Dollhouses

Dollhouses today are not just for young girls anymore.

Around 1957, when I was about twelve, my family move up the street a few houses. Our new neighbors had two daughters, both several years older than I. Being as I was too young to have any real appreciation of older women at the time, I was far more interested in that which sat unused on their front porch--a fiberboard dollhouse. No I wasn't into playing with dolls, but the budding architect/interior designer in me found the 1:12 scale dollhouse, with all its wooden and plastic furniture intact, to be endlessly fascinating. Of course, the girls were old enough to have long-since outgrown their toy abode, but I spent hours effortlessly rearranging furniture and imagining myself, in miniature, living within its decorated walls.

 

1:16 scale is the most commonly used today in children's
dollhouses while adults prefer 1:12 scale (one inch = one foot).

In the years that followed, I move on to designing houses on graph paper, and eventually, in college, designing and building scale model architectural masterpieces out of corrugated cardboard, balsa wood, and a host of other adapted materials. When I began teaching school, I devoted an entire ten-week grade period to teaching my sophomore students architecture and interior design through the building of such models (1/4 inch to the foot). Some twenty years after discovering dollhouses I built a scale model of the house we live in now as a guide for the contractor. He commented later that at times it was an immense help. Today my model "dollhouses" are all virtual, utilizing the computer game, Sims 3.

 

Dutch cabinet dollhouse of Petronella de la Court,
Amsterdam, 1670-1690.

What we'd call dollhouses have been around for thousands of years. Model houses have been found intact within Egyptian tombs (probably having religious purposes). Various examples of miniature rooms with tiny, handmade furniture survive from as far back as the 16th century. Many were housed in custom-built cabinets such as the Dutch example (above) dating from the 17th-century, rather than replicated architectural shells. Perhaps the most famous example of the latter is the Queen Mary Doll's House now on display at Windsor Castle. It was created especially for the queen in the early 1920s. Queen Mary was the wife of King George V. The idea originally came from the Queen's cousin, Princess Marie Louise, who discussed it with one of the top architects of the time, Sir Edwin Lutyens. Sir Edwin began preparations in 1921. The princess had many connections among the top artists and craftsmen of the day who contribute their special abilities to the house. As a result, the dolls' house has an amazing collection of miniature items that actually work. There are working shotguns, monogrammed linens, electricity and lifts, a garage of cars with engines that run. Speaking of running, the doll's house even has running water through its tiny pipes. It was created as a gift to Queen Mary from the people, and to serve as an historical document as to how a royal family lived during that period in England.

 

The exterior shell (above-left) can be hoisted up to
reveal the extremely detailed interior from all four sides.

In the years since the queen's lavish digs were miniaturized, there seems to be no limit to the heights and lengths model builders will go to display the art, crafts, and ingenuity, some of their handicraft having risen in value to several million dollars at auction (nearly as much as the real thing might cost). Tim Hartnella, former computer software developer of Soham, Cambridgeshire, England, quit the rat race in 2008 to pursue his dream dollhouse (below). He spent 7 months creating a grand hotel much like those of the 1920S such as the Ritz and the Hotel de Louvre, in Paris. It's a phenomenal feat of design and creativity, measuring some six feet wide by four feet deep, and over eight feet in height. The 1:12 scale hotel features a wood paneled bar, restaurant, ladies powder room, shops, a wine cellar, luggage store, pantry, laundry and boiler room. The grand building boasts six floors with five staircases. Each of the eighty windows has been specially handmade including the revolving entrance door. There's no indication as to the going rate per night.

 

Now Hartnella is ready to start building furnishings.

There are several conflicting claims having to do with the largest or most elaborate dollhouse in the world today. Dollhouses such as Hartnella's often sell for between $2,300 and more than $10,000. Very often the only reason their makers sell them is to clear space in their work area for an even BIGGER dollhouse project. The Faith Bradford Dollhouse (below) is said to be one of the biggest such undertakings ever built.

 

The Faith Bradford Doll House dates from 1967.
Where's the elevator? Five floors and there's not even a staircase!

