I must work. How I love the smell of turpentine in the afternoon. It would be really good if I could remember that I need to stock up on black oil paint. Time for a note. Back to work.
Aaaaand got the second canvas finished up today:
This is the swarf that will go on the 2nd canvas:
The Quotation:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
– Walt Whitman
Cheap markers on Bristol, done yesterday afternoon. © C. Ford.
Derivan Liquid Pencil. Fun to use and experiment with too.
Dame Vivienne Westood DBE RDI has just blown out her 75 candles, but she’s already back at work with the announcement of a new book. The “godmother of punk” is compiling her best journal entries in Get a Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood.
Dame Viv is pictured on the cover wearing a portrait of transgender WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently imprisoned for sharing classified information on the Iraq war.
“My diaries are about the things I care about,” Westwood said. “Not just fashion but art and writing, human rights, climate change, freedom. I call the diaries Get a Life as that’s how I feel: You’ve got to get involved, speak out and take action.”
Get a Life will be released on October 6, 2016. This will definitely be on my stack of fall books, and I’m looking forward to it. The 75 candles link is NSFW.
Weiß und Krieg und Kreuz, 2015. © Kaddi.
Beasty Art and Beasty Art | “Die Kunst ist eine Tochter der Freiheit.” – Friedrich Schiller.
Photo © Mattia Menchetti
When Given Colored Construction Paper, Wasps Build Rainbow Colored Nests.
It’s unnerving to discover a wasp’s nest dangling outside your house, but perhaps it would be a tad less so with the help of biology student Mattia Menchetti who cleverly realized he could give colored construction paper to a colony of European paper wasps. By gradually providing different paper shades, the wasps turned their homes into a functional rainbow of different colors.
© Waldo Nell
The Extraordinary Iridescent Details of Peacock Feathers Captured Under a Microscope.
In this series of photographs featuring the delicate details of peacock feathers, photographer Waldo Nell relied on an Olympus BX 53 microscope to take hundreds of individual shots that were combined to create each image seen here. The process, called photo stacking, blends dozens or even hundreds of photos taken at different focal points and then stitches them together to extend the depth of field. At this level of detail the feathers look more like ornate jewelry, thick braids of iridescent necklaces or bracelets, rather than something that grows organically from the wings of a bird.
By day Nell is a software engineer in Port Moody, BC, Canada, but is fascinated by technology, science, and nature, all of which he merges in his photography practice. You can see more of his work on Flickr.
NOTE: There is new content, but The Gay Agenda will be sticky for a week.
This is an art project I’ll be backing as much as possible. All the snide and bigoted comments over the years, all the fear-filled rhetoric about the Evil Gay Agenda™ coming to get you, Barbara. Now, we can all have a real Gay Agenda. The Queer Pop Mafia has a kickstarter to fund The Gay Agenda, A witty, beautifully illustrated, totally serious, and just as ridiculous, weekly planner full of LGBTQ history, people, & ideas.
example of an “ABC page”… S is for Stonewall
THE FINAL CREATION
An elegant, thoughtful, and practical personal planner spanning a full calendar year; 52 weeks minimum, maybe more. In addition to standard features, the distinguishing aspect with this annual agenda is a beautiful presentation of people, events, and ideas that we find appropriate for the first-ever, official Gay Agenda.
Important ideas, vocabulary, and history will be highlighted, figures we admire and respect will be introduced, and relevant issues will be mapped out in ways that motivate a critical mass towards a society with equal rights for all. Nothing less. And perhaps a whole lot more.
As you can imagine, publishing is very expensive. The vast majority of our fundraising goal is dedicated to the production, printing, binding, and distribution of The Gay Agenda.
26 original ink drawings of LGBTQ figures and allies from present and past, each accompanied with a biographical narrative. We call these the “People pages.” Here is an example…
[…]
Please help us make this a participatory project. When making your pledge, be sure to include a suggestion as to who we should include as one of the 26 LGBTQ heroines or allies. We also welcome your suggestions for vocabulary, events, theories, and other ideas that fit the “ABC of the Gay Agenda” format. And honestly, there is very little format, if any. Here are some examples of what we’re thinking of for letters “A”, “S”, and “P”.
There’s a video and more of the featured art work at the site, have a visit, and if you can, become a backer and you can say you had a hand in creating The Gay Agenda.
