Archive for November, 2005
44 items.
Go take a look at this book cover and tell me if that doesn’t look like a teen party primer. Marty thinks they didn’t intend it to come off like it seems. I think it had to be done intentionally or maybe their graphics artist put one over on them??? Anyway, I found my way there by way of Pandagon posting on a billboard for Iowa’s Abstinence Mission and someone in the comment thread pointing to the above website selling abstinence only educational materials for schools. But they didn’t point to the web page in question. And they should have. Because I could have missed it if I hadn’t followed a link or two.
No, it’s gotta be on purpose. First you see the obvious and then you see also the feminine P being plucked out of the equation and the subduing of the S.
I am so confused!!! This looks like the cover of an early 1960′s book of mildly naughty sex jokes. Only thing it’s missing is up in the corner the obligatory cocktail shaker and martini glass with a preshrunk woman burping bubbles.
That’s it. I bet they procured old ad art for cheap or maybe no money at all.
”Comment
Salome
Digital painting with photo elements
20 by 16.54 inches
2005
Am getting in a new computer and am preparing to transfer over in the next few days so if I’m posting anything this week it will not be random or select thoughts certainly. And I’m being slow with all things in general. Am having to do email online which means I’m not attending to that really either.
I want to do a side view of an Eve resting her head on a table as she stares at an apple but I can’t think of anyone with the appropriate face. (Or maybe just a simple standing profile?) If there are any volunteers, step up. Don’t know what I’m looking for in the face. I know I don’t want it leering or sly.
Yeah, Eve looking at apple. A tired old image. But I gotta.
Eve Expelled from the Garden
November 28th, 2005 |Posted In: Art, Art-Paintings, Feature, General, My Browser Window, Art-Paintings, Salome and Friends
Eve Expelled from the Garden
Alternative title: The Baker’s Daughter
Digital painting
Approx 14 w by 10 inches h
This actually looks great at 40 by 32 inches. At least on the monitor. Eve is a nod to the pin-up painter Rolf Armstrong, based on one of his paintings. The bakery was one in Augusta, on The Hill. I don’t know if it’s still there. And it was on Eve Street. Which is what gave me the idea for the painting. Was thinking of those older bibles with the paintings with the women biblical characters who look like pin-up girls.
“Now you have to admit you don’t hate squid as much as you thought you did,” says my husband.
I’ve been going through pictures of new lemur species and the find of the ancient mososaurus found in Texas and the ancient sea monster Dakosaurus andiniensis, reading the news stories to H.o.p. We look at a few pics of giant squids. I was about to refer to a post I made several days ago about how global warming will be good for kalamari and how much I hate kalamari and squid, but I fortunately remembered I never made that post. However, Marty is well aware of how much I hate kalamari and squid and octopus. I’m telling H.o.p. about how some people eat octopus and squid and I’m telling H.o.p. how I hate it but his dad loves it.
Enter his dad.
“You’ve been eating squid for years, you just don’t know it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No, I haven’t!”
“Yes, you have.”
Imagine several more rounds of me yelling that I have not been eating squid.
My husband is the primary cook around here. If he’s telling the truth he’s referring to something he cooks.
“What?” I demand. “What has squid in it?”
“I put it in all my gumbo”
“No! You do not! I have not been eating squid!”
“Yes, I’ve been putting it in the gumbo for years. I cut it up in small pieces so you don’t even know it. Now you have to admit you don’t hate squid as much as you thought you did.”
(Moment of silence.)
That’s just plain mean. That’s like when his mother tried to pass off her garden zucchini on me in casseroles and I hated zucchini.
My husband is just like his mother!
Huh. How do you like that, Mr. Cook.
Mr. Cook objects saying, “I don’t cut it up fine so you don’t know it isn’t there, just so it’s not chewy.”
“You never told me.”
“You’ve stood right there and watched me doing it!”
“It must not look like squid!”
“I get it in unsorted seafood stuff. It has squid and mussels and octopus and all kinds of things.”
I really ought to pay more attention to what’s going in my food.
Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. If you look back a couple of posts you’ll see the picture of a dead turkey and a comment on Edward Curtis. That’s my sideswipe version of a Thanksgiving commentary, I guess. But I hope everyone who drops by and reads this post has a good holiday weekend.
