After watching many hours of NASA's amazing SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) footage of the sun at the Internet Archives, I downloaded some short videos and from them distilled the clips you see in this video. I am delighted to find this footage and to create a solar videopoem.

A vision of such power that what went before falls away in a rapturous death. A rapturous death of the ego. An unerasable enlightenment. That Rubicon. I was inspired to write this piece after seeing the movie, 'Sunshine,' which also uses footage from NASA's SOHO Observatory.

A fascinating article from Escape Into Life by Lara Cory on The Etsy Phenomenon, a "balanced account of the success of Etsy with much room for opposing viewpoints." The comment stream is interesting. I post mine here to encourage you to go there, and because this blog is my personal archives.

Brenda Clews (unregistered) wrote:

I think being able to craft an item must be an enjoyable activity - using well-worn and true tested techniques, one can simply fill in the blanks, make the item and then sell it at a craft show or on a site like Etsy. That item has a function. It's a bright teapot, or a plier-knotted silver wire around a crystal to make a magik pendant, or a familiar pastoral scene for the kitchen or bathroom or hallway. The price is right. These items brighten our daily lives, fill in the spaces in our homes, or adorn us as clothing or jewelry, are lovely little gifts for each other.

Art, on the other hand, is hard, tempestuous, fickle, uncertain, a very painful execution of the unknown. While I sell very little work, and my work may sometimes seem decorative on the surface, each piece has torn me open, exposed my core - art-making is a fragile endeavour. Where I start with a piece and where I end are never pre-known. I think making a familiar object, a basket, or sewing some oven mitts with applique of flowers, must be a pleasant activity. To me, craft has a security where the ending, the product, its niche is known, and this must be comforting to the artisan, the person selling their wares.

I can't pretend to know what art is, or even if I do it. Personally I find much museum art - or the contemporary art museums support in traveling shows, not the main collections of historically important artists and art - to be on the whole dry, academic, requiring the knowledge of a vast body of critical art theory and it often seems so abstracted as to be removed from the pulse.

Etsy's too large for me. I've taken a peek now and then, and scurried away quickly. Though of all sites selling goods on the NET it's one of the best, hand-crafted, yes, lovely, let's support the makers of the items, the artists and artisans, and vintage, oh vintage is so beautiful, I love vintage since it's often what was formerly haute couture, fine clothing, what only the wealthy could afford, and now its lace is under our adoring fingers, in our hands.

As for being in the midst of an evolutionary shift in the world in art, yes, yes, yes... surely we are, as surely as in music, film, literature... where the people speak, create, offer. There has never been so much public writing in the world, blogs are booming, and we can upload our videos for public viewing and do in the millions, with the development of Creative Commons licensed music, on sites like Jamendo, music is experiencing a revival too.

Perhaps we are entering a period of high Renaissance powered by the people.

What I've begun working on. A short, short. Which I will not obsessively work on all night since I am fighting a cold and not winning. A still - from the title, which has taken an hour an a half to compose - all 11 seconds of it. Hope you like!



It's Not working. Resolve is meaningless. I was going to stop at 11pm, and yet at 11:30pm I find myself 'just rendering'... the clips which I wasn't going to put together this evening, no, no.

An hour past my bedtime, and rendering the changes. It's impossible! Editing video can become an obsessive occupation. Stay away from it: recommended.

Sigh. I wait. How will the clip look now? Gosh, wish I were better at this! It doesn't look too bad, does it? I love the clips in this video. I love making little videos. Timewise, it's an endless process... forget about time! The body can handle lack of sleep.

Anyway, it's only a minute or two, and soon will be over.

::Smiles:: (some hours later)

I had forgotten that the myth of Atlantis came from Plato's Timaeus. The original a strange story of beauty and loss, of earthquakes and floods.



Raphael's Plato 
(Timaeus, circa 360BCE; 
Raphael's portrait, 1509, a detail from the The School of Athens)

Because of the disco beat, which never relents, the ocean seemed composed of fragmented glass. It falls on a beach painted wet on wet in watercolours and in the sky painted gulls and the metal pin of an airplane. The musical scene felt like animation, the winds coming as in an artful video. Just after half way I heard the Zephyr, soprano voices over the drone. The industrial sounds continued, with that ethereal voice calling from a long way off. The beach grasses waved like animated strokes. The water fell in shattered glass drops. The sonic beachscape built on itself, growing richer, even visionary. The drone continued, a quiet fan with beach detritus, aluminum foil caught in it. Planes flew by. Insects crawled in the dunes. Sandpipers bounced on sand wet with seafoam. Clouds became sparse. The sun shone and it was over.

Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones, 2010,
24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, underpainting. (opens to a resizable pop-up window)

Now that I have rinsed off the chalk drawing and covered the painting in a fine layer of Liquin, which is semi-gloss, it reflects light and this makes it harder to photograph. I have boosted the colour slightly so that it doesn't appear too 'washed out.' On the easel, however, it's looking possible.

A video at YouTube on the painting process, and on the chalk
sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsUQVGXSWro

Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones, 2010,
24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, underpainting. (opens to a resizable pop-up window)

A video at YouTube on painting process, and on the chalk
sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsUQVGXSWro

When I hit the undo button on this post, everything was deleted... trying to remember what I wrote.

Ummm, oh, yes, I did some research on the NET and decided to try a new technique. In the post-midnight darkness I mixed a little Golden® acrylic paint and scrubbed the figures in Raw Sienna with a touch of Titanium White. Today I'll block in the background with the lightest wash of Golden® Raw Sienna and Bone Black. When it's dry, I'll rinse off the original chalk drawing. Then I'll paint the whole canvas with a layer of Windsor & Newton's® Liquin Original and let it dry until tomorrow.

From what I read at Windsor & Newton's® site, I believe the Liquin will change my water-soluble oil paints into traditional oil paints and rather than diluting in water and washing the brushes after in water, I'll have to use turpentine.

I haven't explored this process before and so don't know the parameters or how the colours of the oils will work over the underpainting. In the last two 'on black' paintings I found it was necessary to paint very thick layers of oil paint and I wasn't able to work on detail as I might have liked.

direct link: Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones

A painter on painting. Or, I'm painting again! Yay!

Wasn't a planned video, rather, thinking, many artists are showing themselves painting on-screen, let's put the camera on and get some footage, but I got talking, you know how it is, at night too though I managed to boost the light when I edited it, and now it's a bona fide video.

Enjoy. Hopefully you will find inspiration here for your own art, and might consider posting your own video.


Note: click on the base of the slideshow
to start the slideshow (or in the middle to
go to Picasa and see larger images).

An unplanned video -are they ever any other way?- thought I'd set the camera up while painting, yes at night, I know, silly, only I got talking, you know how it is. Thought it way too dark to consider for anything, but a filter on FinalCut Express, which is what I use to edit video, brought the light out. It's nearly 7½ minutes long, was over 8GB in a Quicktime .mov, but with a bit of fiddling, and I hope the quality is alright when it's finished uploading, I got it down to 1.6GB -under the 2GB limit at YouTube.

It's a 6 hour upload, I know, marathon. Should be up by tomorrow. A few stills... (click for larger)

Later now and it's up: Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones

All I have to post is a little love poem inspired by some special music by a special musician who's beloved at Jamendo, Livio Amato, for my special, and secret, love:


Lyric of Love

-Sensitivity, Musa, Riela-

gently breaking on the waves
of our own oceans

seafoam of stars
falling over edges
pulling back in the underswell
of our desires

birds sweetly singing, ocean breezes, salt spray, morning light of gloss and glittering facets of cut gems

we cannot underestimate
the power of love

the ocean is driven by
inner forces as we are by love

wave patterns, oscillations of polished gems falling as notes of love from our Orphean songs

even as we approach the great mystery it recedes, ever pulling back and falling forwards, white foam melting into sand at our feet

-Dream opening-

then the grotto, magic, rock sanctuary, vision, a lover's cove

the dream of us opens

conch, periwinkle, nautilus, volva, cone, harp, trumpet shells, the music of the ocean at its shores

we are anchored in the swells, water
dance of love

or racing seaward, sails blooming
in the fast wind

-Suspended Animation-

sailing we are birds, osprey
sweeping over the waves
up to the clouds, joy, windsong
of strong wing

the wind who kisses the ocean,
or blows gales, passion

we dance on the beach framed by a disappearing red sun, burnished gong, palm tree fronds black with shadow as the dark washes over us carrying a full moon sailing through the night sky

-Yet, a moment-

we are the sky, the sun, moon and stars, the clouds drifting by, wind, the flying birds, dancing schools of bright fish, the diamond-covered expanse of
glittering

-Infinity-

one day we will wash away, drops in the ocean, no longer even a memory,

yet knowing
love loves
through us


-
Inspired by Livio Amato's album, Sensitivity: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/62537 (section titles are his song titles -I note the sections as I wrote while listening)