Until the past fifteen years or so, virtually all dollhouse were designed and built using traditional or antique exteriors and furnishings. However, today, nearly a dozen manufactures now make dollhouses utilizing contemporary styles, some even modeled after actual homes by modern-day architects. Brinca Dada’s Emerson House (below), and other dollhouse designs, as well as doll furniture and accessories are available at www.brincadada.com. Inspired by the flat roofs and organic flow of Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House and the ultra-modern stone, glass, and steel home that A. Quincy Jones designed for Gary Cooper, Emerson House incorporates beautiful design and exciting play patterns while elevating the traditional toy dollhouse design. The house features many distinctive architectural features like glass corners, minimalist cut stone fireplaces, scored hardwood floors and recessed lights (LED, powered by solar panels). The house has six rooms with a large, open floor plan and floor-to-ceiling windows. Made of wood and acrylic glass, it measures 18 inches high by 21 inches wide and 30 inches long, built to 3/4" scale. It sells for $300.

The house even comes with little wooden people.

The cat ate my dollhouse.

 

Charles Conder

A Holiday at Mentone, c. 1888, Charles Conder.
A day at the beach back then was not what it is today.

I've touched on this subject before, but it's worth mentioning again. Painting style are seldom province of a single nation. For example, when we think of Expressionism, more often than not we think of the Germans. Yet when we think of Abstract Expressionism we automatically bring to mind the New York School of the 1950s. With Classicism, it's the Italian Renaissance. When we talk about Impressionism, first and foremost (and perhaps exclusively) we think of the French. Yet every one of these styles, though they may have originated in a particular country to some extent, each one was international in scope. In fact, taking Impressionism, as an example, some of the best Impressionist works we have today are not French, but American, British, and in the case of the British-born artist Charles Conder, Australian.

Stockyard near Jamberoo, ca. 1888, Charles Conder

Conder was one of the founders and a key member of the Heidelberg School. That's not an academic art institution in Heidelberg, Germany. In fact, as far as I can tell, it has absolutely nothing to do with that country. It was, instead a group of Australian painters in and around the Heidelberg area of Melbourne and Sydney, painting en plein air during the latter decades of the 19th-century. The group included Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers, Tom Roberts, Conder, and Frederick McCubbin. For the most part they were Impressionists and Conder could easily be considered the best of the lot.

 

Besides being a talented painter, Condor was a handsome,
debonair man, what we might term a "playboy" today.

Charles Conder was born in England in 1868. When the boy turned 15, his father, a civil engineer, sent him off to his uncle, a surveyor in Sydney, Australia, hoping to discourage his love of art. But besides his survey work (unbeknownst to his father) Conder took art classes. In 1886 he won a prize for one of his paintings and began getting his illustrations published. Departure of the Orient--Circular Quay (below), from 1888, is considered the culmination of Conder’s mastery of form and brushwork. Painted from the vantage point of an upstairs room at the First and Last Hotel, overlooking the bustling harbor in Sydney Cove, this work depicts the dockside scene at the moment when the ‘Orient’ casts off for her voyage to England. The theme of lively urban streetscapes and rainy atmospheric conditions was one derived from the work of the American-born James McNeill Whistler, who in turn inspired a generation of international artists conversant with the principles of French Impressionism. Conder sailed back to Europe via Naples in 1890, also travelling to Rome and Florence on his way to Paris. There he attended Rodolphe Julian’s atelier. There too, he became friends with Oscar Wilde and many other celebrities of the art world. Toulouse-Lautrec painted his portrait in 1893 (above).

Departure of the Orient--Circular Quay, 1888, Charles Conder.

Conder was to spend the rest of his life in Europe, mainly England, but visiting France on many occasions. His art was better received in England than in Paris. In 1895, Conder came to Dieppe, in an attempt to socialize among the artistic community and the English families with their attractive daughters. Simona Pakenham in her study of the English people before World War I, remembered him as "...a sick man, unable to face reality." Despite his shortcomings, Conder married a wealthy widow, Stella Maris Belford, in 1901, thus giving him financial security. In spite of drunken spells and disreputable company, Conder's skill as an artist was at its height. He made a specialty of painting on silk, especially silk fans (below).

Autumn Fan, ca. 1895, Charles Conder.

Conder was a fun-loving man who often painted with a humorous touch. Around 1888, while staying with Tom Roberts in his famous Grosvenor chambers studio, he painted A Holiday at Mentone (top), which depicts men and women at the beach relaxing while clothed from head to foot–-the men in suits and hats; the ladies in long, girdled dresses with boots and pretty hats. No one seems to even contemplate going near the ocean. Conder delighted in such scenes (below), some actually depicting swimmers in the water (bathers, as they were called then).

