The Creators Project has an interesting story about a textile artist, who embroiders portraits with her sewing machine, and likes to do this in rather out of the way places, so the sewing machine is powered by bicycle, often by the sitter!
I’ll admit to being conflicted here. I think it’s a grand idea, but I also get more than a hint of colonial arrogance, too. I’ll think on it some more.
I don’t have Spring, I have dead stuff and mud, so working with what I have. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
From Giliell, who is surrounded by Spring bursting out all over the place! I’m envious. Click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Foto: LETA.
DelfiTV has a beautiful slideshow of the Daugavpils Fortress, also known as the Dinaburg Fortress. This is the exact sort of place I would so love to be loose at with a camera, go see!
Finches. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Luis Alvarez.
The Tiny Tyrant and his henchpersons announced a “working weekend”, with that supposed work taking place at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia, supposedly he’s there for “meetings”. Except that’s not what he’s doing. He’s fucking golfing. Again. At massive taxpayer expense. It’s clear to me just why the Tiny Tyrant refuses to pretend to work in the white house – he hates the idea of transparency. The whole idea that government should be open and transparent is a vile one to little Donnie, who is much more accustomed to doing his dirty dealing in the dark. Some democrats have noticed this large problem too, hence the Mar-A-Lago bill. Not that anyone is asking me, but I think a bill preventing all this excess travel and expense is called for. If anyone needs to be travel banned, it’s that travesty of a joke passing himself off as some sort of president. Grounded, muthafucker! Not that I expect that manner of spine from democrats. Anyroad…
Trump said he was going to golf club for meetings and phone calls.
Photographed in full golf gear, including glove. #lol pic.twitter.com/DxVdqBn9JN
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 18, 2017
Trump said he was going to golf club for meetings and phone calls. Photographed in full golf gear, including glove. #lol
Think Progress has the full story on all the latest excesses, which are considerable. Apparently, the Tiny Tyrant still thinks “president” means “wow, I can spread my brand all over the fucking place and no one can stop me!”
That’s a tiny bit of a wooden altar, revealing the layers, types, and colours of paint used. Art restoration is a fascinating business, and there’s art under the art, in the science of restoration.
Stratigraphic studies is one of the standard examination methods that provides very precise information about the complexity of paint layers that make up a painting or decorative finish. It is the key method to assess the extent and condition of different painting layers. Stratigraphic studies can reveal the way the paint layers are applied and consequently, they tell us how the artist worked. Tiny samples of paint are taken from discrete and representative areas and mounted in clear resin. Such prepared samples are observed under a binocular microscope at high magnification between 50x and 200x depending on the thickness of the examined layer.Thorough observation of the various layers enables the conservator to determine the history of the object and whether interventions have occurred by inspecting layers of dirt, varnish and paint. Additionally the media analysis can be carried out on the cross-sections which provide important information about an artist’s technique, and helps to determine the most appropriate conservation treatments to use. A technique of staining of cross-sections can detect the presence of certain materials in the various painting layers such as lipids (suggesting an oil-containing medium), or proteins (signifying a gum-, casein- or animal glue-based medium).
The information revealed using the stratigraphic analysis can be recorded using microphotography and then compared with UV, IR and X-ray examination, consequently providing reliable information on the object’s history and artist’s technique.
Then there are the amazing microphotographs of wood. This is a bit of Norway Fir:
When identifying wood, it may only be necessary to determine if the wood is a hardwood or a softwood. In other cases, determining the individual species is necessary. Thin sections are prepared from small wood samples. Light microscopy is employed to distinguish anatomical characteristics of wood using features such as their cells and tissues visible only under high magnification. Technical literature and the collection of samples of numerous wood species are used during the identification.
Go have a wander over to visit Damian Lizun at Fine Art Conservation!
Screengrab.
Enter SlayTV.
Slay was founded by Sean Torrington, a former Goldman Sachs project manager, and his husband Terry; after Torrington lost his job in 2010 , he decided to follow his passion for filmmaking by creating some YouTube web series based on the lives of black and brown LGBTQ people. They then created an app to curate content from Youtube and the web onto one platform. And Slay has been growing ever since.
SlayTV officially launches on May 15 online, on iOS and Android devices, as well as on Roku, Apple AirPlay, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and other services.
Torrington hopes to empower content creators to become “sustainable entrepreneurs” who generate their own revenue. “Slay is not only digital TV, it is a production company and an ad agency,” he tells Out. “We will build campaigns around content on our network to get it branded.”
