Aileen Clarke - Arts Fest

I struggled with picking out my favorite piece at Arts Fest. There are so many amazing artists and so many unique pieces of art from paintings, to ceramics, to photographs, to so much more. After walking around for a while, I came back to the tent that caught my eyes the most. The majority of this artist’s work was of nature and wildlife. I was trying to decide between two of his pieces. One was a photograph of giraffes and the other one was a photograph of an elephant. I originally liked the elephant one because it reminded me of the photograph on my bedroom wall and I have always loved elephants. It is of a baby elephant that my uncle took when he was in Sri Lanka, I believe. I ended up choosing the giraffe one though because I felt it was more unique. The piece of art that caught my eyes the most at Arts Fest was done by an artist named John Hartung. John Hartung made a photograph of two giraffes looking like they were about to kiss one another. I love photographs of animals because of the gentleness and innocence of their features and I have always had a soft spot for animals in my heart. I found this particular photograph of the giraffes to be especially interesting because it captured the two animals in their natural habitat. The photograph also captured the two giraffes interacting with one another in a human like quality of a kiss. I love the contrast between the orange and white of the giraffes coat with the coloring of the green background. I found the purple tongue to also be very funny. I liked that John Hartung was able to capture that along with the one giraffe’s teeth.  When I asked the photographer, John Hartung, what made him take the photo, he told me there was not much thought behind the reasoning for making the photograph. He just liked the way the two giraffes were looking at each other and interacting with one another. The reasoning behind the photograph that he gave me is fitting to the name he gave to his work because he captures the animals facial expressions and he named his work the “art that smiles”. John Hartung said he was on a safari at the time when he made the photograph. He was in Masai Mara at the time looking at national reservations. I had lot of respect for his work and passion and was glad I got the chance to talk to him about his work.