9 astounding photos this mom took to keep herself calm while giving birth.
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Andrew Kotite’s Kinetic Sculpture Pairs a Raspberry Pi and 40 Microcontrollers with 80 Steel Balls
Raising and lowering 80 individually-addressable steel balls in concert with 172 RGB LEDs provides a mesmerizing effect.
Curator Tom Hill was ‘a beacon of light’ for Indigenous artists
Tom Hill helped raise the stature of Indigenous artists in Canada, opening a dialogue that offered a more realistic depiction of Indigenous peoples.Woodland Cultural Centre
Thomas Vernon Hill was an artist, curator, art historian, arts administrator and champion of Indigenous culture. For more than half a century, he contributed mightily to raising the stature of Indigenous artists in Canada, particularly through his work at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ont. Known as Tom to his many admirers in Canada’s cultural milieu and on the international scene, Mr. Hill was a member of the Konadaha Seneca. He died in the company of his family on Nov. 11 at the age of 80.
He was born on May 9, 1943, to Alton and Daisy (née Johnson) Hill at Oshweken, in the Grand River Territory of the Six Nations, near Brantford. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in 1967 and continued his studies on a scholarship at the National Gallery of Canada and Carleton University.
Expo 67 was a turning point for Mr. Hill, who contributed a ceramic mural at the event’s Indians of Canada Pavilion. He began a dialogue with fellow Indigenous artists offering a more realistic, less stereotypical or romanticized depiction of Indigenous peoples.
In 1968 he was named director of the Cultural Affairs section of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. In that role he was instrumental in displaying and promoting the work of Indigenous artists. Among those he mentored was actor and musician Gary Farmer, who worked for the Woodland Cultural Centre starting in 1973, driving a bus to exhibit art in Indigenous communities.
“It was a precious period for me,” said Mr. Farmer, who had grown up largely in the United States and was reconnecting with his Six Nations community at the time. “Tom was a big help to me. He saw something in me. He was this guy in the background, the sensible guy government could trust.”
In 1977, during Mr. Hill’s 14-year stint as a civil servant, Mr. Farmer was among a group of Indigenous artists Mr. Hill selected to meet Queen Elizabeth II on a royal visit.
Throughout his time in Ottawa, Mr. Hill remained close to his Six Nations community and the development of the Woodland Cultural Centre. It was built on the site of the Mohawk Institute Residential School, known as the Mush Hole because of the bowls of poor-quality mushy porridge served to students there.
The Six Nations community took possession of the principal building in the 1970s and made it into a museum and cultural hub.
“It’s significant that we are on a residential school site,” said Woodland Cultural Centre executive director Heather George. “We are engaged here in building resiliency through contemporary art and in that way also building on Tom’s legacy. Every day I come in here I realize how I and the communities benefit from his generosity and kindness.”
Mr. Hill was museum director at the Woodland Cultural Centre from 1982 to 2005, but his presence was felt far beyond the Brantford facility.
“I met Tom on almost my first day at the [Royal Ontario Museum],” said Trudy Nicks, senior curator emeritus at the ROM. “He was this wonderful, smiley, happy person who walked into my office to welcome me to the ROM. He became an important colleague, a friend and a mentor. Although he was at Woodland, it was hard to pin him down to a single role. He was very involved with the wider museum community. He was absolutely critical in building bridges between communities.”
In 1988, a controversy erupted concerning The Spirit Sings, an exhibition at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum that coincided with the Winter Olympics in that city. The Lubicon Lake Cree called for a boycott because the show’s sponsor, Shell Canada, was drilling in an area they claimed as their traditional lands. The brouhaha brought forward a cluster of tensions concerning Indigenous peoples, anthropology, ethnology and the role of museums. In the aftermath, the federal government set up a national task force to explore the issues. Its co-chairs were Mr. Hill and Ms. Nicks.
“It was an excellent opportunity to see his skills and insights. He was very open to working together,” Ms. Nicks said. Their report “was more than just a laundry list,” she said. “It dealt with the urgency of Indigenous involvement, access and opportunity. It didn’t solve everything, but it showed both sides a way of going forward.”
