Category: Art

First, the artings.

These are from the latest installment of the Color Erratica round robin. The color theme this time was “dusk,” so I focused mostly on purpley, winey colors.

The Pea Hens

I’ve had that peacock feather floating around in my stash for at least ten years. It was time to use it. The little cotton knickers came from a bunch of antique baby and doll clothes my mom snagged for me at a yard sale. The background is another piece of wrapping paper from Mr. and Mrs. B.’s wedding. This particular book has already travelled overseas, so I figured it was safe to include the poplar leaf and the peacock feather.

The Party Girls

This was a silly little page. I kept the label from a bottle of Christmas sangria. It was too lovely to throw away. The purple wrappers came from a bag of chocolate truffle candies. The yearbook girls–glued to 35mm film negatives–are from the 1920s (Prohibition era in the USA), which makes me laugh, because the sangri was non-alcoholic.

Baubo and the Girls 1

Baubo and the Girls 2

The last two pages started out covered with dark purple tissue paper. It was a little too garish, though, so I covered it with unbleached waxed paper to tone it down. I love the way it looks–the scans do not do the subtle color justice. I used a couple more Polaroids from my Baubo’s Safari series. I separated the photos from the backing, then sanded through the photo layer, to make them lay flatter and give them some transparency and texture. The top Polaroid was also sanded on the front and rubbed with brown India ink.

The bottom page presented an interesting challenge, in that it had a window cut out of it by the person who worked in the book before me. I decided to emphasize the window by framing it with a scrap of intaglio print I’ve been carrying around with me since college. A cast-off from another student’s printmaking project, I picked it out of the trash and have been carting it around ever since.

Now, the musings.

Thanks to Cynthia for pointing out this article.

I think one of the ironies of the whole Rove debacle is that it shows just how dishonest and lacking in integrity this administration is. It seems to me that, when your platform is based on “moral values,” you might be expected to hold yourself and your staff to a certain, well, moral standard. Countering claims of wrong doing with “it’s partisan politics,” or “he didn’t actually do anything illegal,” seems to me to indicate an ethical disconnect. Since when were moral values a legal matter? Rove clearly discussed information that he had no business discussing with people he had no business discussing it with. Whether or not he’s legally in the wrong ought to be irrelevant to this administration, as it’s quite clearly morally wrong. Condoning such behavior speaks volumes about what’s important to Rove’s superiors and it’s not “moral values.

Oh, and speaking of ironies, dare I say that Mr. Bush’s rephrasing of his intention, from “the leaker will be fired” to “if the leaker did anything illegal he’ll be fired,” might–just might–be considered flip-flopping?