Painting proceeds fund gallery repairs

Funds recently obtained from the auction of a painting from the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery met and exceeded the gallery’s estimated $700,000 to $900,000 shortfall in renovation costs.

The painting, the first sold from the gallery in almost 20 years, went for $2.8 million, which will be used to cover the costs to preserve the facility and its artwork.

Larry Griffis, gallery director, said he was pleasantly surprised, overwhelmed and speechless at the outcome.
“We knew the painting was valuable,” he said. “However, we didn’t expect there to be buyers so eager to bid against one another to reach that final amount.”

The final decision to sell a painting from the gallery came from the Birger Sandzén Memorial Foundation Board after much discussion.

The gallery had begun a three- to eight-year capital campaign that included renovation costs necessary to preserve the collection. Despite a generous donation that sparked this campaign, however, funds came up short, and it was decided a painting should be auctioned to remedy the situation.

The piece was a still life landscape oil painting by Marsden Hartley. It was purchased by Johan Oscar Thorsen, a piano professor at Bethany College, for no more than $75 when himself and close friend, Sandzén, visited Hartley’s studio in 1919 in Santa Fe. The fact that Hartley sold a painting to an individual buyer was rare.
Before Thorsen’s death in 1968, the painting was left to the gallery.

This piece was selected to be sold for two reasons. Its estimated value was close to that of the renovation shortfall, and it also did not fit into the gallery’s collection management policy, which places highest priority on Sandzén, local and regional works.

The Sotheby auction in New York was chosen for its extensive experience in selling Hartley works.
The final buyer, who asked to remain anonymous, paid $3,218,500 for the painting, following an applied buyer’s fee.
The proceeds of the sale will not go to operating expenses, but toward collection-related expenses and renovations to ensure the long-term care of the works. Renovations fall within the capital campaign, whose phases include a development campaign, conservation and preservation of collections, increased endowment for operations and educational services and programs.

Allocation of funds that exceed these costs will be decided at the annual foundation meeting in May, following renovation completion projected for March. Changes include new air handling and mechanical systems, complete rewiring, lighting, UV window replacements, a security and fire detection and suppression system, asbestos abatement and new exhibition room wall board and coverings.

In addition to the capital campaign, plans are also being made to work on the courtyard, which is made possible by funds from the late Walter W. Jones, a longtime gallery board of directors member from McPherson.
The gallery’s primary source of income for day-to-day operations comes from several avenues: the Greenough Trust left by Margaret and Charles Greenough, funds from a small Sandzén Foundation endowment, grants, memberships and donations.

The gallery is a non-profit organization owned by the Birger Sandzén Memorial Foundation and was established in 1955 by Alfrida Sandzén, Margaret Sandzén Greenough and Charles Pelham Greenough III and opened in 1957.
These individuals were the primary funding resources for the gallery until Margaret’s death in 1993. This was last time the gallery had a similar shortfall, which resulted in the most recent selling of artwork.
Two collections make up the gallery, which include the Birger Sandzén Memorial Foundation Art Collection and the Greenough Trust Art Collection.

Landscapes By Karen Sperling

Continuing with the methods of using photographic images to create artistic paintings, Karen Sperling has released the second in her series of DVD's of Painting For Photographers. This time the topic is painting landscapes in which she shows you how to select and create works of art using landscape based photographs.

As with portraits, composing and creating a landscape photograph feels much easier to create to most people as compared to painting one. Most photographers feel that to paint from photographs, you must be an artist and have vast artistic skills. The goal of this DVD to show you that anyone who can create a photograph can also paint using photos. It is the same visual sense that drew you to photography can also help you turn your photographs into digital art work. The first three lessons are the bulk of this training with the rest a set of bonus features that take the topics that you have learned and put them to use with different subjects. The photos that are used in lessons two thru five are included on the DVD so you can work along with the training.

Art Lessons ," begins with a segment on some basic art theories that you should know about when working with landscapes. Here you will look at how some of the masters of landscape painting approached their subjects. You begin with looking at the idea that when you paint landscapes, you paint with tones instead of details. Through the use of dramatic tones you can create dramatic paintings.

You will learn how to figure out what is the subject of your painting is so that you can work to apply the greatest contrast of light and dark to the subject area. You will see how to edit tones to get your point across. You will also learn about the color wheel to get the appropriate tones and color schemes to balance your image. You will also learn about color harmony to blend colors within the image.

Lesson 2, "Main 02 - Oil Painting," now takes a look at creating an oil painting from a photo using the art theories that are based on oil painting. First you start off with some basics on Corel Painter such as getting around in the program . You will see how to use the brushes as well as how to install custom brushes that are included on the DVD.

