Fun Friday Feature … on Thursday
Jeff · July 14, 2005 at 9:07 am · Filed Under General baseball, Mariners
From his new digs in San Francisco, former Mariner Omar Vizquel relaxes by painting. But he won’t do landscapes or baseball pictures, since those would block his path to inner peace. Or something.
Which is too bad: maybe he could airbrush the wrinkles off of Moises Alou and paint the Giants into the wild card race. So what, pray tell, does he paint?
[T]he walls and floors are covered with his works in progress: a tribute to the pope, a Christlike figure and a reclining nude.
No word on whether the reclining nude is one of the “Older Women For Omar.”
Comments
52 Responses to “Fun Friday Feature … on Thursday”
Maybe the “Christlike figure” is Johnny Damon…
A lot of athletes are actually good technical artists if they give it a go; hand eye coordination is basically all you need.
And some good art supplies (don’t cheap out on brushes and paint people, you aren’t giving yourselves a fair shake).
Maybe his ability could be measured by VORP – Value over replacement Picasso, or by RCAA – Renoir(s) created above average.
And the wife thinks all dumb jocks have no culture. She paints with a broad brush herself!
Neat!
It sounds like a fun post-baseball career. I wonder if he’d be able to sell his artwork… if nothing else, it’s a classy way to get his autograph.
Sorry it takes a lot more than simple hand eye coordination. But I think it is awesome that he has an interest in art and is more of a well rounded person. I always like it when athletes are curious about the world around them and not just the one thing that they do really well.
TECHNICAL PAINTER. It is hand-eye coordination, anyone that tells you otherwise is more of a B.S. artist.
Someone here labeled Boone as a baseball character. I have always thought that Vizquel falls in the same category. A great guy to have hanging around on a team, keeping everyone loose.
Actually I’m telling you different and I’m not a B.S. artist ( well….. sometimes). Hand eye coordination is definately a big plus and while I agree with you that there can be a correlation between athletes that have that and the ability to paint there are so many more things that are involved. Its just a part of the equation.
Everything else is just simple practice in regards to painting. Sitting down and doing it, mixing colors, etc. I don’t consider any of that too much of a challenge, since if you wanted to, you could mix paint like a chemical engineer and do just fine.
Conclusion: In all likelihood, Ichiro can draw a more accurate circle than most people that consider themselves artists. Doesn’t make it good or interesting art, but most athletes are indeed solid technical artists for the reason that they have good hand-eye / motor control / depth perception.
Good art is a different thing than good technical art, in case you haven’t distinguished the difference I’m making.
Hey, it’s better than Vince Coleman, whose post-baseball career is “playing golf and spouting off”. He’s in today’s P-I, telling the Go2Guy that he’s “the best leadoff hitter the Mariners have ever had”.
Vince Coleman wasn’t even good, let alone “the best”. Is his half-season here even in the top ten for M’s leadoff? I don’t think so. You can’t steal first base.
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a reclining nude….
IgnatiusReilly, what you are calling “technical art” I would call a skill or craft, but art it is not.
^– Has a BA in art
IgnatiusReilly, what you are calling “technical art” I would call a skill or craft, but art it is not.
^– Has a BA in art
oops, double post
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a reclining nude….
Unless they forgot to mention that the “pope”, “christlike figure”, and “reclining nude” are all the same person.
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a reclining nude….
Unless they forgot to mention that the “pope”, “christlike figure”, and “reclining nude” are all the same person.
Double double posts, sorry about that, got no message that it had posted when I checked, just the message I needed a name/email (guess I hit backspace accidentally so that it never opened that page to replace the previous one).
This is why I hate the all star break. People are reduced to quibbling about what’s technical art and what’s not.
Can’t we all just disagree about Willie Bloomquist instead?
No, we can’t argue about Willie Bloomquist, because there’s no argument to be had. Who’s stupid/insane enough to take the pro-WFB side?
Art: I know what I like. Having a BFA means… little to nothing. And is it just me, or is the combination of Omar’s subject matter a bit weird?
Vince Colman… idiot. But then, we knew that.
