Archive for the ‘Random Art Bloggery’ Category

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Museums.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2021

I visited San Francisco before The Pannie and I was delighted to find out there was an exhibition on Burning Man which, while fantastic, was problematic because now I am so hungry to go back. If one remembers I went in 2012 and while the dust and sun made me wanna DIIIIIEE the art was so unbelievable I would forget the horrors of nature for hours at a time. And the exhibit reminded me of that.

The left had an art car of a dragon made entirely from kitchen supplies, a bus that had been transformed into a movie theater that showed old black-and-white movies and origami-style mushrooms that cycled through the rainbow and extended / contracted when you pressed a button. Oh my God, guys.

There was also an enormous Arc du Triomphe-style collapsable arc. You can appreciate the color-changing mushrooms in the background.

There also had some outfits on display which was fine, not as exciting as the large pieces but still, stunning workmanship.

I was there with Nessa and we ended up walking through the rest of the museum and I saw my dream piece. I’ve made it abundantly clear my feelings on ocellated turkeys (I’m pro in a big way) so off in the distance I thought I saw something truly magical. And I was right.

It was made of clay and I wanted in my possession immediately. It’s good it was in a glass case because I would have tucked it under my shirt and bolted with it.

I recently went to the Cloisters, a museum in New York specializing in the Middle and Dark Ages of Europe. It was painfully obvious that no one had ever seen a lion, heard of a lion except in the bible and didn’t even know lions were felines. It was rough.

Not a decent one in the bunch. You clearly had skills, look at that golden rooster. Totally looks like a rooster. Europe had wolves, why didn’t you carve wolves? Your lions are so bad.

To redeem their art skills there was a drawing on a dandelion in a very small book. The detail work was exquisite.

If you’re in the San Francisco area, go to the Oakland Museum of California. The Burning Man exhibit is long gone but they have great exhibits all the time. And if you’re in the New York area, go to the Cloisters. The gardens are wonderful and the permanent collection is excellent.

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Jessica Describes Stuff – NSFW. Basic Instinct.

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021

While I am in the midst of learning how silicone caulk works (so sticky!), I made a video about the sensual thriller Basic Instinct.

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PTAC improvement, Part 2.

Wednesday, June 16th, 2021

Okay! I went to the local hardware store (support your local hardware store) and got that foam filler as well as white silicone glop. I cut all the foam to fill in all the gaps. Look at that love, that care.

Then I cleaned off the housing and good Lordt, the grime. Look at these swiffers.

Now, because removing the caulk ripped off a lot of layers of wall, I took small bits of paper and put it back with glue so I’ll have a relatively flat surface to spackle on. Remember, we’re not going for flawless, we’re going for not so wretched that it catches your eye.

Next I do a little spackle-y spackle-y, and little sand-y sand-y, a little paint-y paint-y and then the silicone glop. We should be good then.

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Artists I am feeling right now.

Sunday, May 16th, 2021

Heather Penn. If you ask me you will learn that I can draw many things, and many things very well, but I can’t draw rocks. Cliffs, piles of rocks, I suck at them. I mean, I can draw them, they just don’t look like rocks. Sometimes they look like pillows, sometimes they look like potatoes, it varies. Therefore I am smitten and not a small bit envious of Heather Penn. Look at her lush artwork. It draws you in.

Heather sells calendars and is starting to get into 3D, I think she’s creating a game studio. https://www.instagram.com/heatpenn/?hl=en

 

Kazuma Nagai.  I first learned of this Japanese artist when I saw the silver slugs.

I dug a little deeper into his work and he gets weird. I love it.

I don’t where he sells his work but you can follow him on his instagram as well. https://www.instagram.com/slughorse/?hl=en

Posted in Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

You know what soothes the soul in times of strife? Charts.

Sunday, April 18th, 2021

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New rotting fruit art!

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021

I’ve spoken about the amazing work of Kathleen Ryan before. It appears she’s made new fruit and I love them.

I assumed the fruit was larger than life but I had no idea how much larger. It makes me wonder how big her beads are. My beads, even my biggest ones, would not cut it.

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Beaver Skull. Here we go.

