lighting effects

In my ongoing effort to pretend winter doesn't exist and that it doesn't really get dark at 4:30, I've been mucking around with a lamp making project. Before everything outdoors got covered in several layers of ice and snow (about three weeks ago), I carried a pair of secateurs and a shopping bag along on a couple of park walks. Now this is the semi-wilderness park I'm talking about and not the outrageously well maintained Victorian Public Garden. Anyway, I collected some sticks in order to make an 'artistic rustic box lamp'.

The attached pictures will show you just how far I got with the stick lamp - not very as you'll notice. In the second shot the appearance that it's standing upright is deceptive, well actually an outright lie, since it's partly leaning on the black desk lamp behind. Otherwise, it folded into a parallelogram no matter how I tied the strings. I used to be good with geometry too. The idea was supposed to be that a card paper square shade (with cutouts for coloured acetate) would wrap the outside with the other open square tied on top to hold it together. Since it proved to be unstable I tried another plan which was to make the upper square smaller, figuring that would make it less likely to tip. Instead, it twisted. No pictures were necessary as I took the whole thing apart. If we had a fireplace the remains would have made a nice bit of kindling.

Never mind, at least now I can use my table for its regular duties as a drawing and painting space. Have you ever had projects fail that originally seemed to be really good ideas? At least I wasn't attempting to build a fountain in the living room.. this time.

The above is a picture done a couple of years ago called 'Eustace's Gift' (Eustace being the dragon).

Let's hope for an early spring.

♡

now and then

Although I didn't take this picture the lady slippers are in bloom in our favorite park again. I didn't know they were a kind of orchid until today. Aren't they pretty?

I've also been thinking about the future and how the ideas of experts have often been wrong:

'I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.'
~ Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and inventor of Ethernet, writing in 1995. In 1999, addressing the Sixth International WWW Conference, Metcalfe put a copy of his infamous column into a blender, pureed it, and drank it.

'There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States.'
~ T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission commissioner in 1961. Needless to say, Mr. Craven is no longer the commissioner of the FCC.

'I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.'
~ Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM in 1943. Of course, Watson was referring to room-size mega-machines filled with vacuum tubes. But still..

'The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.'
~ Sir William Preece, chief engineer, British Post Office in 1876. Messenger boys?

'This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.'
~ Western Union internal memo in 1876. Western Union sent its last telegram in 2006.

'Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.'
~ Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox in 1946. He was right. Now we've moved on to aluminum and plastic televisions.


I kind of like this girl's idea about the future of robots. Only time will tell if she has the right idea:


'It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.'
~ Yogi Berra

♡

serpent of summer

A couple of days ago when walking along one of the more hidden paths in Point Pleasant Park we found a little guy who looked something like this. Actually, he looked a lot like this. Isn't he beautiful? Definitely a garter snake, but a smallish one, probably only very recently born, he was in a wooded area where  moss, granite outcrops, surface roots and pine needles were lit by dappled sunlight. As I walked between two closely spaced trees I could easily have stepped on him if it weren't that his surprised stare stopped me in my tracks. Yes, he was looking at me with what appeared to be a shocked expression but it may be they always look shocked - at least until they react. Neither of us had seen a snake in the park before so we knelt down and all three of us looked each other over. After a few minutes he gave a snakely shrug and slithered sedately over a root and into a hollow at the base of the tree. We watched him curl into the space and then continued our walk. Next up was the frog chorus among the lily pads of the old quarry pond. You'd never guess a simple walk could be so entertaining, would you?

While I hate snagging internet pictures the problem now is I seem to be in the midst of an unexpected, and entirely unplanned, drawing and painting hiatus this summer. Okay, I could have drawn a snake - it's not like that would be very complicated, is it? Anyhow, I felt like telling the story without going to my drawing table first. I hope you don't mind and I hope the anonymous snake photographer won't mind either. I'm sure the snake won't care.

Meanwhile, I did find a wonderful article called 'Web Design: The First 100 Years'. If you take a peek the mid-90s layout style is a design statement. This is a great talk, well worth reading, especially if you're curious about why the gazillionaires who run Silicon Valley are bonkers.

