A wonderful warm day in February


I am combing through a lot of images in this mode. They are from the enormous body of work Posada did exclusively in the Chapbook area for the printer/publisher, A. Vanegas Arrovo. Love em. They def. give you a bit of confidence that everything doesn't have to be perfect all the time. But, the sheer tedium that Posada endured coming up with "Love Letters" every year, new and different for I am sure more than a decade. Or kids stuff, or Magical Clowns (what is not to love here)--really depicts the day to day tedium that this man endured. So, he earned his chops...and worked within the system. I was fascinated to find out that many of the second color plates of his engravings (many of these primary images had new type added and were reconfigured for new uses) were disfigured or destroyed so that the initial impressions of these images/plates became instantly more valuable. Given that these chapbooks were essentially novelties, or "trash"--no one collected, hoarded or saved these less than precious documents...so that the ones with complete veracity are amazing.

Working on my valentines. Changing color and beginning to do the most frightening thing, adding type. I know, I know...I am a graphic designer so type should be a piece of cake. The trauma is that I do not take the images I put type on very seriously...so its a yawn to see what happens. Now, I am fully invested...and I have to do this very risky thing...add type (and stir?). Oy. My world is frought with neurosis.

K and I went to Corning to have our teeth worked on. We had a lovely girl chat on the way down, and the most wonderful girly girl audio tape on the way back. It was wonderful. K had novacaine, so she was thrilled with what her mouth would and wouldnt do. A. was sick with coughs, phlem and malaise. Poor boy. Sleep helped and by dinner he was healthily pink, laughing and quoting rappers....versus Senor Catatonic who moved in for the last 24 hours.

Sleep beckons. I have a new valentine for you tomorrow!
You all are my valentine. Will you be mine?

First Monday in February


Monday Monday. Went to the gym--did a little bit of this, a little bit of that--and its all getting easier and things dont hurt as much. Working on a portrait for the Museum of Glass (show signage/ show identifier) for a leading studio glass artist. Its back and forth...darks and lights, midtones and highlights--building and building, taking away and building back. Its a mantra, a study, a meditation. Hope I get some mileage on this and get it done today (or at least close).

Reading and studying the Mexican publishers/engravers. Am intrigued by the chapbooks and chapbook covers they did. Posada did well over 300 of them on all topics from music to love letters, to childrens topics etc. And the same ideas rolled around year after year for him to depict. I guess these publishing houses/engravers were the great patrons of mexican illustration in the second half of the 1800s clear through until the thirties..so the taste and expression was formed by what sold publications. The schmaltzy use of flowers and birds have me on the edge of my seat, itching to give it a try. A day later and the beehive I shared with you is not quite there. However, thanks to the chat I had with Murray, I have plenty of amending and changing to do while I ponder the next steps. Plus, I have my Manhattan valentine (a pigeon with a love letter that says I love NY/NY skyline or central park bridge in bkgd.).

Snow is melting here leaving sheer ice behind. It should be on the warmer side this week, so everyone will get nuts thinking that Spring is here. Instead it is the traditional, mid winter fake out. I was remembering a spring break where it was in the 70s and the flowers were blooming...and then back to snow. But, that might have been the April break instead of February. We plan on a short jaunt to the east coast to start the college viewing next week. We have some in the Boston neighborhood, New Hampshire, Vermont. So, we will be busy, but at least we will have started this process too.

Jet Pens


Just an aside I was meaning to mention. I discovered a wonderful site that specializes in one of my all time favorite things. Yes, office supplies. And, to make it even better (how, you ask, could it be ANY better?)--they are JAPANESE office supplies. They have brush pens (thin to thick, disposable to not), puffy pens, white ink pens, ink in lovely silver boxes. They have a wide selection of pencil cases and my all time "must own to give aways"--sushi erasers. So, though you aren't bored or even pretending to be bored, you may want to go to Jet Pens and check them out!

quick


Off to see Lucia de Lammermoor at the movie theater. Taking the kids and the grandparents. Should be done by 4. Then back here for a bit and then to the Ithaca Festival Paint off.

