Shelly

The first-born lash of dawn

January 28, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

There are some fringe benefits to dog ownership, aside from the obvious companionship and entertainment value of living with canines. This morning, I slept in a little later than normal, because last night I’d stayed up way past my bedtime. Harriet, who will usually sleep in as long as I want to, woke me up at 7:30. I had a headache and a sore throat, and could’ve slept a little longer (and eventually did, because I went back to bed), but I’m glad she woke me when she did. When I went outside with her, there was the start of a gorgeous sunrise.

\r\n\r\n

Image Gallery News

January 26, 2006January 16, 2016 Shelly

Like suddenly deciding to jump ship and migrate from Blogger to WordPress, I dove into setting up a Coppermine image gallery on my website. There aren’t any ready made templates that I’m 100% happy with, and the one I chose doesn’t go with the look of the website or the blog–not at all–but it’ll do.

I don’t know what I’m going to do integration-wise. That’s a headache I’m putting off until tomorrow. For now, though, the gallery is up and running parallel to the website, with content duplicated both places. (Except for the photo portion, which I’ll upload at a later date.)

Why, you ask? Because, though HTML coding isn’t difficult, it’s a tedious pain in the arse to update the site as it’s currently set up. Coppermine has a similar functionality to Flickr, which makes uploading and sorting easy peasy. It also includes a bunch of Flickr-y bells and whistles, like viewed stats and individual image comments.

Uncategorized

Space Food Sticks

January 25, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

I periodically wrack my brain, trying to remember a particular candy treat from my childhood. They were little chocolate-y sticks, wrapped in a foil tube. Aside from that, all I could remember is that they were vaguely connected with space or astronauts. I was starting to think I’d hallucinated them, because everyone I described them to gave me a look like I must be smoking crack. Maybe I was. But noooooo! I finally tracked them down: Space Food Sticks.

I believe my day’s work is done.

Art, Journals, Ladybusiness

Femme de Chambre

January 25, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

acrylic, oil pastel, and collage in composition book

I finished another spread in my composition book, this one in the Vessels theme. It started with blue paint that was left over from one of the Soul Mapping exercises. I couldn’t let it go to waste, so I did some finger painting in my composition book. The checkerboard stamp–made from an eraser–came from the same place. The pattern is supposed to represent institutional floor tiles–the sort found in many US schools–but I’m not sure it translates well, given the color scheme. I like it, though, and I think the concept of pattern fits well with the general theme.

The theme and title come from the fragment of dictionary page. I was struck by the juxtaposition of femur with female, and the inclusion of “femme de chambre” (chamber maid). There was certainly a lot to work with there: vessels, chambers, women’s work; the idea that women are empty receptacles, awaiting the indoctrination and training that will allow them to conform to the traditional female role (mother, wife, living loving maid, if you will).

And, just because I can, I thought I’d include a current photo of my work space. It’s actually pretty clean, here. Usually, I leave piles of stuff sitting out, which Pandora sleeps all over and shoves off the edge of the table.

Also, because I can, I scanned and uploaded a real photo postcard I found at a yard sale last summer. It’s not in very good shape (creases, and some pencil marks on the front, and the corners are all bent), but it was really cheap, so I bought it. The back is inscribed in pencil with several names. It also bears the inscription “Norfolk Neb.”

Recto

Verso

Crankypantsing

A Salmagundi

January 24, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

The Throat Clearing. Dear God, please make it stop. Pleeeeeeease. Between that and the woman with the gooey-wet smoker’s cough, I may lose my mind. Or vomit. Or both.
I somehow managed to get soy sauce on the bottom of my jeans this morning. Only, I haven’t been anywhere near soy sauce in days, so where the heck did it come from?
I’ve been playing around with redecorating the website, and have updated the sections with subdivision pages (painting, sketchbooks/journals, gluebbooks/collage, and the main page). The images for the links on the left will change, and I may rearrange/add some categories, just to see if I can break Teh Internets, but the rest of it is basically how I want it. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to work on the rest of it this weekend.
I also finally looked at the new blog template in IE and eeew! I don’t know if it was the settings on my machine, or if it’s just how it was translating universally, but it had a grey background and white text, which was really foul looking. That’s been fixed.
Thirdly, I need to specify link colors, and specify color change and underlining when hovered over.
For one horrible minute, I thought it was Monday.
Someone on Paint_L mentioned Art Spectrum Colourfix Primer, which sounds like it’d be really handy for collage. They claim it can be used as an adhesive, as well as a primer for both acrylic and oil. Bonds aggressively? Sign me up! I can’t wait to give it a try.
It’s windy. Really windy. I’m not going to complain, though, at least not too much, because it’s also pretty nice outside.
I lost another earring, so I gave up and took them all out. I never wear anything but studs, so it’s kind of pointless to bother with them, even though they’ll grow over quickly.

