The Quotation: “Since the music plays so briefly, can you blame me if I dance?” From Cuttlefish’s most beautiful poem, My Place (In The Dance Of The Universe). Not the best shot, but snow and ice were hampering my efforts. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Birch Bark Biting poem by Denise Lajimodiere from her book of poems “Dragonfly Dance.” (Mary Annette Pember)
“I see the design through my eye teeth,” said Denise Lajimodiere, Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe.
“I keep my eyes closed when I work because I see the design in the darkness,” said Lajimodiere of her work in birch bark biting or mazinibakajige, which means “marks upon the bark.” […]
Birch bark biting was a pre-contact method of creating designs for beading or quillwork according to Lajimodiere. “Mazinibakajige died out in my tribe until I began doing it about eight years ago,” she said. […]
Lajimodiere was recently selected for a six-month Minnesota Historical Society Native Artist-in-Residence. With the award funds she plans on visiting the National Museum of the American Indian NMAI’s Archive Center in Suitland, Maryland to see the ancient mazinibakajige held there.
Very cool, this. More people need to work on the plastic problem. It seems as much as I try to eliminate plastic products from my life, I end up surrounded anyway.
Photo credit: Ari Jónsson
Plastic bottles can lay around in landfill sites or the ocean for centuries. While our planet struggles to cope with our ever-increasing appetite for plastic, an Icelandic product design student was inspired to create a little something to address the issue.
Ari Jónsson, from the Iceland Academy of the Arts, has harnessed the properties of red algae to create a biodegradable bottle for drinking water. He unveiled his invention at Reykjavik design festival DesignMarch last month. The bottles are made out of agar powder, which derives from the supporting structure in the cell walls of certain species of algae. If this is added to water and allowed to cool, it will eventually set and mould into a jelly-like substance.
The bottle retains its shape when it’s full of fluid but will start to decompose as soon as it’s empty it.
Just received an update from The Gay Agenda Kickstarter, and Terry has done my suggestion of George Takei. I might swoon.
© Terry Furry.
First up, absolutely stunning macro shots of some awesome insect architecture: Macro Photographs of Nature’s Tiniest Architects by Nicky Bay. Be sure to click the link so you can see all of the photos. All I have is “Wow!”
Arctiine moth pupa (Cyana sp.)
Bagworm Moth
Next, a lake of mirrors. This left me speechless. A Photographer’s Digital Journey to Produce a Lake of Shattered Mirrors.
“Impact” by Erik Johansson, image provided by artist.
Swedish photographer Erik Johansson had a vision for a digital photograph of a lake shattering like a mirror, an image he wanted to produce as accurately as possible. To achieve this effect for Impact, Johansson bought 17 square meters of mirrors, found a boat and a model, and posed all three in a stone pit until he got the best shot for the final image. Several months of planning, shooting, and editing later and he has an entire video that documents the tasks that lie far beyond the many hours he spent in Photoshop.
I must work. How I love the smell of turpentine in the afternoon. It would be really good if I could remember that I need to stock up on black oil paint. Time for a note. Back to work.
Aaaaand got the second canvas finished up today:
This is the swarf that will go on the 2nd canvas:
The Quotation:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
– Walt Whitman
Cheap markers on Bristol, done yesterday afternoon. © C. Ford.
Derivan Liquid Pencil. Fun to use and experiment with too.
Dame Vivienne Westood DBE RDI has just blown out her 75 candles, but she’s already back at work with the announcement of a new book. The “godmother of punk” is compiling her best journal entries in Get a Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood.
Dame Viv is pictured on the cover wearing a portrait of transgender WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently imprisoned for sharing classified information on the Iraq war.
“My diaries are about the things I care about,” Westwood said. “Not just fashion but art and writing, human rights, climate change, freedom. I call the diaries Get a Life as that’s how I feel: You’ve got to get involved, speak out and take action.”
Get a Life will be released on October 6, 2016. This will definitely be on my stack of fall books, and I’m looking forward to it. The 75 candles link is NSFW.
Weiß und Krieg und Kreuz, 2015. © Kaddi.
Beasty Art and Beasty Art | “Die Kunst ist eine Tochter der Freiheit.” – Friedrich Schiller.
Photo © Mattia Menchetti
When Given Colored Construction Paper, Wasps Build Rainbow Colored Nests.
