Here are some recent Gelatin Prints from the end of 2011. Image Scale is 7.5″ x 7.5″ From the Warrior Series From the Neighbors Series From the FACADE series From the Shepherd Series From the Garden Series
A series of linoleum cuts.
Enjoy
FACE-1: Lino Cut 2010 M. Evans
FACE-2: Lino cut 2010 M. Evans
FACE-3: Lino Cut 2010 M. Evans
Left Hand Tenor: Lino cut 2010 M. Evans
Just a quick musical blog for Autumn. Fresh from 1979! (yeow) Recorded on a new, tiny little recording doohickey that I set up in the bathroom to catch some of that bathroom reverberatious vibe. Chunka-chunka!
Click here to listen to The Fall Song (1979)
Enjoy!
I’m sure many of you bloggettios have been wondering: “Where has our humble narrator danced off to?” Getting sick of the loon on the front page, the saccharine sentiments regarding a baseball club from Chicago that could actually pull it off? (oh say it ain’t so, Joe… where’s the eternal optimist now?) And I’m sure a few are wondering” “hey, what happened to ‘Misty’ that sweet and fragrant and blue WordPress theme that you had (somehow) grown so attached to?” Well, Coraline came along and just won my heart. So I clicked and that was that.
The Bike Wisconsin Wrecking Crew: Me, Gregory Goodness, and Brennan (don't mess with him, he has a knife)
Anyway, it’s been a lovely, hot, frustrating, exhausting and foot grinding summer out on the road working the bike tours. We’re like carnys but with a bachelor of arts degree. I must say I had a great time working with the three criminals above. Brennan could’ve been my son, but we treated each other like equals (which is nice considering B. finagled lots of beer outta me). If it wasn’t for Greg’s muscles, we never could’ve gotten those motel bags delivered. The tent service was a huge ordeal, but Brennan made it work, and the staff and volunteers pitched in big time. Hats off to everyone.
Hey, Brennan is up in Seattle now, making his way in their school system, either as a PA or PE instructor. best of luck to the young man. Greg H. starts a course in visual something or other at MATC this fall. He latched into some government program that pays him to go to school. Go stimulus package!
Hey I’m getting into my studio more, doing some lino-cut printing and maybe a drypoint prints too. I got a new toy – a small printing press. it’s it totally cool. Now I can REALLY make some impressions. I promise to get some pics up cause I know everyone loves pictures.
Hey Mindy continues her Yoga Teacher training and is queued up to visit India late this fall. Too cool! They will hit lots of sacred locales like Dar es Salaam, Delhi, and some places way way up high in the north. With luck she’ll bring back one of those tunicky things for me.
Hey The cats are terrorizing the bird lady and her loony spouse across the street. I’m sure it’s nothing more than the occasional cat dookie in the garden. Hey, if she stopped feeding peanuts to the squirrels, I might do something about it… but those damn squirrels just come over and start digging up our garden, and our seedlings, trying to bury their stupid peanuts. The occasional cat-slain chipmunk? Hey, some collateral damage occurs in every conflict. What’s a headless grinny in the grand scheme of things. Hey There are WAY TOO MANY chipmunks in the world.
Hey I couldn’t resist this Gibson in the last year. A real tone monster and fun as hell. It has chased all the others out of the house. It’s fun as hell and makes me feel like an old folksinger… which I am! Did I say it’s fun as hell? I did? What the hell’s that all about, Hey!
Gibson J-185
Oh and as far as the Cubs go… Starlin Castro Rocks!
Hey, let’s make it a short blog this time. Later!
Mommy loon with a passenger
The ice on Lake Monona here in Madison hadn’t been out more than 10 days when the loons started congregating again. Their carefully organized advance teams had flow up from Arkansas and Missouri along the flyway and reported that the ice had broken around Monona Terrace and fishing was plentiful for bluegills, crappies, and yearling white bass and minnows. Along my bike commute, just south of the convention center, no fewer than 3 dozen heavy bodied birds could be seen trolling about – their heads and beaks just above water in submarine fashion. Then, as if on signal they “dive! dive! dive!’ Camera spotters with telescopic lenses set up along old Law Park shoot pictures of the common loon as if they’d never seen anything like it before. But one must admit, there is a comforting and entertaining aspect to these returning birds. It means spring is making its inevitable creep north.
Click here to HEAR a great loon call
An additional returning critter is the peregrine falcon couple who have once again made residence in the nest house atop MG&E near Blair St. These tremendously fast birds are fun to watch as they work the area, readying their nest for a new brood.