“Everything else is just simple practice in regards to painting. Sitting down and doing it, mixing colors, etc. I don’t consider any of that too much of a challenge, since if you wanted to, you could mix paint like a chemical engineer and do just fine. ”
That is an incredibly uninformed statement. Look I teach painting and illustration and typography at Metro State in Denver and I am an exhibiting painter as well. I can tell you with certainty that there are many things involved besides hand eye coordination. It’s one subject in which I am an authority on ( unlike my nut job baseball opinions! Ha!)
Saying that most athletes are good technical artists because of hand eye coordination is just wrong. I have excellent hand eye coordination, it doesn’t mean I can hit a 90 mph fastball.
Technical art is an important part of art though, and I wouldn’t demean it by calling it a craft (conontations of macrame). Technical ability is the ability to speak fluently, ‘fine art’ is the ability to orate like Martin Luther King Jr. (or if you are a modernist, scat jazz). They might not be the exact same thing, but they can’t exist without one another.
^Art degree, plus runs a gallery.
There’s no such thing as “technical art”, for starters. Drawing a circle isn’t “technical art”; it’s drawing a circle, and there are about a million different ways to do it, including scribing a circle with the point of a drawing instrument on a piece of paper, which is what I suspect you meant. That’s hardly the only way to achieve a circle, particularly if you’re also talking about paint on a brush, which we specifically are.
Completely leaving aside the question of “good art”, there are lots of techniques to achieve likeness (which is what I think you meant) that require more than hand-eye coordination. Perspective, for instance. Point of view (and single-POV is not the only natural or realistic one). Even whether to draw with lines or not, and what kind of lines — and painting isn’t much about lines (scribed outlines, that is).
If you meant “technical drawing”, then that’s a different subject, and not what Vizquel is doing. And that kind of artist lets his CAD program draw the circles for him. Perfect every time, much better than even Ichiro could produce. But I’d like to see Ichiro, or Vizquel, achieve a likeness of a reclining nude in CAD. Er, no I wouldn’t.
“Look I teach painting.”
So…you’re biased. Artists are full of themselves. We have the least important job in the world, so we have to be.
Many things though, go on. What are they? Love? Passion? A sharp pencil?
Can’t hit a 90 MPH fastball? Well, you need muscle to be an athlete, and sitting in a class wiggling a brush doesn’t exactly give you that.
I still don’t think you get what I’m saying, as it still sounds like you are saying “Omar Vizquel can’t walk in off the streets and give me a Sue Coe…” – yeah…I know. He has a good chance of being able to walk in and draw you an apple if you sit him down with a picture of an apple. Simple.
“Scat jazz”? Good lord. The history of jazz singing has been enlivened approximately one one-thousandth of one percent by scatting. No, that’s being generous. The two most famous practitioners, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, produced a massive body of genius work that had no trace of scat in it whatsoever. Scatting is a party trick.
What other forms of art are you ill-informed about?
By technical art / drawing; I mean “fancy copying of what you see.” It is the technical aspect of art.
Hrm. Nice.
Did I mention artists were full of themselves yet?
It was an aside; a bit of a modernist art joke. Get it?
There are a number of athletes that are also accomplished musicians. Like Shaq. And actors. Also Shaq.
*runs and hides*
#27 – Say what you must about Shaq, but the guy has at least pursued his education. He went to LSU and got his Bachelor’s (he left for the NBA after his soph or jr year, can’t remember which) and he also recently obtained his MBA…
you used to be able to see a lot of his off-season stuff (painting, salsa, clothing design) on his website but I see that it hasn’t been updated since he went to the Giants. There was an article about them when he had a charity exhibition of his work last year….
That should read “a” technical aspect; Steve is right, perspective, etc. are necessities; but is more of a necessary skill for those that draw from memory, not look at source pictures and make an enlarged painting / drawing of that image.
Wayman Tisdale is a jazz musician. He plays bass. So is Bernie Williams, who plays guitar.
Well, gee thanks for calling me a biased, egotistical, unimportant 90lb weakling, I’m non of those actually, not that it should matter. Good argument though.
And yes, anyone can walk in off the street and draw an apple. What does that have to do with saying an athletes superior hand eye coordination makes him a good artist?
Can’t hit a 90 mph baseball? True, but man you should see me crush 5 mph softballs over the fence!
There was a picture of Bronson Arroyo clutching a microphone in today’s P-I, giving off kind of an Eddie Vedder vibe (is there any other kind?) I have no idea what his music sounds like, and the good lord willing I hope to never find out.
