‘Art’ Category

  1. Bobku

    February 20, 2007 :: 10:16 am

    It seems like all my brother did in grad school was write haiku, yet he still managed to get his PhD in mathematics last summer. The kid must be smart or something. :)

    why topology?
    there is only one reason
    its spelled p. h. d.

    statistics, haiku
    both involve counting
    only one is fun

    dude! look at my hand
    its so weird and colorful
    oh my god i’m high!

    2^3+20
    = 24+4
    a number haiku!

    (x-π)^2
    = x^2+π^2
    -2πx

    y=6x
    implies 1/2 y =
    x+x+x

    just reading the book
    is not an effective way
    to teach to the class

    haiku may have five
    syllables on the last line
    but bobku has one more

    second hand smoke kills
    says the surgeon general
    so, i’ll stick to first

    Category Family, Poetry | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Fish Don’t Float

    February 18, 2007 :: 10:45 pm

    In 1990, Rob Wilson and I spent weeks creating a sculpture to enter in the White Rock Lake Floating Sculpture Festival.

    We were so proud of it. We were allowed to leave art class to gather materials, so Rob drove us around rural east Plano, where our high school was located, until we found a stand of bamboo growing by the roadside (seriously, bamboo growing wild in Plano). We had the windows down and the cassette deck was blasting Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme.”

    We cut down bamboo, and later cut the fish out of foam core, painted them, hot-glued scales onto them (cut from a roll of transparent pale blue 2″ plastic film that Rob brought in), tied our bamboo together into a cage-like structure on top of a raft, tied the fish inside, added colorful streamers, and tossed it into the pond outside the art building for a test run. One corner of it was a little bit underwater, but other than that, we had ourselves a floating sculpture!

    A week or so later, we hauled it down to White Rock Lake and quite ceremoniously, in front of a large crowd, heaved our Fish Out Of Water into the lake…. where it promptly sank to the bottom.

    We were so embarrassed that we simply left. We didn’t stick around to see the other sculptures or to wait for the judging (where we would quite certainly have received the “Least Floaty Floating Sculpture” award). However, in our defense, we were competing against a pool of much older and more experienced established artists. We were just a couple of 17 year olds with some bamboo and hot glue.

    We have a little video of the making of the Fish Sculpture… if I can find a way to get it off of DVD and onto YouTube, I’ll post it.

    On an unrelated note, doesn’t the school look like a prison??

    Category Art, High School, Memories | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Seeing Interesting Things

    February 15, 2007 :: 10:33 pm

    I think maybe I’m approaching Project 365 all wrong now. What I tried to explain in my previous post about it is that it’s not fun anymore; taking my daily photo is becoming one more thing on my to-do list. Because I go the same places and see the same things almost every single day, I’m not seeing anything unusual or interesting anymore.

    I think that maybe I do see interesting things all the time, but it doesn’t register. I need to learn to NOTICE when I see something I like, and stop to record it, rather than letting it flow in and out of my stream of consciousness as I’m on my way to do other things.

    The other thing I was thinking, along the same vein, is that I need to try harder to notice the simple beauty in everyday things. Like the curve of a tree branch, or a discarded cigarette butt, or the texture of a crack in the sidewalk. Or even like right now for example, the bottom of the lampshade in my office has a really nice curve to it. I don’t think I would usually think to take a photo of that.

    I’m too worried about taking The Perfect Photo, every day is portfolio-worthy.

    I wonder if it would be different if I weren’t posting my photos publicly to Flickr, where the world can view and comment on them (not that too many people have). Am I, in a sense, performing for this imagined audience, instead of really thinking about the goal of my project?

    Brett suggested that I wake up 15 minutes earlier each day and take a photo in those 15 minutes. That would basically limit me to the inside of my house, for the most part… but I think that I’ll try it, and try to maybe find a part of my house that I haven’t ever seen to take a photo of each day for a week. I think that there are a LOT of individual spaces in my house I haven’t seen yet.

    Yesterday Yvonne alerted me that the plants outside the front doors of our building were covered in icicles. Perhaps a sprinkler system malfunction? Anyway, they were still there this morning. I’m not sure that the temperature rose above freezing either yesterday or today.

    Category Art, Deep Thoughts | Tags: | No Comments

  4. The Green Bean Queen

    February 11, 2007 :: 3:59 pm

    I am a painter, and I think that my paintings are original, interesting, and very unique. But I can’t say that my art is quite this funny anymore. Judging from the handwriting, I must have been 9 or 10 years old when I did this.

    Category Art, Memories | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Having trouble with Project 365

    February 10, 2007 :: 11:27 pm

    I’ve been having a lot of trouble sticking with my Project 365. I haven’t missed a day yet, but it’s getting harder and harder to come up with something to photograph every single day.

