Deviations from Select Albums 4: 112. Jose Feliciano

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This work was not meant to be complicated - it was just an experiment with the Liquify filter on the sunshade,
the artist's fingers, the guitar strings and the letter F.

For all its simplicity, I was also attempting to create something that would look like two vertical planes; one
from each of the two images - a front image at right and a back image at left, without lightening or darkening
the blue background. This I tried to achieve by extending the guitar fretboard beyond the picture frame of the
image at left and by placing a strip of black to separate the two images and which would create the impression
of a shadow to suggest that the right image is in front of the left image.

At first, the idea seemed perfect - with the extended fretboard inserted behind the blue background of the
front image, the viewer, looking at the left image from top to centre, could approximate that the thickness
of the shadow is the same as the distance between the face of the guitar and the back of the artist.

The dilemma, however, proves that the idea was not perfect. Looking at the left image from the bottom to
the centre, the viewer would now realise, reckoning from the shadow, that the left image is not behind the
right but is in front of it. The extended fretboard could not resolve the dilemma - it is now at its centre.

The partial repetition of the black strip at extreme right produced a certain unevenness of the plane of the
right image - it's as if the right elbow of the artist is nearer to the viewer than his left hand. And it does not
work to resolve the dilemma at left. Instead, it only adds to it. Such is the characteristic of a blivit or a Schuster
fork which is also featured in my immediately preceding work, The Grand Illusion by Styx.

Such is the characteristic of impossible objects.

Images & article from Brainden.com

Impossible objects really get us chasing our tail. Our brain tries to do its best usually, however, there are
instances when it fails to process correctly what the eye sees.

The brain makes sense of shapes and symbols. It's trying to put them together like a jigsaw puzzle, formulating
that which isn't there to that which is believable. 2D figure is sub-conscionsly interpreted as 3D object although
such object can not exist.

Here's the original album cover art design.

Cover illustration by George Stavrinos, album design by Neil Terk &
Co., art direction by Beverly Weinstein & Janna Merlyn Feliciano.
Album produced by Anna Merlyn Feliciano & Jose Feliciano.
Private Stock 1976.

Aaron Loves Angela is about two teenagers living in the slums of New York City who are deeply in love with each
other. Angela (Irene Cara), who is Puerto Rican, falls in love with Aaron (Kevin Hooks), who is black. Their
relationship is not approved by either of their parents. They both rebel against their parents' prejudices, but soon
find out that their friends and neighbours share the same prejudices as their parents.

The soundtrack was composed by José Feliciano and Janna Marlyn Feliciano, recorded and performed on the José
Feliciano album Angela. wikipedia

Fame star Irene Cara made her film bow in Aaron Loves Angela. Cara plays Angela, a Puerto Rican girl who falls
in love with Aaron, a black ghetto youth (Kevin Hooks, whose father Robert Hooks also appears in the film). The
unrelenting grimness of their lives is leavened ever so slightly by comic-relief character Willie (Leon Pinkley).
Way, way down on the cast list is singer Jose Feliciano, making his unstressed acting debut. The script for Aaron
Loves Angela is by Gerald Sanford, and appears to have been adapted from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
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