For Queenie

Falcon Cam:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/falconcam#utm_campaign=synclickback&source=http://www.epl.org/falconcam/&medium=4169851

Groovy design page

My SO is running his own business, which is hard enough, but it’s even harder when you wear all the hats and do everything.    Nobody is strong in every capacity, and he has the artistic/design sense of a well, I don’t know what.  Suffice to say his brochures were a mess.  My graphic arts education is small, and being artistically inclined helps, but I could only make a few suggestions, like too many colors and too many fonts are confusing, not to mention boxing everything in neat tidy boxes.  That might make sense for an engineer, but for the human eye to look at the the human brain to process this kind of mess, it is a counterproductive nightmare.

NOT what you’re going for in a sales brochure.  I was able to give a bit of feedback, but my knowledge of graphics and marketing is really limited, so I felt bad, until I found this neat-o page via Lifehacker, which is an interesting blog to peruse anyway.  I spent an hour there reading about the best ways to scramble eggs.

But I digress.  what you really want is this:  Clean Up Your Mess.  A handy dandy guide to making anything visual more appealing in an easy to read and often humorous format.  I see this being handy for anyone who gets the neat assignment to create some documents for their job, or flyers for an event they are involved with, or their band’s new gig poster, and how to make it something eye-catching and  above all WORK.  I’m a rather shit artist myself, and my own business got dissolved before we could even grow the way I wanted it to, but I do have this instinctual thing about how colors/forms/placement work on a page.  This is a great guide, and I have already learned a lot from it, plus the author has some book suggestions that I will definitely check out.

I see it as a plus for artists with a clientele who don’t understand that the element they like in a piece of media should be there because they like it.  Visual advertising isn’t so much about what the client thinks is groovy, but about what will get the prospective buyers interested, and not use your brochure for a bookmark or landfill.

See?  I get that much!  Once upon a time, graphic arts were practiced only by people who could do art, and had the patience for Letraset, or access to typesetters (those mothers were HUGE).  Now anyone with a computer and the right programs can put together a business card, a brochure, a flyer, so it’s even more important for the Everyperson to have this kind of information.

Check it out is you ever get called on to do this sort of thing.

Oh yeah, and draw Mohammed.

Art worth reporting

Ramones graffiti:

http://cityrag.com/2011/05/ramones-graffiti-rocks/

Hey you artists!

Or not artists.  As long as you can make a scribble with anything from a pencil to MS paint, or you can do amazing 3-D models, tomorrow is Draw Mohammed Day 2.  If you’re not familiar with last year’s event, it was to create a sort of critical mass that would make the death threats that people like Salman Rushdie, Molly Norris, and Theo Van Gogh (his was fatal) thinned out so much that there would be too much for the extremists to deal with.  Mockery is sometimes the best weapon.  Why should anyone be brutally murdered for a drawing, a film depiction, a fictional novel?  Salman Rushdie is probably still not safe, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali still has to hide.

This is intolerance taken to the level of murder, all over some imaginary bullshit.  Cartoons.

Let’s make so many that they can’t target enough of us, and let’s quit being scared of the crazies.

http://dmd2011tf.net/

Make a stick drawing,  something funny and slap it up there.  Here’s mine:

Draw Mohammed and escape Saturday’s Rapture, and have lovely waffles, or the breakfast of your choice.

….but is it Art?

I think it is.  If not art, then hypnotic and cool.  I like food (cooking and eating) and I like seeing the ordinary things we take for granted every day as something more than mundane and boring.  I came across this video over at  Jezebel.com, and had to look at what else these cats had done.

I could watch this jello cube over and over, it’s so cool and beautiful (okay I did).  but on to the cream going into the coffee:

Something us coffee (and some tea drinkers do every day), and to see it like this is pretty damn cool.

These videos are from  http://modernistcuisine.com/ which has even more beautiful photographs, and is going to have a set of books out real soon.  Books I probably can’t afford, but if you love to see fresh food celebrated, spend a little time at their website.

Camp Quest

I am torn.

There is a contest between

http://friendlyatheist.com/

and

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

To support a great endeavor for kids to have a good secular camp, so I want to throw my 2 cents in to the  battle .   Let’s do what we can to help send kids to a good camp experience.  To the maybe now four peeps who view this site, send a few bucks for a very good cause.

Walpurgis Night

I haven’t done anything in ages, yeahyeahyeah, and I made excuses before, yadda-yadda-yadda, but I think I really bit off more than I can chew here.  When I first saw awful reproductions for sale, I thought this would be easy, like People Of Wal-Mart, but it isn’t – at least not for me.

Sooooo, I thought I’d broaden the range of this blog, and write about any goddamn thing I want to, while still kinda-sorta keeping it vaguely to do with images, funny or worse.  Or not.

I crave submissions, too.  If any (of the three of you who read this) have seen something worth putting up here, drop me a line.

Since it’s coming up, today’s post is…

WALPURGIS NIGHT!!!!