Just got back. They had sold out of the Opera...(two theaters worth!) so no opera for us. Stopped at Ludgate Farms and bought maple syrup, vegetable bouillon cubes, quinua, and the new Michael Pallin book on "plant based foods"--We toured the Cornell campus driving through the Plantations, Beebee lake , Forest Home and down through the Lombard Street of Ithaca by the cemetary. It is melting here...40 degrees--so the Cornell students were in shorts and flip flops anticipating spring.

Talked to Murray yesterday about the valentines I have on Facebook (sketches...many of them). Murray took each and every one of them seriously and critiqued them giving me good insight on what to change, what not to change and maybe they were good enough for prime time. I approached one of these illustrations (a current revisit on the beehive) and drew it as a piece to flop and then drew details and background textures as separate parts that I stripped in with photoshop. It was quite interesting as the design has gotten tighter and bolder with this approach. And the designs come together much more quickly. This technique is a refinement on the approach I have been taking which is great. Faster, smoother process, more confidence in the work in general. I am reversing illustrations while I do them as well as I have found many illustrations that are too much black on a white field, become lace on black...and very appropos the topic.


The thinking around doing valentines for my thesis is to explore a variety of different "hands" or approaches to valentines, trying out techniques, use of color etc. in an area that is so broad there is plenty of room to move (from the content). Is it marketable? Well, the first are cards. But you can take it to merchandising and paper goods, to glass designs (perfect for a flipped design for Steuben for example), for a book on love poetry, to using them as package labels or even wine labels (or in the case of honey, honey labels or mead labels). So, this is more of a polyglot way to market the illustrations--but def a possibility. Even themes from this work could roll into CD designs for music/ American music? or even cookbooks...anything having to do with love. It goes beyond the valentines and speaks to affection and fondness. That is a 365 day a year type of opportunity.

Speaking of love...don't you love our President O. whaling on the nay sayers? I am so thrilled that this man does have a temper and will push back. All of this DC crap has got to stop. President O. has a full enough plate from the Bushies, that maybe the naysayers should shut up and sit down or even more wonderful, maybe try and help...versus the same status quo. Haven't we all had enough of people in power?

IF: [sweet] Time


With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons and their change, all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild, then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heav’n, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land,

John Milton (1608–1674)
British poet. Paradise Lost (l. Bk. IV, l. 639–652)

--a confection for you on a cold, snowy, winter day--
close to Valentines Day!

Packaged Queen



I am in love with all things apiary. I have been for quite a while--and have been thinking about the bees, their lives and how they build their hives, the job they do with pollination, their clannishness as a swarm, and now their sudden departure. I am so in love with bees, I am looking into getting a hive with Kitty and seeing if we can do this sort of thing. There are some wonderful sites--with the starter set from Bee Commerce to "packaged bees"and Queens (love it that queens have a price list...>). Virgin Queens or Breeder Queens? or packaged Queens? Just the language is rich and funny. Here is a beekeepers blog>>Maybe that lovely man from the Tburg farmers market can advise? Remember him? He told me about how he rents his bees for around $70 a day to pollinate people's fields. He packages them up and drives them carefully over to the new field...and takes them home at night. Plus, he must get more than the money with what the bees bring home at night..Look at this>we have a fingerlakes bee keeping club! More to learn.

I am also going to get Digimarc for the studio. Digimarc is the copyright service that is part of the pulldown in Photoshop under filters. They have several levels of service and will give me a bit more peace of mind surrounding the ownership thing that is snowballing with the Orphan Rights Act being out there, looming on the horizon--and also just the cherrypickers who take from websites for their own websites etc. This is what Digimarc says:

COMMUNICATE OWNERSHIP
Content (images, audio, and video) often circulates anonymously, without the ability to communicate who owns it or how contact them to obtain the right to use it. Digital watermarking provides a persistent digital identity for all forms of media content and enables copyright holders to reliably communicate their ownership while also providing links to related details and purchase information. This helps to promote licensing and protect copyrighted content from unauthorized use or becoming an "orphaned work."

Digimarc embeds code into the image/illustration versus the fugly circle C and a name over the image which is repulsive and seems so amateur hour. There are shows to enter soon...and having this tool in tandem with that is probably a good idea.