    • I have a lot of routines in my life, especially on weekdays, and these routines seem very… well, routine. I get up, get ready for work, drive to work on one of two routes, park my car, walk to the office, work until lunch, eat lunch, come back to the office, work till 5, go to the gym or run errands, drive home on one of two routes, spend time with Doc, eat dinner, maybe watch a little TV, maybe work on my computer, get ready for bed, go to bed. I’ve tried taking photos on each of these “legs” of my daily journey, with varying degrees of success, but it’s unsatisfying. It feels like I’m not really trying; if I take a photo out the windshield of my car as I’m stopped at a red light, I’m really doing it just to get the picture for the day out of the way, and not because the view out the windshield is beautiful, or interesting, or inspires me. Later, when I post the photo, I can usually come up with a little description that makes it seem like it was my intention all along, when really I feel like I’m totally faking it.

    • About 75% of the time, I get to the end of the day, it’s nearly bedtime, and I haven’t taken any pictures. My brain is frozen; ideas and inspiration are locked out. I roam aimlessly around the house, trying to think of fucking anything worth photographing. It’s too dark and cold to go outside, and it’s too late to go somewhere else. I open cabinet doors, looking for an interesting composition of bottles or jars. I think about taking yet another photo of the cats. I wonder if it’s worth it to take a picture of my messy desk, or a lamp in my house, or my feet. For example, right now it’s almost 9:30, I need a picture, and I don’t want to leave the house because I’m tired. What the fuck do I do?

    • And I have GOT to stop taking pictures of the cats. Seriously. They cannot be my fallback subjects, my easy way out.

    • Someone commented on my initial Project 365 post, “It is nice to see someone play with photos instead of trying to take the perfect one.” But I’ve begun trying to do that. I didn’t start out Project 365 with the intention of taking a GREAT photograph every single day; the point was to just take A photograph, period. Kind of a “can she stick with it for a full year” type of personal test. However, my own sense of perfectionism (and not doing anything halfassed) has since pulled me down the path of You Must Take A Fantastically Fascinating Photograph Every Single Day Or You Are A Failure.

    • I don’t have daily opportunities to do anything or go anywhere interesting. Maybe I need to force the issue and figure out a way to make that happen.

    • Maybe what I need to do is give myself specific assignments for short photo series.

    At any rate, here are some of my recent photos… the ones that I like, that I don’t feel too ashamed about the half-assed way I went about taking them.

    Category Art, Deep Thoughts | Tags: | 2 Comments

  6. The Sugar-Plum Tree

    January 8, 2007 :: 9:59 pm

    THE SUGAR-PLUM TREE

    by: Eugene Field (1850-1895)

    Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?
    ‘Tis a marvel of great renown!
    It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop Sea
    In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;
    The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet
    (As those who have tasted it say)
    That good little children have only to eat
    Of that fruit to be happy next day.

    When you’ve got to the tree, you would have a hard time
    To capture the fruit which I sing;
    The tree is so tall that no person could climb
    To the boughs where the sugar-plums swing!
    But up in that tree sits a chocolate cat,
    And a gingerbread dog prowls below —
    And this is the way you contrive to get at
    Those sugar-plums tempting you so:

    You say but the word to that gingerbread dog
    And he barks with such terrible zest
    That the chocolate cat is at once all agog,
    As her swelling proportions attest.
    And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around
    From this leafy limb unto that,
    And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground —
    Hurrah for that chocolate cat!

    There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes,
    With stripings of scarlet or gold,
    And you carry away of the treasure that rains
    As much as your apron can hold!
    So come, little child, cuddle closer to me
    In your dainty white nightcap and gown,
    And I’ll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree
    In the garden of Shut-Eye Town.

    Category Poetry | Tags: | No Comments

  7. Project 365

    January 4, 2007 :: 10:53 pm

    I have assigned myself a Project 365 for 2007: to take one interesting photo every day for the entirety of 2007.

    A Project 365 can be anything you want it to be — taking a photo, writing a poem, collecting a found object — and the only rule is that you do it every single day for the whole year.

    I decided to take a photo each day. I’m not requiring of myself that it be high art or amazing technique or anything like that; in fact, I suppose it doesn’t even have to be interesting. As long as I do it. My original idea was to take 365 self portraits, but that’s a LOT of pictures of me. I don’t think I want to see 365 pictures of myself. So I’m going themeless, although I’m sure some of them will be self portraits.

    Actually, in a way, all of them WILL be self portraits, because every time I choose a subject for a photo, I reveal a little something about myself…

    Anyway, at the end of the year I will basically have a photo diary of the past 365 days. Sometimes I have trouble remembering what I did two days ago, so I think it’s going to be very cool to be able to look back and see something that I did or some place that I was or something that I saw, every single day.