When I was a pagan, I referred to it as Beltane, which is still a groovy name and accurate, for as far as i know, all the Celtic Pagan holidays began on the eve.  Work schedules generally would not cooperate, so I would thow the Beltane shindig on May 1, when either peeps could take a day from work or it would land on a weekend.  We went all out for this one, this and Samhain.  Plenty of food and liquor, a bonfire when the neighbor would lend us his burning barrel, some good Celtic folk music (and the one time gangsta rap – that was a funny sight) and even a Maypole once.  Kids and adults alike had a blast.  We’d dress up in our floaty pagan clothes, and bring out the flowered crowns, and beat our drums, and when i had the pool, some of us would go for a dip.  Good times.

I like this picture, grabbed from Google images, and there was no use policy on the site, but it reminds me of the cartoons by an old acquaintance Eldon DeDini, a cartoonist for Playboy, and a regular at the printing shop I once worked at in the nineties:

We didn’t have masks that cool, nor did we have naked people (at least within the torchlight by the house.  I did hear of couples going our to erm, bless the fields, but that’s what you’re supposed to do).

Now here’s this band that is supposed to be from the90’s, but I don’t buy it; they look  totally 80’s hair metal, the kind I don’t like.  They call themselves Stormwitch.  The name should be excessive hairspray, and the music will nauseate just the same.    I’ll link to the sample of the song, so you can buy it if you want.

If you must:

http://www.mp3mixx.com/album/stormwitch/walpurgis_night-1244089

I think that dude on the right stole my sister’s band jacket from high school marching band circa 1977.  I should not be so nasty; I had big hair too, and i loooved my shoulder pads.  You just shouldn’t be doing this after Penelope Spheeris did The Decline of Western Civilization: the Metal Years.

No, wait a minute – this guy totally does it for me!

This dude comes from:

http://www.thisisharz.com/walpurgis.html and there are plenty more pictures and explanations of Walpurgis Night.  They party way harder than we did, and i really like the witches further down.

It just goes to show that humans will take any excuse to dress up in fun costumes and drink and eat, and enjoy music.  I find nothing wrong with any of this.  I wish everyone reading this a wonderful Walpurgisnacht/Beltane/Mayday whatever to have a good time and enjoy your friends and family.  Just don’t torture them with Stormwitch, OK?

Kokopelli

If you lived through the popularity of Native American/Southwest decor fascination of the 1990’s, you know this image.  He was SO fuckin’ hip at the time – I give you, Kokopelli:

This pic is from Chaco Canyon.  Kokopelli is from the Hopi Indians, and he has a great story; he might even be considered part of an archetype of flute/pipe playing deities/symbols (someone disable my slash key, m’kay?) because there are a lot of them.  I got some good information from here:  http://www.shamanicvisions.com/music-folder/kokopelli.html that confirms stuff I have read in the past about this now recognisable figure.  Now I go all quote like, and cut and paste, with all credit to the site above:

The Hopi usually depict Kokopelli, the Humpback Flute Player, as a stick figure in the act     of walking. He has antennae on top of his head. He is usually bent forward, blowing into a     flute that he holds between his hands. His back is bowed, filled with sacred cargo.     Kokopelli is a traveler. His luggage or humpback contains the seeds to be scattered. His  flute calls the rains to nourish the seeds.
The Hopi say that Kokopelli is the antidote for Panayoikyase (an Ancient Being, or Power, which is full of destruction of the earth, of the people). Kokopelli calls forth the energy necessary to defeat Panayoikyase with the magic of his flute, awakening that power within  people’s hearts.

They go on to say he is also a fertility figure, and I know I have seen pictures of him with a big erection, but have not been able to find anything authentic (although I must admit to not wanting to shuffle through page after page of the stuff I DID find).

What makes him Heinous is that his cute little form was used on ALL sorts of things, from jewelry, t-shirts, cards, posters, tattooes, wind-chimes, candles, basically anything that could be sold…

 

…and he was really, really popular, until everyone got sick of his little ass, then began making parodies or should we call them tributes?

No, let’s call them what they really are, the co-opting of an image that sold a lot of stuff.  For a little while, they were cute and gave the impression that someone owning something with this image on it was an Earth-Friendly Non-Threatening Sensitive sort of person who was basically joyfull.  But, as we do, we beat an image into a joke, and it becomes meaningless, or its meaning changes far beyond, to where you have to explain why you have this thing.

I want to call this phenomenon Saturation.  An image gets so much play, or it is co-opted by a group of people to have a certain meaning that really has nothing to do with why it first was crafted, and I suppose mythology can only stay relevant if it is changed, if it wants to be a meme and spread.

We got Saturated with this image to the point of boredom, and we’ve moved on, consumers of the Next Shiny that we are.  Now Kokopelli looks dated and used up, no longer hip.  He looks dated, and that’s too bad, because chewing up and spitting out art is not the way to really consume it – you need to digest it.