Few people swam, or even tanned, at the beach in the 1890s.

The bohemian lifestyle of many gifted men of the age attracted Conder, while his charming, rakish character, and witty, delicate work attracted them to him. Years before, back in Melbourne (around 1888), Conder had shared a studio with Tom Roberts, whom he had previously met in Sydney. Short of cash, the attractive Conder apparently paid off his landlady with sexual favors. She, in turn, gave him a receipt in the form of syphilis. Tragically, in 1909, Conder died of the disease. Just four years after his death, his work was being acclaimed by Degas and Pissarro, two of the foremost French Impressionists, who ranked the Australian as a "Modern Master."

An Early Taste for Literature,
1888, Charles Conder

 

The Parrish Museum of Art, Water Mill, NY

The new Parrish Museum of Art, Water Mill, New York.

From the road, Montauk Highway, Water Mill, New York, it doesn't look much like anyone's traditional idea of an art museum. It's 615 feet long and 95 feet wide. Even as one nears the entrance, the Parrish Museum of Art resembles nothing so much as a giant barn aimed at the mass feeding of livestock for market. Situated on the fourteen acre site of a former tree nursery, immediately adjacent to the Duck Walk Vineyards winery, even the setting suggests some type of agricultural enterprise. The original plan called for an $80 million village, encompassing a 62,974 square-foot museum, consisting of 30 modest, low-slung buildings, designed to resemble the studios of area painters. However, the financial crisis of 2007–08 forced the museum to dramatically downsized their undertaking to less than a third ($26.2 million) of the original budget. Thus, we see the gigantic barn with its 34,000 square feet and 6,000 square-foot porch.

 

Designed and built during a time when money was tight,
nothing was wasted of architectural frivolity.

Inside, the single-floor museum is structured quite simply, its public functions (reception area, gift shop, and café) to the west, administrative offices and art handling to the east, with seven galleries (housing the permanent collection), arrayed in two parallel bars, on either side of a central hall. Three additional galleries house temporary exhibitions. All of the galleries are illuminated by daylight, which shifts gradually throughout the day and changes with the seasons. The building is situated so it can catch the "Hamptons light" which is said to be a reason for the area's popularity as an artist colony. The new museum officially opened in November, 2012.

 

Even from the air, the Parrish Museum of Art (barn)
gives little indication of the fine art it houses.



The light and landscape have long drawn artists to the easternmost end of Long Island ever since a railroad extended its service to Southampton in 1870. The famed American impressionist painter, William Merritt Chase, first visited the area in 1878. He returned to established the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art in 1891. It was the first such school in America devoted to plein-air painting. The Second World War saw the departure of many notable artists from Europe to the United States, and many of whom visited the East End. American artists of the New York School followed, such as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, and Esteban Vicente. For the past 60 years, the East End has been home to a veritable pantheon of modern and contemporary artists, among them Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Eric Fischl, and Dorothea Rockburne.

 



Inside, the museum dramatically reflects its outward structure.

Samuel Longstreth Parrish was born into a family of prominent Philadelphia Quakers. He was educated at Harvard, where he first developed his taste for Italian Renaissance art. Parrish began collecting seriously in the early 1880s, shortly after moving his successful law practice from Philadelphia to New York. During this time, he regularly visited his family home in Southampton. The village, then as now, was a popular summer resort. While traveling in Italy in the fall of 1896, Parrish decided to build a museum in Southampton to house his rapidly growing collection of Italian Renaissance art and reproductions of classical Greek and Roman statuary. He purchased a small parcel of land next to the Rogers Memorial Library on Jobs Lane. He commissioned a fellow Southampton resident, the architect Grosvenor Atterbury, to design a suitable structure. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Atterbury designed the museum over a period of nearly twenty years.

 

The original Parrish Museum of Art in Southampton, built and enlarged over the course of several years, mostly dated from around 1900.

The original Parrish Art Museum at Southampton (above) was a single, large, exhibition hall constructed of wood during the summer of 1897. A Concert Hall was added in 1905, and the wing to the street was constructed nine years later. An arboretum was laid out on the Museum’s grounds as well, by the well-known landscape architect Warren H. Manning. Parrish’s death in 1932, coupled with the Depression and the war years that followed, slowed developments at the Museum. In 1941, the Village of Southampton accepted the building, grounds, and founding collection as a gift from Parrish’s estate. As the 20th century wore on, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Parrish had outgrown its original building, which lacked not only the basic infrastructure required by a professional museum, but also the space necessary to share its collection, as well as temporary exhibitions, with the public. In 2005 the Museum purchased fourteen acres in Water Mill, New York. The board of trustees selected the internationally celebrated architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron to design a new and expanded building there.

