Fourth of July, 2014

The Fourth of July is our Independence Day and is a federal holiday. That means the day off from work and time to enjoy family, friends, a lot of flag-waving, picnics and fireworks. Party hearty! Or, as Erma Bombeck put it:

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness.  You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."

One of the classic events is often an evening performance by the local symphony or orchestra, followed by the fireworks display. One of the more famous ones, often televised, is the Boston Pops Orchestra, composed of some members from the Boston Symphony.

The following pictures were taken in July 2013 as the Boston Pops prepared for their rehearsal on July 3rd. The frightening thing about the thought of people being wanded (oh yeah, a new vocabulary word) and FBI and heavy security for a rehearsal is that it almost seems normal now.  Kind of makes you wonder about the meaning of "civilization".

 

Meanwhile, in Kabul, Afghanistan, a re-enlistment ceremony:

Pods Again

OK, it's not a pod, it's a magnolia blossom that has started turning brown. When she was a kid Susan lived for few years in Alabama and still remembers climbing in magnolia trees and smelling their great smell.  Our new friends, Archie and Martha, have magnolia trees in their yard and brought Susan some of the cut blossoms. If you leave them out they turn this beautiful brown color very fast. But if you put them in the refrigerator they stay white for a long time. Sure, you don't get to see them constantly but in our place the refrigerator gets opened often. Probably too often, but I'm not going to discuss that.

What does this have to do with pods? Two things. One, the center thingy (stamen?) is sort of pod-like and is good inspiration for me. Two, Susan took pictures of the pods I am making now and decided to take all the color out of the pictures so I could focus on the shapes. Eventually they will get glazed or painted or something, although I'm liking just the odd shapes of some of them.

 

Pods

I am working. Unfired pods.

Hang It

Three birdies, all with a hanging hook that was put in while I was shaping them. I thought they could be hung in a tree. My idea was OK but the concept was faulty. They aren't flying, they are just sitting, as if on the ground or in a nest. So why would they be hanging in the air? Whatever.

We experimented with different acrylic paints on them and this last one has the old-world look I like. But maybe it's not "birdie" enough of a look.

 



Whatever.

We are catching up with our Netflix queue. Gave 5 stars to Nebraska, replayed the ending of the wife's scene in the cemetery three times before we could stop laughing. Gave 5 stars to Frances Ha, great acting and a story that managed to pull itself together by the end (we had doubts in the beginning). Gave 5 stars to Dallas Buyers Club, with a 6th star to Jared Leto for his acting. Gave 4 stars to Rush, a little too predictable. Gave 5 stars overwhelmingly to American Hustle, the incredible Jennifer Lawrence just seems to suck in all the air in a room when she's in a scene, making it hard for you to notice any other actors.

Buried Treasure

Go here to see what Seth Apter is up to once again.   Although we are identical twins, born several years apart and mysteriously separated at birth, we are both artists. But.... his art work is more creative than I could ever dream of. Go here for the listing and links of all the artists he inspires and admires.

And here is the Buried Treasure from my blog, an entry that reminds me that it's not hard to remain humble when you are trying to make art. There are days when Your Art just stomps on you but you come back day after day anyway, knowing that one day you'll make magic.

From October 20, 2013, Sad Birdies:

Look pretty good, don't they? This picture and the next two were taken by a fellow classmate, Bernie, who has a big honker of a camera. So you think all went well? Right now the Kiln Goddess is laughing her head off.

For starters, notice the small spot on the back of the dark bird below? Somehow the glaze just skipped that spot -- an air bubble? Or did the Kiln goddess spit on it?

Below is a really interesting sort of pink glaze and sheen effect I'll never be able to create again because I have no idea how it happened. Take a close look at the bottom of that bird. See that clunky spot under it? That's a bad bird butt.

Here's a quick shot I took of all the birds from that particular firing.

So you politely ask "Why are they sad?"

