Hello 2014

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about:

Don't worry about popular opinion
Don't worry about dolls
Don't worry about the past
Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about growing up
Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don't worry about triumph
Don't worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don't worry about mosquitoes
Don't worry about flies
Don't worry about insects in general
Don't worry about parents
Don't worry about boys
Don't worry about disappointments
Don't worry about pleasures
Don't worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's advice to his 11-year-old daughter in a 1933 letter. The letter is found in "F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters."

Oil pastels

Do I remember how to use these things? Maybe.

Evening on the beach

Art in Flight

Canada's Royal Air Force Snowbirds

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowbirds

Backing up my entire northern life

It took almost 4 years, but I have officially filled up my iPhone. 6 GB of photos alone, it was time to clear out a bit of the riffraff. But upon going to see what was actually on the thing I found everything that we've done in Canada. It hit me that I got my first iPhone the first morning we were in Duncan. It's a library of odds and ends, good meals, funny people watching, beautiful scenery, Einstein, worldwide vacations and portraits of everything I found notable, in order. Birthday Christmas Easter Summer Birthday First Snow First Blossom Camping Changing Leaves Christmas et al. My art, others' art, art I want to make, art I WISH I could make. Before clearing 1500 pics off the phone I doublechecked 3 times that the files were backed up on my laptop. The pictures of my youth barely fill a little shoebox, yet the digital images of the last 4 years number in the thousands. Somehow they all mean something, even the little memories seem worth keeping (at least for a little longer...)

Here's to 4 years of artful days. I present to you:

iPhone, a cross-section:

As long as time, everlasting.

Panda!

And your work will be as good as your ambitions

Arbutus view

 

My desk at work is an endless pile of computers and parts, a graveyard of dead cables, and am continually grateful that I don't have a public-facing cubicle. I thought it needed a better view, so I painted a little peek of Maple Bay for myself.  

First snow!

RaWr

oh, my little town

i now live in a little town, by choice. we had every opportunity to start over and chose to be here. it has its great highs, and sure its lows. every place does. the things we liked and the connections we had here far outweighed the other options. but oh, my little town is frustrating sometimes. this is one of those times.

there is a beautiful graffiti mural that has gone up by a 20 year old artist whose mom runs the community farm store along one of the major roads in town, paralleling the train tracks which hopefully in the not-too-distant future will be once again carrying tourists up and down vancouver island when british columbia gets its funding back in order. on a crumbling brown wall behind a closed hotel cyrus genier painted in beautifully bright greens purples blues and pinks the word community. and now so many including the town and councillors of duncan are up in arms, ordering the removal of the crime.

the problem they claim is that the art is in the style of graffiti and does fall innately into the description of the town graffiti policy, and that it wasn't permitted which would additionally require it to be in the "heritage" paint scheme which i'm sure just means dull pale colors.

first of all, everyone seems to be overlooking the content - it says community, for crying out loud. it is inclusive and done with great care, not in spray bomb haste. it covered a dilapidated old wall that itself was a worse eyesore. there are buildings like the old movie theatre that are old and unkept, or the abandoned blue building on chemainus rd that sits on the entry into town. my point is there are so many bigger problems to solve then a wall that reads community. and maybe i'm inherently biased based on my age, arts education, outsider status - but i truly think those ideas cast aside, it's still a good thing for this little town to look beyond what they've always been and think about who they are, who they are becoming, who they want to be.

and while sure maybe a permit would have been the moral way to go, i agree with the owner who says she doesn't think she would have gotten approval had she gone about it the traditional way. there is a stigma in this town against the new, but in the short 3 years we've been here i can honestly attest to change, to a lightness in the air, where grandparents are carrying their ipads with pride, and old houses are being bought renovated and sold, where a new accredited university is handing out degrees.

change is hard, sometimes it's slow and sometimes it hits you over the head,
one little wall at a time.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/168501706.html?mobile=true

new project::l'avocat

in the baby stages of a new project highlighting all of the places we love to eat drink and be merry here in our own backyard. along the way i came across this nugget of truth (paraphrased by me):

Apparently, during a two millenia-long game of Telephone, the Aztec word ahuácatl, meaning testicles because of their shape, was hijacked by the Spanish invaders and became abogado. When these little crocodile pears were shipped back to Europe, they were anglicized to avocados and then avocat in French. Their original etymology was lost in translation. To the Europeans, l'avocat meant the advocate - a new meaning for the mystifying fruit was born.

and such, the path that leads us here is rarely that of which we expect.

Confession

While tying up a few loose ends on this here cybernook, I had a realization: this site barely has any "art" on it (or at least  t r a d i t i o n a l  art). Somewhere along the way my initial attempt at documenting my own work faded by the wayside. Instead a the focus seems to have shifted to the things I encounter as time rolls on. But if you look at life through "art" colored glasses, isn't all life art? Composing complex dishes, exploring the world surrounding, pondering life's mysteries. It's all art to me. Let's go with that...

Lost, but now am found

About 2x a year I lose something I *swore* was right there, behind the photo frame under the postcard that was strategically placed under the notecards. The stuff on my dresser/side table live in a specific ordered chaos for years at a time, and usually I know exactly were each gem is hiding. Now this is NOT to say that all the crapola on my side of the room is valuable, or worth searching for. Most is not. But its proximity to the important stuff earns it near vital status, as it provides the markers, the buoys of thought in my miscalibrated brain. But this time around, whilst no one was around to poke at my process or call me away for tv shows bonding time or meals, I tackled not just the stuff on top, but the stuff IN and UNDER the other stuff, the stuff that the stuff had been stuffing.

Only problem is the mental buoys are gone, the pots have been pulled and the crabs crawl delicately back into the dark abyss. It's going to take me another year to find where to all my treasures have sunken.

A selection of random items recovered in current raid from drawers/piles/stacks/underthebed/backpacks that are neither the best nor worst:

My iPod Touch! Just in time for Hawaii... camera, email & music in one, plus load up some game apps from my iPhone and I'm good to go.

50's-style robot wrapping paper! Awesomely wicked (& my favorite recovery of the day).

Year-old issue of Phoenix New Times with amazing cover story... based on the first few pages that distracted me from cleaning for a half hour, this story is juicy. Will go perfect with coffee and croissant in the morning.

Unopened box of Hot Tamales. mmmmm love these little guys. They were in a pile of March/April items so I'm guessing they're left over from Easter. That's less than a year ago, so from experience they will still be mildly chewy and not completely overtaken by the cinnamon alcohol. A good find there. 

Christmas ornaments? Have no clue how long these have been hanging around, but I know they're not from last year, but have each other to keep company.

A sketch of a lion, who will only upload upsidedown. Interesting...