 

Perhaps as a result of cost-cutting early on, the museum
in no way competes visually with the art it houses.

The Museum’s holdings now consist of more than 2,600 works ranging from early 19th-century landscape paintings through American Impressionism into the 20th and 21st-centuries. In addition to names mentioned before, their collection includes such important artists as Childe Hassam, John Sloan, James McNeill Whistler, Dan Flavin, and John Chamberlain, as well as such members of the dynamic contemporary art scene as Ross Bleckner, Chuck Close, Elizabeth Peyton, Jack Youngerman, and Joe Tucker. The Parrish holds the largest public collection of William Merritt Chase (over 40 paintings and works on paper) including more than 1,000 photographs relating to the life and work of the artist. Their Fairfield Porter collection reflects the work of the most important American realist painter from 1949 until his death in 1975. These were also the years when Porter lived in Southampton. In 1979 his estate recognized the bond between the artist and the Museum by donating some 250 works to bolster the Parrish collection.

 

The Parrish permanent collection is marked by the work of
virtually every important artist to ever call Long Island home.

Maya Lin installation, a guest exhibition dating from 2014.
In foreground, Equator (2014),  Latitude New York City (2013), and
Arctic Circle (2013). On the wall, Pin River—Sandy (2013).
 

 

Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve

The story of three ambitious women (and their men).

March 29, 1951, the Pantages Theater, 6233 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, California--three actresses held their breath as the winner of the Best Actress Academy Award was about to be announced. Gloria Swanson (for her role in Sunset Boulevard) was the oldest of the three major nominees at fifty-one. Bette Davis (for her role as Margo Channing in All About Eve), was forty-two; while the youngest of the three Anne Baxter (for her title role as Eve Harrington, also in All About Eve), was twenty-seven. All three smiled in anticipation of hearing their name called. Each stirred in her seat. A moment later, their smiles faded. "And the winner is, Judy Holiday for Born Yesterday." Judy was twenty-nine. It was that kind of night. All About Eve had been nominated for a record fourteen Oscars (a record which stood for some forty-seven years until tied by James Cameron's Titanic in 1997). All About Eve won six, including Best Picture.

 

Two kingpins from Hollywood's "golden days"
(before TV).

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's
going to be a bumpy night."

All About Eve began with as a simple anecdote told to the writer, Mary Orr, by the European actress, Elisabeth Bergner. While performing in The Two Mrs. Carrolls during 1943 and 1944, Bergner recounted how a young fan had become part of her household, employed by her as an as-sistant. Later she regretted her generosity when the woman attempted to undermine her. Orr, used the incident as the basis for a short story "The Wisdom of Eve" pub-lished in 1946. In the story, Orr gives the girl a more ruthless character and allows her to succeed in stealing the older actress' career. In 1949, Hollywood film writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz was consid-ering a story about an aging actress. He read "The Wisdom of Eve" and felt the conniving girl would be a useful added element. He sent a memo to 20th-Century Fox president, Darryl F. Zanuck, sug-gesting Eve to be a superb starring role for Susan Hayward. Mankiewicz later presented a film treatment of the combined stories under the title Best Performance. He changed the main character's name from Margola Cranston to Margo Channing while retaining most of Orr's characters, including Eve Harrington, Lloyd and Karen Richards, and Miss Casswell. Zanuck was enthusiastic and ordered a script while at the same time providing numerous suggestions for improving the screenplay. Zanuck reduced the screenplay by about 50 pages and chose a new tile from the opening scene in which the Broadway critic, Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), says he will soon tell, "...more of Eve...all about Eve, in fact."

Confrontation--the old and the young. Anne Baxter
proved to be no competition for Bette Davis.

