Old World Swine

Berried in Work

Berries and heavy cream... and a little sugar.

Sorry for the light blogging over the last week or so. I have been hustling making contacts and doing self promotion, trying to scare up something like a steady income with this art gig. That end of the art biz has always been difficult and not something to which I am naturally inclined or motivated to do. I have to stir myself up and put on my salesman hat... or my plaid Herb Tarlek coat, as it were.

But, I have had some encouraging response and have finally taken the step of being represented by a gallery. It only a small, local gallery, but showing locally is an idea I like, even if I add some better known and commercially successful galleries as I go... which I need to do.

I'm also taking steps to move toward more explicit religious imagery in my work, and stepping into a role as a Catholic illustrator and fine artist. It is what I have always wanted to do (since I became a Catholic, anyway), and I'm a little surprised at myself that it has taken me this long to get started. I can count the number of truly religious images I have done on one hand. I expect that Paul N. and some others will have an opinion on that, and I look forward to hearing them.

Suffice to say that I do believe there is a meaningful and healthy difference between religious art and non-religious art, between craft, design, illustration and fine art, and that there is an important role for each and all of these things (and a great deal of potential overlap, as well). Saint Francis said, "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.". To do explicitly religious art and illustration is simply to recognize that sometimes it is necessary to "use words", to speak plainly and openly, even as one tries to preserve the mystery and profundity that should characterize such work.

Simultaneously, my thinking about the direction of my still life art has been undergoing a change and I have been stewing and mulling and meditating on that, getting the creative equivalent of a deep breath before taking the plunge into articulating a different point of view... actually, articulating in a more mature and fully realized way a point of view I have carried with me since I was a graduate student. More on that soon.

Anyway, the pictures above illustrate what we did this past weekend. We took Darling Daughter and went berrying, getting about eight pints of organic raspberries in an hour-and-a-half of delightfully leisurely picking. Perfect afternoon for it, and the great thing about picking your own berries is that you get to play The Berrying Game.

Oh, you can buy berries in the grocery store, but then you don't get the entertaining challenge of spying out the really good, ripe berries. You don't get to weave your hands in and around the thorny branches, like some kind of leafy, pointy version of Operation (Bzzz!). You don't get to learn anything about the habits of bees, or get to develop your Bee Whispering skills. You don't get to race anyone to see who can pick faster (though if you spy out the last pint of berries at the grocery store, you may end up racing someone who also spied it).

More than just a great time or an afternoon's distraction, our berry picking excursion was the kind of fully-orbed human experience that becomes a meaningful memory (if a small one). I like to think it cancels out and heals a little bit of the time I have spent channel surfing or aimlessly poking the cold ashes of the internet in the wee hours.

Skeleto-riffic!

A good friend sent my son a movie for his birthday a while back, and it has become a cult favorite in our house, which means that it passes this important Good Movie Test; that we have all begun to quote the dialogue liberally in our daily conversation.

The movie is The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a tasty and twisted spoof of every low-budget Sci-Fi flick you ever wasted a late night on. It calls to mind gems like Plan 9 From Outer Space or Creature From The Black Lagoon.

The key to the entire plot lies in the mysterious element called atmospherium, a substance so rare and powerful that it draws together all the main characters who pursue it for various ends; the advancement of Science®, world domination, survival and greed among them.

A strange meteor has fallen, and Dr. Paul Armstrong, Scientist® (Larry Blamire), accompanied by his hapless wife, Betty (Fay Masterson), are on its trail, hoping to find within it traces of the elusive atmospherium for Science and the betterment of mankind. All Dr. Armstrong seems to talk about is being a scientist®, and all his wife seems to talk about is being a scientist's wife. He is a dashing, rolled-up-sleeves sort of scientist, and she wears the same dress, pearls and heels through the whole movie, even in the woods.

The aliens, Kro-Bar (Andrew Parks) and his wife Lattis (Susan McConnell), crash land on Earth when their rocket ship runs out of its exotic and powerful fuel... atmospherium! Against astronomical odds, they happen to crash very near to the location of the strange meteor! They wear silver lamé space suits, talk in stilted English and are clearly superior to humans in every way... or are they?

