Art on the Walls

The New Deal Cafe provides a venue for local artists to exhibit and sell their work. We have a showroom and glass display cases, and every other month new artwork is featured. Join us at a reception to meet the creative talent behind the next exhibit.

If you’re an artist, we’d love to talk to you about having a show at the cafe.

The cafe’s art exhibits are mounted by the New Deal Cafe Art Committee and sponsored by the Friends of New Deal Cafe Arts with support from Prince George’s County. Your tax-deductible donation to FONDCA supports art at the cafe.

May and June 2009

Painting Robot

Though human creativity and artificial intelligence are related in a broad sense, there is currently little crossover between the two. Pindar’s art deals with exploring each and trying to find the connections.

Pindar’s primary tool in this endeavor is an artificially intelligent painting robot named Zanelle. This robot not only attempts to mimic human painting techniques by using a brush to apply paint to canvas, but it also attempts to interpret and compose artwork on its own. To achieve this it uses a number of artificial intelligence algorithms (neural-nets) including but not limited to k-means clustering, back propagation, and max-nets.

Their artwork together can be seen as a collaborative effort. In this collaboration, he supply’s the inspiration for its paintings in the form of subject matter. The robot then takes my seed image, and using the algorithms that he has written for it, interprets the image and produces an original composition. With the original composition in memory, the robot then directs me to mix a paint palette for use in the painting. He sets the paint out, puts a brush in Zanelle’s robotic arm, and tells it to begin painting. 12-48 hours later a painting is complete. For more info check out Pindar’s web site vanarman.com.

Greenbelt & Beyond

Ron Wilder has been honing his craft of photography for many years. Recently he decided to start presenting his work at arts and crafts fairs in the Maryland and Washington, DC area as well as submitting work to gallery shows. Ron has developed an affinity for nature photography and has focused on this aspect of his work in the last year. His “passion” for the medium actually grew out of moving to digital photography. He now works totally in the digital media. His subjects include landscapes, animals, flowers, sunsets, and various other topics. He recently started dabbling in infrared photography and this is proving to be a very exciting new aspect of photography for him. You can find Ron’s work on his website at mcwilder.com.