Chad is coming this Saturday with his children to do the Ithaca Paint Off. Jime will be there too. I don't/didn't want to do it as I don't really paint. If they had an Ink Off...I might have had a crack at it. But as the tribe is gathering for this, I was musing that this would be the opportunity next year to get all the local illustrators I know from Rochester/Syracuse, down to below Sayre/ Binghampton to participate--and I could have an early dinner here for them prior to the even. Combine networking with fundraising--and let people show off a bit. Need to think a bit more on this.

I am choking a bit with the illustration--getting a bit caught up in the time it is taking to finish things...but still in a positive motion. Got a very encouraging note via Facebook with people I should contact specifically as it relates to the portrait work I have done (Corning Museum of Glass and the Burkas) as this person thought this work has traction. Am a bit panic-y about that and will talk it through with the mentor in SF. Gotta get to work...times a wasting.

Chops


I've been thinking about chops. Not lamb chops or pork chops but the wonderful new word that means you have the licks, the chops--to do something. Essentially, you have honed skills that you have earned by working at your craft. This is what I am working on as an illustrator. With chops comes the confidence that you can do anything put forward as you have been there, done that..or at least been there kinda sorta, done that kinda sorta...but a track record and the headset to do anything. Plus, in having this experience and trust in your own work, comes an ability to put a line down and know how to think and plan as the work progresses to rescue the piece or morph it to another place. It's knowing how to get into the trance from which the work evolves and changes.

We used to say "you need to put in the time" which for me as a young designer drove me batty as I had the skills and time...and it was never enough for those I worked with. However, looking backwards at this impatience, I think the age>experience combination was to a degree just a way of pushing me back...a way of not having to manage me because chops come from being bumped around, being directed as much as having the head/hand skills to take the work someplace. There are plenty of really talented designers and illustrators that definitely have the chops but do not have the ability to see the environment they are competing in, or see where they fit on the spectrum of illustration and reality. So, time does factor into chops or chopdom...but from a hand and skill standpoint--sometimes that is inate.

I was talking to R. about my thesis. The Garden project made me afraid because of my lacking chops in this world of decorative illustration. I just didn't know where to start. Sure, I sketched and traced. Sure, I researched and developed reference. Sure, I knew what and how I wanted to do this--and everything didnt work, everything froze. However, like the Memento Mori work, the valentines are flowing. Unlike the Memento Mori work and the Syracuse vector work--these valentines are being corrected, changed, colored, critiqued, aspects redrawn, reconsidered. So, from essentially spot illustrations with both the Syracuse work and the Memento Mori work, these pieces are getting context, being considered as illustrations with a frame, a world they live in--and this fear is beginning to ebb a bit. From this work, I am getting my legs in the heavy line work (above is the starting point on an Eden inspired valentine), to thin line work, to something in between. I am thinking about cut paper (something in the past I havent tried in a serious picture making versus sketch making way) and other aspects of approaches. This current body of work is giving me life to consider the Garden of Eden presented in a less threatening way. These valentines are the right diving board from which this work will morph to the Genesis work. And the valentines morphed from the daily picture making that the Memento Mori project was. Memento Mori was just an ink approach to daily illustrations on the topic of death, memory and remembrance. It was a new image a day...never revising, never refining. It was one shot...and on to the next. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but frankly, I should revisit those images and refine 12 of them to take the sketches to illustrations. More was better for the time. Now taking the more and condensing it down, and finishing them really takes it from a random thought, to a deliberate expression.

Hey now. Sounds like I have been learning something.

The Provensens again!






Thanks to Linda Tajirian, my very smart and tuned in classmate from Hartford--I was made aware of this phenomenal book, " The Fireside Cookbook" by James Beard and illustrated by Martin and Alice Provensen (Simon and Schuster, 1949). I quickly scuttled over to Alibris to see if they had a used copy so that I could pour over their work and at the same time, devouring the wonderful recipes by Beard (those foodies in the know call him "Beard" or at least that's what they do around here!). I found a copy for $6. with shipping getting me the book for a whisker under $10. And, as quick as you can imagine, the book came on Saturday. It is a remarkable publication with color plates in each section--some spreads in color too. Then its an explosion of line and flat color illustrations which are a real poke in the side to me. I really identify with those...and should do a valentine or two modelled on the way they handle the color and the whimsical line. They are not afraid of doing little curlicues and swashes in a single line weight, blended with their storybook approach..charming. In the chicken section there are tons of fox in the hen house little references. Terrific negative and positive approaches...that show off their strong design abilities. This stuff is stylish, cute and funny--more like the Shaker book with animals and flat architecture. However, their greek myths peek out with greek recipes and the flair for those things for children appear regularly. I will post some of the these simpler images today/tomorrow.

