Feb 22nd, 2010 by Jim Talt
For those of you that couldn’t make the January meeting at Ken Patton’s home here is a shot of us in Ken’s studio. Mark Chapman also conducted a discussion on armature considerations and techniques for large installations.

Ken explains his favorite techniques and tools
Ken is a recently retired mechanical engineer who creates mesmerising kinetic art. His other interests include triathlons and serious hiking. By serious I mean hiking from Northern Oregon all the way to California!
February’s Annual Election Meeting was hosted by Marty Eichinger at his gorgeous East side gallery and studio.

Looks like a party but there was business conducted...honest!
Business included Treasurers report, election of officers, discussion of a juried portfolio, volunteer needs, future educational topic suggestions, shows, and artist calls. Surprisingly, there was not a single vote for holding board meetings at 9 AM in the morning ….
However, before and after the business there was ample food, wine, and conversation.
Posted in PNWS Meetings | No Comments »
Apr 8th, 2009 by gracewoodp
Jennifer Corio of Cobalt Designworks sent this article from the DuBoff Law Group for us to consider.
Many of our clients have been shocked to discover that the rights they believed they had in their website URLs and designs were, in fact, owned by their website developers.
Unless an appropriate contract is entered into between your company and your website developer, you may find that the website designer your company hired to assist in purchasing a URL and establishing a web presence, rather than your company, owns the domain name. Further, it is important to realize that when an independent contractor is hired to design your company’s website, that independent contractor will own the copyright in the design unless you have a written agreement providing otherwise.
As you might imagine, problems can arise when your company desires to terminate its relationship with the website developer, since the website developer may then refuse to assign the URL to your company and may assert its copyright in the website design as well as any logos and other material developed by it for your company. This could result in your company being required to retain the services of the developer it no longer desires to work with, pay the website developer an exorbitant fee to purchase the rights you believed your company already owned, or start all over, with a new URL and website design, which could result in loss of goodwill and loss of sales.
It is, therefore, important for you to be sure that you have a written contract with your website developer making clear that your company owns the URL and will be listed as the registrant, and that the website designer is assigning your company all intellectual property rights in the website, including but not limited to the copyright. Please contact our firm if you need assistance with drafting such a contract, or reviewing a contract provided to you by the developer.
In a future issue, we will discuss some other important web-related legal doctrines.
Tags: Working Artist
Posted in Techie: Web, Blog, Digital | Comments Off
David Cerny’s “Entropa” by Patrick Gracewood
Jan 26th, 2009 by gracewoodp
It’s easy to make someone (or a country) look foolish is deception is your intent.
David Cerny’s giant sculpture to “celebrate?” the Czech Republic’s presidency of the European Union is an 8 ton, 350,000 euros, sophomoric joke.
Member nations are reduced to the most obvious visual cliche: Germany as a swastika, Italy as a soccer field, Romania as a Dracula theme park, Bulgaria as a series of pit toilets. It goes on….
Not very clever. It seems his creativity went into making up artist persona’s and fake websites. The result is notoriety for him, a sculpture that was up for less than a month, enormous waste of materials, bad feelings and embarrassment for the Czech government and the European Union..this too goes on.
This is ART?
“Some of the Characteristics you see in psychopath are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,” says Gregg O McCrary a former FBI special agent. He was talking about Bernard Madoff, but the same could be said of David Cerny and his sculpture.
Posted in Comment & Critique | Comments Off