Peregrine in flight
Speaking of creeping north, Baseball will finally return to the northland this weekend with opening day. To some folks in Wisconsin this means the eternal hope that a team based in Milwaukee will finally find its way into the playoffs. But seriously, opening day means that the Chicago Cubs will once again return to their ivy covered home in Wrigley Field. This year they bring some hope that was not fulfilled in 2009 when, in the 100th anniversary of their last pennant, injury and the ill-will brought on by the presence of Milton Bradley, and other distractions left them with a sub-par finish. This spring, a few new faces with some hot bats (Tyler Colvin) and a refreshed pitching staff have many of us feeling positive about the 162 game haul. Chemistry is key. With luck we won’t have to ingest too many chemicals to drown the sorrow of another lost season.
As Ernie Banks used to say so many years ago: “The Cubs do it again in two thousand ten” (wait… what will they do again?)
Hey, don’t get me wrong: the whole Avatar experience is just that… an experience! Hi fidelity, 16 channel, body throbbing surround sound; 300 trillion dollar special FX software (invented by the MAN himself); IMAX 3D with vomit inducing flying creature action, and the frosting on the cake — the US Army OBLITERATING the Mother Tree. Wow! I loved that! Pocahontas meets Dances with Wolves meets The Terminator meets ‘please-forgive-me-for-I-have-sinned-against-the-earth.’ The size of this shaggy dog eclipses that big rock in Australia. But those little jelly-fish things floating in the air in front of me while the Navi roamed blissfully through the branches of the mother tree… just blew my mind. Almost as good as the bad trip I had on Gray Thunder acid in 1972.
Now my father has this huge cat, Rascal, and when I visited him recently I took a close look at this cat: it has a big flat nose and is a spittin’ image of the Navi. Ha! All this technology and you copy the face of cat living in Cleveland Heights?
Rascal: Inspiration for the Navi - can you see what I'm talking about?
Navi: Based on a cat living in Cleveland Heights
Eduardo Paolozzi: An inspiration for the Daleks
Oh God! Its a Dalek! Run for your fishing life or you will be EXTERMINATED!
But seriously, I mean… every one who is half his or her worth on earth would go ga-ga over a 10 foot tall humanoid thing. Tall is the thing. All famous models are at least 9 feet tall. Nuns – who rule a good part of the world – are all approximately 14 feet tall. Basketball players are tall. Abraham Lincoln was tall. All in all it’s just another brick in the wall is Tall, a tall tale. A ten foot tall creature with the face of a cat, pastel blue-green skin, great legs and a cool tale? I’m in love!
I happened to get to a theatre in the middle of the day and caught a matinée (with a really nice group of octagenarians) at the Cedar-Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights. What a great old school theater this is. We saw “The Hurt Locker” – right after the awards deal last week.
From the Hurt Locker: A soldier approaching a bomb which he will diffuse with his hands.
In every story there is a stick or an arm or a hand which reaches out and either draws you in or keeps you at a slight distance. We need this so we can maintain our own place, our personal definition and yet be near enough to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ the new myth, the new metaphor. That distance allows us to stay at a safe distance, to keep emotions in check, or to enter into it deeper if we care to (or dare to). When a human voice is not available, the technology — the word on the page, an image on celluloid or video, or the virtual world of the internet provides a medium for transmitting the stories.
Technology, while an essential element of life in the new millenium, has one huge drawback: it allows us to remain distant, anonymous, remote. Cell phones are great if you are stuck in the fog on a dark road or need to transact business 24/7, but not a good thing when it replaces being face to face. A radio controlled ‘drone’ aircraft, bombing suspected terrorists is good when it protects the lives of soldiers, but bad when it dehumanizes killing, like a video game. Video games are fun for young kids, but unhealthy when they swallow up the precious hours of our youth in damp cellars, becoming numb, blasting away at virtual enemies. The games become nothing more than early training for the defense department. And in the case of Avatar the film seems to be an over-used cautionary tale cloaked in 300 million dollars of technological bling. Sure, it looks good, but what’s new about it? What’s new about the story? During a time when we have too much information pounding into our retinas, our ears, or senses, we need rich, organic stories to remind us what being human is all about. We need stories of loss and love and comedy and foible and imperfection told to us by the human voice or a word on paper. We need a small room with seven actors rambling on to a crowd of thirty-one on a Friday night in Madison, Wisconsin or Chicago Illinois or Omaha, Nebraska. We need a back-yard fence and the neighbors talking. We need to cut off the WI-FI at the Cafes, leave the laptops at home and get back to talking to each other. At this time we don’t need substitutes for reality, we need the warm breath of the next human.
So get out on your bicycle. Feel the spring breeze. Take out your ear buds. Listen for that sound, that story… that’s a human talking. Don’t miss it.
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