Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Arrowmont with Marlene!


So I am off today to head to Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in TN with Marlene True to assist in her metals workshop "Tin is In!And as Good and Gold!" She the only true cowgirl I know, an awesome metalsmith and amazing person. And yes, the blue and sterling cross she made out of an antique chocolate tin. She ROCKS! The photo's blurry but too much fun!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Banana Ghost

Oh YEAH!
....two beers 1:30am
Banana ghost!
click above for fun animation!!!

Let's Play Sustainability

Click the above title to find out if you live a sustainable life!

Monday, September 24, 2007

Movement

Sometimes things move in a linear fashion. I have been trying to illustrate comcepts like these for my art appreciation students. But then there are those times when there is merely expansion.... non linear growth if it were. Little big bangs of enlightenment.... mine today has been Theo Jansen and now Popcasts! I am currently listening to Princeton University professor and "postmodern Socrates", Kwame Anthony Appiah, deconstructing on the "Golden Nugget" of Western civilisation theory. Ah....expanding the mind feels so damn good! Join me!

More, Oh YES! More Theo Jansen!


Well I couldn't get enough, how about you??? f
For a 30 minute interview and snippets of his DVD go here!
http://www.poptech.com/popcasts/PopCasts.aspx?viewcastid=25
(pssst! click on the post title)

2 1/2 Minute Portrait

Not as "moving" as Theo Jansen but fun! Paintjam!

Fantastikal!!!!


Theo Jansen (1948) studied physics at the University of Delft (The Netherlands) from 1968-1975. He left University to become an artist. He painted for the first seven years. In 1980 he built a flying saucer (15 ft flashing lights, beep sounds) that flew over Delft and set the town in commotion. Then he built a light sensitive spray-gun which paints an object on a surface. Since 1986 Theo Jansen has been writing a column for the Volkskrant (national newspaper).Since 1990 he has been working on a new creation: skeletons made of electric-conduits which walk on windpower. These animals have evolved into several generations over the last twelve years. Eventually he wants to put the animaIs out in herds on the beaches, where they live their own lives.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

B More Positive

"Life will find a way"
I believe Jeff Goldblum said this in Jurassic Park. Better to go to sleep on a good note. Loved the passionate scientist character.....

Rant of the month

I don't know about you but the last article makes me want to cry. I mean how do we even begin to clean up a non-biodegradable trash pile two times bigger than TEXAS!??? What the HELL is this world coming to? Tell me please.
I try, try, try to open eyes in the classes of the high school students I teach this semester. Not to the environment per se, but to just SEE! To be aware, AWAKE, as they walk through life! People bungle through life with their PLASTIC ipod earbuds... are they listening? Of course not, because who wants to?! Squawking about the ocean and the environment is not as catchy as a Shinns tune. Well then I hope Mother Nature wins! I hope cancer from their stinking cigarettes kills them all. I hope apes do take over the world and the Statue of Liberty ends up buried to her eyeballs. Cause I tell you what, we don't deserve this Eden, we thankless, hairless apes who gotta get down the road in our giant smoking gas burners. "Oh yes! Where we have to go with our plastic everything is so damn important, there are clients on the line! Deals to be made! Get out of the way! To hell with the big blue marble!"

That's what they think I'm sure...cell phone in hand behind their volvo/bmw/mercedes/escalade steering wheel...
I mean isn't it?
Do they know? Have they ever made anything with their hands? from earth? or wood they cut themselves and planed down? Have they grown anything? Have they ever see the lightbulb go off behind a young person's eyes?
Where's the quality I ask?
'Cause I see plenty of quantity every day.

Maybe the pretty jellyfish will soften my rant.....

Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches?! or Why I Hate Plastic


This is an article posted by Jacob Silverman for Howstuffworks.com
"In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: TRASH, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]."

WHAAAAA?! Texas!!!!!

"The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. But before we discuss those, it's important to look at the role of PLASTIC. Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans [source: LA Times]. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic [source: UN Environment Program]. "

HANG ON! Did he just say 46,000 pieces... EVERY SQUARE MILE!???
I thought so, resume:

"In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one."

Ummmm.... okay,if you're not unnerved...

"Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean [source: Greenpeace]. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [source: Greenpeace]. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore.

The main problem with plastic -- besides there being so much of it -- is that it doesn't biodegrade."

Oh and btw, it secretes TOXINS! Sorry for interrupting. Please, continue.

"No natural process can break it down. (Experts point out that the durability that makes plastic so useful to humans also makes it quite harmful to nature.) Instead, plastic photodegrades. A plastic cigarette lighter cast out to sea will fragment into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic without breaking into simpler compounds, which scientists estimate could take hundreds of years. The small bits of plastic produced by photodegradation are called mermaid tears or nurdles.These tiny plastic particles can get sucked up by filter feeders and damage their bodies. Other marine animals eat the plastic, which can poison them or lead to deadly blockages. Nurdles also have the insidious property of soaking up toxic chemicals."

Oh good he mentions the toxins...

"Over time, even chemicals or poisons that are widely diffused in water can become highly concentrated as they're mopped up by nurdles. These poison-filled masses threaten the entire food chain, especially when eaten by filter feeders that are then consumed by large creatures."

How LOVELY! And we keep making MORE of the stuff, thinking its just great. I mean hey, it doesn't break! right? Wow how man has come up with some great stuff! We're surrounded by plastic...shoot me now.

Too read more by Jacob Silverman on the subject go to:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch1.htm

Friday, September 21, 2007

SMOKIN!


I have fallen behind in my posting!
And I owe so many people pics, I've been snapping and not burning!
So in this spare ten minutes I am trying to download off the camera and thought I'd share this moment at the recent IAC show "Felt Up". It is Cindi Buell with Stanley Newton and her felt racing typewriter. Smokin'!

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Absolutely Yummy site


I just stumbled onto this website http://www.photogravure.com/
Abolutely yummy, dreamy,
historical photogravures.
sweat dreams!

Friday, September 7, 2007

Are You A Magpie?


I know I am...
any found trinkets,
shiny or rusty
end up in my pockets,
on my dresser
in jars,
on ledges.
in window sills,
lining my nests






want to brag on my friend John W Golden.
Check out his new print of a Magpie available in his Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6972487