Saturday, November 29, 2014

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round One: Luini v. Mabuse!


The Infinite Art Tournament is proud to introduce... the first of the M's.



Bernardino Luini
c. 1481 - 1532
Milanese




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Mabuse
c.1478 - 1532
Flemish



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Vote for the artist of your choice! Votes go in the comments. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Michael5000's Post of Thanksgiving 2014


Gratitude: a five-minute drill. No intangibles like "friends" or "family" or "my health" or "a sense of wonder," because, boring!

1. Agricola

 
2. Sibelius


3. Audiobooks


4. Running shoes that actually prevent injury


5. Basic Instructions


6. Old-school detective fiction


7. Serious literature


8. The sewing machine


9. The Aubrey/Maturin Novels
It was strange to see how quickly this progress took on the nature of ordinary existence: the Surprise had not run off a thousand miles before the unvarying routine of the ship’s day, from the piping up of the hammocks to the drumbeat of Heart of Oak for the gunroom dinner, thence to quarters and the incessently repeated exercising of the guns, and so to the setting of the watch, obliterated both the beginning of the voyage and its end, it obliterated even time, so that it seemed normal to all hands that they should travel endlessly over this infinite and wholly empty sea, watching the sun diminish and the moon increase.
10. Mozart


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How about you?

Thursday, November 27, 2014

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round 3: Kandinsky v. Kapoor!

Wassily Kandinsky
1866 - 1944
Russian; worked internationally

Defeated Willem Kalf decisively in Round 1.
Beat play-in photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in Round 2.







Anish Kapoor
b. 1954
Indian

Clobbered Angelica Kauffmann in Round 1.
Held off living German painter Anselm Kiefer in Round 2.







Vote for the artist of your choice in the comments, or any other way that works for you. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

The Wednesday Post




Hello to you from Colorado
Hunting, Fishing, Horseback riding, and Scenic Jeep Tours arranged.
Plus Booze!

PIONEER MONUMENT
DENVER, COLORADO
This beautiful landmark of Downtown Denver pays homage to the early pioneer and settler of the Colorado Territory.



Hello to you from Colorado & my vacation trip.  It's lovely here, & good weather too.  Went to the mts. for a picnic lunch and saw snow -- cold!  Fine too.  Hope you have had a good summer.

Regards, Jessie May H.


GLACIER CREEK
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
From left to right in the background are Taylor Peak, Andrews Glacier, Hallet Peak, Tyndall Glacier, and Flattop Mountain.
Union Pacific Railroad Colorphoto




Hi Gang

The country out here is fantastic.  The first night of camping in the mts. @ 10,000 ft the temperature droped at night to 18 above.  Glad I had a double sleeping bag with me.  Plus Booze

Katie

p.s. We're heading Southwest!



Highway 40 S, Glenwood Canyon
Colorado River near Glenwood Springs, Colo.



Dear Mr. Jones,

I thought I would write you a line from out here in Colorado.  It's nice to be home again.  Thanks for showing us the VibraHarp and the Carillon controls, etc.  The Fair certainly was wonderful.

Sincerely, Kenneth Tillstson

Am sending this in a letter as it will be more sure in getting to you.


BOX CANYON MOTEL
Ouray, Colo.
2 blocks West of U.S. Highway 550
Phone 325-4531
Attractive motel with 22 units, some kitchens.  Hot water heat, combination baths.  A quiet, cool location with beautiful view of the mountains at an elevation of 7706.  Sundecks, playground and picnic area available.  Hunting, Fishing, Horseback riding, and Scenic Jeep Tours arranged.  Your hosts Ray and Joyce Scoggins.



Deer Park, Ca  5-4-79

They bought a house.

Dear Harriette,

Ed & I will arrive at Aurora, Thursday, May 10 at 1 p.m.  Bruce will meet us.  Monday at 6:30 p.m. we leave for Los Angeles by train.  Would you send a card to Bruce.  I could see you Mon p.m.  No meals.  Love, Lois



Aerial View of Denver, Colo.



Saturday a.m.

Hello to you from beautiful Colorado.  I have been having a wonderful time going to "special places." This is my first trip without my sister who died in December, and I miss her very much.