While the movie is technically "all about Eve," it could be far more accurately termed "all about Margo Channing," (Bette Davis) the aging Broadway diva who literally "steals the show" in competition with her nemesis, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Not only did the two end up competing for the same Academy Award, but all along the way, from the first day of shooting to the Hollywood premier, October 13, 1950, the two female stars vied for supremacy for the lead roles in which they'd been cast. The Hollywood press reported a bitter feud on the set while in fact, there was no literal or figurative "catfight," only a subtle competition, written into the script, as well as their personal and professional relationships. Today we'd call it chemistry, or perhaps life imitating art. Bette Davis, with a longtime reputation as being "difficult to work with" was in no way contrary. She knew a great script when she saw it, and beyond that, recognized a superb role that would extend and enhance her faltering career as she slipped past the devastating age of forty when even exceptional actresses like herself (having been nominated for six Academy Awards during her career), fade into a background of character roles much like that of Margo's assistant, Birdie, played by Thelma Ritter.

A perfect cast, a perfect script, Academy Award-winning writing and direction, can only yield a superb film. The critics have long been nearly unanimous in praising All About Eve.

While many Hollywood critics often resort to industry stereotypes, All About Eve presents audiences with a cast of divergent and multifaceted characters. For example, Bill Sampson (Merrill) provides Margo with the emotional and career support that she needs, yet he still holds her accountable for her mistakes. He is able to walk the fine line between good natured and cynical as he sees the world around him for what it is, yet maintains a positive outlook. Margo’s playwright, Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe), and his wife, Karen (Holm), possess an equally realistic relationship as they struggle to maintain their marriage amid the temptations and suspicions of celebrity life. The only characters that are reduced to types are Eve (Baxter), whose gradually emerging villainy and ambition know no bounds, and theater critic, Addison (Sanders), whose life seems to hold no purpose other than damaging others’ careers as a means of inflating his own ego. Despite their stereotyping, the performances of Anne Baxter and George Sanders are nuanced enough to ensure their characters’ believability.



Recognize her? The role of the innocent starlet,
Miss Casswell, is played by a very young and
inexperienced Marilyn Monroe.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Cabela's Sculptures

Cabela's bronze Bear Versus Eagle, Wheeling, West Virginia

When we think of Cabela's, we seldom think of art. In fact, when we call to mind the nationwide chain of outfitters, and sporting goods stores, it might be safe to say the last thing we think about would be art. That should not be the case. True, you're not going to find them selling Monet reproductions or images from the ateliers of De Kooning or John Singer Sargent. Cabela's is a man's store if there ever was one, though they do feature a number of items for the wives of their primary clientele. Inside, one gets the feeling that the store drinking fountain may be spouting pure testosterone. At the same time, they are big on exactly one type of art--wildlife. You see it neatly matted and framed behind glass on their walls, in the form of bronze lamps, tabletop sculptures, and dozens of examples of the taxidermist's art arranged in pseudo-natural settings like targets in a shooting gallery. It is art, I guess, though not unquestionably so.

Unfortunately, the names of Cabela sculptors are not as
widely available as their images. I could find only two.

Cabela's Pony Express Rider
outside their Sidney, Nebraska,
headquarters store.

Although the company handles a smattering of art-related items, the real art is outside, between the store and the parking lot in the form of independently com-missioned monumental bronze sculptures of (you guessed it) wildlife. Although the company has made its fortune facilitating the killing of wildlife, they are to be congratulated for their support of talented sculptors whose work is aimed at the preservation of the spirit of animals in the wild. Each store has a different bronze sculpture, some quite dramatic, some even including the human element from the past such as that outside the company's larg-est store in Hamburg, Pennsyl-vania (above), and their Pony Express Rider on the grounds of their headquarters complex in Sidney, Nebraska (above, right).

A broad sampling of Cabela's corporate tastes in art.

Mike Hamby's bronze sculpture, Fierce Encounter (above), can be found in front of Cabela's Dundee, Michigan, store. This sculpture is one of the largest bronze wildlife sculptures ever created. Born and raised in Lehi, Utah, Mike Hamby has always had a fascination for Native American culture. Much of his childhood was spent exploring the canyons and history of his home state, experiencing firsthand its timeless wonders. The effect is evident in his work, as seen in the remarkable flair for the richness of the past. His work is flavored with the soul of the desert, the mountains, and the determination of the people who live there. His aggressive style and intense focus gives each piece a distinct history all its own. Mike has been blessed with a unique combination of talents, as an artist, musician, illustrator, and retired pro football player.


Outside the Cabela's store, Mitchell, South Dakota.

