Asian Masters of the Graphic Arts

This week I visited The Asian Masters of the Graphic Arts held at the Morgan Library. This is a selected showcase from past Colorado International Invitational poster Exhibitions. The posters will be shown September through December 2007 so there will be plenty of time to visit this one.This showcase features a chinese poster designer Fang Chen who flew out to CSU from Pennsylvania where he now teaches graphic design. I had a chance to speak with Fang and he told me "the most importang thing to think about when designing a poster is the message". Other artists you will find here are Han Jiaying, Shen Hao-Peng, Wang Zhi Min, Fang Xiao-Chin, and Wang Yuefei. Most of the posters you find will have messages about social issues, but there is one promotional poster designed by Fang Chen that stood out of the crowd for me. It is titled meditation and was designed by Fang to promote a meditation class. This my favorite pick of the bunch.

Fang Chen says "As an artist and educator, I am proud of having chosen poster design as my career because it represents one of the most difficult challenges and requirements for creativity"
"A good designer maximizes both communication and aesthetics in a limited circumstance when he or she designs a poster"
"For years I was thinking of creating a poster to demonstrate a lofty oriental aesthetic realm of solemn and quiet".
You may view posters and learn more on the Asian masters of the graphic arts at http://lib.colostate.edu/CIIPE2007

Prints by Sarah Melendez

Greetings art fans,
I have just visited an exhibit of prints created by Sarah Melendez showing in the Mini Gallery on the CSU campus in the visual arts building. It will only be up September 17th through September 21st so I suggest you move fast. My first impression of her works was that she has a great understanding of color and line work. On the negative side of things I have to say I was not impressed with framing and mounting of her pieces. Sure the framing was clean but I was bored because every piece was framed the same way with a sheet of glass over white mattboard. She needs more variety to keep my attention and to give a bit of a surprise element to the viewers walking through. I would also have liked to see more variety in the scale of the prints. My top favorites in this exhibit were "From Nothingness" because of its use of warm and cool colors, negative and positive shapes, and continuos flowing movement and "Being Dormant" because of its great linear marks over a fading background. A cupple of prints I disliked were "Pig on Paros" and "Cow on Paros" because they were both very dark and I found it hard to understand the line work. Thanks for checking in with me Fort Collins and have an art filled week.

CSU Student Exhibition/15th CIIPE

Hello all,
I have just visited the CSU Student Exhibition located in the Visual Arts building on campus. This exhibition is a collection of posters covering a wide range of world issues. Problems such as terrorism, global warming, darfur, and animal rights are addressed through image and type on these posters. I felt that I walked away from this exhibition having gained a sense of education and global awareness for these topics after studying each poster carefully. These posters will leave you with a new outlook and perspective on life having realized the growing problems humanity faces every day. I did enjoy the variety of pieces I found and the differences in color choice, type choice, and sense of imagery. I strongly urge people to stop in and take a close look at this poster exhibition because I think there is much to learn about global problems in our world today.