Right now I’m deep in morosing over computers. No, I still have not purchased a monitor. The past couple of months when I was talking about how next we would be upgrading H.o.p.’s computer, in the next year and a half, I was pretending that my monitor wasn’t on its way to dying, sometimes not coming out of sleep mode. Then I was certain it had died and hadn’t, and then again. And finally the other day it wouldn’t come on for a number of hours and finally did and I have it now set to no sleep ever at all and we can only hope the power doesn’t go off here again for a little while like it did six times day before yesterday. At least not for an extended period.
My monitor is over three years old. That’s as long as I could expect it to last.
Considering I need a decent monitor for graphics, but not a stellar one, I started beating my head up over whether to go with another ViewSonic CRT, which are disappearing but great for graphics, and get a behemoth 21 incher that will break our backs and take up all my desk real estate and force all the peripherals like my scanner and printer into my lap, or go with an LCD, and have been looking at mid-range 19 inch ViewSonic LCDs for about $400 that might do and are supposed to have good color, good black and be easy on the eyes (must be easy on the eyes). I have spent all my time the past couple days reading reviews and comments. I read a great review about one of the models I’m looking at. I have read great user comments and horrible user comments about it and seems it’s a throw of the dice one won’t get the periodic loser monitor of that model. In the meanwhile, I’d discovered the rebuilt computer a friend did for me when mine died three years ago has a dinosaur video card and I called my brother for help figuring out what video card I need to upgrade to, as I’m going to need a DVI cable probably, and he is trying to get me to go with a ViewSonic or Samsung that’s about $150 more. He is telling me also that there are some problems with upgrading my computer as I have got speed and room but an antique motherboard. So I was banging my head like I said over what to do.
In the meanwhile I was pretending that H.o.p.’s computer didn’t occasionally not cut on. This has happened more and more, where the power goes out, it needs to be cut off and it doesn’t cut back on. Finally, when the power went out the other day I spent 45 minutes trying to get it to cut on. Today Marty spent a long long while trying to get it to cut on and finally cursing it and saying evil things about it and how he was tired of this and I kept thinking eventually today it will come on but next time it may not, and eventually it cut on.
9/10′s of H.o.p.’s homeschool work is via the computer so it’s priority. (I may not be able to get him interested in much of anything people recommend for a second grader–like reading and writing and arithmetic–but we spent the past couple of days reading up a little on Leonardo da Vinci on the internet and looking up his paintings and inventions. He appreciated some of the paintings but observed that Da Vinci painted “really big babies” and was amused. He was more taken with the inventions. He has been talking a lot about Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine the past couple of weeks, fascinated by it and wanted to see all the pics he could of the inventions and people’s interpretations. And one of his programs told him about pointilism and he asked me about that yesterday. And we talked a long time about Edward Munch’s “The Scream”. His new little art software program–decidedly liteweight–just said it was a “Really scary painting!” so we talked about the history behind the painting and the explosion of Krakatoa that summer which made for the rip-roaring sunset Munch saw on the bridge that influenced the painting, and we talked about the similarity of the painting with some others which appear to have to do with the death of Munch’s mother when he was a little boy. And we ended up talking a long time about cubism and Picasso as what his new liteweight software said about cubism was particularly lame. So we talked about multiple viewpoints and experimented with multiple viewpoints physically so he could get a better idea of what I was talking about. I tell myself while others on homeschool lists are speeding ahead with the required that we’re getting something done here even though we go about it all ass backwards. Hey, but he’s now suddenly getting some math concepts that were difficult for him before.)
I’m trying to figure out what in the hell to do about the computers.
I looked up the computer specs of what’s fundamentally needed for H.o.p. exploring animation a little further and my brother says my computer as it stands is adequate for that. So I could shift this computer over to H.o.p. I had been hoping to upgrade H.o.p.’s monitor which is an old 17 inch Dell which he has personalized with magic marker eyes and arms and mouth.
This isn’t our couple of weeks for electronics. The vacuum went last week after 7 years of service. We replaced it.
