key figures in the British pop art scene that followed were Richard Hamilton (b. 1922) whose work depicted cars, pin-up models and electric appliances, amongst others. Peter Blake (b. 1932), on the other hand, concentrated on comic strips and pop singers while the magazine collector Eduardo Paolozzi (b. 1924) produced impressive collage prints by recycling and integrating old advertisement material with comic-strip images.

As for the US, during the 1950s the art world was dominated by “Abstract Expressionism”. It was until the early 1960s when art critics and American artists alike began to embrace Pop Art and give this new style of art their own inimitable American “take”. In 1962, an exhibition entitled “New Realists” was held at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. This was ground-breaking in America, not least because the exhibition featured work from artists including Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), Jim Dine (b. 1935) and James Rosenquist (b. 1933). Of these, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Oldenburg went on to become key figures on the pop art world. Warhol became a household name.

Indeed, Warhol’s fame elevated in 1962 after his “Campbell’s Soup Cans” work was produced and featured in separate works – firstly as individual “cans” and then the same cans aligned in immaculate rows. Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, possibly the biggest 60s female icons at the time, were also given the “Warhol treatment” in which he silk screened their images, altered the colours and reproduced them in repeated patterns.

Roy Lichtenstein was very much a “comic-strip” artist and produced masses of works using imagery from comics. Starting out in 1960, he painted vastly-inflated images of comic-strip frames formed from the dots of colour newsprint. During the same year, Oldenburg set about carving his own niche in the pop art world, creating large, painted plaster sculptures of sandwiches and cakes ! These were soon followed by huge plastic appliances that were softened to allow them to give a distinctive “droop”. All of it was designed explore the nature of “consumer culture” that was sweeping the nations on both sides of the Atlantic.

With mass consumer commercialism on the rise at an alarming pace (and seemingly with no end in sight) “Pop Art” remains very much alive and is perhaps even more poignant and thought-provoking today as it was even in the mid twentieth century.

Clayton Brothers Exhibitions and Paintings at Saatchi-gallery

Rob Clayton was born on 1963 in Dayton, currently lives and works in Pasadena and Christian Clayton was born on 1967 in Denver, currently lives and works in Valencia. Los Angeles artists Rob and Christian Clayton are brothers, collaborators, and the best of friends. Collectively they work as the Clayton Brothers, producing dynamic, improvisational, yet purposeful and humane paintings, installations and mixed-media works on paper. The Clayton Brothers’ approach to art-making is a collaborative process: one brother begins a painting, then hands it off to the other, then back again, and so on. Their art is narrative, autobiographical, uncanny and intuitive, culled from the secret language of a shared childhood. Rather than nostalgic musings about youth, the Clayton Brothers’ recollections of the past are revealed through a twisted lens of adulthood. At once epic and intimate, the Clayton Brothers’ layered paintings become stories where the matrix of two psyches – independent, but related – weave together elements of memory and the subconscious using the seemingly innocuous – the TV dinner, the toothbrush, the dastardly squirrel- as metaphors and messengers.For brothers Rob and Christian Clayton collaboration is more than a process: the concept of symbiosis resonates through every aspect of their paintings and installations. In a practice devoid of ego and restraint, the Clayton brothers develop intense compacted narratives on an intuitive basis. Rob and Christian Clayton seldom work on the same canvas at the same time, or discuss of their projects during making. Playing off their unspoken synergy, they take turns inventing, adding to, and editing each piece, propelling their ‘stories’ through spontaneous improvisation. Entwining their independent approaches, styles, and palettes, their works operate as co-authored epics, fusing the concept of self with the communal.

Working from their Californian high street studio, the Clayton brothers draw inspiration from their immediate environment, incorporating local businesses, neighbourhood regulars, and snippets of overheard conversations as subjects for their paintings. Composing their pieces conjunctively, motifs, gestures, places, and figures reoccur within different works, creating inter-linked dramatic scripts. Set on collaged canvases, the physical layering of their surfaces reflects their condensed tableaux. Approaching painting as a visual representation of pure energy, everyday scenes explode in vortexes of blinding colour, animated movement, and product placement, giving the effect of viewing every frame of a film simultaneously. Through presenting a locality, the Clayton brothers relate the personal to the global. Offering a vision of America-as-it-is, they celebrate and share all its diverse, spectacular, and solitary splendour.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2006

• Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Pasadena

• The Armory Show, Bellwether Gallery, New York

• Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison

• Bellwether Gallery, New York

• Wishy Washy, Bellwether Gallery, New York

2004

• Art Statements, Clayton Brothers, Art Basel Miami

• I Come From Here, Mackey Gallery, Houston

2003

• Six Foot Eleven, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles

2002

• Candy Lackey, Roq La Rue Gallery, Seattle

2001

• Green Pastures, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles

Conclusions:

Rob and Christian Clayton seldom work on the same canvas at the same time, or discuss of their projects during making. Playing off their unspoken synergy, they take turns inventing, adding to, and editing each piece, propelling their ‘stories’ through spontaneous improvisation. Entwining their independent approaches, styles, and palettes, their works operate as co-authored epics, fusing the concept of self with the communal.

What to Do Next…

If you want any information about Clayton Brothers or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/clayton_brothers.htm

Selected Jeppe Hein Exhibitions and Paintings at Saatchi-gallery

Jeppe Hein’s works address us individually; though, importantly, we might not have asked them to. Hein delights in apparently serendipitous events, suspending common sense laws of cause and effect and conjuring up scenarios in which, in direct response to our presence, seemingly sentient behaviour is coaxed from inanimate things.

selected GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2005

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

MCA, Chicago

2004

Wohnseifer / Hein, Union Projects, London

Moving Parts, Kunsthalle Graz / Museum Jean Tinguely Basel

Performative Installation, Siemens 2004, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig

A Secret History of Clay: From Gauguin to Gormley, Tate Liverpool

Gegen den Strich, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

Quicksand, De Appel, Amsterdam

What did you expect?, Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels

2003

Hein, Schellberg, Wohnseifer, Schnittraum, Köln

The straight or crooked way, Royal Collage of Art, London

Biennial of Ceramic in Contemporary Art, Albisola

Auf eigene Gefahr, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Performative Installation, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig

2002

Ingrepp, Uppsala Kunstmuseum, Uppsala

I promise it`s political, Museum Ludwig, Köln

Fuzzy, Galleria Minini, Brescia

Inside / Outside, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig

Hell, neugerriemschneider, Berlin

No Return. Positions from the Collection Haubrok, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach

2001

Changes possible, Kiel

Biennale di Venezia

Arbeit, Essen, Angst, Kokerei Zollverein, Essen

Frankfurter Positionen 2001, Frankfurt

Strategies against Architecture II, Pisa

Neue Welt, Frankfurter Kunstverein

Take off, Arhus Kunstmuseum

In some of his pieces he articulates a dialogue between the work itself, the person encountering it and the gallery space in which it is sited – though this is a conversation for which one is wholly unprepared. Works of this kind imply a wry relationship both to the Minimalist sculpture of the 1960s and to those forms of institutional critique that sought to question the authority of the museum or gallery space. Yet Hein’s practice does not really fit either tradition – the mode of address and playful tone is at odds with, for example, phenomenological interpretations of Minimalist sculpture, in which the viewer participated in the work but as a relatively abstract presence.

The other wall shows what I chose to create in the end. With this exhibition I’ve been thinking about the gallery’s situation, and how it presents and represents art. How artists can go into an exhibition space and use it to stage their art. My job has been to find out how I, with the room as frame, can make my work function best, while maintaining a relationship with the room itself.

what to Do Next…

Read more Articles about Jeppe Hein http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jeppe_hein.htm

Artist Dash Snow’s Art Work and Paintings at the Saatchi Gallery

Dash Snow uses the sensational story of cannibal and self-style messiah Daniel Rakowitz as an inspiration for his installation. Drug den accoutrements of cheap leather sofa, potted plant, satanic medallion, and snake skin boots are compiled in shrine-like effigy, rendering a portrait of a monster as a sad, pathetic, ridiculous cliché. Piled in the well-worn seat of pot-head immobility, these relics of evil are transformed to impotent and empty mementos. Accompanied by a newspaper clipping detailing bizarre court revelations, Snow’s installation examines the fine line between banality, insanity, and sheer terror.