Qualcomm with growth of only 12.4 percent

Samsung is racing to take top spot in electronics and semiconductor domain. As per the newly released semiconductor ranking by IHS iSuppli for 2010, the No. 2-ranked Samsung held 9.2 percent share of global chip revenue, up from 7.6 percent in 2009. This put the South Korean electronics giant a mere 4.1 percentage points behind perennial market leader Intel of the United States, says IHS iSuppli.

"The rise of Samsung is one of the biggest stories of the last decade in the worldwide semiconductor market," said IHS analyst Dale Ford. "When experts discuss competition for Intel, they almost always focus on Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD). While it is true that AMD is Intel's major competitor in the microprocessing unit (MPU) market, Samsung is the primary rival of Intel for overall semiconductor market share. And although they are mainly indirect competitors in the marketplace, Intel and Samsung have been ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, for a number of years."

IHS iSuppli findings and observations on semiconductor vendor ranking in 2010 include:
In 2001 Intel's market share at 14.9 percent was more than three times that of Samsung at 3.9 percent; Samsung ranked fifth then. Since that time, Intel's market share has ranged between 11.9 percent and 14.8 percent. Meanwhile, Samsung has seen its revenues grow by 355 percent from 2001 to 2010, allowing the company to expand market share and raise its ranking.

Samsung's strong performance in 2010 was driven by booming sales of its main semiconductor product: memory integrated circuits (ICs). Among the major semiconductor categories, memory ICs had the strongest growth at 52.4 percent. In comparison, the next fastest-rising area was sensors and actuators at 35.5 percent, followed by discretes at 34.5 percent.

The biggest growth driver in the memory segment in 2010 was dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which enjoyed 75.0 percent expansion. The other major segment of the memory market, NAND flash, grew 38.6 percent for the year.

For Samsung, given its position as the world's leading supplier of DRAM and NAND, the company's 59.1 percent rise in semiconductor revenue during 2010 meant it massively outperformed the overall semiconductor industry. Worldwide semiconductor revenue amounted to $304.1 billion in 2010, up 32.1 percent from $230.2 billion in 2009, according to the final IHS iSuppli 2010 semiconductor revenue ranking.

U.S.-based Micron Technology, Hynix Semiconductor of South Korea and Japan's Elpida Memory expanded their share of the total market by 1.1 percent, 0.7 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively. For Micron, the combination of strong memory market growth and its acquisition of Numonyx propelled Micron up five places into the Top 10 to No. 8. For their part, Hynix and Elpida achieved revenue expansion of 66.2 percent 63.3 percent, respectively-the largest increase among Top 20 semiconductor companies based entirely on organic growth. As a result, Elpida jumped up four spots in ranking from No. 15 in 2009 to No. 11 in 2010, while Hynix advanced one place to No. 6.

Renesas Electronics Corp. went up in the rankings from No. 9 in 2009 to No. 5 in 2010 by virtue of the merger between Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics. The two companies, which had combined revenues in 2009 of $9.5 billion, grew 24.7 percent, less than the overall market, to $11.9 billion in 2010.

The 3.9 percent market share in 2010 of Renesas Electronics Corp. is still lower than the 4.3 percent market share of Renesas Technology, formed in 2003 by the merger of Hitachi Semiconductor and Mitsubishi Semiconductor. Renesas Technology had seen its overall market share fall to 2.2 percent in 2009, but the most recent merger now boosts the merged entity back up close to the company's original share and into the Top 5 rankings.

A combination of impressive business execution and participation in strong market segments enabled Maxim Integrated Products, Marvell Technology Group, Elpida Memory, Broadcom Corp. and Xilinx Inc. to make the biggest strides in the Top 25 market rankings for 2010.

Maxim jumped six places to No. 24, followed by Marvell climbing five places to No. 18. The rest moved up four places, with Broadcom moving into the Top 10 for the first time. All five companies, driven primarily by organic growth, expanded their revenues between 36.0 percent and 63.3 percent in 2010.

Other semiconductor suppliers achieving strong growth in 2010 without the boost of a major acquisition were Texas Instruments with an increase of 34.4 percent, Analog Devices with 36.9 percent, Infineon Technologies with 41.8 percent and Panasonic Corp. with 52.5 percent. Infineon's revenue for 2010 still includes the wireless business it sold to Intel at the start of 2011.

NXP, which sold its set-top box business lines to Trident Microsystems in 2010, also delivered a healthy performance with 24.3 percent growth.

Suppliers among the Top 25 that struggled the most in 2010 were Taiwan-based MediaTek with flat revenue, Qualcomm with growth of only 12.4 percent and nVidia with 13.1 percent expansion. Qualcomm slipped from No. 6 to No. 9, and MediaTek fell from 16th to 19th in the rankings. nVidia was able to hang on to its No. 20 spot. AMD and Sony Corp. also fell in the rankings by four positions each, as their overall revenue growth significantly lagged market growth.