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021

Remember Deer Skull? In a moment of weakness I bought a beaver skull. C’mon guys, it was on sale! I got it for cheaper because the front teeth, the most valuable part of the skull, were broken at the tips. I’m going to cover the whole skull with beads similar to the deer but in gold and jewel tones. I have a lot of beads left over from the acorn necklace.

And after my dad died I submitted a 6″ x 6″ tile to the Museum of Beadwork, I used more of those metallic beads there.

So for this skull instead of matching the color of the bone I’m going hard in the opposite direction. I painted the everything except the teeth blue and put blue and green felt on areas where I might want to shove in some decorative pins. I need a substrate to shove the pins into and bone is notoriously resistant.

I used Apoxie Sculpt to mold clean ends on the teeth. I can cover those bits with beads and you’ll never know they were janky and broken. Fun fact: The reason the fronts of the teeth are orange is because that’s rust. Their teeth are covered with iron.

I want there to be a gold line going from the forehead to the back. Lord, this has been a journey. I first beaded a beautiful strip. I couldn’t believe the richness of the gold color. Then I realized the richness is due to the beads being covered in 24K gold. I had forgotten I had bought them. I am very much not using those beads on a frikkin’ beaver skull so I took it apart.

Attempt #2. I decided I wanted it to be a pointed stripe fading into dark blue. The color blend was too chunky so that one was scrapped.

Attempt #3. Nope.

Attempt #4. YES.

I will clip those loose threads and I can fix the wobbliness when I glue it down by pushing it around until it sets.

That took a solid week to make one strip. This learning curve needs to pick up but I’ll get there. Eventually.

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Let’s start the 2021 on the right foot. With charts.

Friday, January 15th, 2021

Several of my favorite charts, the Venn Diagram, which pleases me.

 

And check out this extremely beautiful infographic. I love it.

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Art and design. Choices are made. Not all of them are great.

Thursday, January 7th, 2021

Design is my career so I unintentionally look at everything and check spacing, check colors, check legibility, check line breaks, etc. It’s maybe not the best trait because I can’t ignore bad art and design which is all over the place. Allow me to share.

Swishy brush fonts are tough. Too much swishy and it looks like a different letter. And sometimes the swishies between two letters touch and you get problems. Let’s not forget the “Clint” nametag incident. “Curt” isn’t workin’ too good either.

Back when we could go places I used to frequent a Korean takeout place. This was the packaging for their chopsticks.

I thought it said OW! for way too long.

Good To Go! A lovely cafe in White Plains where I live. Look at how the tree is nestled between the D and the T. That works.

So why is your overhang this? Why? With the tree as the T? Which is a similar brown to the sign so you can’t see it? It you made the tree white it might have been fine. Please get ladder and fix. Please. It hurts my heart.

I used to pass this in Grand Central Terminal every day.

Perfect. Papyrus, now with the addition of Comic Sans. It’s circled back around to glorious.

And finally…

Everything. Everything is wrong with this. And I had to stare directly at it when I went to the bathroom. Truly blessed.

 

Addendum: I love how each animal gets crappier as your eye slides down the painting.

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My dream tile.

Monday, December 21st, 2020

I collect art nouveau tiles. I’ve talked about my Wall O’ Tiles previously. I periodically buy new tiles and swap them out with tiles I don’t totally love. I usually spend somewhere between $25.00 – $65.00. I’ve found some real treasures but there have always been a few I knew I could never have. The primary one is a flower that shows up in every “check out these baller tiles” collage.

One day I was hanging out on eBay looking at tiles when… there it was. For sale. With 14 people bidding on it. So I decided that’s it, I’m going to bid on it, and I did some aggressive soul-searching on what I was willing to spend on it. I went with $350.00 and walked away. I would let the eBay gods decide if I won or not. I cannot convey to you how psyched I was to get the “You’ve won!” email. The bidding ended at $306.00.

I own it, guys. I own the dream tile. I also found a the same tile with a different glaze and it was like $55.00 because you totally can’t see those sweet little flowers in the background. I wanted to have the lesser version to show why the great version is so great.

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