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Existential Impact of
LoneTree
Lullabye Kitty
LuckyBoy really knows how to relax, and relax, and relax a
bit more.
We are like him. We "sleep, as if to dream", in this poor life but wake up only to God's
eternity.
More of Our Organization's
Reasons to Exist
Maybe "existential impact" is not an oxymoron. We are all not just dust in the
wind. The true message of existentialism is that seeming is being - or may as well
be. What one perceives to be so may just as well be, for all practical purposes.
One can act only upon one's own perceptions. BUT, we have some control over how
we experience and interpret our perceptions. Attitude plays a big role, and we
certainly have some control over, some impact upon, our mood or attitude.
The existential philosophers would not have wasted entire careers espousing a
negative, nihilistic, cynical unhappy philosophy. What would be the point? If
life is so trivial and we all are such zeroes, why bother writing about it? The
real point is exactly the opposite of that which most philosophy professors and
literati say.
It is that we can change our reality if we find that what we experience is
depressing and unwelcome. Our perceptions and how we interpret them are within
our spheres of influence. We can alter our attitudes. We can change the world.
Besides, the universe is such an immense miracle of such incredible beauty!
That we may be but a tiny particle of dust in such powerful infinite winds of time is an
enormous gift. We should be grateful to the Ground of All Being, even if our
thankfulness is as if to a Person whom we call God. Our joy should be great merely
for the chance to participate in its incredible gargantuan unfolding.
LoneTree Pictures produces fine graphic and
digital photographic art with a certain emphasis on nature, wildlife and church art, the whole Earth and
the notion that the universe is God's Cathedral. We depend on you for funding through
your generous purchases. We support the Van Leeuwenhoek Institute,
VLI.
This
not-for-profit corporation promotes education in the sciences, does research in
microscopy, telescopy and cosmology and helps people in dire need to understand their
treatments for extremely serious or potentially terminal illnesses by producing
medical literature reports concerning said treatments. VLI also promotes
community involvement in church efforts to engage their faith in the affairs of
society.
LoneTree and VLI are enlightened or progressive Christian organizations whose
faith is informed by science, respects all scientists and believes that there can be
no contradiction between true science and true faith. Scientists and Christians
seek Truth. We all seek God in some sense.
Gary Kent is our artist in residence. He is a fine art photographer and graphic artist who happens to use a computer the way any other artists might use a pencil, a
fine lens, a paintbrush, an enlarger, an easel
or choices of film type and developer chemicals.
Gary celebrates the computer as a new tool, like a sophisticated novel kind of paint brush or a powerful electronic canvas, for the human creation of sublime beauty.
Many photographers surreptitiously use a computer to enhance their work and publicly and hypocritically shun this new tool as a sort of gimmick or fraud because the way they use it - it is.
That is why some art critics mope about with a jeweler's loupe so that they may
examine a photo to see if it is a digital reproduction and to give clues at to
whether it has been enhanced by "illegitimate" means. But Gary enthusiastically places all his professional faith and hope in
digital art as a manifestation of the New Worldwide Renaissance that began during WW II with the decoding of the German Enigma Cypher.
Computers have ushered in the apex of a New Age, just as the movable-type printing press ushered in the top of the
Age of Enlightenment. After the Industrial Revolution has come not a
post-industrial or post-modern era but a New Age of Re-Enlightenment, a
NeoRenaissance!
Through Gary, LoneTree operated two studios, A & B, in Wheaton and West Chicago, Illinois, respectively. Studio A
was in Gary's Wheaton home. Studio B was the entire basement of the Life Center
& Parish House of the Church of the Resurrection in West Chicago. Now, we
come at you from our big Studio C in Fall Creek, Wisconsin.
LoneTree has seven or eight good computers (we lost count,
like John McCain's homes) and we use them like anyone else would use pen and ink, brush and canvas. Computers are here to stay, like the wheel, fire and the printing press.
The art critics who deem computer enhancement of photographic art as being
prohibited by some invisible lofty principle of professionalism of which they
have appointed themselves the sole guardians are the Luddites of art. Someday they
will learn, but not before some of them will have to simply die away. Let's see how
much learning occurs in the tomb.
The post-modern or post-industrial Age of Computer Re-Enlightenment makes possible the NeoRenaissance Man or Woman who can explore all the arts and sciences to any desired depth through that unfinished but increasingly potent information superhighway, our global networking system - the international Internet and the vast World Wide Web.
Viva!
Gary belongs to the American Association of Artists, the Chippewa
Valley Art Association, the American Chemical Society, the State Microscopical Society of Illinois, the
American Association of Chemists, the American Chemical Society, The
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, Mensa and the
Anglican Church of North America.
"My art is the result of having a very good eye, mastery of technique, philosophical attention to content and a trace of talent. One must assiduously seek content that is interesting and is capable of eliciting an emotional response in the viewer. But without a philosophical foundation, said seeking is futile because this sad lack makes one's own eyes blind. One cannot have a good eye that is so unseeing.
Mastery comes with practice and practice comes with application to real people's wants and needs. Everyone has talent, it is a matter of making good use of what you have and of refining it."