I hope you are well and enjoying each day.  I go home next week.

Best regards,
Jessie May Hamilton

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round Two: Hayter v. Leonardo da Vinci!

After nearly a year with no First-Round ties, we had two consecutive ones this week in the matters of Laurencin v. Lawrence and Legar v. Leighton. They will re tire to the green room for at least three months, and Stanley Hayter will take on the winner of Leonardo da Vinci v. Lely -- which is to say, Leonardo da Vinci. Let's see how he does!



Stanley William Hayter
1901 - 1988
British

Tied with Raoul Hausmann in his first try at Round One.
Beat Erich Heckel in a second go at Round 1 by a two-vote swing.  YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!







Leonardo da Vinci
1452 - 1519
Italian

Pounded Sir Peter Lely in Round 1.






Vote for the artist of your choice in the comments, or any other way that works for you. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

Monday, November 24, 2014

The New Monday Quiz Pilot

Back in the day, this online daily was famous not for its art but for its quizzes.  Weren't those fun!?  No?  Well.  I got a bee in my bonnet recently (these things happen when I get assigned to too many trainings, meetings, and other occasions at which one must sit still) to fire up the old quiz engine again.

Here's a pilot!  If people say "YAY A QUIZ!" or imply as much, then I'll probably make more.  If they don't, then this could be a one-off.  Enjoy!

1. This isn't a particularly famous painting, but it's representative of its famous painter.  Who is he?


2. According to tradition, this man's famous book is a collection of the sermons of the apostle Peter. He was the first bishop of Alexandria, and his symbol is a winged lion.

3. This isn't the way you'd usually look at it, but it's a population map of __________ just the same.


4. When mysterious strangers make a surprising prophecy, this character responds by saying:
"Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:
By Sinel's death I know I am thane of Glamis;
But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman; and to be king
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor."
5. This shows the same passage written twice in the two scripts of the ____________ language.


6. It has the lowest freezing point of any elemental metal.

7. What country printed this postage stamp in its 20th year of independence?


8. He is a fairly well-known composer despite having only three "hits": two of them are the opera Boris Godunov and the tone poem Night on Bald Mountain.

9. This is a still from the #41 movie on the imdb database's user-voted listed of the best 250 movies of all time, right above The Pianist and right below Terminator 2.  What is the name of this 2000 film?


10. Dorothea Brooke is torn between dusty old Mr. Casaubon and dashing Will Ladislaw in this English novel?

Saturday, November 22, 2014

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round One: Lowry v. van Leyden!

L.S. Lowry
1887 - 1973
British



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Lucas van Leyden
1494 - 1533
Dutch



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Vote for the artist of your choice! Votes go in the comments. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Notes Toward a Somewhat Crazy Quilt

If you have a lot of storage space and a "waste not, want not" mentality, you can start to run into trouble after a couple of decades of quilting.  Every project generates perfectly useable scraps, and you try to keep them organized, and eventually you have enough little postage-stamp sized pieces of fabric to completely cover the state of Idaho.

I've long imagined that I would sit down with the scrap someday and just start sewing some of it together.  And now I have.


When I first sat down, I didn't know if I was going to try to arrange patterns by value, or color, or what.


Eventually, I realized I was just going to start sewing stuff together at random.


 Some of these fabrics have been on my hands since the first few weeks I took up the craft, in 1994.


I didn't have a real plan for what I was doing, but fortunately we had a big staff meeting at work.  These are often good creative catalysts.  At this one, I realized that I was going to cut the rough blocks I was making into 10" squares, and put them into a frame of 2 1/2" white strips.  They suddenly look a lot tidier when squared up.


Some people have asked whether this is a "crazy quilt."  It's not, exactly.


A proper crazy quilt would have lots of fancy top stitching to hold the piecing together.  Although there's a small amount of applique in this one, and occasional places where I play some tricks with the piecing, there isn't and won't be anything you could call fancy top stitching.  That's not my thing.


I think a proper crazy quilt would be "crazy" all the way through, too, not framed in blocks.


I'll let you know when it's finished, which should be sometime between Christmas and the 2020s.

Incidentally: the depressing thing?  I've made more than fifty of these blocks, and the impact on my collection of fabric scraps has been undetectable.