That content includes a wide variety of programs in various formats, for and by queer people of color, such as: the docu-series Other Boys NYC, a 50-part series exploring narratives of queer and transgender men of color; No Shade, inspired by Torrington’s coming-of-age in New York; and the romantic sitcom Love @ First Night, based loosely on Sean and Terry’s relationship.
Out has a nice introduction video. SlayTV. SlayTV on youtube. Great content, wonderful people, go explore!
Two “wee” gay badgers Mustard & Ketchup, who’re in a “long term lovin’ relationship,” star together in Looper’s retro new “Farfisa Song” video. The music project, helmed by Stuart David of Belle and Sebastian, is gearing up to launch tomorrow pre-orders for exclusive vinyl of its 2015 album, Offgrid:Offline, which this track originally appeared on.
The video’s cutesy cartoon characters were animated by David’s longtime collaborator, Iain Gardner, who also created Looper’s “Oh, Skinny Legs” visual. “I loved how ‘Farfisa Song’ harked back to the sounds from my youth and consequently found inspiration from ’70s variety shows for the video,” Gardner told OUT. “And it’s been a great way for me to flesh out and get to know my characters, Mustard & Ketchup.”
David said he gravitated toward the badgers because they live in a world where no stigma is attached to being gay, but where it is frowned upon to be a badger. Throughout the video, they’re shown preparing for a Looper music video on what looks like a very slim production budget. “We are proud to have worked with them on this video,” David said of Mustard & Ketchup. “We do feel, however, that Mustard and Ketchup may have overlooked the fact that there is something of a stigma attached to those who have chosen to associate themselves with Looper.”
Via Out.
Via Entertainment Weekly.
NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo holds Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold. CREDIT: YouTube/New York Daily News.
A short while back, I posted about the history of the cop who murdered Eric Garner. It was an ugly history, one which was ignored in keeping Daniel Pantaleo employed. That employment continues, but the person who disclosed that hidden history? No, they are no longer employed.
The release of previously secret disciplinary records of the NYPD officer that killed Eric Garner is stirring controversy in New York City, reinvigorating a heated debate among activists and city officials over transparency and police accountability.
On Tuesday, ThinkProgress published the disciplinary records of Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who used a prohibited chokehold against Garner in 2014. The records — which were previously hidden from the public — originated from the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the independent city agency that fields complaints about officer misconduct. They were leaked to ThinkProgress from an anonymous source who was discovered by the agency and forced to resign.
The news also forced the CCRB to formally confirm that the documents are real.
The CCRB’s actions triggered indignation from Cynthia Conti-Cook, a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society’s Special Litigation Unit. The group is currently involved in lawsuits to obtain disciplinary records from both the CCRB and the NYPD.
“When there is more political will to fire a whistleblower than an officer who killed an unarmed man, it sends a message about the Mayor’s capacity to act quickly and therefore simultaneously sends a message about his lack of political will to hold police like Pantaleo…accountable for misconduct,” she said, referring to the fact that Pantaleo remains employed by the NYPD, and received a raise last year.
I could not possibly agree more. This is shocking behaviour. Well, it should be shocking. I’m afraid we have all become much too inured, and given the increasingly open shite supremacist feeling in uStates, there tends to be little more than an ennui laden shrug over such heinous actions.
Civil rights groups and several city officials were also outraged by the content of the documents, which showed that Pantaleo had 7 complaints and 4 substantiated allegations years before his encounter with Garner—far more than the overwhelming majority of his fellow NYPD officers, according to CCRB data. The revelations also raised questions about whether Pantaleo was properly disciplined, as the documents showed that the NYPD repeatedly enacted lesser penalties than those recommended by the CCRB.
Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, said that earlier review of the records could have saved her son’s life.
“Someone should have taken a look at his record a long time ago,” Carr told the New York Daily News. “If they had done that maybe my son would still be alive.”
That’s assuming that anyone looking at Pantaleo’s record would have actually done something about it, which is more than questionable. Cop shops all over the country simply don’t have a problem with bigoted, homicidal cops, nor do they seem to be overly concerned about dead brown people. It seems the only time they do care is if they end up in the public spotlight, and even then, the result is rarely justice.
The Mad Artist has been in her lab all night, and may or may not be around, depending on whether or not she can manage to drag her arse out of bed sometime today. Remember that The Endless Thread is always open!
© C. Ford.
From Lofty. I’d say those are gorgeous asses! Great captures. That fourth shot is breathtaking. Click for full size!
© Lofty, all rights reserved.