Then, we have the power mad Dr. Roger Fleming (Brian Howe), who seeks the atmospherium only as a means of fully awakening and animating the most mind-warping evil terror on Earth - The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra! With the power of the evil skeleton, Fleming can rule the world!

Throw in the sultry and dangerous Animala, whose very existence breaks all the rules of nature (Jennifer Blaire), a hideous, three-eyed mutant alien monster, a forest ranger and a farmer and you have the entire cast.

The action is filmed in California's notorious Bronson Canyon, birthplace of such classics as Attack of the Crab Monsters and Teenagers from Outer Space.

I can't tell you how things play out (and does it really matter?). Suffice to say that, if you are a fan of classic science fiction movies, and if your mind survives the onslaught of horror, it will be well worth your time to watch.

The Moss is Always Greener

A while back I was filling out one of those inane Facebook polls or games and was asked to name my favorite color. I hadn't thought about it in a long time, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had passed, over the past several years, from a Blue to a Green. Green is now most often my color of choice, from clothing to the paint scheme in our dining room. Not a garish green, but an earthy, mossy green.

I don't think it can be a coincidence that I have been living among a crowd of old oak trees for the last several years. You can hardly see the sky from our property. I get no use at all anymore from my telescope.

The shade is deep enough that grass barely grows, which bothers me not at all. We cultivate mostly rocks, moss and mushrooms... an abundance of mushrooms and other fungi this year. I hope to begin painting some of them soon. With the mild and misty weather of the last month, our little corner of the Ozarks has begun to remind me of Master Yoda's home planet of Dagobah... teeming with oozy things, frogs, salamanders and leaves that seem to continually glisten and drip.

The green of the Ozarks has soaked into me, I suppose.

I didn't care much for Arkansas when I arrived here at the age of fourteen, and I continued not to like it for a long time after. Hot, muggy, with the enervating low, rolling hills and trees like great, green cotton balls instead of the gothic spires of spruce that I had known in my youth in Alaska. The spruce trees and the mountains of Alaska lead the eye always up, up to the wild, bracing sky. The Arkansas landscape, in comparison, seemed to me to cover the earth like a wide, wet blanket.

Like a cave fish in reverse, though, I have grown eyes that have become accustomed to the light and learned to see the beauty they had missed. The beauty of Alaska ravishes the viewer, where the beauty of Arkansas - and of the South - beckons like the open doorway of a warm, friendly inn. You are welcome to come in and rest if you like, but you need not. For those in a hurry, it will seem like a worthless waste of time. Most of the modern world is in a hurry.

I'll always carry the rough, breathless beauty of Alaska around with me, but the green South has become my home.

St. Christopher Protect Us!

I have been wearing out St. Christopher's phone line the last few days, praying over various car and travel related problems. I could use all the prayers I can get, so I'm sending out the call to all my readers.

I have one car that has been repaired (thanks be to God!), but another that is balanced on a knife-edge between being fixable and being a heap of worthless, inert metal. Our family needs this car to be in working condition, and within our meager budget.

The other cause of so much running about by St. Chris lately is the fact that my son passed his driver's test today, and will be on the road by himself for the first time tonight, as he drives to an evening college class. This gives new relevance to the time-worn phrase "Saints preserve us!".

Needless to say, we all covet your prayers.

Carter's Shameless Cynicism

After playing the "race", "fear", "violence" and "homophobia" cards in the health care debate within the space of only the last forty-eight hours, what panic and hysteria cards do the Democrats have left? Space aliens? Albino Monk Assassins?

Former president Jimmy Carter, in a desperate attempt to make certain that he will never again be taken seriously about anything, cynically declared that opposition to Obama and his health care program (whatever the heck that is), is based on racism. I say "cynically" because Carter himself doesn't really believe it. He is using the charge of racism to try and strangle a public debate that is not going at all well for his side.

He is simply letting it be known; if you publicly and vocally oppose Obama's push for a government takeover of healthcare, you will be accused of racism.

