Lonnie Lardner - The Lardner Report

Shorebreak Shooting – How Passion Begets Beauty

March 31, 2019 by Lonnie Lardner

“Crystal Ball” Photograph by Clark Little.

He may just be a surfer dude, but Oahu resident Clark Little is blowing the minds of photography fans all over the world. A total adrenaline junky, Little admits he loves the rush of getting tossed about in the waves. With childlike abandon, and a set of flippers, he fearlessly dives into his shoreline landscape.

It all started when his wife brought home a (lame) picture of North Shore waves. And he basically said, “I don’t think so.” He let the tide take him on his way. And in the last 8 years, he has never lost his sense of wonder. Each shoot is pure joy — and it shows. It’s what every artist should feel — and share. Check out the video and photographs below.

“Waimea Eddie Shorebreak 8” by Clark Little

My Mystery Minimalist

February 28, 2019 by Lonnie Lardner

(Pic #1) Little Alexander’s minimalist contribution to our art workshop. For him, it was more about what not to paint.

For the last 30 years I’ve had the joy of running art workshops for hundreds of inner-city kids in South Central LA. Each session offers a chance for every child to express his most creative instincts. There are no rules. No instruction. Just a few hours of unbridled artistic energy.

(Pic #2) Fearless self expression in paint, metallic powders, cotton balls, and buttons.

With that kind of freedom, we typically witness franetic applications of paint, glitter, confetti, stickers, beads and, well, pretty much anything that glue can keep on the page. (Pic #2) Layers upon layers of color, texture, and goo. It’s almost as if it’s their last day on earth, and if they don’t load up their artwork with 16 pounds of “stuff” there will be no trace they even passed through.

So when I spotted the pure red and black minimalist painting above, I freaked. Kids don’t do that. If there are jars of glitter and glue, they will be emptied. Paints are poured, poured again, and almost nothing is left on the table.

Minimalism is defined as a 1950s abstract art movement whose pieces “minimize distractions and focus on only what matters.” The boy who painted the minimalist piece on top apparently gets that. In fact, I think it takes a certain discipline and clarity of thought to eliminate objects from a painting instead of adding them.

My only regret is that I didn’t get to meet this young Ellsworth Kelly. He apparently skipped out and left his work on the sidewalk. Another perfect artist move.

How Picasso Redesigned Apple, Inc. — And Our Lives

January 31, 2019 by Lonnie Lardner

(Pic #1) The Bull, Lithograph by Pablo Picasso, 1945 / Inspiration for Mac sleek.

Twelve lines — and there it was.

It seems almost impossible to fathom, but just one defiant Spanish artist revolutionized the way a multi-billion dollar industry designs its products, and changed the way we all work. Pablo Picasso, the irreverent, most trailblazing painter and sculptor of the 20th century, continues to shape style and function, nearly half a century after his death.

The series of bull drawings below, explain how. And why Apple, Inc. is still “all in.”

(Pic #2) “The Bull” (lithograph series) Pablo Picasso, 1945

Picasso pretty much defined minimalism through these eleven drawings…starting with a fairly realistically rendered bull up top, and ending with a handful of lines that evoke the animal’s “essence” at the bottom. The series is a step-by-step illustration of how to break an image down into its most basic parts.

Today, Apple incorporates these lithographs into its internal, highly secretive training program.

(Pic #3) Steve Jobs: “Let’s make it simple. Really simple.”

Jonathan Ive, head of design under Steve Jobs, describes the process of creating one of Apple’s Power Macs: “We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential,” he said. “We kept going back to the beginning, again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts?”

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The relationship between Apple and the prolific painter was exposed in a New York Times article in 2014. The Apple Uiniversity course on communication (taught by Randy Nelson, the former dean of Pixar University) focused on all 11 versions of “The Bull.” His point was: you rip through dozens and dozens of iterations until you can simply deliver your message in a concise way. The Apple brand has stayed true to that philosophy, ever since.

As the former Apple CEO explained: “The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.”

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Fun fact: Steve Jobs was influenced by 20th-century European artists. In fact, the original Mac logo from 1984 was inspired by Picasso’s contemporary and sometimes rival, Henri Matisse.