In Creation’s Journey – Native American Identity and Belief a book Mr. Hill co-edited for the Smithsonian Institution in 1994, he wrote, “the task force called for new partnerships between institutions and First Peoples to be based on such principles as mutual appreciation, the recognition of shared interests, and full involvement of Native Americans in the development of policies and programs. All this is a far cry from the practices of the past.”
Mr. Hill published widely including co-authoring the book Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of The Image Makers, with Elizabeth McLuhan, in 1984.
As he emerged as a force as a curator and museum director, Mr. Hill put his own career as a visual artist on hold. Of that decision he told an interviewer in 2004, “You can’t be the patient and be the doctor too. Here I am now taking the role of the curator, and so I can’t do my own art … I’ve let my own art career go by the wayside.”
Museum director Rick Hill (no relation), who co-edited Creation’s Journey: Native American Identity and Belief with Tom Hill, called his friend and collaborator a bridge-builder, saying, “He was a cultural mediator here between Christians, Longhouse People and people in between to bring people together just as he was also a cultural mediator to government.”
“He was one of the few people who could talk about Picasso, the Canadian arts movement or a sacred object,” Rick Hill added. “We didn’t always agree, but he got me to rethink things. His greatest gift was to get us to think about what we think, what we make and what we say. He did that while maintaining and even embellishing Haudenosaunee intellectual tradition. He thought tradition could be used to fashion a new future.”
Tom Hill’s community involvement included participation with Old Mush, a group of male singers who perform traditional Six Nations songs. They sang at Mr. Hill’s funeral service at Oshweken.
Tom Hill had many diverse achievements over a long, productive life. In addition to museum direction and visual arts, he also contributed to stage productions. He worked on the script of Paddle Song, a one-woman show about Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson, with writer Dinah Christie.
In 2015, Mr. Hill invited Cheri Maracle, a Haudenosaunee/Irish actress, singer, playwright and professional host, to read for the lead part. Ms. Maracle was stunned when Mr. Hill reached out. “I first met him when I was a young girl. I was really floored by who he was, by his breadth. He was someone I aspired to be like.” She got the role.
Tom Hill with Haudenosaunee/Irish actress Cheri Maracle. Maracle got the lead role in Paddle Song, which Hill worked on, and plays a water drum given to her by the curator at one point in the play.Cheri Maracle
Paddle Song, featuring Ms. Maracle, toured Canada and was staged in Norway. She also performed excerpts from the show in New Delhi. As she sings at one point in the play, Ms. Maracle beats a water drum given to her by Tom Hill. “Getting the drum ready by soaking it and stretching it is part of my warm-up for the show every night.” In addition to remembering his sense of humour and lovely giggle, Ms. Maracle recalls his “infectious enthusiasm and his positive support. He was instrumental in seeing Indigenous artists succeed. He was a beacon of light to so many people.”
Among his many honours, Mr. Hill was named to the Order of Ontario in 1993 and received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts, and honorary fellowships from the Canadian Museum Association and OCAD University. He was a member of OCAD University’s Indigenous Education Council from 2008 to 2018 and received an honorary doctorate from Wilfred Laurier University in 2003.
Tom Hill leaves his wife of 48 years, Roberta Jamieson; his sister, Rose Margaret Hill; daughter, Jessica; and grandchildren, Daisy, Miles and Lyla (Bird).
Catalina Classic Commemorative Statue photography contest winners
A photography contest whose sole subject was the Catalina Classic Commemorative Statue at the Manhattan Beach pier was hosted last month by the South Bay Boardriders Club, Paul’s Photo and Easy Reader.
Second prize by Homer Hernandez.
The statue was dedicated in August (at no cost to Manhattan Beach), after seven years of planning and fundraising by the Boardriders Club. The 17-foot tall bronze statue was sculpted by former Hermosa Beach pro surfer Chris Barela. It commemorates the Catalina Classic Paddleboard race held each year in August. The 32 mile race begins at Two Harbors on Catalina Island and ends the Manhattan Beach pier.