They are sad because I screwed up their butts. First, I like to make the birds rattle (they are hollow) so I put BBs in them. Because the birds are hollow I have to make a small hole in the bottom so air can escape. This firing was high-fire for these special glazes, not low-fire which is what I usually do. Much to my dismay (and huge learning experience) the BBs melted this time and flowed out the air hole and made a mess on the bottom of the birds. To make thinks worse, my glazes ran more than I expected and flowed over. AND, even though Susan has warned me a hundred times, some of the birds' butts weren't exactly flat so they fell over in the firing and messed up the glaze.

Out of 17 birds, 8 were a BB disaster, 3 tip over all the time, and 3 had a lousy glaze job. Three are OK. And you thought making art was easy!

47 Years

Ah, to be young, and dumb and fearless once again.

Still hanging in there, 47 years now.

As if we'd have it any other way!

.....................................

 

Late edit, in response to query: We are on a dive boat off the Kona Coast of Hawaii, many years ago as the antiquated dive equipment shows, there and Bonaire were our favorite spots. We also dove Kauai, Maui, and Caymans Islands and Susan also dove Cozumel and Cayman Brac. She had over 120 dives, including 3 solo dives, I had about 85 dives. We finally quit diving when it got too tiring to be safe. Yes, you are weightless in water but the equipment isn't lightweight when you have to bag-drag back and forth from hotel to car to boat and the boat leaves really early and the long days on dive boats get really .... long. We miss it a lot.

It's Criminal

This is the what Susan (and I) had for breakfast this morning. They are attractively arranged on ... no, we don't call those "paper plates" in our house ...the "summer china".

First, you start with this:

After a good toasting, you apply this:

Don't worry, you picked the kind with 1/3 less fat so it's healthy.  Then, you apply a liberal smear of the best, most criminal stuff in the world:

If you don't eat or like bacon, never mind. Otherwise, belly up to the trough. They probably could have called it Bacon Jam Crack.

Just to keep this in the art realm, here's a little birdie, wings are a bead glaze, the rest of the body is Golden's Iridescent Stainless Steel (Coarse) acrylic.

Susan speaks: There are days .... he sat right next to me as I entered what he wanted to comment (finally!) on several different blogs. Somehow, randomly, about half of the comments disappeared into thin air. What the ....?  Why is it that every time I'm trying to show him how he can do his own stuff the computer just barfs on me?

Nuts to You

Little acorns. Maybe not so little, about hand-palm size. The bisque-fired clay (Longhorn White) unglazed is the white of the caps, the black is black iron oxide rubbed into the markings. I never bothered to glaze them so Susan took over and did some magic with alcohol ink on the bottoms and a little gold paint on the top.

School is out for a while so I'm trying my best to drive her nuts.

I'm listening to The Goldfinch from Audible.com, pretty darn good. Last night we watched Elysium from Netflix (we love to get red envelopes). Nope, just barely 3 stars - overdone acting by the villain and (per Susan) stereotyped characterization of the females. Matt Damon was OK but Jodie Foster ... she could out-do Bette Davis and Joan Crawford on the evil stuff.

I've been asked my opinion about the VA hospital horrors. Yes, I was in the military but qualifying for VA care is on a tiered system and the top of the tier is veterans who have a disability due to actual combat injuries. The tiers go down, at the bottom is the group of veterans who just need to see a doctor and had a very minimum time in the service and who were discharged when they were healthy. That group is pretty large because (obviously) everyone would like free medical care and after all, that was what they were promised.  So I'm eligible for that tier but no thank you, I'll go to a regular doctor and deal with my co-pay.

Do I believe the horrors of the wait time? Absolutely. But everyone is ignoring "the elephant in the room." There wouldn't be long wait times if they had more doctors. But they don't have enough doctors because nobody wants to work for the VA because they can make more money elsewhere and not have to put up with petty turf battles and entitled staff/clerks who will get their salary regardless of how they deal with the veterans.

Footnote to the whole mess: I have a friend who uses VA exclusively. He needed to see a podiatrist so in early May they gave him an appointment in mid-August.  No surprise there, he expected that time delay. But.... last week, Surprise! Surprise! they called him  ... Surprise! Surprise!... and offered him an appointment in mid-June instead.  Somebody is running scared.