catch up

We have been so busy, not a chance to post a note. Friday was heads down work. We went to Cornell around six to attend a big Central New York indoor track and field event with Alex running in a singleton (1000?) and a 4x8 relay. It was quite a scene,with the Cornell facility--gorgeous, with a crowd of boys and girls in amazing shape doing amazing things. The 300 for the bigger schools was spectacular with these boys running like freight trains at startling speed was stunning. The teamwork and attitude of these students was affirming. I loved seeing a slice of New York State under one roof. We had a great time on the floor (versus up in the stands) mixing it up with the team, their teachers and other parents doing the same thing. This was done around 10:30 for us..We rolled over to the Nines in Collegetown and had a pizza with Kitty--bringing one home with us for Alex.

Saturday was a shopping day. Singlehandedly, the recession "the meltdown" should be partially recovered thanks to our vote. First there was a Wegmans cartorama filled with vegetables and bread, grass fed meat (small bit) and super bowl cuisine supplies (read chicken wings, pizza, tortilla chips). Then there was the purchase of ski goggles for Kitty. And then, we went for it. Alex has wanted to learn the bass guitar. He has been talking it up...and if there is a significant talk up--then we invest. So, we went to Ithaca Guitar Works and bought a cherry red bass guitar and mid level amp. We brought it home and he immediately started poking around on it...So now, I need to get some lessons cranked up with someone local. There is interest...so, there could be passion. And with passion comes involvement and energy. So. This week.

We went to the Pourhouse to hear the Chokers last night. It was really fun and the Chokers were ON. They were tight, the sound was terrific. Full house--with lots of musicians crowded in to mix it up--

Gotta go. Up against the SuperBowl as a deadline today.

working away in the clouds


Just got a pile of stuff out to Creative Quarterly, a wonderful, well designed publication by Charles Hively that really speaks actively to the design, communications, marketing and illustration world. There is a great aesthetic of strong, good design that has a sense of humor and fun...not totally bent pinkie perfection--swiss /academic design, but with the right balance of smart, humorous, witty work. Charles also creates and publishes 3x3 which has a similar sensibility exclusively for illustration. I think he is developing a publication that takes on Communication Arts and transcends all the others (Print, How, etc.). So, we wait and see on this one. The 3x3 show I got into at least gets mentions from my friends etc. that they saw my work unlike the other shows where a stunning silence happens from friends, clients etc. 3x3 is soon too...hopefully there will be some time to enter a bunch of the valentines a group...hmmm.

I am on the illustrations with a slightly different headset than Memento Mori (which I was reviewing this a.m. for Creative Quarterly). The Memento Mori work was inked in, scanned and that was it. No sketches. No rework. Just plain guts on the page...And what I have now is the let it fly--ink on paper which I might do more than once! Then its scanned in with other bits and pieces that are assembled in photoshop in a higher than usual dpi (either 400 or 500 dpi) to size. Then, I erase and patch the black and white prior to even thinking about color. Color is a whole other thing... I am using non photo blue pencil for sketching and my new friend, the pentel fine line whiteout pen (acquired in LA! at Famima, that cute japanese store). So, in the tradition of logo design technique we learned in school (draw on paper, get a piece of glass and put it on top of the sketch, paint negative and positive with plakat--back and forth).

Now I am back to that approach, only with my pictures. The tiger is being recolored and doctored...with a redraw of some clouds and some consideration of texture/activity at the bottom of the page. The more I doll it up, the more it doesnt help the image. To take clues from indian art, a flat color in the background isnt a problem, nor are flat color borders are good too. Totally work either flat and flat, or flat with thin patterned borders. So, need to go back in with that in mind.

