Photography
Christine took Roll2006.02 to Wolf for developing & had a CD made. This seems a happy solution to scanning issues. The photos i took of the crescent moon were quite blurry and could stand a remote shutter trigger. Christine took photos of the half moon in daylight that were quite beautiful. Of the bird photos I took on Saturday, many of the ones i was most excited about (a kite and a buteo) have the small distant bird surrounded by the huge frame of the image. I suspect i could get a fairly reasonable image of the bird from scanning the negative at a high resolution. The shots of the Green Winged Teal, taken with the tripod in the side bag of my bike, turned out quite well from one point of view — the bird wasn’t really in a good profile.
Again, i find myself less than pleased with the results.
Painting
Christine and i had a discussion about whether my style was surreal or not. I was tempted by a Surrealist group on Flickr, but she cited Breton and said she was confident i was an Expressionist. I find it interesting Klee is Experessionist and Miro Surrealist. (Is there a Mediterranean vs European culture distinction in that?)
Surfing … well Mail
The Artistamp mail list was very active today, distressingly so, in some ways. After several days, weeks of lovely chat of aesthetics and philosophy, there’s been a bit of a rant about the Artistamp Album. It’s a little hard to read someone trying to defend my thoughts as an artist when I don’t need defense. And then there’s the issue of the erotic art which distressed the organizer of the album. It’s kind of playful erotic art, but it’s definitely “male gaze” erotic art. I can appreciate being an organizer and worried about the ages of the participants in the swap and whether there’d be an issue with angry parents. And, while i don’t think i’d be needing to cover it up, i can understand why some folks might. Yes, that might be prudish, but when a work calls itself erotic art i think there’s some recognition that it’s in an area that’s past the bounds of some folks.
The tone got a bit heated. I’m not sure why i find it so hard to let go.
Other posts included a comment on some techniques for embossing paper by Jenny Groat:
One of the things we did was to cut a pattern out of mat board, then use a good paper (such as Arches 90# or 180# HP), sometimes dampened slightly, to press onto our matboard design with some kind of small but not sharp tool. We could “deemboss” this way, too. Some excellent results could come out of this.
Finally a call to participate in a se-tenant sheet, $45. I think my participation in the omnibus will have to forestall my participation here.
I need to remind myself that participating in big collective things isn’t nearly as rewarding as reaching out to individual artists without a “swap.”