Third prize by Samir Shahin.
Contest winners are: First prize Dennis White; Second prize Homer Hernandez; Samir Shahin.
Honorable mention by William Skones
Honorable mention by JP Cordero
A New Film Documents Kerry James Marshall’s Dynamic Stained Glass Windows for the Washington National Cathedral
How do you revise a narrative that some still believe true? And, how do you change that story to focus on perseverance and reform when the fight for justice is ongoing?
In 2017, two stained glass windows commemorating Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson were removed from the Washington National Cathedral. When Kerry James Marshall (previously) was commissioned to create their replacements, he grappled with these questions, ultimately offering a dynamic pair of works installed this September.
A new short film for Art21’s Extended Play series documents the artist’s process and thinking behind the monumental windows, which were made in collaboration with stained-glass artisan Andrew Goldkuhle. The vibrant pieces depict anonymous protestors engaged in a peaceful demonstration. Some figures holding signs saying “No,” “No Foul Play,” and “Fairness,” slogans inspired by a speech by Chicago’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington. The phrases connect a basic principle of the U.S. Constitution with that of dishonesty and crimes and reflect the need to redress wrongs.
“We tend to make celebrities the focal point of any kind of achievement when for the most part, almost all the achievements we experience are the work of a vast number of anonymous and unidentified people who put in the work on a day-to-day basis,” Marshall says. The title of both the windows and the documentary, “Now and Forever,” reflects this dedication to showing up and striving for a better world each day.
No matter how much progress we make, the artist reminds us, “achievement doesn’t necessarily mean complacency.”
Watch the full film above and find more about the project on Art21.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A New Film Documents Kerry James Marshall’s Dynamic Stained Glass Windows for the Washington National Cathedral appeared first on Colossal.
Amazon Says Its New AI Image Generator Won’t Hurt Photography
Amazon’s recently announced Titan generative AI isn’t quite the same as consumer-facing image generators like Dall-E and Midjourney, but the Titan Image Generator may hold implications for professional photographers working with corporate clients.
Businesses that use it can take images of their own products and have the generative AI swap out settings, backgrounds, or complementary visual elements through prompts. It can also produce entirely original images.
For its part, Amazon says photographers have nothing to fear, and that the Titan Image Generator will supplement rather than replace the original content photographers and creative digital artists produce for their clients.
“The [Titan Image Generator] would really be meant to augment what photographers are always doing because, and based on my observations and what I’ve seen at the enterprise level, is most people want new and original content, especially when they’re looking at photographing new events or new people. They’re going to still want photographers,” says Sherry Marcus, Director of Applied Science in the Generative AI Services Organization at AWS in an exclusive interview with PetaPixel.
That may also depend on the kind of photography brands or corporations are looking for. Marcus sees content creation within advertising as the biggest use case right now, where industries with the “largest appetite” for ads would be interested in how Titan’s multimodal AI works to create images supplementing their own assets. A brand trying to figure out where to place images can adapt said images based on, for instance, what’s on the website, what user preferences are, as well as regional or seasonal imperatives.
Teaching the AI the Ropes
Being a multimodal generative AI platform, Amazon is teaching its Titan Image Generator with a lot of data from both images and text to learn and spot similar images and be more precise in delivering results. The “secret sauce” is in trying to predict what the next words or images should be in the model, which is a key element in how the AI is being trained. Humans supervise the fine-tuning, which is basically sets of questions and answers. So, for example, if the request is a picture of a penguin on a surfboard in Hawaii, variations should appear that are very specific to the request.
“When you search for something in natural language, we encode the content both in text and in the image, which is very powerful in getting the right answer and generating all of those components,” she says. “In the prompt, you can get it more specific and say, ‘The sun shines from X angle,’ or ‘Give me a picture at dusk or 5 pm.’ It’ll look at the text and know that dusk and 5 pm may be the same things and then look at images associated with that.”
For advertisers, that kind of granularity without setting up multiple photo shoots could be a cost-effective way to adapt a campaign for different markets. That is, at least in part, because brands can use the multimodal image generator with their own assets, like blending in an existing product photo with a unique background, scene, character, or visual complement that wouldn’t always necessitate setting up a separate shoot to get similar results.