Bringing Fire


Prometheus, Rockefeller Center
Prometheus , Paul Manship (1934), with the fire in his hands in front of the Rockefeller Center in New York with lines from Aeschylus inscribed

Well, in the cracks of the day--I am beginning to make some headway. I have one valentine done and down. I have another one almost tinted. A third in a very 2/3 mode where I thought it was done, and its not. My tiger is getting an overhaul with color and clouds. Thanks to some coaching from Will Bradley, this spot illustration is beginning to be more. Textures, simple backgrounds, environments to ground the figures. I have another bird and another bee one planned.I have one with a squirrel (reference done) to do in the Will Bradley simple chapbook style. So, as I said, I needed to blast through the "I'm going to jump" phase with more work...and it will keep the gyroscopes going so I can do this thing. I am really loving this work--its level of finish--using the first drawing as a starter. Cleaning it up on the computer, outputting it and then working color layers (really quick) in ink on lovely, thick vellum> scanning it in in greyscale and converting it to single color layers I merge in photoshop. Much faster than drawing them online...and still maintaining the handmade. I will add highlights and small details in photoshop (drawing with vectors), but I am trying to keep that to a minimum. I feel confident I could have a dozen by San Francisco with a New York piece (perhaps a valentine to Greek coffee and hot dogs? or the statue of Liberty pastiche valentine? or the architectural valentine?or or or...inspired by Rockefeller Center Valentine!!). That's it...the Prometheus at Rockefeller Center.

Snow days for every school in the area except for Tburg. I guess they figure we are made of stronger stuff...and have us doing school because the last legs of the regents tests are today (3 hrs in the pm for Kitty) and midterms for others. Kit can walk...but I cringe to think of the schoolbuses trundling down the slippery streets with the happy, chattering kids in it. Being a schoolbus driver is a heroic job...and miraculous on days like this.

On a terrific note, The Chicken Chokers will be playing at the Pourhouse on Saturday. R wants me to start working with hand drawn chickens and choking hazards as there is much potential there. We will be there as it is always a ton of fun, the music extrodinary and all our pals at our Tburg Clubhouse, the Pourhouse. A treat!

Off to pour another cup of the most delicious coffee in the universe, and settle in for a morning with animation in powerpoint (something I know very little about...and have a project in!). Onward.

Phew.





No longer ready to jump...Will Bradley has once again, rescued me from the edge--with his more refined chapbook style (seen in the Sleepy Hollow book illustrations). I love these images as he uses tigerteeth and some interesting woodcut conventions and simplification that I can learn from. I need to work on a few things in my notebook to better understand/ model this look/feel. Bradley has simple, strong compostions which parallels my work--and I like the way he sets the stage with the trees in the backgrounds or the integration of type.

I also got interested in Wil Barnet's prints/illustrations. Love this stuff too.




Ripping my hair out

Now this is the thesis I remember. The hair ripping part of doing a thesis. You toddle along, making images, having an illustration party with yourself, making pictures, amending pictures, moving to the next picture--setting them up, knocking them down. Then what happens, is that the track splits and you need to change, amend, rethink, or keep going with the thesis--keeping all the plates spinning and work coming out the back end. I am so good with this. Started with the concept of "Visions of Paradise" which evolved to the Garden of Eden story. All was great with the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Good and Evil. It begin to get nasty with the separation of the firmaments. How to depict God? The first reminder was to myself..."why are you doing this" What is the end game for July 09?" After a dozen pictures messing around with the Genesis project, I jumped off and started to just look around after the immersion in Indian painting, Mexican woodcuts, and the usual suspects (in the world of inspirations). I needed to work on a technique with this black and white work--so that the ink work could evolve into colored illustrations in the occasion they needed to be color. I am so good with just black and white, and this stretch to color is pushing me a bit. I figured I would give myself a vacation from Genesis and work on work related to what happened after Adam and Eve were cast out. True Love For Ever....Valentines. I have a hive (done), a lady (needs color), a singing bird (needs color), a tiger, a finch in a leafy shape, and plans for another beehive married with a frame and a honeycomb pattern. I am working with all sorts of reference from Audubon Natural Science books to more Indian work, more woodcuts etc. Am getting a bit more fluid with how to take it to color albeit with the 80/20 measure, it is puzzling me as I work with it. Not that it's unachievable, its just making me think, which makes the work go a bit slower. I will have 6-8 Valentines for San francisco, the existing Eden work with a change in the firmament piece, a piece dealing with the trees that bear fruit with the grasses that bear fruit, the birds of the sky (hopefully) and the beasts of the seas...The hair ripping is I feel like I've hit ice....I am slipping and sliding around and feel that though the work (compared with the decorative work of last July) has tightened and has more resolution, more finish than before. I am thinking more about the work, how the image is put together and how to take it apart to make it right again. I am making parts to add to symmetrical/ flipped images to make it seem more integrated. I am making parts for borders, for frames. I have stand alone beasts and beasts that just seem stuck on am image. The heart from last night, despite the color work still couldn't sit up and breathe--so that time is moot. Simple and elegant, break lines and bars, remember tapering, remember the 80-20, remember the sense of context. Try to give the image a place where it lives....Man, can't I go back to tracing Prince Valiant?