Art, Artist Books, Poetry

Hemp Bound Journal: Three Things (reworked)

January 24, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

I really didn’t like the way this page originally looked. It was nothing but silver, which worked better conceptually than visually. The only parts I ended up keeping were the coin, mirror, and key. Everything else was gessoed and collaged over. It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge improvement.

collage (fragments from old patent book, key, coin, and mirror fragment) with oil pastel, Neocolors II water soluble wax crayons, instant coffee, gesso, and india ink
8 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches

Three things
Are not four things.
Three things
Are sharper than knives,
Silent famines of thought that
Shine silver like moons in the dark.

Three things are perfectly cold
By intent
By design
By the deadliest scheme.

Three things are ancient wheels
That turn in the night,
Near misses and reflections.

Three things
Are stitching thought to flesh to deed,
Bone drawing blood slickened sinew.

Three things are problematic monsters
Ministering, waiting, and watching.

Art, Crankypantsing

Dirt on the Slide

January 23, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

I finally replaced my dryer yesterday, after engaging in a game of musical appliances that involved moving three–count ’em, three–dryers. Not by myself, mind you. But still, it was w-o-r-k. It was well worth the effort, though, or it will be after I finally get to dry my jeans. You see, they are so loose they’re threatening to fall off me, onna count of they haven’t been properly dried in months. I very nearly rewashed them, so that I could dry them, but I decided it would be a silly waste of water and electricity to wash and dry clean clothes.

The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, Oil on wood, 141 x 176.5 cm (including frame), 1434-36

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’d like to commence with today’s Art History and Rules to Live By Lesson.

Once upon a time, when I was a wee lass, I took an art survey course which comprised, in part, the study, comparison, and contrasting of Medieval and Renaissance art. To wit, Medieval art is highly symbolic and not terribly concerned with the natural rendering of forms, while Renaissance art, though still highly symbolic, fetishizes the pursuit of naturalism. In other words, Medieval art appears–to our eyes–to be two-dimensional and stilted while Renaissance art appears to exhibit depth and shading and all those things we like to think make art look “realistic.”

The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, detail

So, anyway, one day in class, Dr. StuffyPants was interrupted in the midst of mumbling about Jan van Eyck’s Madonna with Canon van der Paele by a student who asked, quite reasonably, I thought, if the apparent deformity in the Baby Jeebus’ right foot was due to the artist’s ignorance of anatomy or if it was a naturalistic rendering of the model’s malformed foot. Dr. StuffyPants blinked, and replied, “It’s dirt on the slide.” At which point, the entire class of about 200 students cracked up laughing. Which caused Dr. StuffyPants to become unglued. Which made my day.

The moral of this story, because you know there is one, is that it is generally good policy not to make up shit when you don’t know, or can’t think of, the answer. Not that I don’t believe he didn’t know the answer. The man was stuffy, certainly, and arrogant, for sure, but ignorant of the subject matter he was not. He was simply unable to think on the fly, and when a student asked him a question he was unprepared for, he couldn’t pull the answer out of his ass with a compass, a map, and two extra hands. No ma’am. Not if his life depended on it. If he’d just fessed up to his momentary mental lapse, all would have been well and he would have likely finished the lecture with his dignity intact. “I don’t know” is, after all, a perfectly acceptable answer. But, no, he told an obvious lie in order to save face, and it backfired, damaging whatever respect his students had for him. (And, lordy! I just looked him up, and he’s still teaching intro and survey classes.)

So, my secondary point is to share the source of my little giggle fest this afternoon. I overheard someone complaining that there was “dirt on the slide,” which in my world is code-speak for “someone is talking out of their ass.” Heh.

