Images drawn on an iPad by David HockneyIf I were Alex Cassetti, I would exclaim that David Hockney is “fresh as hell”. This is an unafraid artist who paints about everything that touches him from his lifestyle with pictures of men in swimming pools in Los Angeles to his new and exciting pop in the iPad art world. I love it that Hockney has been drawing on his iPhone and has newly adapted the pad (down to having coats made with big interior pockets to hold the pad). He has exuberantly leapt on the technology, making new pictures that have merit on their own, and not trying to be anything than what they are. He creates images daily and emails them out to his friends just because…and this resonates with me. So, inspiriation is there. Just get going. Keep drawing regardless of the medium. It will look like you because, silly, it is you.

“Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?” David Hockney

“I realized when I was doing the sunrises last year that it was partly because the iPhone was beside my bed when I woke up,” “But if I’d only had a pencil and paper there I probably wouldn’t have chosen to make pictures of the dawn.” David Hockney

And so today begins. Recycled soup (bean as the base…tomatoes added as well as some chicken) ready for the back porch crew. I made two cornbread loaves last night while I joined the world watching the amazing and to me, frankly pretty scary/horrifying venture in Chile to get the miners out. That tube, the rescue contraption called “Phoenix 2”, 26” x 6’ being lowered into the ground essentially with a jerry rigged rope tow, with either a miner or a rescuer squeezed in, coffin style with air and (I hope some medication) to make an uncertain journey (180 feet of it encased in a metal tube as the ground was uncertain towards the top of the shaft). The chanting of Chee Lay by those above and below as if it was a game, interestingly, instead of buoying my spirits, made me chew my lip even harder. Then the elegant Florencio, the first miner up, was instead of having a bit of privacy watched as his dear little son (with a chilean mylar balloon shoved into his hand by some media spinner) break into heart wrenching tears when his papa surfaced. And the media circus surrounded this poor soul who needed a beer and a chance to put his head down, hold his family’s hands and say a big prayer that he was out of that subterreanean prison and his comrades would make it too. There was nothing about this enterprise that spoke of any of this being a “sure bet”— but the quiet confidence of those surrounding the entrance to this shaft was reassuring even to this nail biter. I hope that today brings more confidence, more rescues and closer to this amazing story of these men below the ground.

Sure make the small stuff seem pretty silly, doesnt it?