At the Fitchburg Art Museum .... the art was devoted to "paper" and was kind of interesting. It's a small museum but nice. We bought some homemade chili and homegrown potatoes from a nice lady in the lobby !!!
Art! ... these are cut and rolled pages of an Encylopedia Brittanica !
A high school kid drew this (charcoal on paper) !!
A collection of time worn Busby Berkeley DVDs (1930's musicals) arrived today. I love this vintage cornball stuff !!
The middle of The Depression, and people needed stress-free sweetness when they went to "the movies". A swim scene from one of Busby's films (no sound) ...
Deb was out to lunch today and I decided to pay my yearly visit to the Museum of Russian (religious) Icons, which is nearby. We tend to think of Russians as nasty, godless warlike people. Well that's generally true of the governments that come to power there, but most people are peasants or working class and they don't go looking for wars. Ronald Reagan said it well: "People don't start wars. Governments start wars".
Okay, speech over. The museum has original centuries old religious paintings and craftworks, and it's fascinating to see this stuff. These are generally "multi-media" artworks made of wood and sheet metals (gold, silver, or tin). Most are a bit 3-dimensional.
Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the art of religious icons....
This Morning
Excellent book and video (which is available on DVD or for free on Youtube - see link below).
In today's world this is ancient history and most people under 50 wouldn't care a bit, but this is how personal computers (and afterward, the internet) were given birth. These were extremely big events in forming the society we live in today (for better or worse - I am not convinced that the internet, as it exists today, is making the world a better place).
* * Thank you, Cousin Pete for triggering me this morning on this topic (even though you didn't mean to !) . * *
My Latest Pencil Coloring "Art"
(I did the gradient gray sky by computer)
Decided to try something new and "color" a picture using only the computer. This is not finished - I put in about one hour (and this includes learning what the computer options are). The pencil pictures take 8 - 12 hours work.
This method offers a lot of surface texture options and gradients, etc etc etc. and it's FAST !
But it is definitely not nearly as much fun as colored pencils, and it's honestly too easy and has no "hand crafted" feeling to it.
Web Archive .ORG
I rediscovered this website last few days. It allows people to archive just about anything they want to put on the www. It's kind of a dumping ground, not to be critical, because there is all kinds of stuff - people's home movie, old newsreels, very old films, silent movies, ancient TV shows - you easily get lost in this huge library of stuff.
It's easy to find interesting weird stuff but hard to find the great stuff that you hope to find.
The plot goes all over the place, like they were writing the script while they were shooting the movie. But the visuals are absolutely fantastic. So good, I bought the (new !!) DVD.
Calm Down, Spring is Near
"Beware the Ides of March"
Bad day for Caeser (he deserved it), but we got some great art out of it.
Russian Panorama Camera Going on Ebay
(Uses Common 35mm film)
Can This Man be Trusted With a Welding Torch ??
When a retired engineer looks for a car ..... spreadsheets are a "must"
Listening to very very cool Jazz from Bill Evans (1958 ?)
Penny and the Red House Finch
You didn't ask, but ....
"A highly social bird, the House Finch is rarely seen alone outside of the breeding season, and may form flocks as large as several hundred birds. House Finches feed mainly on the ground or at feeders or fruiting trees. At rest, they commonly perch on the highest point available in a tree, and flocks often perch on power lines. During courtship, males sometimes feed females in a display that begins with the female gently pecking at his bill and fluttering her wings."
You may be cool, but you're not
1970 Dave cool
(That's Loretta in my arms !!!)
Two "Scary" (or not so) Movies
These days, "horror" movies have massive shock effects, hoping to actually shock you with horrific scenes. But over the decades, many excellent horror flix were polite, sedate dramas of people dealing with a scary background story. A classic example would be Dracula (1931, Bela Lugosi).
Kiss of the Vampire (I watched it this week) is like that. It's a costume drama with vampire / satanic overtones with subdued sexual implications. All in all, a decent 90 minutes of interesting entertainment. But it won't give you nightmares.
Another movie this week was Vamps (originally titled "Ghouls"), which is a Russian ??? or Romanian ??? or Hungarian ??? flick. Very well produced, excellent cinematography, and interesting view of religious peasants facing a cult of vampires. And .... the end is as romantic as any Hallmark TV movie. But, again, except for a few (very good) intense scenes, you won't have nighmares after this.