Beverly Paddleford's Corn Stalkin' (above), is just outside the Cabela's in Mitchell, South Dakota. Beverly is co-owner of Eagle Bronze, Inc. of Lander, Wyoming. She and her husband, Monte, have been producing bronze sculptures ranging in size from miniature to monumental in their foundry since 1985. They now operate one of the largest foundries in the United States, and second to none in monument production. Raised in an atmosphere of creativity by her father, sculptor Bud Boller, Beverly was not able to devote extensive time to her art until Eagle Bronze and her husband and four daughters could afford her the time. Finally, in 1995 she was able to work on her first bronze monument, The Lineman, for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's Headquarters in Washington, D. C. In 1998 she was commissioned by Cabela’s to create a bronze monument for their new store in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. The result was a larger-than-life monument of two sparring bull moose titled Northern Challenge. That was followed by a monument for the new Cabela’s store in Mitchell, South Dakota. Placed there in 1999, Corn Stalkin’ (above)is a three-times life-size monument of a fox flushing out three pheasants.

Cabela's, Verdi, Nevada

 

Video Editing

Sony Vegas Movie Studio. I've used this one. It's one of
the best, also one of the more advanced (complicated)
as to features.

I thought long and hard before tackling this topic. The reason being that it's about the most difficult form of creative endeavor commonly seen today. Painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, everything except possibly moviemaking pales in comparison in terms of their technical complexity, effectiveness as communicative media, and in their creative potential. In the past, this complexity, not to mention the cost of the equipment involved, put this art form far beyond the reach of virtually every independent artist without a million-dollar bank account. Today, with home computers, and a plethora of editing software at the amateur video artists fingertips, one would think that many of the inherent difficulties of creative video production would be a thing of the past. Not true.

 

A sampling of editing interfaces. Some are better than others. Filmora I have and use, but I'm not about to recommend any of them, they're too diverse.

Certainly, the cost of the hardware and software involved is a very small fraction of what it has been in the past (some software is even touted as being "free"). But that doesn't make video editing much easier. In fact, the sheer number of software programs available erects a formidable wall the amateur artist must first surmount before even getting started. From that point on, come the basics--how to draw (shoot), paint (choose), and refine (improve) images using electronic media tools. And finally, the video artist comes face to face with a broadside selection of "decorative" items which, in one sense, add fun and games to the creative endeavor, but also lay out yet another layer of technical complexity not to mention a whole minefield of pitfalls. In some ways, video editing is related to the much older art of storytelling with film, yet with a virtual encyclopedia of subtle differences. Thus in tackling this topic, my primary purpose is not to expound upon it, but to simplify, which as always, may be the most difficult art and science known to man.


Typical editing interface features. The preview window
is controlled from the timeline much like a VCR.

As you may have noticed in looking over the various editing interfaces, they all have certain features in common (above). Each has a library window (where raw content clips are stored). There's also a selection window (showing a larger key image chosen for use), a preview window for viewing your production in progress, and a timeline window (at the bottom) upon which the various video segments, captions, visual effects, and audio tracks are assembled and manipulated in their order of appearance). These features will vary in size and arrangement with various software. For instance, the library window and selection window are sometimes combined.

Each raw video segment, as it is inserted into the timeline, is
represented by a "key" (or first) frame to simplify visual continuity in editing. Overlapping with other segments the first few seconds at the beginning and end of a segment creates a "dissolve" transition.

In painterly terms, the library window is the video editor's palette. The timeline corresponds to the painter's canvas in conjunction with the preview window. Keep in mind that the video editor deals with the standard two dimensions of the painter plus a third dimensional element of time as well as the element of synchronized sound. The typical timeline on most video editor may have as many as three video tracks (the main image track, a caption trace, and a third track for transitions and special effects). Often there are four separate audio tracks, one for audio synchronized with the video, a second for added music, a third for added sound effects, and a fourth for a narration (usually added last). Thus the final video production is built up from the raw video and audio tracks much like the multiple layers of a painting.

A video editor in transition menu mode.