Nancy Pelosi followed up as if on cue to drag fear of violence into the repulsive mix, invoking the name of Harvey Milk as a shield against any further protest against Obamacare. If you oppose Obamacare publicly and vocally, you will be accused of stirring up violent impulses in your countrymen, especially impulses against black people and homosexuals, and maybe little puppies. You may be accused of having violent tendencies yourself, like a deep desire to shoot people who disagree with you, or perhaps a desire to dismember them with chainsaws or sexually assault them while your half-wit cousin plays banjo on the porch. In other words, opponents of Obamacare are scary, unstable, violent rednecks. And did I mention they are scary and we should all be very scared of them?

The only fear that Carter and Pelosi have is the creeping fear, the very justified fear, that they have already lost the debate. They fear that the shine has come off the Obama presidency so quickly, and that the wheels coming off may not be far behind.

Obama himself has been reduced to running around the country grumpily shouting "the debate is over, because I, the decider-in-chief, say so!" in front of carefully assembled, sympathetic crowds. It is hard to hear him over the roar of recent polls, however. Most people are satisfied enough with the health care they have and realistically fear that the phrase "public health care" may one day soon carry many of the same melancholy associations as "public television" or "public housing".

In addition, Obama's sense of political timing could not be worse. The economy is shaky at best, unemployment is high, people's 401Ks are still smarting from the wounds of a very recent stock market plunge, Medicare and Social Security both face a highly doubtful financial future... Americans do not at all see how it is a great idea NOW to launch the biggest entitlement program EVER, when they are rooting around in the couch for gas money. They know, as does everyone, that government control of health care can not happen without big tax increases, which will only add dead weight to an already struggling economy.

If Obama decides to run the health care debate all the way into the ground, Congressional Dems know they will pay the price in the coming mid-term elections. They want the new health care bureacracy - want it bad - but they don't want to have to stand up for it in a way that risks the ire of voters back home. Their support of Obamacare is very shallow. The president knows this, and is frustrated.

I'm not a fan of insurance companies, either, and I know there are a lot of problems with the current model, but government control always means higher costs, greater inefficiency and reduced quality over time. Always. You think we are spending a chunk of change on public schools? Wait until we get Obamacare.

Panel Discussion

I've just been preparing some panels by applying a toned ground.

Now, see, if I was a modern artist, I'd be finished now. Just hang it as a grouping and call it "Tectonic II" or something...

"The Grid" Redefined, and Travel Tips

Much as I hate to send anyone to the ACLU website, this linked video is funny and a little scary... or a lot scary. You wonder how much of this kind of thing is going on already.

As is commonly the case, I can only quote Chesterton;

"None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them."

I'll be posting more lightly for a while, as I have a number of projects going, some different directions I want to develop in my fine art, as well as just some business that needs doing. I hope to post every weekday, but longer, more substantive posts will be a little less frequent. I should be posting some interesting new art soon.

Today, a few things I've learned about life while teaching my son to drive;

1. Leave other people plenty of room to make mistakes
2. Respect the law
3. It is impossible to be at peace when you are in a hurry
4. Making a wrong turn does not equal being lost
5. When you complain about traffic, don't forget that you ARE the traffic
6. Be aware of what's behind, but focus on what's ahead
7. Sometimes it's better to yield, even when you have the right -of-way
8. Keep your head, even when others don't... especially when others don't
9. To travel hopefully is not better than to arrive... "arriving" is kind of the idea**
10. Think things through - decisions you make early on can affect your whole trip

and, finally -

11. Enjoy the scenery whenever you can

*Besides... how do you travel hopefully without a destination? As C.S. Lewis said, "If that were true, and known to be true, how would we ever "travel hopefully?"

Musical Answers To Life's Pressing Questions

I finally thought of what President Obama and the health care alarmists remind me of, lately;

And this video goes out to Kanye West, Serena Williams and Congressman Joe Wilson;

That's Better...

Ahhhh.... feeling nearly human again after doing mortal combat with a virus for a couple of weeks. Many thanks for your patience, and a special thanks to the gracious patron who purchased the painting form my online store yesterday.

Huzzah! Now I can buy alcohol, tobacco and firearms!

This seems to be a week for pipe smoking. The painting that sold is a pipe painting, and I also want to give a shout out to a couple of pipe forums I have enjoyed crashing around in while I was too sick to do anything productive.

