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Show There is a way to appreciate art small person, and where is the teeter-totter? This is not a difficult puzzle but it is fun to explore. The teeter-totter is in reality the whole picture. The shape of the picture or format can be square, rectangular, round, etc. The next question is where is the fulcrum or balance point of the teeter-totter. The balance point is an imaginary line down the center of the work no matter what the shape. The weightiness of the large and small persons on the teeter-tooter now has to be translated to the subjects sub-jects within the work. Some textures, tex-tures, colors, values attract more attention than others. In fact the relationship between two or three colors and textures may attract more attention than all the other colors and textures in the painting. The attracting power of a color or combination of colors is called the visual weight. Some shapes are the same way as color combinations in their ability to attract more attention atten-tion than other shapes. The positioning of a building near to the bottom of a work or up in the center and very small, all affect the way we interpret the attracting power of the thing or its visual weight. These items of colors, col-ors, values, subjects, textures, etc. found within the work individually are some times referred to as ele ments. The elements are distributed throughout the work as the artist felt the need to balance the piece. Every time the artist looked at the work he balanced it anew through his visual processes. This continues con-tinues until he is satisfied with the balance. Our viewing is similar to the artist at every observation of the work of art we balance it anew. This is where the sense or feeling of the work being "right" is derived from. For us to enjoy a work, the mechanics of our visual process demand the works we view to be balanced whether it's abstract or traditional subject matter. By DR. BEN PATTEN What! There is a why to art! You have probably wondered why some art works were acceptable accept-able to you and some were not. Why would artists paint all that modern stuff? It seems they are just wasting paint and materials. The next few articles hope to show some of the reasons why artists compose their works as they do. Even though there is a strong basis for the emotional content in art these aspects will not be dealt with in this series. Have you ever had the problem of installing a new appliance and it did not work. Everything was tried to make it work. Finally, a repairman repair-man was brought in. The repair man discovered the appliance was unplugged. The joke and the bill were on us. This story highlights the mechanics of our visual processes.' proces-ses.' The visual processes of differentiating dif-ferentiating one thing from another are' slowly being understood by scientists. sci-entists. The artist has found over the years there are some ways which look better than other ways. The reason for these "rules of design or composition" is because of the visual processes of seeing which we all share like the appliance being unplugged. Even though we might not like the subject or the way an artist has painted something, some-thing, we still sense a certain "lightness" about the work. The first principle of design is balance. In actuality balance is the foundation of other principles and is always operating in every work of art. The discussion usually ends up here in a type of visual metaphor which physically doesn't make sense. The visual symbol of a teeter-totter, a small person sitting a long way out on the board balancing balanc-ing a large person sitting near the fulcrum. This is suppoed to explain how balance works. When I look at a painting, do I ask which subject in the painting is the large person and which is the |