It’s unnerving to discover a wasp’s nest dangling outside your house, but perhaps it would be a tad less so with the help of biology student Mattia Menchetti who cleverly realized he could give colored construction paper to a colony of European paper wasps. By gradually providing different paper shades, the wasps turned their homes into a functional rainbow of different colors.
© Waldo Nell
The Extraordinary Iridescent Details of Peacock Feathers Captured Under a Microscope.
In this series of photographs featuring the delicate details of peacock feathers, photographer Waldo Nell relied on an Olympus BX 53 microscope to take hundreds of individual shots that were combined to create each image seen here. The process, called photo stacking, blends dozens or even hundreds of photos taken at different focal points and then stitches them together to extend the depth of field. At this level of detail the feathers look more like ornate jewelry, thick braids of iridescent necklaces or bracelets, rather than something that grows organically from the wings of a bird.
By day Nell is a software engineer in Port Moody, BC, Canada, but is fascinated by technology, science, and nature, all of which he merges in his photography practice. You can see more of his work on Flickr.
NOTE: There is new content, but The Gay Agenda will be sticky for a week.
This is an art project I’ll be backing as much as possible. All the snide and bigoted comments over the years, all the fear-filled rhetoric about the Evil Gay Agenda™ coming to get you, Barbara. Now, we can all have a real Gay Agenda. The Queer Pop Mafia has a kickstarter to fund The Gay Agenda, A witty, beautifully illustrated, totally serious, and just as ridiculous, weekly planner full of LGBTQ history, people, & ideas.
example of an “ABC page”… S is for Stonewall
THE FINAL CREATION
An elegant, thoughtful, and practical personal planner spanning a full calendar year; 52 weeks minimum, maybe more. In addition to standard features, the distinguishing aspect with this annual agenda is a beautiful presentation of people, events, and ideas that we find appropriate for the first-ever, official Gay Agenda.
Important ideas, vocabulary, and history will be highlighted, figures we admire and respect will be introduced, and relevant issues will be mapped out in ways that motivate a critical mass towards a society with equal rights for all. Nothing less. And perhaps a whole lot more.
As you can imagine, publishing is very expensive. The vast majority of our fundraising goal is dedicated to the production, printing, binding, and distribution of The Gay Agenda.
26 original ink drawings of LGBTQ figures and allies from present and past, each accompanied with a biographical narrative. We call these the “People pages.” Here is an example…
[…]
Please help us make this a participatory project. When making your pledge, be sure to include a suggestion as to who we should include as one of the 26 LGBTQ heroines or allies. We also welcome your suggestions for vocabulary, events, theories, and other ideas that fit the “ABC of the Gay Agenda” format. And honestly, there is very little format, if any. Here are some examples of what we’re thinking of for letters “A”, “S”, and “P”.
There’s a video and more of the featured art work at the site, have a visit, and if you can, become a backer and you can say you had a hand in creating The Gay Agenda.
ETA: I was asked for my suggestion for a LGBTQ person for Terry to draw, and my pick was George Takei, but I was sure he had already been suggested, but it turns out I was first, and Terry had been hoping someone would suggest him. I have a warm and fuzzy.
Nakotah LaRance is a citizen of the Hopi Nation, six-time World Champion Hoop Dancer, and member of Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations. He is equipped with a game console, earphones, a Japanese graphic novel, and a dance hoop, to signal that he is both a traditional dancer and a fan of popular culture; he resists easy categorization.
Photograph by Will Wilson (Diné/Bilagáana), b. 1969
1992, from the Feather series
“1992 represents a future denied us in 1492. A kind of reminder that indigenous people have a future that they can make their own.”
Photograph by Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisga’a), b. 1955
Will Wilson is a Diné/Bilagáana photographer who has gone platinum (the platinum photographic process) with CIPX, The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange. Another photographer doing the same is Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisga’a). You can read more about these artists at http://nmai.si.edu/indelible/.
A major exhibition featuring contemporary photographs by Native American photographers Zig Jackson, Wendy Red Star, and Will Wilson in dialogue with photographs from Edward Sheriff Curtis’ renowned body of work The North American Indian will be at the Portland Art Museum through May 8th. There’s more about the exhibit and the artists here: http://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/contemporary-native-photographers/