I feel like I haven’t gotten anything accomplished today. I got my W2 problem sorted out yesterday, and was able to file my federal return today (state isn’t accepting e-files until the end of the month). That’s something, I guess. I also got some photos of this morning’s extra lovely sunrise and uploaded them, along with some sunset photos from earlier in the week. That’s about it, though.
Sunrise
Sunrise
Pylon at Sunset
Sunset
I finished Chapter 2 last night, including the visual component. At the rate this is going, I’m going to be filling up several composition books before I’m finished. Whew. But, it’s interesting to see how things sort themselves out, as well as seeing trends and themes emerge. I guess I find it especially impressive, because it seems so chaotic while I’m going through it. To have a moment of clarity at the end of each section is rewarding.
Soul Mapping, Chapter 2
9 3/4 x 15 inches
collage (Gepe mount, brass brads, copper wire, worry dolls, paper towels, hair, dress pattern, knife blade, key, fortune, sandpaper, fragment from algebra book, magazine clipping, cork, and acrylic paint) in composition book journal
And now, some random randomness:
I was recently reminded of someone I went to college with. He was a fellow art student, studying drawing. I was only in one class with him–a disappointing watercolor class[1]–so I really didn’t have a good idea of what sort of work he did. His watercolors were nice, but pretty mundane. I recall lots of still lifes and landscapes. Certainly not anything to get granny’s knickers in a twist.
Imagine my surprise when, on viewing his senior show, I was confronted with dozens and dozens of large-format, carefully rendered self-portraits of him–nude, mind you–with all manner of fantastical equines. Male equines. Very obviously male equines. The drawings themselves were in Prismacolor, and had a distinctly Precious Moments Meets Black Light Velvet Painting feel about them. The horses, unicorns (yes, unicorns), and centaurs (yes, those, too) were all of the large-, liquid-eyed variety, with exaggerated Arab heads and delicate feet.
Can you just imagine it? A room chock-a-block with homoerotic bestial fantasy art? Don’t you think, at some point, someone would have taken this poor kid aside and told him, “Dude, your kink is not okay”? Hard as it is to believe, I have to assume that this guy was actually graduated. The thought that such work would earn him a degree in fine art is more than a little mind-boggling.
As a funny aside, the reason I even saw his senior show is that it was held at the University Museum of Art, where I worked, and I happened to be on duty that weekend. Weekends at the MoA were when folks from the local community stopped by. Old folks from the local community. Old folks who were really not amused by the My Little Porny Exhibition. We got more complaints about that show than any other, including Sylvia Sleigh’s nudes, which made the local patrons all sorts of pearl-clutchy and cranky.
So, anyway, now, whenever I see fantasy art that involves equines, I think of My Little Porny Boy. Which is a roundabout way of saying that, when someone on Paint-L mentioned centaurs, I started giggling uncontrollably.
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[1] I think I’ve vented my spleen about the unsatisfactoriness of that class in the past.
I got an e-mail notification that my W-2s were available on-line. The only problem is, I signed up for e-W-2s two years ago, and it’s a service you’re supposed to re-up on a yearly basis. Because I had such a terrible experience last year getting my W-2s (as in, I was unable to retrieve them electronically, and did not receive the requested paper copy through the post), I declined to enroll in it again this year. I just didn’t want to go through that mess again. So I was mightily surprised to find out that my enrollment had been carried over without my permission. Damn!
I decided to try to make lemonade with lemons, and tried to download them. Only, A) in place of user ID, they want my SSN. I suppose that’s somewhat logical, but in every other place, when they want SSNs, they explicitly ask for SSNs. They do not call them “User ID” numbers. So, I got that figured out, only to find that my PIN is not working properly. I used their web form to reset it, and got the new PIN via e-mail. And, it was the same damned PIN I’d already tried using. And, it still didn’t work.
I called their customer service number, only to have their auto response system request, yes, you guessed it, my SSN and PIN. The same PIN that did not, has not, and as far as I can tell, will never actually work. You have got to be fucking kidding me! So, I tried the handy trick of calling back, but not responding to any of the auto response prompts. If you do that, most computer systems will assume you’re on a rotary phone, and will put you through to a real, live human being. Not that that did me much good, because the real, live human being gave me the same damned PIN. I tried to explain to her that it’s never worked, and that I went through this exact same song and dance last year, but she was totally unhelpful.