I took a break from thinking about the computer and started on another pic this morning and also took a break to clean out the refrigerator. The door only opens so far before it hits the cabinet so I can’t take out a couple of drawers and it’s a pain to clean and so I always neglect it. The next person who puts garlic chicken in its take-out container without a pan underneath to catch overflowing sauce gets…well…they’ll be told again not to do that the next time. Our refrigerator is one of those ultra cheap synthetic refrigerators landlords buy and for a fair percentage of the population the time I spent cleaning out the gummy garlic sauce would have cost them as a new synthetic refrigerator, except they wouldn’t have a synthetic refrigerator.
I clean out the refrigerator every Thanksgiving. I do at other times as well but it’s an unfailing Thanksgiving thing. Just is. The gummy garlic sauce got under the glass over the vegetable bins and the glass doesn’t lift out and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get those last few dregs of gummy garlic sauce out. Which I don’t like, since it doesn’t feel like a clean Thanksgiving refrigerator.
Though we’re not going to have Thanksgiving food in it. We’ll be having Chinese take-out.
Garlic chicken.
Tild hit me with the following song meme.
It doesn’t matter what genre they are, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the songs in your blog. Then tag five other friends to see what they’re listening to. Comment a bit on WHY the piece is on the list; otherwise, the list has no context—it just exists in a vacuum.
Sorry, can’t follow the directions as I haven’t listened to much lately that wasn’t voted on by H.o.p. and I usually listen to albums. So I threw on some Telemann as I couldn’t find the Vivaldi I wanted to throw on, but I didn’t want that so I tried Corelli and several others and finally went to the only Vivaldi we have anymore which is the “4 Seasons” (isn’t that pitiful, need to buff up the classical) which I don’t care much for but the balance of instruments in it was what I was looking for tonight and it has some lovely violin. But it’s too peppy. (Actually, the Adagio of the Summer Concerto is pretty funny and I’m enjoying that. Sweetness combined with gossipy high drama.) No, I’m putting on some Albioni. That’s it. Better. Kind of.
But you see it’s mixed up with music from an art program of H.o.p.’s and the whirr of the air filter and the drone of the refrigerator so I can’t even hear it.
I don’t know what I want to hear. Just not enjoying listening to anything right now. I’d thought baroque would fit the bill tonight but it doesn’t. What I want is Yo Yo Ma doing Vivaldi, which I don’t have and which I prefer so far to other intepretations of Vivaldi which (to me) trumps Vivaldi’s timelessness as Yo Yo Ma purges the bustling silks of the court and other pretentions. So ultimately I turn to Yo Yo Ma doing Bach.
I’m not passing along the meme to anyone as I failed totally at it. I’m just not very good with memes.
It’s been a bad tech day today so powers of concentration aren’t there to think about much. Power outages over and over. My monitor died. Will get another one tomorrow. Marty came home complaining of power outages at the studio mucking with things there as well despite back-up batteries.
T Wrecks At the Museum of Natural History
Alternative title: Escape from Creationism!
Digital painting
Approx 24 w by 13 inches h
And yes that’s H.o.p. Artist and fledgling animator. My pride and joy. Who has taken to calling me “stupid head” the past week whenever he disagrees with me.
To give you an idea of how I do things.
We were at the museum and ah I got the idea for the painting.
I had taken this picture of Hop–which is what gave me the idea.
I took this picture of a mural at Fernbank with the two T Rexes facing off.
Cropped and put together the two images to use as a reference. Repainted entirely in Photoshop. Altered a few things in the Fernbank mural along the way (actually altered a lot but you can’t tell it). Opted to leave H.o.p.’s fingers blurry for sense of motion. The artist who did the mural at Fernbank used images I’ve seen elsewhere for a reference but I can’t place where. But I know because I remember seeing a number of them (we have tons of dino books).
Dear Upstairs Neighbor:
I didn’t mean it when I told the landlord that I didn’t care about your chickens one way or another but that, after months of them wandering the narrow back courtyard-alley under the fire escapes all day, I would rather them in a chicken coop than out pooping all over the place . I didn’t even phrase it like that. I didn’t even bring up the chicken poop. I didn’t even remark on the chickens last Friday until after it was introduced as a topic–though I had said once previoiusly, months ago, that I thought a coop would be good. Besides, when I envisioned chicken coop I envisioned one of those big wooden ones where they have tons of room to roam around and have a big chicken wire porch where they can enjoy what bit of sun there is back there, and not the cage that all three of them are now sitting in out back the past two days. That’s depressing me! Please, they can’t even walk around in that cage but two steps sideways and forward and I’m feeling it’s my fault for saying I thought they could use a chicken coop. Besides which they can no longer peck at H.o.p.’s feet.
