here’s a self-portrait in the rain, looking at the mudding going on inside the new Resnick pavilion at LACMA. whereas our little project spells out “ATM,” this bit of wall spells “POM.”
Category Archives: why artists need math
Dogs in scale vs. dogs for sale
dog in scale vs. dogs for sale:
god playing tetris
garage inside out with scale
in my post yesterday it was pointed out that i didn’t provide a point of scale for the mitten painting.
garage inside out
in just a short time the weather’s gone from “maybe we can own wool clothes in LA” to the usual 80 degrees and sunny. for a hike we went wandering in a lovely canyon in the Palisades (where locked gates aren’t too locked) and saw several thousand feet of wild and rampant nasturtiums. they weren’t flowering (or sporting seeds, which are good for making faux-capers when you pickle them) but we could see the spread going wide and deep into the distance. (and unstoppable, if you’ve ever tried getting rid of nasturtiums.)
our little home renovation project is a budding little weed too. it started as a small concrete job in which some Samoans (drinking cases of Hawaiian Punch) poured us a new set of front steps and removed our old flooding concrete deck (more Punch).
we then had a slowly eroding dirt mound in the shape of a deck, so we went ahead and got a new deck (built by a tea-drinking Brit, who was not impressed by the new steps, saying “you either pour smooth, or you pour rough, you don’t do both,”) a new gate (replacing the old crappy unswinging gate), and decided to seal the garage so that the outside world would no longer visible from the inside.
first things first. the old gate with redwood posts gets reclaimed and sent back to modernism:
then, we had to turn the garage inside out.
(the dog’s in there for scale, and looking at all that old art is sort of fun, though anyone who’s interested in how NOT to store paintings can contact me for lots of info. if anything looks pilfered in the photo-i’m sorry)
next comes the diverting of a stream so we can grow real Japanese wasabi and wild mushrooms (and nasturtiums i suppose) and really call it a day. i wish.
reflected vs. reflection
Light arriving at an opaque surface is like me arriving at a buffet. it’s all about which dish will be rejected and which dish will be ingested, since the color of something is determined by which wavelengths of light are reflected and which wavelengths are absorbed. turn away all wavelengths and you are a big white light, eat everything and you are a massive black pig.
sometimes the question is exactly which colors are not being represented.
of course the quality of the buffet matters, and the last time i was faced with a tray of smoked salmon at a breakfast buffet in Hawaii i took the advice of a friend’s father, who suggested a special way to use the tongs. he told me to open it up and run it parallel along the bottom of the platter so you pick up the entire half of a wild salmon in one stroke. he said “you get some looks, but hey, they’ll bring another one out for the other guests.”
one alternative to this is to make your own gravlax, which is perfect if you are tearing down your deck and have some bricks handy to press the fish with. the great thing about making your own is that you can eat it like a burrito and no will give you “some look.” incidentally, fish scales are not opaque surfaces, they are translucent, which means they transmit light as they scatter it, as opposed to plastic wrap, which also transmits light but absorbs the transmitted light.
scattered blue light
it’s always been a great hope of mine to see the green flash at sunset (or sunrise – but that would require some east coast or houseboat type of living), but so far i have either missed it and/or the sun flashed green without me. yesterday i saw a program about a two-person rowboat race across the Atlantic Ocean and wondered whether any of them saw a green flash amidst all that water and all that free time. the two American men profiled had severe ass rash for the entire time they were in the race, some 50+ days, so probably not.
according to Wikipedia the green flash is more likely to be seen when the air is clear (ha!) and the reason it looks green is because the blue light (higher frequency) is scattered out of our line of sight. it also says the green flash can be seen from the Moon, so that’s another place to go, in case the California coast fails to provide anything but unscattered blue light. In any case the flash never lasts for more than a couple of seconds, so my advice is never to turn away when the sun is about to drop.
bend in the road
Canine Sherman under the buckeyes.
composition 101
there’s a theme going on here, but i’m not sure what it is. pretty much it’s a study in color&composition, or two instances of “one of these things is not like the others.”
magic pedals
i’ve been working on a project where the boss is constantly thinking of ways to make money. he’s really good at it, and he’s always trying to angle a better deal, or get a better percentage. it’s a numbers game to him, and the funny thing is that he treats his people really well. you want to be on his side. in fact he treats his people far better than any spiritual non-profit hooha that i’ve ever dealt with. ahem.
the truth is some people can just do that, sit around all day and think of ways to make money. it’s really fun for them. i take the same amount of time and energy and figure out how to make myself a magic pedal.
this too is fun. i guess it takes two to tangle. he gets his money, and i get some of it also, to spend on a six pack of Marinated Turnip in solid Pack from the 99 Ranch Market, pretty much the best condiment in the world, if you can call it a condiment, since i eat it straight out of the jar. what i really wanted to spend my money on was this sign. i was going to run over and slap my credit card down and walk out with it, but it’s attached to their wall.
(It’s hard to read but the bins contain Italian Roast sandwiched between Double French Roast and French Roast.)
muy authentico!
