click for enlargement>>
Click for another year>> I am now a year older today. We are going to the State Theater to see They Might Be Giants (a fluke,really, as I bought the tickets without registering the date). So, that is the fanfare.
The monkey keeps evolving for the wine project. His head is still evolving, but you can see something happening. I may do a little abstracted guy too.. who knows.
Holiday card was approved yesterday. Need to do brand new accurate art for it. The cool thing about this card is that it pushed me into learning a bit about Live Paint (one of the whizbang tools that are part of Adobe Illustrator). Like the negative snot that I am, I wrote it off like many of the "wild and crazy" filters that make your image seem oh so "digital". Turns out, its a great tool, a good time saver and allows lots of changing, lots of variation (to offer to clients) and gives you another work around to cutting and pasting shapes. Divine. I think I may change my name to reflect this conversion to align with Live Trace, Live Paint, Live Wire... at least when it comes to these new tricky helpers. And, I would not have even thought of it if I hadn't been in the presence of Jean Tuttle and Nancy Stahl who do not write off filters and new tools-- but try them and embrace them. I need to grow up and be cool like them....
Speaking of Jean>> Chad Grohman wrote a mini article/interview with Jean and posted it here!
Cracked open one of my Fraktur books yesterday to read a bit on the religious symbols that the author speculated on . It really isnt clear about the imagery in Fraktur whether it reflects a tradition (predominantly German) of religious art and symbols...or whether the imagery just is...and stands alone. Being a gorpy person who loves symbols, I of course, want to believe that this stuff is chock full of meaning, meaning inside of meaning, layer upon layer often not even understood by the artist/illustrator / scrivener--but because of the deep history and visual memory of these things-- they are embued with so much more. The author reminded his reader of the powwowing and folk cures and of the superstitions and beliefs of these people which we do know...and rolled his assumption that this stuff means stuff based on that as the foundation of that understanding and knowledge. I can make that leap of faith too. Not scientific-- but my gut says yes. I need to learn more about the Ephrata community as they are (to my thinking) the thought center for this type of American work. Their beliefs, their leader and his writings should illuminate this.
Sorry this is so fractured today...but thats kind of whats going on here. Hopefully, more later...at least visuals.