'Snow Hare' by Shawn Branden

"A few years back I lost a close friend I'd had since childhood. His death was tragic and left me in a state of grief that I was having trouble dealing with. I decide to make a film about what I was going through. It's called: Snow Hare.
The film itself is about a snowshoe hare going through the stages of grief. It was my senior film at Cal State Long Beach and consumed the last few semesters of my time there. It was a lot of work, but along the journey I met many like minded friends that helped me to believe in my story. Everyday I drew pictures and thought about my lost friend. In the end, making the film was the best therapy I could have asked for."
                                                                              -Shawn Branden

Iron Giant by Heather Harris

   www.heatherlynnharris.com

   This piece of art was inspired by my love for emotional story telling.  The Iron Giant is one of my favorite animated films because of the emotional relationship that develops between Hogarth and the Giant. A boy who makes a friend, and a new person to an area who needed a friend.
   I wanted to capture the special relationship that these two shared in my painting.  I placed the Giant on the hillside to help give perspective of how large and strong he really is. Then I set Hogarth in the large metal hands of the Giant.  I set the scene at night because I love the coziness of a night time scene.  It feels warm and enveloping and is secure, just like Hogarth is secure in his knowledge that the Giant won't hurt him.  I placed the cape on the Giant as my own nod to the Giant's adoption of the "Superman" role and not the villain role in his newfound society.
   I chose to do this piece in oil paints and oil washes with pen and ink and color pencil added for emphasis.  I love the rich color of oils and the washes allow me to create a wonderful harmonious mood to the whole piece.  The pen and ink and pencil gives me the ability to bring in the clarity of line and detail that I wanted to capture the scene of the town, the junkyard, and the power station, which were all integral places in the development of their relationship." -Heather L. Harris

"John Huges" by Ken Elkinson "...on the roads I experienced new levels of insanity....."

"I remember being totally bummed out when John Hughes died unfairly at the age of 59 a few years back.  I know he did not do much if any directing since the early 1990’s, but I know he still wrote stuff up to the time of his death.   I had this 1% hope that he would direct something else, kind of like that 1% hope I have that my hero Steve Perry will release some new music at some point in the future. 

I don’t normally name my songs myself.   That is because I named a song on my debut CD in 1996 after a girl I saw on a talk show, and all my friends made fun of me.   Since then I generally give the job of song naming to my friends and family – rightfully assuming they will do a better job that I did!  But once in a while I come out of retirement, and in this case – once I played back the arpeggio bubbling lead synth of this track, I knew it had to be called John Hughes.   I do have this (now no longer) secret wish that one of John’s kids will hear the song one day and dig it, as I know at least one of his sons is in the music business.   Maybe they have already – but even if not, I am cool with just simply honoring one of my idols." - Ken Elkinson

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"I am a super angry driver and the last three places I lived are constantly ranked amongst the top worst traffic cities in America - Atlanta, then NYC and now Los Angeles.   With each passing day on the roads here in L.A., I experienced new levels of insanity.  People shaving as they drive, eating full meals, women applying makeup - a bus driver reading the newspaper on the steering wheel of a city bus.   I even saw Bob Barker driving once with a girl a third of his age.

My final straw was when my then three year old twins started to repeat my road rage rants word for word, including words not even grown ups should be uttering.   I did not want me (or more importantly my kids) getting shot, so I decided I needed something to help me cope.   I had been primarily a solo piano artist, but I started composing ambient music.  One track turned into ten turned into 168 ideas, many of which became songs.   I took 60 and made it the box set Music For Commuting." - Ken Elkinson

"Out Of The Painting, Out Of The Picture" by Lory Orrù

"This painting is the artistic soul that lies within each of us, the search for the color, is devoted primarily to the self-taught artists like me, for this reason I have given the title "out of painting'" -Lory Orrù

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My Comments: We've all seen the sketches of the hand drawing the hand, or a person drawing themselves, but the artist Lory Orrù breaths another dimension to this idea. What I mean is that the eye gravitates more to the detail, and color, and expression, than the fact that the girl in the painting, is painting herself. It's the subtly of the idea (of the person creating one's self) that speaks great volume to how far one has come in fine tuning the definition of the self. I really enjoy this piece a lot. 

       written by Postac

ART WITH HEART - Mirror by Postac'

Mirror

Mirror was one of the first of the 13 songs inspired by the book Clone by Sniffcode.com, because of it's title, Clone. I was playing with the idea of what the life must've been like for the original copy of the cloned character in the book, Joey II.

I imagined Joey's life (the original) as a boy who's an out cast from the other kids because of his creative ideas, expansive imagination, and love of science. I envision he's being taken on field trip to a science lab for the first time and is taken back by all of the buttons and lights which follow the commands of long equations to control various devices. The music is representing all of these machines operating in harmony, and Joey begins to think of all these ideas and what he could do if he had these tools and what things he could accomplish.

At about 1:14, Joey's gets his own little lab together and starts his journey with a few drops as you hear at 1:18 and 1:31 is where his life takes off till we get to the end and he's looking upon a glowing green tube with an embryo inside.
The beat links the two representing the heart of both Joey II and Joey (the original).

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