Nighthawks

Nighthawks is a familiar painting that has been honored, parodied, and rendered in so many ways that pretty much everyone has seen a version of it.  I like it; there’s a print of it hanging in my home office with a crack in the glass from the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989.  That glass will not be replaced, as a reminder of how much that event impacted this area.

Painted in 1942 by Edward Hopper, it is an image of three people around the counter of a diner, with the cook/server behind the counter.  What makes it evocative is the faces of the people: Why are they there?  What are their stories? What is everyone thinking?  The painting leaves it up to the viewer to decide.

Tom Waits made an album in 1975, Nighthawks at the Diner, which was a live and intimate recording including the title song, and to be honest, I heard that song before I ever saw the painting.  When I saw the painting, well, the two go together very well.

Perhaps I loved it because that was my way at the time (I heard it in the 80’s to be fair; I’m not THAT old!).  Many a late night was spent in a similar diner (or more likely Denny’s – not remotely as romantic) unable to sleep, off work in the middle of the night, and just wanting that last cup of coffee and cigarette.  Often, the people at the counter were workers like me, or just left the bar scene, or just couldn’t sleep, and had to be out of the house.  There is a bit of mystery about the people there, like I mentioned above; it’s almost like a Twilight Zone episode.  A story is there, but the viewer gets to interpret it.

Someone did – Douglas Steinberg made a play about it, and set it up with real live people:

There’s a Simpsons version:

There’s a CSI version (but I don’t watch that show):

and Lego:

Then there’s this:

I kind of like it, but it’s a IDKWTF sort of thing.

Michelangelo’s Pieta (possibly NSFW)

One of the finest pieces of sculpture, possibly one of the first to combine naturalism with classical style.  This statue has had a lot of tongues wagging about what Michelangelo was trying to portray.  Mary looks really young here; was this because she was so incorrupt (being virgin and all)?  Chris Rock put it best as Rufus in Dogma, my ‘go-to’ source for making catholicism make any kind of sense.  I paraphrase:

“Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus, but do you think a married couple never got down after that?”

So to expect her to remain ‘inviolate’ for her whole married life (we assume she stayed with Joseph, right?) is nuts.  My Grandma is crying in heaven right now, at the very idea she did the nasty with her husband.

This is nicked straight from Wikipedia: (start quote)

Another explanation suggests that Michelangelo’s treatment of the subject was influenced by his passion for Dante‘s Divina Commedia: so well-acquainted was he with the work that when he went to Bologna he paid for hospitality by reciting verses from it. In Paradiso (cantica 33 of the poem) Saint Bernard, in a prayer for the Virgin Mary, says “Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio” (Virgin mother, daughter of your son). This is said because, being that Christ is one of the three figures of Trinity, Mary would be his daughter, but it is also she who bore him.

A third interpretation is that suggested by Condivi shortly after the passage quoted above: simply that “such freshness and flower of youth, besides being maintained in by natural means, were assisted by act of God”.

Yet another exposition posits that the viewer is actually looking at an image of Mary holding the baby Jesus. Mary’s youthful appearance and apparently serene facial expression, coupled with the position of the arms could suggest that she is seeing her child, while the viewer is seeing an image of the future.

(end quote)

The opinions are interesting to me, as ancient art has gone through stages of being magical symbolism, representative, and finally to a stage that someone might actually make a piece of art to make someone think beyond the depiction.  What do I know?  I just took an Art History class in community college a LONG time ago, been playing with several mediums all my life, making installations and doing performance art without even knowing it.  What I do know is this is an incredibly gorgeous piece:

Sidebar:  My parents were catholic in the sense they just bought into it (probably out of fear, as I was baptized by my mother in a sink, and I suspect she did the same to my son who I was raising as a Godless Heathen) and Mom had a little booklet about this sculpture.  It smelled like roses, and I used to sniff it all the time.  Smelling like roses means something is godly – ask those Amityville house people…until the WALLS START BLEEDING!

So can people do fuckery with this?  Of course they can!

I am told the creator of this did it with a piece of lexan and lit it from the edge.  I am also told this can be done with plexiglas, but lexan has better optical transmission properties.

Whatever.  It makes me think of a toy I had when I was a kid; Lite Brite.  Or  those funky neon pens that show up on black paper.

Heinous?  Not really.  My first thought was someone playing with Photoshop or some such thing.  It’s not an improvement or a new take on the piece, it’s just a “See what I can do!”  I have a couple of icons like that, and I don’t use them anymore.

What I did like was what I found on Covers and Citations:

http://search.it.online.fr/covers/

and:

and:

and:

and:

I like these.  I can’t really call any of the above as a Heinous Reproduction, and I liked looking at the other offerings on the site.

I thought this would be a fun blog to do and rip on shitty stuff that people actually thought was worthy of their walls, but i have found so much more. This is not to say if we find crazy ass shit on etsy or whatever that we won’t make serious fun of it, because we will.  It’s great because I find some great stuff while looking for some shitty stuff, and that’s always a plus.