Dash Snow photography becomes a way of engaging with environment and memory. Each snapshot captures a place, time, and emotion, freeze-framing the individual components of everyday experience, mapping out the compilation of an identity. Using a Polaroid camera for its instantaneous results and association as keep-sakes, the familiar format of Snow’s photos replicates the sentiments of his images: cheap, disposable, and plebian mementos become humble evidence of discarded beauty.

Snow’s photographs explore personal existence as a periphery to globalised culture. Presenting an unabridged account of his marginalised lifestyle, Snow’s often uncomfortable images paint an intimate portrait where topical issues such as sex, drugs, poverty, and anti-social behaviour are confronted from a frank position of personal participation. Translated through the generic quality of his medium, Snow’s photos convey the disoriented fragments of memory as voyeuristic observation, conceiving the experience of ‘self’ as a bi-product of mass media dissociation.

Picturing the underbelly of contemporary culture, Snow distances his images with cinematic veritas. Graffiti, ironically broken signage, seedy hotel sex romps, and instances of human despair don’t evoke empathy, but rather suggest a poetic affirmation of humanity and against-the-odds survivalism.

Dash Snow’s Untitled (Thong) reworks imagery of porn, violence, and glamour into a totem of faded power. Recalling the optimistic ideology of Suprematist design, Snow’s collage presents a futuristic icon from degenerate emblems. Mounted on a mundane wall paper background, photocopied snippets of syringes, gems, rodents, machine parts and bottoms merge as an abstracted cyborg figure, an unsavoury goddess of underclass bravura.

Read Entire Article about USA Artist Dash Snow paintings and artwork at The Saatchi-Gallery http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/dash_snow.htm

Cottage Keepsake

Do you want to create something memorable for a customer or a friend?.. Something they can look at over the winter months when they are back into reality?. Try painting, drawing, quilting, sewing, whatever your passion… create a cottage portrait or keepsake for them.

Start with people you know or know of, and ask if they would like the idea of a keepsake from their great holidays at their cottage?… Most likely the answer will be yes.

If painting is your passion, then why not step it up another notch, and paint their cottage portrait on a old saw blade, old wood, or stone.. or why not frame a painting or drawing with driftwood, or some sort of treasure from around the cottage.

IF quilting or sewing is your passion, then you could create a patchwork quilt of the cottage or beach or woods around it… use your imagination, use old fabrics from the cottage, old table cloths etc, This would be the perfect opportunity to get yourself invited to the cottage! You need to take pictures, and look around for treasures that can be used in your project.. Maybe a collage from small objects around the cottage?..

I always found the best place to look for surfaces to paint on, would be the storage shed or garage of a cottage, especially one that is older and has been in the family for a number of years. There is always SOMETHING around that can be made into a keepsake. I once painted on an old broken paddle, an old saw blade, a plank of wood from the original part of the cottage that had been replace and stuffed in the shed. You will find something if you look hard enough, and depending on your crafting passion, come up with a creation for a great cottage keepsake that can be enjoyed and looked at with fond memories of a great holiday at the cottage!

Artist Dash Snow Contemporary Art Work

For Dash Snow photography becomes a way of engaging with environment and memory. Each snapshot captures a place, time, and emotion, freeze-framing the individual components of everyday experience, mapping out the compilation of an identity. Using a Polaroid camera for its instantaneous results and association as keep-sakes, the familiar format of Snow’s photos replicates the sentiments of his images: cheap, disposable, and plebian mementos become humble evidence of discarded beauty.

Documenting his life through a lens, Snow’s photographs explore personal existence as a periphery to globalised culture. Presenting an unabridged account of his marginalised lifestyle, Snow’s often uncomfortable images paint an intimate portrait where topical issues such as sex, drugs, poverty, and anti-social behaviour are confronted from a frank position of personal participation. Translated through the generic quality of his medium, Snow’s photos convey the disoriented fragments of memory as voyeuristic observation, conceiving the experience of ‘self’ as a bi-product of mass media dissociation.

Picturing the underbelly of contemporary culture, Snow distances his images with cinematic veritas. Graffiti, ironically broken signage, seedy hotel sex romps, and instances of human despair don’t evoke empathy, but rather suggest a poetic affirmation of humanity and against-the-odds survivalism.

