Hi everyone! I hope your weekend is heading off to a great start. The weather has taken a bit of a summer break and cooled down enough to open up the windows again.
Let me open my email and extract the rest of the good links that I’ve been holding to share:
Designsponge shared this post featuring a project embellishing stairs with design. I think it is absolutely fabulous and wish I had stairs of my own to do this to. Someday.
Racheal Anilyse contributed to Found Art Tuesday with these postcards which are lovely and perfectly capture the spirit of Found Art Tuesday with their uplifting message. On the back of the postcard is a modified version of the poem Sonno Mama: As Is.
A new-to-me artist that I have flipped-fallen in love with is Heather Smith Jones, which was featured on Creature Comforts yesterday. Here is a link to her flickr.
Decor8 shared this link to a company who will print up to 5 yards of your designwork onto fabric. Very cool. Actually, that reminds me, last week I printed out a pattern I designed onto some iron on transfer and afixed it to some fabric. It was pretty stiff so I plan on putting it through the washer and dryer a few times to soften it up.
For those who enjoy workingfortheman.com, here is a link to a site with potential, here is Start Procrastinating.
Last night at my artgroup meeting, we started talking about how energy is harnessed. There was lots of talk about the sun, coal, gas and generators. Well, as the headline on their blog states: this next site is not about those kind of generators. Onegoodbumblebee shared a link to the Generatorblog which just keeps us all up to date on the latest internet generators.
A few good ones from a quick browse through the site: What’s Your Problem, apparently my problem is that “I’m a bullying crankypants who don’t take no crap from nobody”. It’s especially fitting because I do use the term crankypants with some frequency. Here’s a generator for making cool worm paintings. And lastly, a little known and possibly embarrassing fact is that when I was in early college and had late morning classes, I would watch the smurfs on Cartoon Network and started keeping a list every the names of every smurf ever mentioned. So in honor of that, I present you with the smurf name generator.
Smurf on Everyone!
Page A Day, originally uploaded by robayre.
I wanted to share this really cool project that mim shared on her blog. The site has viewer submitted pictures of 1. a vintage picture of yourself and 2. a current re-enactment of the vintage picture. There are some truly classic ones in the bunch.
Ooops, that’s all I can share right now because I’m about to head out for a family dinner. The above picture of the last few posts are more scans of my Page A Day pages. You can see more here.
Today I released my Found Art Tuesday piece into the world. You can see the painting in yesterday’s post here. This is actually a big step for me because I actually left it in my own city, which has always been a fear of mine. I was able to do this by doing it in a more secretive manner. I put it in a geocache that was near the art building at NIU. For this painting I was combining a couple projects in one, Found Art Tuesday and Geocaching. Have you heard of Geocaching? It is a world wide treasure hunt and so much fun. You visit the website and then use a GPS to find coordinates to caches that are hidden around all of us all the time. My hopes are to set up my own cache sometime soon that will be themed for artwork. Sometimes geocaches have booty inside, and if you take something you must leave something behind. Most of the time these treasures are just kid junk like happy meal toys, etc. I want to create a geocache that is filled with original pieces of artwork, for artists to trade.
I know I mentioned it yesterday, but I would like to mention it again. Found Art Tuesday has a new flickr group and I’d love for everyone to join in. It is so much fun. The thing that really appeals to me about found art is the idea of shaking things up. People don’t expect to find artwork for free out in the world. Imagine how most people are just living their lives on autopilot and coming across a piece of artwork makes you snap out of it a bit. Sometimes people are so caught up in this way of life that they don’t even notice it or if they do they pass it up anyway, or that they are too afraid to step out of their bounds of comfort and take a bit of risk and take it. Read Rosa’s experience of this weeks found art piece here.
I feel guilty that I never posted a fifth movie for Beautiful Film Week. Even though it is already Wednesday of the following week I’m thinking “better late than never”, so without further ado, I present you with What Dreams May Come. We were recently talking about this movie at work. I recalled that my sister had informed me that this movie is based on the Novel by Richard Matheson, the author of I am Legend, which was also recently made into a movie. What Dreams May Come, is such a feast for the eyes. If you love Art, then you will love this movie, because it is filled with Art references, everything from scenes presented entirely in impressionistic style paint and gothic (if I remember correctly) architecture. The basic story is a love story, but it could be described as dramatic and surreal as well.
Here are a few more screen captures, please pardon the pics, I only have this on VHS so the quality is especially horrible. And here is the Netflix page so that you can add it. If you have already seen this movie, I recommend City of the Lost Children, it is another absolutey beautiful film, very stylized as well.
Oh, and I watched that History Channel special, Life After People. It was “eh”. I felt like they repeated a lot of stuff over and over, like yeah, we get it, wires are going to rust, bridges will fall. And, I didn’t understand why they thought we should care if our cell phones die and if bears roam the streets, we will all be gone. There were a few things that I thought were informative, such as the residential village near the chernobyl disaster that had been evacuated and left vacant, and how it has fallen apart since, without people there to continually keep it up. Also, quite a bit of interesting information about the hoover dam, like how the cement inside it is so thick that the center part is still curing and how it could possibly be the last source of harnessed energy on the planet.
I’ve decided to participate in Abbytrysagain’s “Beautiful Film Week”
When she first proposed this I had just seen a couple beautiful movies that I thought would be perfect to share, but now a couple weeks later, I can’t remember what they were. oops. Not the best memory here.
So until I can remember which ones I want to share, I’ll start like this:
I know some film makers out there strive to make films in which each and every still frame can be a piece of artwork, standing alone from the rest of the film. So here is a quirky habit I have: when I watch movies at home and see a particular frame that I think is just absolutely beautiful, I take a picture of it. I thought this would be a nice opportunity to share a few here.
The first one is from Donnie Darko. I’m obsessed with this simple (probably no longer than 5 second) shot of Donnie and Gretchen on the trampoline, I don’t know why, I just think it is beautiful.
Then here is a capture from Shop Girl. I wasn’t even that crazy about that movie, but this shot made me run to get my camera.
The last one is another favorite, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was from. It was just a very short shot of an audience of children and their reaction to something shocking. Their expressions were priceless.
Continue reading ‘Beautiful Film Week for Monday, oh and Mondo Beyondo’
Hmmm, not sure if I’ve posted this one before. One time when a group of my friends and I were driving down to St. Louis I came up with a game. It evolved from the game Celebrity Head and 20 Questions. Basically each round there is one person who gets to chose something, or actually ANYTHING in the world, or out of the world. Anything you can think of. Then the rest of the players take turns trying to guess what you are thinking of with only yes or no questions. As long as they get yes answers, then they continue asking. When they get a no answer the next person goes. The person who finally guesses the answer gets to run the next round. Okay, now back to the thing the person picks, it is more fun and the game will last longer if you can think of complex things. Of course you could pick a loaf of bread, but we’ve had things like such as a blade of grass we drove by 32 minutes and 45 seconds ago, or a thought Abraham Lincoln had shortly before being shot.
Leaves are starting to fall and it smells like autumn.
My brother told me about a game he plays. The game is “What are they doing right now?” You think of any person under the sun and ask “what are they doing right now?” and everyone has to tell what they think that person is doing. Simple, but fun. The example given to me was “what is Katie Holmes doing right now?” I said trying to escape her handcuffs. My brother said a coworker of his gave this whole descriptive story about how she was running through a field with search lights on her and she hits a point and just falls straight down. She has reached the distance allowed on her electrical collar.