Marcus also notes there are safeguards in place to deal with copyright infringement and inappropriate content that will include invisible watermarks. These will confirm images were generated by AI, while the image generator will try to create different images whenever two users use the same exact prompt.
“In that sense, you still might need someone to take the photos but you just don’t need to necessarily put them on location,” she says.
“Brands want authenticity but they also really want to be able to do things quickly. I think generative AI is providing that capability to do the touch-ups much more quickly but I don’t see brands really wanting to get rid of that authenticity, that realism, that spirit of the moment that you get from doing live photography.”
An ‘Accelerant’ and Not a Replacement
In other words, it would be possible to set up photo shoots in a studio and then work on the visual elements within the image using tools like the Titan Image Generator. It’s not clear if Amazon received that kind of feedback from companies using its cloud and AI development services, but cutting costs is often a page in the corporate playbook when new technologies emerge.
Amazon believes the image generator will help all users at the enterprise level use the capability more safely and securely to help accelerate their business objectives — without “taking away individuals’ jobs.” It’s more of an “accelerant” to make them more productive and resourceful, she adds.
Plus, there are differences between product photography and event photography that show the limits of what the AI can do. It can’t generate images about a live event it knows nothing about, including those attending, much less do it in real-time like an on-site photographer could. And while a brand can utilize the AI to complement its own images, Titan can’t pull from a brand’s own image and product resources to create something that way. Copyrighted brands, logos, likenesses, and assets are untouchable that way. First, you take the original image and then plug in the AI to work with it.
“My experience is that brands will still want to be able to take live photos of their products and events in different ways, in a very realistic format,” says Marcus. “Many multimedia companies want to be able to have their own brand associated with content creation, so this is another tool in the toolbox to act as an augmentation.”
Titan Image Generator is currently available as a preview in the United States and only in English, though Amazon also announced that it is looking to expand availability to other markets and languages going forward.
Local artist’s sculpture to be unveiled at Flushing shopping mall to mark holiday season
A downtown Flushing shopping mall is preparing to unveil a new sculpture on Dec. 7 as part of an annual holiday lighting ceremony.
Local photographer retires, becomes new utility clerk
Longtime Hiawatha resident Deb Christian started her first full day as the new utility clerk for the City of Hiawatha on Dec. 3.
Christian’s official start day was on Dec. 1, which is the same day she retired from photography and operating Deb’s Images.
This librarian turned photographer takes stark, dazzling images of the Prairies
By day, Sandra Herber is a librarian at Humber College in Toronto. But on her time off, she’s an intrepid photographer of Canada’s far-flung landscapes. Her fascination with the art form began at age 12, when her mother passed down her grandfather’s old manual Pentax Spotmatic. “I was so obsessed with it,” Herber says. “I begged my parents to let me set up a darkroom in our basement.” As an adult, she took her camera on various trips through Malaysia, eastern Myanmar and New Guinea, but it was only in 2002, when she enrolled in her first photography workshop, that she began to take her hobby more seriously.
In 2013, Herber flew to Saskatoon to snap some photos of the Prairies’ historic grain elevators, which piqued her interest for their ability to meld form and function. The vast landscape—giant flat fields, endless stretches of sky and isolated old buildings—enchanted her. “Everything about the Prairies is a challenge,” Herber says. Scattered remote communities face unreliable cell service. In the summer, the punishing heat can crest to 35° C or more, while winter temperatures sometimes plummet to minus-40. “It is not a land for the faint of heart,” she says.
READ: This mid-century photographer captured the Inuit’s disappearing way of life
Soon Herber was going back twice a year. In 2015, she made her first winter excursion, which became a lesson in emergency preparedness. She had to plot out and download online maps for her entire route in case she lost cell service. Before she left, she also double-checked her food and fuel supplies, since there would be nowhere to stop along the way. Despite these challenges, that winter in the Prairies brought her obsession with the region into focus. “The grain elevators and any other buildings just stand out so beautifully,” she says.
