By Sal Maccarone Due to both the availability, and permanence of the material, carving objects from natural stone is an ancient activity. Going all the way back to Paleolithic times, man has always found ways to fashion stone. After all, we use the term “Stone age” to reference some of our earliest ancestors. Back then most of the carving was ...

By Sal Maccarone Artists have been rendering their surroundings ever since they began to walk the earth. For instance, primitive cave paintings and pre-historic petroglyphs bear witness to the way things were. Landscape paintings are the only record that we have about where, and how these ancient groups lived. Bodies of water, forests, mountains, valleys, animals and people are just ...

By Sal Maccarone It is fascinating once realized how the discovery of gold here in California had such a profound impact worldwide. For instance, as a direct result of the 1849 gold rush, leaders in this country began thinking more seriously about connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This of course was to facilitate commerce by moving goods, (and people), ...

By Sal Maccarone The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was the idea of Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957), head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM.) Mr. Mayer felt that the organization would lend respectability and status to the movie industry, the reputation of which had been tarnished during the Roaring Twenties. So on May 4, 1927, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts ...

By Sal Maccarone Parks are wonderful places! They provide recreation, they are aesthetically pleasing, and they are helpful to our environment in many ways. There are many types of parks, from urban to national, but they all share the same basic goal: setting aside space which will contribute to our physical and psychological well-being. Many urban parks are green spaces, ...

By Sal Maccarone Optical art, fractal art, abstract art, and many other forms of art rely heavily upon the placement of geometric shapes within a given space. Geometry is a language! The math that is used to create shapes — comprised of points, lines and curves — is thought to be universal. Geometric art forms can run anywhere from a ...

By Sal Maccarone Pirates and their pirate ships have always had a special place in our lore of the land. Those reprehensible villains in their sturdy well-manned boats. Arrrrgh! Forever a problem, it took the 17th century Dutch navy to finally devise a way of combating the threat. Their approach was simple: build a light weight, extremely fast ship that ...

By Sal Maccarone The lines that distinguish the difference between art and craft are oftentimes blurred. Craft is utilitarian, art is for looking at, but sometimes a particular craft is so precise that it might as well be art. Let us explore the world of engraving as an example. Beginning sometime during the fifth century B.C. man figured out how ...

By Sal Maccarone Through the ages mankind has always had a fascination with the reconfiguring of landscape. For example, what once was the Isthmus of Panama is now the Panama Canal, what once was a desert in Nevada is now Las Vegas, and what once was a swampland in Hawaii is now the very famous Waikiki Beach. Waikiki, in Honolulu, ...

By Sal Maccarone There was a time when hotel lodgings were very basic, consisting only of a room with a bed, a nightstand and a common bathroom at the end of a long hallway. That all changed somewhere along the way as luxury hotels were conceived and then built. Here in America, that change happened as a direct result of ...