Bernie Williams plucks a passable jazz guitar in the George Benson mode. He’s probably the “best” baseball-player musician I’ve heard.
Didn’t Randy Johnson bash a guitar in public on occasion? I won’t mention Sandfrog.
Randy Johnson is a pretty decent photographer as well.
“And yes, anyone can walk in off the street and draw an apple.”
Look; ALL I’M SAYING, and have been saying this whole convoluted argument is: take 50 athletes, 50 desk jockeys and send them to draw an apple, the 50 drawings of apples by athletes will be better than those of the business majors by an large.
It has to do with areas of your brain developing more with use, and athletes / artists use this same portion of their brain for different reasons, but they are both better developed than in the average person. Exciting stuff eh?
You are unimportant though.
#33 – Funny you should mention Brandon, err Bronson Arroyo. I was browsing the new releases on cdnow and saw that he has an album. From the sounds of it, he does covers of early 90′s grunge/alternative music..
As an aside, it’s funny how we (as a group) can take a seemingly innocuous subject (like Omar Vizquel’s paintings) and turn into a huge analytical debate.
I’m just sayin…
I’ll stay out of the argument about hand-eye coordination and “technical art,” but I suspect I am one of the few people who has seen an original Vizquel. He (or perhaps whoever owned it) donated it to a school auction my wife chaired. While it did show some “technical” ability, it was otherwise best described as, uhhhh, interesting. Didn’t draw a bid, though.
Well, if I recall correctly, there was always a good deal of head butting going on at college. Ceramicists getting called “crafty” by the painters, painters being knocked by the performance artists, etc. And any other number of other philosophical bickerings about art were usually going on at any one time. Fun stuff (wait, no…it wasn’t).
We’re opinionated and loud, even if we don’t matter, that was our motto.
Can you have “eye-hand” coordination if you’re nearly blind? That’s how Monet was near the end of his career when painted a lot of scenes from his garden. I saw the Monet exhibition in Portland a few years back, and I can assure you the art was not in his “eye-hand coordination.” It was his ability to create on canvas the FEELING of being in a brilliantly-colored garden on a summer afternoon in France.
No…you have to be under the age of eight to paint like THAT.
KIDDING!
But Monet was a scrappy local painter, who could paint in eight different styles, and just needed a chance to paint every day in order to show people what he could do…
/*ducks, runs away from baying mob*/
#42: Thanks a lot fella — I just spit Diet Mountain Dew all over my monitor.
#43- Did you just make abstract art?
#43 –
I live to serve. And how many times, in how many places, does one get to see Monet and Willie Bloomquist in the same train of thought? that’s why I love teh internets.
#34 Randy Johnson was actually a photographer for the Daily Trojan in college. There was an interesting article/interview with him about it in the DT my freshman year.
Hey, he was able to sneak in some thumbnail descriptions of his Giants teammates while wielding the brush! “Bum bum bum, bum bum bum,” Vizquel hums while he adds shadowing to a woman’s features, light music playing in the background.
mr shaq is also filthy rich as an investor: he was one of the original investors (WAY WAY before IPO, e.g. pre-VC money) of google. good for kazaaam, damn i wish i had an mba.
has anybody actually seen rj’s photos? im not knockin the guy, i’m just curious.
and bernie is pretty good as a guitarist, he’s put out a couple of fusak-y records. i heard him play hotel california, it was pretty good!
Please folks, over here. No, over here.
This is from the artist’s teal period.
“Right Fielder with Bagel”
Well, I’m sorry ma’am, but remember, this is painting, not photography.
anyone remember Vincent Askew, aka “The Fiddler”? Quite the violinist if I remember correctly. Wonder what he’s doing now.
#42 and #44 Thanks. Best laughs I’ve had all week. We really need a baseball game around here though.
#46 That’s cool, I didn’t realize his photographer jones went all the way back to college.
And yes I’ve seen some of his work, it’s actually pretty good. I believe he did a calender when he was pitching for the M’s and the proceeds went to some charity. I actually ( and almost literally) ran into him at Ivey Searight once when he was picking up some prints. The dude is way tall.
Vinny the fiddler, I remember him. Another Calabro nickname. Is he still at Portland?