Dash Snow’s Untitled (Thong) reworks imagery of porn, violence, and glamour into a totem of faded power. Recalling the optimistic ideology of Suprematist design, Snow’s collage presents a futuristic icon from degenerate emblems. Mounted on a mundane wall paper background, photocopied snippets of syringes, gems, rodents, machine parts and bottoms merge as an abstracted cyborg figure, an unsavoury goddess of underclass bravura. Read Entire Article of Dash Snow at the saatchi-gallery

About Isa Genzken Painting’s

The column for Isa Genzken is a recurring motif: its linear purity becomes a critical field on which she explores the relations between art, architecture, design, and social experience. In her most recent work, Genzken augments her usually svelte and sophisticated formalism to create assemblages of maximum overload. Bouquet explodes as unwieldy still-life: its plinth base defiled with spray paint, adorned with garlands, topped with a menagerie of cowboys and Indians warring under an ornamental flower arrangement. Posed as a beautiful and grotesque requiem, Genzken’s sculpture references a shattered utopia, framing modernist architectural form as monument of hope and mourning.Leaning against the wall as a series of towers or screens,

Isa Genzken’s installation becomes simultaneously painterly and architectural: her giant mirror plates like translucent building facades, encapsulating reflections of the gallery interior within their chaotic framework. Highlighting this illusion between flat and perceived space, Genzken collages her glass planes with pages torn from books, bands of tape, and dripping paint, creating a sense of weightlessness in their layered materiality. Repetitive grids, greasy lines, and candy coloured bars, become entangled as urban decay, devouring antiquarian images in its graffiti-like debasement. Titled Kinder Filmen 1, Genzken’s installation suggests information overload broadcast as disrupted transmission, her formalist excess presenting a break down of innocence.

During this period, her work groups, which are wide-ranging and surprising in terms of both form and the media used, have involved her public in a constantly fresh examination of the meanings and function-modes of artistic propositions. Here Isa Genzken focuses on the medium of sculpture. This has not been such a presence in art in recent years, but a younger generation of artists is once more making it central to its creative activities. Genzken’s work, both historically and actually, is impressive in this context, not just because of its consistent development, which is inherent in the work, but also in the precise analysis, critical of both the age and of art, that she regularly and effortlessly leaves behind her.

German Artist Alice Könitz at the Saatchi Gallery

Konitz has often employed models and maquettes as a means of interrogating space, and even her fully realized works often feel provisional. Based on a maquette on view in the gallery’s back room, the show’s capacious if spare centerpiece, Mall Sculpture (all works 2006), comprises four large, thin, hexagonal melamine frames covered in brown felt that are in turn supported by five triangular columns covered with sheets of reflective gold-colored construction paper. Despite the regularity of the modular units, the work’s overall plan is asymmetrical and looks surprisingly arbitrary, appearing at once like an enormous, unclasped gold bracelet and an errant fragment from a low-budget science-fiction set. Konitz based her form on architectural structures she observed in West Los Angeles’s Century City–shiny urban-scaled emblems of late capitalism, anxiously situated between Utopian modernism and the empty promise of postmodernism. Theatrically exposing its thrifty origins and heavily glued joints, Mall Sculpture communicates its inability to signify luxury and power, instead performing as both disruptive barrier and open-ended monument to the contingencies of social space.In her 2004 exhibition at Susanne Vielmetter, Alice Konitz presented an absurdist video featuring four characters in an idyllic natural setting, all wearing geometric masks that looked at once primitive and fashionable. Such images represented a way for Konitz to begin negotiating the complex symbolic terrain between exteriority and interiority. In her latest show she continued to use formalism as a vehicle for moving from idiosyncratic concerns–recurring modular shapes, familiar low-budget materials, a limited palette now further refined to brown and metallic colors–toward an investigation of the wider social realm. While Konitz stated no explicit political ambition, the exhibition’s no-nonsense title, “Public Sculpture,” invokes a social dimension at a moment when “public” and “private” are semantic notions defined by an elite.In the wooded setting of Alice Könitz’s untitled video, “primitive” imagery (geometric masks and props) meets “primitive” facture in a series of three tableaux that recall the mannered staging of early cinema. Collaged from plays by Ionesco and other absurdist masters, the scenarios seem intent on going nowhere.

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