Very often the Selection Window may also be used to display a menu of transitions and other special effects which can be inserted in the timeline (often through "click and drag") for artistic effects, though one must be careful such elements do not attract undue attention from the content of the video. Likewise, captions should only be used when no other means is available to aid continuity or impart needed information. In general, captions are valuable as titles at the beginning and credits at the end of the video much as in movie editing. Many of the same basic storytelling techniques applicable to moviemaking apply to video as well, such as beginning each new segment with a general view, followed by a more detailed, medium shot, and finally close-ups as needed. Then, once the editing artist is satisfied with his or her video masterpiece, the "composition" is turned over to the software for "rendering" into a chosen format (avi, mov, MP3, or MP4, etc.) to be played back on any number of computer video players, or archived either on a hard drive, a "thumb" drive, a social media site, or "burned" onto a DVD for replay on TV.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
One of my own editing projects:
 

The Verdict of the People

The Verdict of the People, 1854-55, George Caleb Bingham

About noon tomorrow, January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump will become the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. Regardless of your political affiliation (or my own), President Trump will become a fact of life for at least the next four years. Of course, if the past year or so has shown us anything, it's that there are no certainties in American politics. in a broader sense, One might even go so far as to say the same applies to American history in general. Around 1852-55, the American frontier artist, George Caleb Bingham, painted a series of large-scale depictions of the American political system as it existed on the western frontier of the United States at the time (basically west of the Alleghenies to the area bordering both sides of the Mississippi River. One of those paintings, The Verdict of the People, will hang on the wall of the Capitol's Statuary Hall (the old House of Representatives chamber) as it presides over tomorrow's traditional inaugural luncheon. To the surprise and dismay of the St. Louis Museum of Art, which owns the painting, its presence at such an august event has become controversial.

 

George Caleb Bingham
Self-Portrait, ca. 1834

Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the chairman of the Joint Congressional Com-mittee on Inaugural Ceremonies, thought Bingham's painting would add a nice touch to the celebratory proceedings. Ilene Berman, an art student at St. Louis University, and art his-torian, Ivy Cooper, who teaches at Southern Illinois University, think otherwise. They started a petition which, at last count, had been signed by over two-thousand people who agree with them. Why the big ado? First of all, it has little to do with the painting itself and much to do with the title. The petitioning group disputes the fact that Trump's election, in which he trailed his opponent by nearly three-million votes, does not reflect the "Verdict of the People." It reflects the constitutional verdict of the Electoral College. Thus, under the circumstances, the largely academic pet-itioners see the painting's title (if not the painting itself) as being inappropriate.

Stump Speaking,  1853-54, George Caleb Bingham

When the U.S. Constitution was drafted, the founding fathers did not trust the white, male, landowning, voting citizens of their country with the all-important responsibility of electing their leaders, specifically Senators, the President, and the Vice president. The system of governing, of, for, and by the people was so new to the existing realm of political thought as to be considered a highly dangerous experiment. The institution of an Electoral College, elected by the people, but free to act on its own, was considered a prudent buffer between ignorance and governmental wisdom. And, if the nature of most of the voting individuals Bingham depicts in his Stump Speaking (above) and his Verdict of the People (top) is any indication, such a move was likely a wise one. They are far from the embodiment of democracy at its best. Instead, they are democracy as a hectic undertaking in which those who take politics seriously are inseparable from those who view politics as a spectacle. (Notice the man at far right wearing three hats, which he has likely won in wagering on the election outcome.) Bingham also makes a point of depicting the disenfranchised in the form of the shadowy African-American figure in the far lower-left corner (with the bandana around his head) pushing a wheelbarrow. Bingham became an Abolitionist and later a Lincoln Republican.

The County Election, 1852,  George Caleb Bingham
(probably the first in the series).

As seen by Bingham, during the 19th-century, voting was, indeed, something of a public spectacle, only a little more dignified than a public hanging. It's difficult to say at precisely what point in American history the Electoral College became antiquated, and later detrimental to the whole political process. If one were to venture a guess, it might be at the same time that high school attendance became mandatory, thus providing some semblance of a politically astute electorate. Another possible date might be April 8, 1913, and the passage of the 17th Amendment mandating the direct election of U.S. senators (as opposed to their being selected by state legislatures). The reasoning being that if the electorate was considered sufficiently trustworthy in directly electing their senators, the same should be true as to their President and Vice president.

Canvassing for a Vote, 1852, George Caleb Bingham

Much has changed in the American political system, as underlined by Bingham's 1852 Canvassing for a Vote (above). The politician has a familiarly "shady" look, but otherwise, virtually nothing is the same. Nothing, that is, but the constitutional relic from more than two-hundred years ago by which twice in recent American history (five times altogether) a president has been elected having lost the popular vote. The artsy petitioners out in the Midwest should not be protesting a painting underlining the political changes of the past two centuries; but instead, fighting to repeal the one remaining constitutional anachronism it represents, which so distorts and abuses the will of the American people.