So the track has split. What I have learned when this happens is to soldier through. Left foot, right foot as this is the place were the energy happens. Nuclear fission. This is where you gut it out, keep the time and passion on it--and we may see a leap ahead. I should understand this in my spirit...it is just so disheartening.

Exams next week for the home team. There were some small badger fights to get the information on which tests, when...with a lot of bold, laxidaisical talk that merited my getting off my haunches and doing the who/what /where/when on all the subjects. I really hate this stuff. Long day. Hopefully, an early night.

Curry flavored dreams.




Working on a valentine with frogs. Have done it as a reflected piece, adding and overlaying in photoshop to see how I can make it a bit less flippy...putting things on the spine, stripping in stuff into the black. Am taken with doing a leafy frame with an animal inside ...with some sort of play between an animal and bird/ heart. Also on the tiger drawing with a leopard in the plans. This Janist painting style is very stylized (which I love) and have lovely conventions like crazy geometries and decoration and the figures do things the human body would never concieve of. There is an illustration in my wonderful book (From the Ocean of Painting, India's Popular Painting from 1589 to Present by Barbara Rossi (ISBN0-19-511194-x)) of archers kneeling within a shape in the upper part of the image described entirely by arrows facing in, and these archers are shooting out. What if that shape was a heart, there is a valentine there...beyond cupid and his dinky arrows that prick but not eviserate. These indian guys are not messing around in their picture. Specifically, these images that I have fallen in love with are from the Deccan area of India...and as they are for the populus versus the elegant Indian Paintings I have been trying to imprint on my brain. With the popular, the conventions are stronger--the images more iconic as they have to be knocked out to sell a lot of them. There are pilgrimage paintings created with the same imagery--some rendered more simply than others...but the same mannerisms, same decor, same pose of the figure. I have been plucking images out of the marginalia of these pictures for details in these valentines. Sweet.

I just tried to find these tigers online to share with you. Turns out, LACMA has a significant collection of indian art that they purchased from the collections of Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck. Heeramaneck was a collector whose works were sold by Sotheby's--and there is a catalog of the entire collection. LACMA also has quite a few wonderful examples online to review. I just adore this stuff. Look at those nutty palettes. Not quite the great grey/blue north that I live in...but believeable in Miami.

IF: Climbing


Climbing is unadulterated hard labor. The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow.

Annie Smith Peck (1850–1935),
U.S. mountain climber.
As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 15 (December 1977).

Said c. 1925 by the pioneering climber who, at seventy-five, was still scaling mountains. She conquered her last peak at age 82: the 5,363-foot Mt. Madison in New Hampshire.

Annie Smith Peck is an inspiration to all of us, to continue to climb and strive for goals that may seem unattainable at the time. This tree, the Tree of Knowledge represents that goal, the pursuit of learning, growing and understanding. With this, comes wisdom and understanding.

Interesting Article from the Design Observer on Decorative Illustration

The Curse of the D Word
Steven Heller

Do you make things look nice? Do you spend more time worrying about nuance and aesthetics than substance and meaning? Do you fiddle with style while ignoring the big picture? If your answers are yes, yes, or yes, then you are a decorator.

Being a decorator is not how graphic designers necessarily want to perceive themselves. But what's the big deal? Is anything fundamentally wrong with being a decorator? Although Adolf Loos, an architect, proclaimed ornament as a sin in his essay, Ornament and Crime, an attack on late-nineteenth century Art Nouveau, in truth decoration and ornamentation are no more sinful than purity is supremely virtuous.