    I’ll also have a nice big collection from which I can pull the best shots and add them to my portfolio. (Oops, did I just give away my secret identity there? Oh well. It’s not like 98% of y’all don’t know me already anyway)

    I guess part of the point is committing to the challenge of doing something every single day besides brush my teeth and shower (yeah, I’m pretty low maintenence!). But I also think that it’ll challenge me creatively, as a photographer (make that a wannabe photographer; I’ve dated enough of them, worked with enough of them, and married one of them, to know that my talent ain’t shit in comparison).

    So if you are interested in watching my life progress before your very eyes, you can bookmark my Project 365 photostream.

    Category Art, Deep Thoughts, Goals | Tags: | 2 Comments

  8. Yes those are clouds.

    :: 5:46 pm

    Hi! Yes, I have changed my masthead from that indescribable mass of orange and green brushstrokes to a photo of storm clouds.

    My annual urge to redesign my blog has taken over. Stay tuned for the final version.

    Category Art, Blog, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  9. november snowstorm

    November 30, 2006 :: 7:37 pm

    The unseasonable warmth of the past week collapsed under the weight of a wintry storm. Snow fell for hours. Tiny ice pellets coated my car.

    The chill of the north wind cut through my light jacket, through all the layers of my skin, muscle, fat, and all the way to the bone.

    Bodies unprepared for the sudden arrival of the twenties scurried from building to building, seeking escape from uncontrollable shivering.

    Category Poetry, Snow, Storm, Weather | Tags: | No Comments

  10. tilt-shift miniatures

    October 24, 2006 :: 6:14 pm

    I found a Photoshop tutorial describing how to make photographs look like miniature dioramas, an effect called fake tilt-shift miniatures. It’s crazy! I did the photo below in a matter of like 2 minutes at work yesterday.

    Category Art | Tags: | 2 Comments

  11. robert parke harrison

    October 5, 2006 :: 9:28 pm

    Robert Parke Harrison takes amazing photos! I love his use of texture and shadow, the way it’s dark around the edges of the photos, and his themes of humans interacting with nature in surreal ways. I imagine that in the stories he tells, it’s very quiet, maybe just a little noise from wind or rustling leaves, and it’s dark and cloudy, but some objects glow brightly of their own accord. Sometimes you’ll blink and everything is different.

    Category Art | Tags: | 1 Comment

  12. the week’s update

    October 1, 2006 :: 10:09 pm

    I’ve been working on my other website a lot this week so I haven’t had much time to write.

    Last week kinda sucked, between feeling downright awful for several days (bad period) and some crazy shit going on at work involving deadlines and last minute changes and having to say no and things maybe not working right and the possibility of a trivia slideshow to be presented in front of 2500 rich people going down in flames (it didn’t, but it was nervewracking getting there) and talking to managers about lessening the craziness of the crazy shit and just generally being extra crabby.

    It was a bad week for a lot of people that I talked to.

    Also, I barely ran any at all last week; my leg is still not feeling any better. Now it’s doing this thing where if I put any weight on it, it feels like it’s going to buckle! Good times all around. I’m going to try to get back into it this week, maybe run some on the elliptical machine, which I like better than the treadmill and it feels better on my injury.

    I got a slew of new freelance work and billed for quite a bit from September. I feel that the projects are coming at a good pace now. Nothing like the craziness of the book project. That should be printed and might deliver this week (thus the reason I was working on my business website; my URL is printed in the credits).

    We did have a good time out on Saturday night with Kirk, Brittney, and Stan. We ate at a steakhouse and then went to the crazy bowling alley-slash-event and entertainment center. We didn’t do any actual bowling, but played some video games, then went to Steak and Shake for ice cream.

    Thursday night was a lot of fun. It was Doc’s birthday, and I took him to Kostas (Greek food) for dinner. We usually only go there once a year on our anniversary, but I decided to buck tradition. He didn’t know that Lori, Joel, and Valerie were going to be there too. We had some great food, wine, and baklava, and I was really pleased that I was able to treat everyone. It feels nice to do that for my friends on occasion. We stayed at the table until after they had closed, talking and laughing. Lori gave Doc some fun little toys and candies, and we played “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans Roulette” where we closed our eyes, took a jellybean, and hoped to god it wasn’t the Vomit flavoured one. For the record, I got Earthworm, Doc got Sardine, Valerie got Grass, and Lori got Earwax. Doc voluntarily ate a Dirt flavoured one, and Lori was game and ate Soap and Booger. Joel ate Bacon and declared himself done.

    Doc found an old Hi-8 tape of my trip to New Mexico in 1996 with Kathryn and Ginger. We have two ancient Hi-8 cameras; one of them only plays audio and the other only plays video. I don’t even remember this tape; I’m dying to see what’s on it! I caught a glimpe of my old Honda Accord in one shot. I miss that car!! It had some problems towards the end, but I miss having a manual transmission and I miss having a red car. I might send the tape to a place that will convert it to DVD for a hefty fee.

    Category Design, Doc, Health, Holiday, Marathon, Memories, Work | Tags: | No Comments

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