Armed and Ready

I got in big trouble over these little arms, about 2" long. Susan painted them for me with Golden's gold and stainless steel paint. And then I went and sold them at our student art sale. Oops! She liked them and wanted me to keep them. I told her I'd make some more and got her typical response: "Oh, sure, I've heard that promise before." In my defense.... well, I have no defense.

She also painted this little squash for me - alcohol inks on the bottom and acrylic on the top with gold dots. It sold late in the day at the sale, which surprised me because I thought it was a pretty good piece.  I used to be hesitant to paint clay pieces (already bisque fired) because I thought everything had to be glazed or it wasn't "real". She's found numerous examples in books and in museums that list "paint" as one of the materials on a contemporary ceramic piece so I've finally gotten over that hangup. It seems that the Old Rules are fading away in favor of just making a piece look the way you want, regardless of the materials or style.

I did set this piece aside for Susan, as I thought it was the best of the three "fantasy" birds I made. The other two I sold at the sale. They are all about 3-4" high.

Remembering, Memorial Day, May 2014

I'm going home
Without the sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without this costume
That I wore

 

Leonard Cohen, from Going Home

 

 

Remember Barry Lynn Brown ....


Killed in Action, Vietnam, 1968

Remember James Clifford McKittrick....

Missing in Action, Vietnam, June 1967

Washington DC, Part 3

Image above by Wolf Kahn at an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We were really surprised at the quality of the collection shown - another one of those times when we didn't plan to see the exhibit (it was across the building from a Monuments Men exhibit) but thought we'd just rush through but wound up looking for over an hour.

How can you not want to have art like this in your home? These two in the National Gallery of Art were Susan's favorites this time, Degas' Before the Ballet above and Rousseau's Boy on the Rocks below.  She winds up with different favorites every visit.

Here's one of my favorites:

And here's something at our Metro station that had me Fully Flummoxed:

What the ....? An angel with black wings? Huh? Contrary to New York City where we talk to everyone, Washington DC is very uptight and unfriendly so we just behave ourselves.

Well, not exactly everyone. We happened to be there when the Cherry Blossom Festival was going on so we stopped to watch their parade and wound up talking to these people. You might not recognize him but I've now put his books on my Amazon wishlist -- Andy Straka.  An interesting thing about him, aside from the fact that he is famous and that we had fun talking to him and his charming young accomplice, is that he is a licensed falconer. 

The parade was kind of a bust, slow moving because it kept stopping so people in the parade could sing or perform for the fat cats who had paid to have grandstand seats. The ordinary people like us just waited and waited on the sidewalk for the parade to move on. Definitely not like the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Not to mention the fact that we had no idea what this float was supposed to be.

 

The weather was great, the art was great, but it was a very long day and I got really tired and it's really easy to fall asleep on the Metro... or in the station.



Jamie Fine and Lori Katz (DC, Part 2)

Both Jamie Fine and Lori Katz are ceramic artists who are so willing to share information about how they work that it is almost frightening. They are one of the reasons we always go back to the Torpedo Factory.  I didn't know which one to feature as the lead-in picture on this blog so my Blog Wrangler settled my dilemma by choosing a Selfie she made in the bathroom on our trip. She told me if I stared at it long enough the mirror fog would evaporate and she would be revealed in all her splendor, glory and hotel towel.

 

Above is a wall installation of Lori's tiles, set up at the Torpedo Factory where she has a space. Her website is here.

 

Below is Jamie Fine giving me an up-close-and-personal lesson in texture tool making. 

 

 

Not until I got home and checked her info on the internet did I find out she had studied with Ruth Duckworth, who is one of my favorite artists. We saw a show of her work in Chicago years ago and the book of her work from that show survived our downsizing and has a prominent place in my collection of artists' books.

 

 

I've watched Jamie's video several times now.

 

 

Usually we see Susan Finsen at the Torpedo Factory but this year we missed her. You'll have to settle for a shot taken through the window of her studio. I really like her idea of "pocket" paintings..

 

 

A fine finish to our day? Could you ask more than to have your name on a porta-potty?