I really hope I’m not at fault for this and instead it’s the other person in the building who’s afraid of avian flu.
Regardless, your chickens are not just depressing me, they’re upsetting me. They’re cramped and it’s raining and it saddens me that they’re sitting in that small cage with their only cover being a mesh window screen held on top by bricks. They’re wet and it’s getting cold. In case you need a reference, this is a chicken coop. Or this. They also come in less expensive, unadorned styles. Like so. Though what I had in mind was larger, if not this big. Some kind of wooden enclosure into which they can retreat from the rain and the elements with the nice sun porch I was mentioning.
Darn my mouth but it never occurred to me the chickens would end up sitting in a small cage in the rain.
Thank you.
Everyone else blogs pics of pretty live birds sighted from their lovely home environ which has the kind of things (trees, food) that attracts avians other than asphalt-nibbling pigeons. But there’s no point my missing out on the prom, so I dug up a date. At the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. The one that got away from Swanson. Which says something about life if you’re a cynic. Which I’m not. If I was a cynic I’d have gone over to the Fernbank Science Museum and shot a pic of the stuffed vulture.
Has a distinctive woodlands, pre-puritan look to him, but looks are as deceiving as Edward Curtis.
Museums and ants
November 20th, 2005 |Posted In: Art, Art-Paintings, Everyday Stories, Feature, General, Homeschool, Art-Paintings, We Went and We Saw
At the Museum of Natural History
Digital painting with some photo elements (with photo by artist as reference)
25.09 high by 22.56 inches wide
2005
Via Shakepeare’s Sister, people are going over to New Dharma Bum’s to look at the post Pensive.
Someone mentioned in the comment area the Atlanta zoo and its primate area, which is now first class. We live in Atlanta and have a family membership to the zoo and visit frequently. I have only a couple of times posted on our visits there, still, I thought I’d posted on this previously but had not. The Atlanta zoo didn’t used to be at all what it is now. I had only been to a couple of zoos before I went to the Atlanta zoo back in the early 80s. I’d been to the zoo in Washington D.C. and the one in Columbia S.C. which had natural habitat areas and islands. So we went to visit the Atlanta zoo. We had been there not very long and entered the primate house where the famous Willy B. was kept in his concrete enclosure with a television for company. And we left the zoo, sickened. It wasn’t Willy B. that caused us to leave. It was the zoo in general and in particular the orangutans. There were two, an older and a younger one. The younger orangutan looked healthy and curious, well-groomed. But the older one was lost to the world. She (if I remember correctly, the orangutan was female) sat before the bars, exposed, depressed, past the point of desperation, unkept. Concrete enclosure. Dank. Like Willy B. they probably had a rope with tire as their sole entertainment. It was obvious this orangutan was in great distress. And, as I said, we were so sickened by the display that we felt literally ill and immediately left.
I forget what initiated the scandal that followed a couple of years later, when the Atlanta zoo was declared one of the worst in the nation and was nearly closed down. If I remember correctly, there was the death of an animal that precipitated the excitement.
The zoo was redone and millions of dollars invested creating the Ford African Rain Forest. I read that they cut in half the number of species at the zoo (now Zoo Atlanta), which only makes sense, a zoo is only going to be able to have a premiere, hospitable environment for a few species. And now Zoo Atlanta is one of the best zoos in the country. When we go next I’ll carry my good camera and hopefully get some good pics I’ll post here. We’re due for a visit, and they now have new gorilla twin infants which are being touted…and which we may not even see when we visit. Which is one of the great things about the zoo as far as I’m concerned. Privacy for the primates. Their habitats are built in such a way that when you visit you may not even see but one gorilla roaming around if it isn’t feeding time.