The first is the Christian Pipe Smokers forum, where there is always a satisfying blend of curmudgeonly affection and fragrant clouds of grudging camaraderie. There are even a few very agreeable resident atheists and agnostics. Esteemed reader Del (with whom I was once privileged to share a pipe and a pint) turned me on to the site.

In response to one thread, in which the origin of matter was being argued, I recently posted thusly;

First, we might be able to talk more intelligently about the nature of "matter" if we can ever actually find any.

We keep slicing matter into smaller and smaller bits and, while I don't understand it clearly at all, I do understand that it would be very presumptuous any longer to think of matter at any level as something "solid". It seems likely as not to be a state of energy, or a whole panoply of energy states...

A healthy dose of humility along the lines of admitting "We really don't know what the hell matter is" would keep people on both sides [of the creation debate] from making unfounded sweeping judgments.

Another observation is that if the universe were not so ordered, we would never have known how disorderly it is.  That sounds glib, but it's true.

Incidentally... I'm not a big fan of ID "science", because it ultimately seems like a kind of "bait and switch". I definitely believe in a designer, but I don't have high regard for those who pass off ID as hard science. I reject the idea that there is some ultimate choice that must be made between ID science on the one hand, and atheistic science on the other.

Even given that God exists, there will never be any kind of equation you can write out on a blackboard that will end in "= God". It is not a question that mere empirical science is equipped to answer, either in the positive or the negative. But those who think that a lack of scientific evidence for God = a lack of evidence altogether are badly mistaken. There is philosophical evidence - pure reason - that does attest to the existence of God. Check out Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica , for a start.

It's a bit silly of the ID folks to talk as if there is a scientific discipline that could ever prove the existence of God, and it's every bit as silly for atheists to talk as if "science" could in any way be used to disprove the existence of God.

Now, speaking just for myself, as an artist... I don't know why I would be thought especially crazy for looking at the world and recognizing the character of a work of art.

I don't think anyone on the forum would insist that this post or the others must be meaningless and random. So, we can know by experience that meaning of some kind really exists, at least in our communications here. Our words have meaning, road signs have meaning, the Pieta has meaning, "e=mc2" has meaning... how is it that Bergman's The Seventh Seal is meaningful, yet the whole universe is meaningless?

The alternative is to say that our communications (and other things we find meaningful) only seem to have meaning, but really don't. For some reason, we have a sense of meaning, but there really is no meaning.

That seems to me like a colossal feat of denial and self-deception, but it would at least be consistent. Saying that we only project meaning on to reality is the same thing. No one really lives that way or thinks that way, yet some people will talk that way to avoid thinking about the possibility that our lives really do have meaning.

The other forum I have enjoyed lately is the Smokers Forums, a pipe and cigar forum moderated from the U.K.. It's more densely populated and cosmopolitan than the CPS forum, and I don't feel qualified to jump in very often, as I am a novice smoker (only a couple of years of occasional pipe smoking). These guys are like, professors of the pipe.

Finally, tonight is the monthly meeting of The Ozark Pipe Smokers, and I'm looking forward to going. I haven't smoked at all - have had no desire to smoke - since I first got that nasty head cold a few weeks ago. As I'm doing much better, today, I'm anticipating a couple of tasty bowls and some good conversation.

If you're in the area... see you at Romeo's!

Bold Prediction!

I did not hear President Obama's speech to congress last night on health care. I can't bear to listen to political speeches much, anymore.

I have also not heard any reaction to it.

But, I will predict that the President's party are saying "Yea!" and that the opposing party is pretty much saying "Boo!".

I will also lay odds that these reactions to the speech were well prepared before the speech itself was even finished being written.

It will be presented - with complete, uncritical sincerity - both as a stirring, challenging speech that puts opponents on the run, AND as a lame, insubstantial speech that is an insult to the democratic process.

I will say that one gets the sense that, whatever happens, it is really beyond being substantially influenced by, you know, voters. The two "sides" will fight to a highly public draw and a deal will be made in a backroom, with everyone getting his slice of the pie... and us providing the pie.