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  #1  
Unread 07-26-2013, 08:59 AM
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Mario Pita Mario Pita is offline
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Default Piano Mantras

I created illustrations for ten couplets, mostly from my photographs, related to the thrill of learning to play the piano. I hope other piano lovers will enjoy them and that they may inspire someone to take up this wonderful instrument. The set is here:

Piano Mantras
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Unread 07-26-2013, 05:25 PM
Marcia Karp Marcia Karp is offline
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Your illustrations are very dynamic, Mario. I can imagine your joy in making music.

Best,
Marcia
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Unread 07-27-2013, 03:55 AM
Sharon Passmore Sharon Passmore is offline
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Hi Mario,
I am going to comment on the images and leave the couplets to the poets. I am also going to post a comment on one image at a time.

First off - these are fun! I enjoyed discovering some of the symbolism and puns. Is the specific piece of music in the backgrounds significant?

Some of the images are more successful than others. One I find interesting is this one:



There is the play on keys, of course, but the structure of these keyboards combined with the apartment building seem to create a barrier. There is an obstacle created by the keys floating in front creating an additional barrier. In the far background we have a topsy turvy land where down is up. I take this to imply freedom and creativity. So these keys are very strange keys that let you out instead of in. This may not be your meaning at all, but that's what I get from it.

Technically - this is very clean work.
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Unread 07-27-2013, 09:40 PM
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Mario Pita Mario Pita is offline
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Thanks, Marcia, I am glad that the illustrations conveyed some joy of making music!

Sharon, thanks for singling out this image for detailed commentary that makes me see it in a new way. That is a good point, that the keys are keys that let you out rather than in. It's interesting that the wall and the keys felt like a barrier and maybe that has to do with the fact that to get to that fluidity of music, we have to learn to use those keys, which can be difficult but well worth the effort! But music has structure as well as fluidity, pictured there for me as a keyboard architecture for the apartment building where I used to live and started to learn to play piano and maybe began to dwell not just in a building but in music as well. Thanks again for your comments!

Mario
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Unread 09-05-2013, 08:50 AM
Sharon Passmore Sharon Passmore is offline
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In this image there is an interesting relationship between the stairs, piano keys, the ropes and the tunnel the child is walking through; curves and stripes, stripes and curves. I find my eye bouncing between these as well as the different hands in the image, the railings, the ropes to the tree trunks (we can't see the bark but we know bark is rough like the rope).

I get the feeling that there is meaning here but I can't quite figure out the mysterious ropes. Some of the other meanings are quite obvious, so a little mystery is good. Ropes hold things and the child's hand is held... One rope is old and one is new like the old and new hands in the image... I like that you have not used the same rope and merely changed the value and saturation. That would have come off as lazy.

You managed to have 3 strong focal points which don't compete with each other.

My only nit is the star field being a bit cliche.
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Unread 09-06-2013, 08:23 AM
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Mario Pita Mario Pita is offline
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Hi, Sharon,

thanks for coming back to this with interesting comments. I wanted the visual relation between the steps and the keys to reflect that between musical pitches there are intervals referred to as steps, and also to reflect that learning to play itself comes in many steps, leading ultimately, hopefully, to musical heights. I like the observation that one rope is old and one new, as are the hands, which I hadn't connected. Like steps, ropes could also suggest something for climbing, but I wanted the knots to evoke the tangle that one's fingers may get into when starting to learn to play. I understand the nit about the star field. In this case though it felt right to have it behind my daughter with my hands holding her as she was learning to walk, because the yellow concentric bands are a tunnel in a playground that suggested to me a birth canal, and since, elementally speaking, we are children of the stars, it represented for me her having in some sense come from the heavens, and of the possibility of, in some sense, our ultimately returning there, to the music of the spheres, climbing many steps. Thanks again.

Mario
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Unread 09-06-2013, 09:53 AM
Sharon Passmore Sharon Passmore is offline
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Mario, I am also noticing, between these two images that have been discussed, a relationship between the internal and the external. The external portions of the images, the water, are both barricaded. It's as though you are not going out today, you are going in today.
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