In the 1930s, these small wooden elevators dotted seemingly every town and village in the Prairies, but the ensuing decades of agricultural industrialization rendered them obsolete; they were steadily replaced with larger concrete structures. Herber is drawn to the old buildings for their visual appeal, of course, but also for their importance to the Prairies’ past. (She is a librarian, after all.) On her trips, she visits other historically significant structures, like a two-classroom schoolhouse in southwestern Manitoba and a 20th-century church built by Ukrainian immigrants who moved to the region in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was one of the first things they constructed so they could have a place to gather. “Many of their descendants have moved to the cities, and that whole culture, that whole way of life, has disappeared,” Herber says. “But these buildings hang on as a memorial.”
Herber tries to scout and map out most of her locations in advance, but trees like this one (captured in 2022 in Saskatchewan) are a stroke of luck. It caught her interest while she was driving, so she quickly pulled over and got to work. “Every other tree in the neighbourhood had lost its autumn foliage,” she says. “But somehow that little tree had hung on to its beautiful golden and rust-coloured leaves.”
This photo shows what was then Canada’s oldest Prairie grain elevator, built in 1897 and once operated by Lake of the Woods Milling Company. When Herber visited it in Elva, Manitoba, in 2022, it was in the process of being dismantled so its wood could be refinished and reclaimed for other uses. Just over a month after her visit, a random spark burned the 124-year-old structure to the ground.
Only a handful of people live in the hamlet of Herronton, Alberta. Herber estimates that its population likely never exceeded 50 or 60, yet in the early 1930s, there were an impressive five grain elevators in the area. The blue-green building, shot in 2018, is the official colour of the Alberta Wheat Pool. Founded in 1923, it was one of the first wheat farmer co-ops on the Prairies and later became part of Viterra, currently the nation’s largest grain handler.
In 2023, Herber spent over an hour driving next to this Saskatchewan field, trying to find the perfect shot of hay bales. The result shows her ability to see beauty in what locals might consider run-of-the-mill. “I’m not saying that those people don’t appreciate the beauty of the Prairies—of course they do,” she says. “But maybe an outsider’s view shows you that something ordinary can be really beautiful.”
For a decade, Herber has been building her scouting map, where she pins locations that she wants to visit and colour-codes ones she wants to return to (or not). She had already photographed this Manitoba grain elevator in the summer, but she came back in 2022 to see it surrounded by snow. This photo was captured after a white-knuckle drive on the Trans-Canada Highway, plagued by four-foot-high snow drifts and plenty of ice.
Grain elevators were painted different colours depending on who owned them. Herber believes that this one, located in Saskatchewan, was once owned by Searle—hence the large, faded “S” at the top. When she took this photo in 2023, she incorporated the power lines; many photographers omit them, but Herber considers them an inevitable and important part of the Prairie landscape.
During Herber’s travels, she sourced a lot of locations from organizations like the Manitoba Historical Society. But in 2022, she came across this barn in southwestern Manitoba while browsing geotagged images online. She usually selects historical subjects for her photographs, but she found the contrast of the red walls against the stark white snow too striking to resist.
This Ukrainian church, not far from Saskatoon, was built in the early 1920s. It replaced the congregation’s original building, which went up in 1905—the same year Saskatchewan became a province. Last year, Herber drove to the church, where she learned that the congregation still exists, although it’s now based in the village of Alvena. “They protect the church,” Herber says. “They come out; they maintain it.”
In 2022, when Herber pulled up to this school in southwestern Manitoba, she was immediately attracted to its vibrant yellow colour. It’s a two-classroom schoolhouse—a departure from the usual single-room ones found in the area at that time—and Herber suspects the community must have taken great pride in it. Although the Coultervale School District dates back to 1887, the one that Herber photographed was constructed in 1914.
‘Mature themes’: The NGA’s new $6.6 million artwork comes with an age warning
Fifty years after controversially purchasing Blue poles by Jackson Pollock, NGA hopes its acquisition of Jordan Wolfson’s animatronic work will also write art history.
