What I wasn't expecting was the tremendous amount of artistic inspiration I received, which I entirely owe it all to my girlfriend. On about the third day of the trip she was insistent that we find something to do other that browse around or take another walk around the community. So she spent the better part of the morning browsing the Internet and the newspaper looking for something to do. What she found was an impressionist art museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut called the Florence Griswold Museum. Florence Griswold was a woman who inherited a house from her family and decided she'd rent it to artists to subsidies the cost of this inheritance. More and more artists began to stay at the home due to its location ( being near both Boston and New York City ) and its beautiful landscapes. Eventually it became somewhat of an artist colony that had a heavy influence on Impressionism in the United States. I've always had an interest in impressionist painting. Primarily because every painting course I've taken since the age of 13 till today instructors have compared my work to Impressionism, so I have a personal connection with the style.
The museum had some great works of art from artists, who stayed at the Griswold mansion, including Henry Ward Ranger, Willard Metcalf, Matilda Browne, and William Chadwick. The Griswold mansion was restored to give a glimpse of things such as what a typical room looked like, the dinning room where all the artists had dinner together and how Ms. Florence's room would have appeared. This glimpse into their lives is what struck me as most inspirational. For one the artists painted everything in the house. Their canvases extended to everything from the panels of the doors and walls to pieces of furniture. Many of these works told a story about the individual in that space or a story about an encounter while staying at the house.
One of my favorite works was a panoramic landscape painted on the fireplace mantle in the dining room, where all the artists would have dinner together. The scene contained about a dozen people running through a field. The figures included a shirtless man painting, one guiding a cow, others holding bottles of booze, and people hiding behind rocks. It looked funny, almost like a cartoon. One of the employees at the mansion explained the story behind the work and that all the figures were artists from the house. They used this piece to poke fun at one another. The woman, who worked at the house, went on to explain humorous stories behind several other of the works painted on the doors and walls. The artists used several of these paintings to talk to one another and tell inside jokes while making great works of art.
When returning to Baltimore after the relaxing mini vacation I was given the opportunity to generate some design work that uses humor and story telling, much like the artists at the Florence Griswold artists' colony. A friend of mine had a birthday coming up and I wanted to send around an invitation inviting people to a happy hour celebrating the occasion. I wanted to produce something fun that would be personal to him but that others would still find fun and funny. My friend is Russian and growing up we had nicknamed him The Russian Bear because of the way he would shout when making a play or showing frustration in a sporting event. I included aspects of his background and his nickname into the emailer and short animation, which I've included below. Putting the design together was a lot of fun and I feel that's what made the final piece so successful.
Click the image to see the animation or watch in the embedded youtube video below.