Quote of the week:
 “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
~ E.O. Wilson
♡

our singular satellite

Some years ago I read a story about a man who was trying to sell a movie idea proposing that if you wanted to meet real aliens all you had to do was to go to a part of the world where a full eclipse of the sun was about to occur and look around for odd creatures. Perhaps there'd be one or two peculiar beings wearing long coats and breathing apparatus or you might notice some strange sealed vehicles. You see the idea the man had was that solar eclipses seen from Earth may be one of the wonders of the universe and there could very well be tourists from distant places who come to witness them.

Have you ever wondered how marvelous total eclipses are?

It is a very strange quirk of fate indeed that the disc of the Moon should seem, from an Earthly perspective, to be exactly the same size as the Sun. While we take it for granted that the two main bodies seen in Earth's skies look the same size, it is actually something of a miracle. Most people are fully aware that the Moon is tiny compared to the Sun but that it is much, much closer to us causing them to appear equal in size. To be precise the Moon is 400 times smaller than the star at the center of our solar system, yet it is also just one 400th of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

The odds against this optical illusion happening at all are simply huge - but how bizarre that both values are the same, perfectly round number. Isaac Asimov once described this perfect visual alignment as being:

"The most unlikely coincidence imaginable".

Even more amazing is the fact the Moon also manages to very precisely imitate the perceived annual movements of the Sun each month. The full Moon is at its highest and brightest at midwinter, mirroring the Sun at midsummer and at lowest and weakest at midsummer when the Sun is at its highest and brightest.

Life is strange. I'll check outside again to see if there's an alien waiting for the moon to rise. Maybe the snow will be gone.
♡

round and round

Having had to keep the curtains and windows closed on weekdays for the first  two months of summer has pretty much stopped me doing much drawing (the paints and brushes remain packed away).

Not to be one to do nothing when I'm kept from the drawing table, I've been spending some of the downtime making little beaded bits again. Whether I'll apply for a small space at the local Christmas craft fair in December is still to be decided, but having nothing at all to show would make the idea a moot one.

Up to now I've made fifteen beaded pendants and a couple of new bracelets. What's been trickier, though, has been trying to take three or four decent pictures of each one - yes, it's a juried show. Once I have access to my workspace and daylight again on a regular basis I guess I'll figure it out.

Nevertheless, making things is much more fun for me than photographing them. Out of more than a hundred images taken one late afternoon a few days ago, these are the best ones so far. Thank goodness for digital cameras, eh?

The good news is that our windows and the balcony door will be replaced on Tuesday - the last place on this side of the building. Besides having to move the furniture away from the front of the apartment (!) we've already noticed it takes the crew the better part of twelve hours to complete a switchover so I guess we'll be taking a trip that day. Know of any good movies showing this summer?

♡

ps: I wouldn't have cared about this work if anything had been noticeably wrong with the old windows, but there wasn't. I wonder why is everything always about appearances these days.

plans and what happens

This is our new roommate - that big green thing on the left side of the picture.  What happened was we heard late last week that we're getting new windows, at absolutely no expense to us, other than the disruption that will come of having scaffolding hanging out front during the process, never mind when they actually haul the old ones out (including the balcony door) and put the one ones in. Maybe the rent will go up a tiny bit in honor of all this but that's all part of the fun of renting. Unfortunately, since this will likely occur in late April and May, it means there will be no balcony garden this summer. No vines winding up old tree branches lashed to the rails and no tomato plants in pots. Never mind.

We decided instead it might be a good time to rescue a palm plant we'd seen at the supermarket a few days earlier. It was still standing looking forlorn in front of the banana display when we returned. Approaching it carefully, but not wishing to offend the poor thing, I apologized before poking it with a stick a couple of times to make sure there were no tarantulas still in residence. Once I determined it was clear of jungle fauna I attached the leash, showed it some tasty treat plant food and coaxed it out of the store. We attracted a bit of a crowd in the parking lot when the plant had to make several attempts before managing to climb into the back seat, but by the time we got here all we had to do was tell it our apartment number and it pushed the elevator button all by itself. On arrival it climbed into it's new pot and sighed with relief as the afternoon sun came shining through the old windows.