Art, Journals

Soul Mapping: Chapter 3 Finished

January 23, 2006October 12, 2015 Shelly

I spent most of yesterday working on the writing portion of Chapter 3 of Soul Mapping. Today, I did the visual part, which involved a bit of finger painting. Appropriate, I think, as this chapter dealt with education, which sent me on a tangent about an experience I had in kindergarten. I remember, during coloring time, getting disgusted that the white crayon didn’t make a very satisfactory mark, so I colored the clouds blue and pink and orange and purple. I thought they looked perfect, but my teacher told me I’d done them wrong. “Clouds are always white,” she said. I remember thinking it was sad that she’d never seen a sunset.

That experience ruined art classes for me throughout grade school and most of high school. No matter how hard I tried, I never seemed to be able to finish my art projects “correctly.” I realize now that the problem was not mine; that it was my teachers who were crappy at the art of education, and not me who was crappy at art. Some people really should not be allowed anywhere near kids.

Soul Mapping, Chapter 3
acrylic, gel pen, oil pastel, and collage in composition book

Crankypantsing, Pets

A Crack in the Sky

January 21, 2006November 15, 2015 Shelly

Dear God! When, oh when will I ever learn not to drink acidic beverages right after I’ve brushed my teeth? Ugh. I will say, though, that Santa Cruz organic, not-from-concentrate lemon juice is to die for. When not chasing toothpaste, it has a wonderful burst of flavor that is nothing like the single-note sourness of RealLemon and its kin. It tastes a bit like a mixture of lime and orange. I don’t normally splurge on the good stuff, but it was on sale at the co-op this month, so I bought some.

Okaythen.

I never did accomplish much yesterday. I think I’m still in the two-day weekend mentality of having to be productive the whole time. The whole point of having a three-day weekend, and of working my behindermost off doing four long days to enable such, is that I then get to have an ass-sitting day.

I did get a couple of things done, which will make it easier to get to work today. I went through my hard drive and made a play list of random, inspirational music. It’s an odd, eclectic mix, with about 500 songs in all, so it should be awhile before I get tired of it.

I also did some cleaning, so I don’t have to mess with that today. I have a really hard time working on other things when the house isn’t clean. Since I hate to clean, that might explain why I often have a hard time getting anything done. I also blame some of it on the weather and the time of year. Mid-winter is difficult for me. I like the cold, but the lack of light–made worse by the endless Indiana clouds–is depressing. The days are getting noticeably longer, though, so there will soon be an end to that particular excuse.

And, look, the sun’s come out to play, so I can stop thinking about making paper boats.

Here’s a tip!

If you ever have to use adhesive velcro strips or dots, you know it can be difficult to get everything lined up properly. What I do is peel-n-stick one piece of the velcro to one of the objects, then peel-n-stick the opposite piece of velcro onto the first piece, velcro-y sides together. The glue-y side of the second piece(s) of velcro will be facing out. You can then press the object to the surface you want to stick it to, and all the velcro strips/dots will be perfectly aligned.

I only mention it because I just got done velcroing my computer speakers to the top of my monitor. Pandora likes to nap up there, and I’m sick and tired of her knocking the speakers off. One of these days she’s bound to break one of them, and since I splurged on nice speakers, I’d rather avoid that if I can. And, whaddya know, I only just finished and Pandora is already back on top of the monitor. I guess I should be appreciative that she waited until I was done? Cats are some sort of pain in the ass, I’m tellin’ ya. But she’s 17 and I think that’s permission enough to do pretty much whatever she pleases–including sleeping on my monitor and walking across my printer and turning it on and off–so I’ll do what I can to accommodate her.

Pets, Photography

Silly Saturday Dogblogging

January 21, 2006November 15, 2015 Shelly

For some reason, Harriet has a thing about oatmeal. It’s one of only a few foods she’ll actually lose her brain over. Because I’m a big meanypants, I teased her with my flying oatmeal spoon while I got pictures of her brain implodiating. She’s a ridiculously funny dog, but she has very little sense of humor about some things. Like food. I suspect that it’s a Very Good Thing that I’m the one with the opposable thumbs and not her, because she does not look amused. But, not to worry, she was handsomely rewarded for being a good sport.