Gary has nearly a PhD in chemistry, a very advanced MS degree and a liberal arts diploma from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
He has been around the block. He started college at the University of Illinois
in Champaign-Urbana, spent a few years at Elmhurst College, transferred to the U
of I at Chicago Circle and transferred again to I.I.T. He then began graduate
studies at Northwestern University. He finished up back at I.I.T. He could not
stand for his defense of thesis because his fellowship expired and there were no
funds to support his continued effort to graduate with an actual diploma. So, he
occasionally quotes his diplomate as a Ph.D. (abd) - all but dissertation.
Interested in art from the time of his youth, when his dad was a devotee of
classical music, his mom was a ceramist who painted fine images on porcelain and
his brother was an advanced degreed graphics artist. He took up photography when his
beloved cousin was killed in a rock climbing accident, leaving him with a collection of
nice cameras and accessories.
Having fallen in love with computers as an undergraduate and having used them extensively in his dissertation research, he has never been without a microcomputer since 1979
when Radio Shack marketed the first off-the-shelf P.C. Atari Apple Computer
and IBM came later
and their success far exceeded Radio Shack's TRS-80. This is
why Apple and Steve Jobs always get the credit.
But, Jobs did not invent
the PC. In fact, an early version was marketed by HeathKit. It was
assembled by the user from numerous parts that were supplied by the company.
But, it was a bear to use. The IO boot program had to be loaded by
plugging in a bunch of patch cables!
Gary thinks time-shared mainframes are a waste of time because one's share of such resources is miniscule and such share is dwarfed by the present day power of personal computers. If he wished, he could assemble
by means of his network a small supercomputer from the many powerful PCs that
LoneTree and VLI owns.
LoneTree's artists in residence, including Gary, are all volunteers. No funds are wasted on salaries for our artists, or for anyone else, for that matter.
VISA, MASTERCARD, DISCOVER, AMERICAN
EXPRESS, YOUR BANK
Go to
any exemplar page and use the form there to specify a picture, its size, whether
it is to be framed and/or matted and note its price according to the guidelines given
there. Remember the picture's title or its number in either type of slideshow gallery
sequence (this site's own or FothoThing). Uh oh. you might have to be able to count.
Also give a brief
description of the picture if you can, just to make sure, using the feedback
page. Sorry this cumbersome procedure will be changed. Then use your credit
card with PayPal.
Be sure to use the same name on this
site's forms as you will use with
PayPal. We shall install a shopping cart ASAP.
For a limited time only, you may
select a second picture of the same size, et cetera, for no additional charge
except for a slightly increased shipping fee. We make no profit on shipping.
The slideshow galleries include
FotoThing and an in-house slideshow for each of four categories as seen on the
exemplar pages under the Products or Premiums links. There are, perhaps, a dozen dozen
pictures on this site.
But you can ask for hundreds more in each of over a
eight
more categories. LoneTree can
snailmail or email pages and pages and pages of contact prints,
which are like thumbnail pictures, in about any nature, landscape or wildlife
category that you can think of including Cityscapes, Architecture, Old houses &
Barns, Antennae/Grain Elevators/Power Towers & Substations, and
Planes/Trains/Automobiles as these are "works of Man" as being part of Nature.
LoneTree's prints are
always in limited editions (25 or less) regardless of format (size and other
parameters). They are always signed by me (or any other artist that we may
sponsor) and dated with the edition limit stated in order to make this a true
investment for you. Gary Kent's and LoneTree
Pictures' product will
increase in value by 300% in less than 5 years from purchase.
The captions for the photopaintings depicted on this Website are all by Gary, who is therefore the "I" or "me" referred to therein.
Since we are all volunteers, LoneTree's personnel may be called amateurs
because we do it "for the love of it", the meaning of the word. But, we have
high professional standards that are all the higher just because money is not an
object.
DID YOU EVER
(CONTINUED FROM PART 1 ON THE HOME PAGE)
While far away from any city,
Standing here upon love's ground,
Trees and flowers fill with pity
For the men who'll cut them down!
May your highways carry sorrow!
May your lakes and rivers die!
This, the curse on our tomorrow
In return for filth and lies.
When that last drop quickly burns
and radio-semen rapes the air,
Whitened helixes will turn
as cinders meet the hollow stare
Of a man who cannot wonder,
Of a girl who cannot feel
And of a child, a living blunder
And of some computer trained to steal...
...And of some computer trained to steal!
Gary
The Universal Sunset
Sunsets are my favorite. The only thing more
beautiful is some of the sights to be seen of crystal structures under the
microscope with polarized light and crossed polarizer filters. I have some of these
shots too, in the "Crystals Gallery", take a peek.
Tautology
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..."
But, a rose is a rose,
the classic tautology offered by logic and linguistics professors.
GAK's FOTOTHING
A FULL MOON IN THE WISCONSIN NORTHWOODS
I wish to become THE nature photographer for Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana. In other words, for the whole northern
Midwest. Right now, my Studio C is located in Fall Creek, Wisconsin. But, someday
I may go back to Flatland, that is, to Illinois. But there are some scenic hills in
Flatland, nevertheless. Try looking near Galena.
* VLI is the Van
Leeuwenhoek Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to science education, scientific optics,
microscopy, telescopy, astronomy and cosmology.
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