no screaming this time, just a big stick
I reposted this here once before with more description. It’s originally from 2008. Now, miraculously, someone is doing it, which is what prompts this re-re-post. I wanted to share the link to the inventor’s project. Check it out on Kickstarter!. Kind of reminds me of my folding iPhone, though mine didn’t fold. I still don’t see the need. Two screens, closely fitted, would be fine. And could’ve been done ages ago.
Went to the park to read. Too darn windy and cold to sit on a metal bench and read, so I sat in my car. I read for a while, and when I looked up, I thought, “geez, I really should practice a bit.” So I got out my little sketch book and doodled my building. Roughly 5×7. Rusty. But it’s early in the year. There’s time to get better.
This is here mostly for me, so that I can easily find these links. Well over a year ago, a designer I follow, a wizard with Adobe Illustrator. posted a series of rants on LinkedIn about AI’s destruction of the arts. I commented that it was a tool that wasn’t going away and should be taught, and he deleted my comment. It made me sad.
I had seen a prompt writing tutorial on youtube. I thought it was excellent. It pointed out the effort, the knowledge and artistry that would go in to anything created with AI that was artist/creator approved. More than anything it showed me that AI could be a useful tool and needed to be learned and experimented with like any medium.
Then, some amazing AI art landed in my facebook feed. From an artist named Kelly Boesch. I follow her now, and track her work on instagram and youtube. Kelly Boesch’s Reels are on facebook, if you belong. View a few of her pieces. Wonder at the skill and talent necessary to extract something so amazing from AI.
Recently, a facebook post led me to an interesting article from 2015: The 100 Greatest British Novels. I love lists like this. I’ve found some of my best reads from lists, Harold Bloom’s Western Canon in particular. Lists and friends, actually. Return of the Native, Daniel Derronda, Silas Marner, many that I should’ve-but refused-to read in high school. From the list, it’s fun to see how many I have, or haven’t yet, read. I felt pretty good while I scanned down this list of 100. I got some new titles, some new authors. As I scrolled, I grew more and more curious as to which book would be #1. Then there it was. Unbelievable. I’d made it this far, and in the end, there it was- my nemesis. Middlemarch.
I call it one of the most over-rated books of all time. (Another being the scrambled mess Catch 22, but that’s, Ha!, another story.) I’ve started it twice, got a little over half-way through, about to the funeral, both times. Can reading the first half twice count as having read the book? I guess it doesn’t work like that. It’s one of the most scrambled, disorganized novels I’ve ever attempted. And there it is, at #1. I guess I really need to do it.
I’ve found it fortunate that my local library doesn’t have a copy. I gave my own away; but low, there is is, downloadable for free from Project Gutenberg. ePub, Mobi, PDF, plain text. My pick! So I’ll do it! I’ll put it on my iPad and keep at it, at least past the funeral. I’ll find out if the spoiled girl hooks up with the artist. Or the doctor. I’ll do it.
Kim gave me the pumpkin that I used in the last Halloween post. She also gave me a rather unique looking gourd that she thought might be fun to put a face on. It was. I looked at it and, possibly because I’m reading a book on fish intelligence, I immediately saw this sea creature. The actual colors look brushed on, and several times I started to smooth out a mistake only to discover it wasn’t my brush strokes but was the natural coloring. I think he’s pretty cute. Maybe Kim will give him a home.
I’m trying to see if the browser supports avif. If it does, an image of a demon provided by my granddaughter displays. If not, it shows my mousetoon honey logo. Hey, they’re what I have.
The html looks like this:
<picture>
<!– use if browser supports AVIF –>
<source type=”image/avif” srcset=”IMG_2027.avif”><!– use if browser doesn’t support AVIF –>
<img alt=”Fallback image.” src=”HoneyLogo.jpg”>
</picture>
She was inspired by an eagle and had a tattoo of the bird put on her thigh. Knowing my daughter, I thought that eagle should have a tattoo of my daughter on its thigh.
I actually drew the whole bird, it just wouldn’t fit legibly on the card.
I ran this first in my Penn State blog. Is this the fifty-fifth anniversary? Maybe I should just bring it forward every year? Anyway, I thought it deserved a retread.
A student committee asked if I’d host the art room discussions about ecology. I was in the room practically all day anyway; it was my senior year and I spent all of my free periods working on art projects. I figured I could wing any discussion since discussion was easy. A mountain of trash, industrial air pollution and chemical run-off- Pottstown had it all: It was rich material. But when the day came, Earth Day 1970, no one talked. None of my fellow students had an opinion. At least, not early in the morning. I stuttered and stammered through the first period class, just filling the silence with my voice. As the class filed out, the art teacher strolled past and muttered, “Better get your head out of your rear, Stong. Come up with something quick.” Yeah. Got it. Bob Kingsley with sound advice. He was probably the best teacher I ever had. Too bad it was just for an elective my senior year of high school.
As the next class walked in, already bored having spent their last period talking about “ecology,” I was blank. Should I focus on ecologically sound art materials? Probably; but how boring would that be? How likely was it that any of these folks would go in to the Arts? In frustration, I started tossing out opinions, but even I was bored. The second class moved on and the third period started. Good grief did this suck.
“Look,” I said in frustration, “So we pollute. What’s the big deal? There are a lot of people. They’ll pollute until people die and there aren’t enough people to pollute any more.” Bingo. Reaction and discussion. Not much, just a bit; but there was discussion. Some of the students actually took strong issue with what I said.
“If we change nature’s balance won’t nature just adjust? re-balance on its own? So some weak species disappear and some sick people die, won’t we be stronger for it?” Could I call it performance art? Not really; performance, certainly, but art? Nah. It’s difficult being artistic while you pull your head out of your rear. I did create a moment for myself, though; a point, like a seed crystal, for memories to gather on and clarify. I realize in retrospect that this was probably a first for me. Performances of all sorts, some contrary some exaggerated some as a devil’s advocate, would follow. The most recent, suggesting we publish our salaries and performance reviews, led to my “early retirement.”
Every year the local high school enables students to paint holiday scenes on shop windows throughout downtown. Typical pictures are of the Grinch, Charlie Brown, or Snoopy. Year after year the same sorts of images go up, generally inspired by holiday cartoons. Last year, the Black Diamond Barbershop, which is on the first floor of my building, inspired the students with a little of the shop’s own quirkiness: the students doing the barbershop’s windows pulled imagery from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. The Tim Burton stop-motion animation is one of my favorites and the windows surprised and delighted me. It seems that last year wasn’t just a flash in the pan, but hopefully, an ongoing tradition.
This year, the barbershop’s inspiration continues. The students, given free rein by their teacher and the shop owner, came up with wonderfully gruesome images that slap those Charles Schulz and Dr Seuss images right in the face. A snowman toasting a screaming marshmallow, a shrieking evergreen tree. The images appear to be more original than I’ve seen before, though with web animation what it is the characters could be pulled directly from animation I’m unfamiliar with. Regardless of where exactly the characters are from, the stimulus can only be attributed to the shop itself. During the off season, basically the rest of the year, the Black Diamond Barbershop features their own brand of quirky art in the front windows (and throughout the shop)- animal skulls, antiques, and artwork that are all interesting, often dark, but always able to grab your gaze and stimulate your thoughts.
It’s wonderful stuff! Thanks to the shop owner, the students, and the faculty at Bellefonte High School.