Here’s a strange thing. The images from the previous post were uploaded to Flickr, so I figured I’d just link to those files, instead of uploading duplicates to my website. But, I noticed something odd. Apparently, some of the “medium” size images that Flickr provides have a larger file size than the original images. WTF? How can they shrink a file, but make it larger? I’ve done a spot check, and it doesn’t happen with all images. Why it would happen with any of them is a mystery to me.
Soul Map, Chapter 2
Last year, I started working through the book Soul Mapping. I got a few chapters into it, and the going got rough, so I put it aside. I picked it up a few weeks ago, and have been trying to do a little work in it every day. I’m not big on self-help books, but this one is geared toward artists and finding motivation and inspiration, so it’s a little bit different.
One of the goals of the exercise is to develop a visual vocabulary that can be implemented in one’s artwork. So, it’s helpful to artists who feel they have run out of inspiration or who are having trouble finding their voices. The exercises require a lot of of both written and visual journaling. Each chapter culminates in the creation of a small soul map, which together will ultimately form a large soul map.
Unsurprisingly, the beginning exercises deal largely with childhood and formative issues, which can be incredibly difficult for some people to sort through. When I started the book, I was working through it along with a group of people on one of my art lists. We all did really well with the first two chapters. When we hit chapter three, everything fell to pieces. I guess everyone felt it was just too damned hard.
Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it get the better of me. I guess that’s why I picked it back up again. Just based on how large an impact the first couple chapters had on me, I know there is a huge amount to be gleaned from persevering and forcing myself to finish working through the book. Boy, is it ever hard, though!
Soul Map, Chapter 1
And, on a lighter note:
There’s a commercial for a local personal injury attorney that cracks me up. Apparently, the best selling point they can offer up is that they will argue your case in court using Power Point. Oh yeah, that impresses the hell out of me.
We had a nice, hard frost last night. It’s been warm and wet and yucky, so this was a very welcome change. It seems as if the local critter population appreciated it, too. The birds were extra boisterous this morning, and there seems to have been a higher than normal amount of bunny traffic in Harriet’s yard (cuz, it is all hers, dontchaknow?).
I got some pictures of her patrolling the perimeter, nose-to-the-ground, tracking rabbity interlopers. Every so often, she’d pause, stuff her face in a pile of leaves, huff and snort, then move along to the next spot.
I also got a couple of what I think are good “stacked” (ha!) photos, taken from the rear side, one with her head facing away, and one with it turned back toward me. I nearly missed the second one, because she saw or heard something interesting and was off like a bolt of lightning.
I’ve been finding that it’s difficult to get outdoor photos of her, because whenever I’m outside with her, her attention is focused on me. It was much easier when there were two dogs, because she was more apt to ignore me in favor of more entertaining companionship.
I also got some photos of the frosty grass and frost crystals on one of the young black walnut trees. Since I was up way past my bedtime last night, finishing up all the image issues left over from the migration from Blogger, I was lucky that I woke up before the frost had melted away. I had just enough time to get a few photos before it started to disappear.
We are moved. There will be no further updates at the Blogspot address. The sudden uber-ugliness of the old blog is not something I can live with. It is hideous. Do not gaze upon it lest you be turned to stone.
All the links in the headers on the main website have been updated. Now, I just need to sort out the aforementioned minor formatting issues and reinstall the images that have been lost. Whew!
I’ve apparently gone through an entire black ink cartridge in my Epson printer. Or, rather, my cat has. She walks over the printer on her way to nap on top of my monitor. Every time she steps on the printer, she turns it on, which means it goes through it’s start-up, head-cleaning routine, which uses up ink. If I were smart, I would’ve unplugged the stupid thing when I realized she kept turning it on. But, noooo. I’m a dork. So now I have to go buy another black cartridge if I want to print anything.
I’ve been going through old posts, fixing problems with image locations and adding categories to them. It’s time consuming because my connection is crap. I’m working backwards, and have gotten almost half-way through May. Good grief! I had no idea I’d used Blogger’s image hosting so much. What a pain in the ass! Literally.
Also, I set comments so that you don’t need register. If anyone was bothered by that, it’s gone. I still have to approve everyone’s first comment, but after that, everyone is unmoderated. That should take care of any errant spam. I don’t tend to attract much of it, but when it happens, it’s a pain to track down and delete.