As I was saying,we have a family membership to Zoo Atlanta and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. We went yesterday to ogle the special exhibition Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest along with my brother and his wife and their young daughter. We only had time yesterday for about two and a half hours and then had to leave, but as it is, within a short while we were completely saturated with information, which is the way it is with museums. There is just too much to absorb in one visit, particularly for children. You can only reasonably take in so much information before the rest starts to wash over you and is lost. So we will be returning soon to Fernbank and will try to get there several times before this special exhibit closes.
There’s a nice little store in conjunction with the special exhibit, which doesn’t allow photos at all. We got a book of make-it-yourself kachinas and are about to do one. There were some nice inexpensive things by pacific northwest artists and some very expensive textiles. I watched as a child of about 8 or 9 went over and stood next to a large bark basket for sale that would have cost thousands and played for a while with the tassels dangling from it and then for some reason decided to put it on his mouth and chew on it a minute.
Now here’s my complaint about the zoo and museums in Atlanta such as Fernbank and the High art museum. They don’t have regular free days. I think Zoo Atlanta and Fernbank both only have one free day a year. I don’t know about the High. And now there’s a new aquarium opening which claims to be the world’s largest–and it is pricey. Most of the children in Atlanta are unable to take advantage of these valuable resources. About 40 percent of children 18 and under live in poverty. It was 38% in 2000 and I imagine is higher now. Nearly 1 in 4 families lived below the poverty line here in 2000 and current poverty line guidelines are woefully out of date. Poverty guidelines have a family of 3 at $16,090 and a one person household at $9,570. How in the hell can a family of 3 “live” in Atlanta on $16,090.
Across the street are condos starting in the upper $300 thousand range. These are plain old condos. Housing in Atlanta is expensive.
For Fernbank it costs $12 per visit per adult and $11 for children under 12. That’s $35 for two adults and one child. A family membership is $75 and pays for itself in two visits for us.
For the zoo it costs $17 for adults and $12 for children aged 3 to 11. $46 for one visit for a family of three. A family membership is $89 for a year.
The High Museum costs $15 for adults and $10 for children 6 to 17. Family memberships for a year are $90.
The aquarium costs $22.75 for adults and $17 for children 3 to 12. There are no family passes. An adult pass is about $60 for a year and $43 for a child.
There are many things we would love to do with H.o.p. that we never get around to doing because of scheduling or expense. I feel fortunate to be able to provide him the advantages of the zoo and Fernbank which I think of as essential. I think it’s important exposure and is a great supplement for the homeschooling. Next year or the year after perhaps we can add in the High.
There is the free Fernbank Science Center which is great. Still, the majority of children in Atlanta aren’t going to be able to take advantage of the zoo, Fernbank, the aquarium, the High, and it seems irresponsible of a city and its artistic and educational institutions to not provide a means of access for those unable to afford it. (P.S., 38% I know isn’t a majority but I figure that many families not poverty line are too financially stressed to be able to pop for museum memberships or visits especially if they have multiple kids.) I just noted above how with children what a museum has to offer can be way too much in a couple of hours. One free day a year just doesn’t do it. The High did have one free day a week before they moved into their new building back in the 80s. The Botanical Gardens used to have one free afternoon a week. That shut down around the time we moved to midtown. Plus, this is a city that is very spread out and hard to get around. Getting to the zoo (not on a rail line but close in town) and the High is one thing. Fernbank is nowhere near a rail line.
I did the above portrait of an unknown woman after one visit to Fernbank.
I’m working now on another idea I got yesterday.
And battling ants. Got up today to thousands of ants invading the kitchen. This happens after a rain, about two or three times a year, and though the ants are numerous I’ve never walked in to find the cabinet housing the sink black with them. It didn’t rain. And there they were. Thousands upon thousands. I poured ammonia on the back step (they come in around the back door) and started swabbing down everything. I’ve repeated the process three times now and they’ve decreased somewhat but the floor is still swarming. About 15-20 per every3 square inches now but it was like triple that before. And like I said, the cabinet holding the sink was black with ants scampering up and down and all around. Fortunately they pretty much confine themselves to the kitchen. Only a few cross the threshold out of it.
I gassed myself good with the ammonia. (No, vinegar or pepper or hot chili sauce or pepper sauce of any type doesn’t have any effect. I have tried all those remedies before.)
