Looking in at Iowa

Image via Wikipedia

State Finalists and Regional Winners were posted today. More from Official Google Blog:

Starting today, you can vote for your favorite doodle. Your votes will determine the four national finalists. Just make sure to vote soon: you only have until May 18th. The national winner will be announced and the winning doodle will replace our usual logo on the Google homepage on May 22nd. …

More from Google:

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where we invite K-12 students to reinvent Google’s homepage logo. This year we asked U.S. kids to doodle around the theme “What if…?”

Well, the entries are in, and we couldn’t be more impressed. We received thousands of wonderful doodles, and choosing 40 finalists for the public vote had to be one of the most difficult but enjoyable jobs at Google in the past few weeks.

So the kids have done their part, and we’ve done ours. Now it’s your turn to help out by picking your favorite doodles. Your votes will help us select a national winner to replace our usual logo on the Google homepage on May 22, 2008. …

Google says that “you may vote for one doodle per age group.” (Perfect!)

Regional Winner under Grades 4-6, Region 6:

Exploration Space

For my “what if” question, I thought and thought and the idea that kept coming into my head was, what if we could explore all of space. I mean if you think about it, we do not know that much about the universe that we live in.

Name: Joel Weikert

School: Western Hills Elementary

State: Iowa

Regional Winner under Grades 7-9, Region 6:

Perspectives on Escher

What if M.C. Escher and his perspective of unreal possibilities became a mascot for Google. He took our understanding of the world around us and re-examined it using his own personal lens. He helps us see possibilities before we could imagine them. Isn’t that what Google does today by fostering our own ability to invent and share new ideas?

Name: Belinda Mahama

School: Ames Middle School

State: Iowa

Additional Iowa finalists:

K-3: Mara Clark, A.J. Neubaum

4-6: Noelle Johnson

7-9: Jamie Goodman III

10-12: Kyle Culp, Scott Skophammer

Image by Dulimaman via Flickr

From New York Daily News:

… thanks to a new schools program just announced by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“Picturing America,” this project is called - 40 large posters, soon to be delivered to every one of New York’s 1,400 public schools, and, eventually, to every school and library in the country. American masterpieces all, vividly depicting great scenes from the nation’s storied past: Grant Wood’s “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”; Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware”; …

Large image of Grant Wood’s painting here.

Description at Picturing America page:

Grant Wood (American, 1892–1942), The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931, Oil on Masonite; H. 30, W. 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1950 (50.117) Photograph © 1988 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Art © Estate of Grant Wood / Licensed by VAGA, New York.

More information about Eastern Iowa artist Grant Wood available from Encyclopedia Britannica.

From The Capital Times (Wisconsin):

“American Gothic,” stolid, creaky, stuck in a time warp. Pretty near homely. How did it become such a central image in our culture and consciousness?

“No one really knows,” says Sasha Waters Freyer, who has made a documentary film “This American Gothic,” about the painting’s contemporary legacy. …

The film becomes the story of the town’s long, dogged effort to raise money to build a tourist attraction, the American Gothic House Center, a chance to come back from its second Depression. …

Many Iowans had originally felt insulted and mocked by these two faces, as stereotypes of dour Midwestern rubes. “I think there’s a dual meaning that also can be positive,” says Freyer, an Iowa City resident who lives in a farm house with a big front porch like the painting’s. …

From White House site:

2008 State Easter Eggs

Local artists created the decorated eggs, which represent each state and the District of Columbia. The 2008 Easter Egg Collection continues the tradition that began in 1994 where each state sends a decorated egg to the White House for display. The collection is coordinated by the American Egg Board. White House photos by Chris Greenberg. …

Iowa [IMAGE]

Maybe it’s more interesting when opened up. What do you think is inside?

From The Aspen Times:

[Tomás] Lasansky is the youngest of six children — the oldest is some 20 years Tomás’ senior — and from that vantage point, art was not only a constant, it was fun and a way to bond with his family members. Lasansky says there was never any pressure on him to create; the word he uses is he was “invited” to work on the various projects undertaken in Iowa City, which the Lasanskys called home.

So at 4, Tomás helped one brother make a steel sculpture of a horse and rider 10 feet tall — big enough that, when it was sold, a wall had to be knocked out of the house to relocate it. Lasansky later spent 10 years helping his father make prints.

“Growing up was fabulous,” said Lasansky at Magidson Fine Art, where his first solo exhibit in Aspen opens Saturday, Feb 23. “We had this old Victorian house and everyone used it as a studio. I had a basement full of anything I wanted — pottery, wax, steel, prints. I used to hold classes for the neighborhood kids.” …

“Geronimo with Flag” acrylic on canvas

Here is a link to the video. The CNN graphic shows her name as “STUFFY.” Surely the Iowa woman is Norma “Duffy” Lyon of Toledo, Iowa - aka The Butter Lady.

CNN Description:

An Iowa woman created a bust of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama using 23 pounds of butter.

More from New York Times:

TOLEDO, Iowa – He’s like buttah. …

Tonight, Mr. Obama pointed her out in the crowd and called her an “important dignitary.”

“I hope you didn’t make my ears too big,” he said.

She didn’t.

Announced this week, the NEA page specific to Iowa - with additional details - is here:

Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre
Cedar Rapids, IA
$10,000

D’Agata, John
Iowa City, IA
$25,000

Riverside Theatre
Iowa City, IA
$10,000

University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA
$10,000

Two additional Iowa grants were listed on the same page.

Partial article available without Chronicle of Higher Education subscription:

Valerie Miller loves cows. An artist, she recently decided to share that love with her alma mater, the University of Iowa, by creating and selling 5,000 limited-edition prints of a bovine and donating half the profits to the university’s Tippie College of Business. …

See also: ( STEEL COW ) gallery and studios