ETA: I was asked for my suggestion for a LGBTQ person for Terry to draw, and my pick was George Takei, but I was sure he had already been suggested, but it turns out I was first, and Terry had been hoping someone would suggest him. I have a warm and fuzzy.
Nakotah LaRance is a citizen of the Hopi Nation, six-time World Champion Hoop Dancer, and member of Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations. He is equipped with a game console, earphones, a Japanese graphic novel, and a dance hoop, to signal that he is both a traditional dancer and a fan of popular culture; he resists easy categorization.
Photograph by Will Wilson (Diné/Bilagáana), b. 1969
1992, from the Feather series
“1992 represents a future denied us in 1492. A kind of reminder that indigenous people have a future that they can make their own.”
Photograph by Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisga’a), b. 1955
Will Wilson is a Diné/Bilagáana photographer who has gone platinum (the platinum photographic process) with CIPX, The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange. Another photographer doing the same is Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisga’a). You can read more about these artists at http://nmai.si.edu/indelible/.
A major exhibition featuring contemporary photographs by Native American photographers Zig Jackson, Wendy Red Star, and Will Wilson in dialogue with photographs from Edward Sheriff Curtis’ renowned body of work The North American Indian will be at the Portland Art Museum through May 8th. There’s more about the exhibit and the artists here: http://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/contemporary-native-photographers/
Peter Churcher has a new series out, Rear Balcony, well worth seeing, in person, if you can. It will be at Michael Reid Galleries Berlin, 8th – 30th April 2016. You can some of his earlier work here.
Four Self-portraits in a Bunch of Balloons 2014, 162 x 130 cm.
It’s not often you see a prison program which works, but every now and then, someone gets it right. Prison art program The Torch seeks to rehabilitate Aboriginal inmates. The art work is amazing and beautiful, and not only provides a way to make a living, pile up a bit of cash while serving a sentence, prevents recidivism, it helps to reconnect indigenous people with their roots. That last is crucial for indigenous people everywhere. For every indigenous person being forced into a colonial lifestyle, the odds aren’t good. This is highlighted, briefly, in the article:
Mr Morris said Indigenous Australians made up less than 3 per cent of the population, but close to 30 per cent of the prison population.
“They’re 15 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous Australians,” he said.
And rates of reoffending are also too high. “Developing economic opportunity and independence allows participants to start afresh, start again and get over that cycle of poverty and disadvantage,” Mr Morris said.
Photo: Works painted by former and current inmates of Victorian prisons. (ABC News)
Photo: The Torch program helps Aboriginal inmates reconnect with their heritage. (ABC News)
Annette S. Lee, assistant professor of astronomy and physics at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, created the oil and mixed media “Fall Stars” to represent two major autumn constellations—Moose for the Ojibwe and Turtle for the Dakota/Lakota. (Courtesy Annette S. Lee)
Even though a sprinkling of snow fell just this Thursday in northern Minnesota, any arrows shot earlier at Wintermaker apparently have hastened his final departure from the sky. But the rise in the night of Curly Tail, the Great Panther of spring, could bring the threat of floods and dangerous, uncertain travel.
Long before Europeans brought over their Greek monikers for the constellations, Native cultures already had named their sky people. And those faraway relatives helped them to understand their world and how to survive in it.
For the Ojibwe, the constellations of Mooz (Moose), Biboonikeonini (Wintermaker), Mishi Bizhiw (the Great Panther) and Nanaboujou (the original man of Anishinaabe narratives), heralded the arrival of fall, winter, spring and summer.
More on star maps and skywatchers here.
A renegade artist took to Central Park this weekend to express discontentment with presidential candidate Donald Trump in the form of a fake tombstone dedicated to the oft-lampooned businessman with the epitaph “Make America Hate Again.” The mysterious stone also features Trump’s birth year, 1946, but includes no year of death.
[…]
The equally-critical graveyard project first surfaced on social media on Saturday, but by Sunday night had been removed by the city Parks Department—much to the chagrin of anti-Trump New Yorkers.
A spokesperson for the parks department told NBC that there is currently no information as to who erected the tombstone, but that it was city employees who hauled it away. No word on where, exactly, the artifact was hauled to.
Read more here.