They tell me majesty palms can quite easily grow to 8 or 10 feet tall. By the end of summer I might need a machete to clear my way to the bookcase. No, please don't tell it I said that. It looks as though I might have committed to a tree after all.
♡

projects past and improbable

I got tired of looking at the last image when I open the blog so I thought I'd post one of the old paintings that hasn't made an appearance in a while. It's called 'The World' and is one of the Sufi mandalas I did about ten years ago.

Meanwhile, this is the most recent of the quick sketches from a story that keeps sliding in and out of view and in a way it may be the perfect one to describe how I'm feeling about the project.. at sea. I'm no longer certain it will go much further unless it's strictly as a series of drawings and paintings that people would be able to draw their own conclusions about. So for the time being I think I'll leave it in the background while it makes up its mind about what it wants to be.

Lastly, here's another vimeo animation you may enjoy:


Wing from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

♡

lost and found

It turns out there's an urban art form I'd never heard about until very recently. Next time I go for a walk I'm definitely taking a few posters with me. 

Lost: Elephant
Color - Greyish
Size - Largeish
Looks - Like an elephant
Last seen - Halifax area
When - Not for a bit
Answers to - this

(**)

sayings of a Buddhist Rabbi

There's so much nonsense going on wherever we look these days that sometimes the best we can do is find something that makes us laugh. I found this painting by an old favorite artist, Charles Bragg, and it turned out it fitted very nicely with these wisdom lessons sent by a dear friend several months ago.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

Be here now.  Be someplace else later.  Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.

Wherever you go, there you are.  Your luggage is another story.

Accept misfortune as a blessing.  Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems.  What would you talk about?

There is no escaping karma.  In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited.  And whose fault was that?

Zen is not easy.  It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have?  Bupkis.

The Tao does not speak.  The Tao does not blame.  The Tao does not take sides.  The Tao has no expectations.
The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud.  Let your stillness be as a wooded glen.  And sit up straight.  You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.

Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.
Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.
Each blossom has ten thousand petals.
You might want to see a specialist.

Be aware of your body.  Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself.
The Buddha says, There is no self.
So, maybe we're off the hook.

♡

fragility of information

The Rosetta Stone, discovered by soldiers in Napoleon's army in 1799, was found to have three different bands of writing inscribed on it. The top band contained Egyptian hieroglyphs, the second an Egyptian script called demotic, and the third band was in ancient Greek. Since the Greek language was still in use, translation of the rest of the stone was possible. Both demotic and hieroglyphic languages had been lost to the Egyptians more than a thousand years earlier.

I realized a few weeks ago I'm going to have to take new digital pictures of the older paintings in my small collection because the originals were lost when the new computer crashed a while back. Now that's really not much of a problem but it made me wonder what would happen to society if all the computers went down? It's even possible that some catastrophe could strike, say a massive solar flare, that didn't kill us but did destroy the power grids. If something serious happened would we know how to put things back together?

Most of us have experienced losing access to music, movies and video games simply because the technology has changed so much in recent memory but we're generating more information than ever before and storing it on ever more transient media. Much of what is being lost is hardly essential. I mean future generations aren't going to fail because you lost the family photo album when your hard drive died but it would be a very different story if all the bank and financial records disappeared, never mind medical records and technical manuals. Every time Amazon tries to sell me a Kindle I wonder what they have planned for books. Paper isn't manufactured to last for decades either but surely would outlive the plastic screens. Most of the digital storage media that's used in the world today has a short shelf life.

So far as I know they never figured out what they'd write on signs to warn people in the distant future about the dangers around nuclear waste sites. I haven't heard about that topic in a while but don't think it was resolved. I wonder what kind of Rosetta Stones we could develop for ourselves just in case things changed very suddenly? Is it even worth thinking about?

Maybe we should be leaving repositories of knowledge for our descendants. Perhaps we should be making copies of wikipedia printed on acid free paper or carving the basic ideas and history of our culture on clay tablets that we can fire and seal away somewhere. It wouldn't cost very much and someday might prove helpful. It would be a good idea too if education covered more practical skills and apprenticeship - a reasonable alternative to current pastimes designed to increase consumption.

Every civilization thinks it will last forever, and none of them do.

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Shelley