Take for example the Psychedelic Style of the late 1960s that was smothered in flamboyant ornamentation (indeed much of it borrowed from Loos' dreaded Art Nouveau). Nonetheless, it was a revolutionary graphic language used as a code for a revolutionary generation — which is exactly the same role Art Nouveau played seventy years earlier with its vituperative rejection of antiquated 19th-century academic verities. Likewise, Psychedelia's immediate predecessor, Push Pin Studios, from the late 1950s through the 1970s, was known for reprising passé decorative conceits. In the context of the times, it was a purposeful and strategic alternative to the purist Swiss Style that evolved into drab Corporate Modernism, which had rejected decoration (and eclectic quirkiness) in favor of bland Helvetica. In their view, content and meaning were not sacrificed but rather illuminated and made more appealing.

Anti-decorative ideological fervor to the contrary, decoration is not inherently good or bad. While frequently applied to conceal faulty merchandise and flawed concepts, it nonetheless can enhance a product when used with integrity — and taste. Decorators do not simply and mindlessly move elements around to achieve an intangible or intuitive goal: rather, they optimize materials at hand to tap into an aesthetic allure that instills a certain kind of pleasure. (more>>)

left foot, right foot


Made a great soup with the stock from the weekend. Just added 3 types of mushrooms (portobellos, shitakes, oyster)with parsley, 3 pieces of hard peasant bread and a handful of those mini carrots. Cooked em down until the carrots were soft. Used the hand chopper to puree. Splash of 2% milk. Done. No effort. Delish. I am so into this making stock thing. Use it all up--and processed a mess of veggies that were minutes from becoming compost. Now, it feeds the team--with comfort food we all adore. Did you have a chance to hear Mark Bittman (my all time favorite) talk about the carbon footprint attached to food this morning on NPR. Really speaks to me--making a compelling argument for reducing meat consumption (health, environment etc)and considering the impact an individual's eating program can effect on the environment. Not even considering health...which goes hand and hand with the environment. Good for everyone.

Trip to the House of Health today. Split my time so I had 20 min on a bicycle, 20 on the treadmill and 15 lifting weights. This is a real deal...and not a snooze. It was great. Going to do this again tomorrow.

Back to amending files for the big company. Need to sweep the desk clean to get back to clean new work. Am being a bit tortured as they want high tech images for free...(read, my Shutterstock account)--and Shutterstock has its limits. Really has it's limits...So, the end product suffers. But, it is what it is. Better than a MSWord design that was going direct to customers.

Time for valentines!

cold day on the plateau

Busy. Had all sorts of fun last night at the Rongovian Embassy celebrating with the fun Rongovians complete with the Rongotron, great dancing with The Destination, costumed individuals and a ton of people I love to chat it up with. My goodness, we are so lucky to have such a nice community of people. There were spangly hats, tuxedos, people wrapped in flags and even a guy that looked sort of like a cross between a shaman and someone from Bladerunner. Too cool for this school.

This morning, R. was out and on the road by 5:30 a.m. to get to the plane to go to NYC for the Winter Antiques Show set up for the Museum of Glass. The Museum is the featured institution for this event--and thus the trip and presence by R. So, it was early up and going. Did a bit of dinner shopping as I knew my private and personal time was to be spent in the afternoon with the insurance assessor looking at the possible damage at the Luckystone which was very interesting and action oriented which was very solid for me. It is something we can sequentially act upon to get results versus the big old head scratch that I have been experiencing. I also have an evening meeting of the Moms with kids in the school play. So, frozen food is in order.

Lots of business stuff with the creation of the 1040s, the writing of the W9s etc. More fun than you can shake a stick at. Also, I feel pretty great as I was worrying about the ethics of a project I was going to work on--and resigned the project before it even happened as it conflicted with my thinking and honestly, my sleep. So, I feel a mile high as in all things, "do the right thing". Plus, I may be able to do a good turn for friends of mine.

Working on a valentine with a prod from a primative indian tiger. Round teeth, curly tongue and hindu inspired valentine. Lots of yellows and corals/ pale blue and white. A delicate palette might be fun to do. I was also thinking of getting back into the derivative palettes we worked with this summer. Perhaps a Vermeer colorway for an indian picture?