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Showing posts from May, 2011

Lucy's got wheels

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We spent a beautiful Memorial Day sailing on the boat belonging to our friends Chris and Anne. Chris took the beautiful picture of Émile, looking particularly sailorly, and me. Lucy can start, go, and even stop on a two wheeler all by herself. She accomplished this a whole year before I did as a child, and I am incredibly impressed be her coordination, bravery, and determination. I can't wait to go on bike trips with her. A friend, Jessica Gidal, sent me a link to this very beautiful animation music video, directed by Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg. Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo .

Trying to work, distracted by admiration

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I am trying to settle on a new project, or an old one, after my exciting weekend. Here are two artists I enjoyed while my muse looked for her ritalin: The ever lovely Caroline Leaf: and an artist who is new to me: Lydia Greer , in San Francisco. I am especially excited about these shadow films.

24 hours of animation, 18 hours of struggling to get it into the right codec...

What I discovered is that, even though they gave the theme only at the start of the 24 hours, there were more things I could have done to prepare. On the technical side, get the right software and the right cables ahead of time. On the artistic side, create the characters ahead of time, and give a few trial runs of the technique to be used. Overall, this was really good fun. A million thank yous to Laurent, who took the kids to the zoo, into the garden, for naps...

24 Hour Animation

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I am pretending I am not a mother of two children, and giving in to 24 hours of (slightly stressful) play. An association in Belgium, Zorobabel (some sort of figure from the old testament, rebuilt the temple--I'm not sure what the significance is) is doing a 24 hour animation marathon. It started an hour and 25 minutes ago. The theme is John Locke's question about honor among thieves. Loosely. I naturally thought of 6 year olds. I am waiting for my laptop to open a bunch of files. Tick, tick, tick... The above is one of Lucy's wonderful writings. I will leave you to decipher, as it's not to far from commonly accepted spellings.

Oughter

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When my painting teacher in my first year class made my friend, Claire Redmon McConnell , redo her portrait of an apple it was because she said the representation was larger than life sized, and no one wanted to look at objects larger than life sized. At the time my teacher, Martha Armstrong , said this, I thought it was arbitrary crankiness. I now realize that, while clearly an overstatement, there is some hint of sense. I still can't explain it, but I find that, in general, and soup cans aside, outsized representations of things, people, tend to fall on the bad side of my irrational aesthetic score card. All of which is to say that I finked out, and the 24 by 48 inch otter has shrunk to 5 by 8 inches. I still don't know what I am going to put on that big canvas. It really is a leap to go from rather small to rather large. And, as my friend Nick Kilmer cautioned, not always necessary. But I have this big canvas that I've carried around for ten years, and I feel I ought to

Time

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I'm going through a really dry spot, time wise. Ten minute naps are just a touch frustrating. I'm waiting for the paint to dry so that I can do another coat. I found a very young artist with prints, drawings, and animations, whose work I really enjoyed (particularly the prints): Kathryn Marshall . Graphic but painterly monoprints--perfect combination. My friend Jinny introduced me to the art of Morris Graves and now I am looking for more. I'm feeling more inspired to move into a more symbiotic relationship with the paint and brush, less purely hierarchical (with me on top.) I have no control anywhere else, why cling to it in art? Oh, wait....

Émile the otter

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I'm working on a new painting for Émile. This is the sketch.
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Happy Mother's Day Flower

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A rhinoceros can ferment food in it's stomach. Stampeding while intoxicated?

Other people like frogs, too

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The Frogs ... How could I not love this treasury? Curated by Universal Arts , and featuring my frog princess.

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