13 October 05
Arrival of the ATCs
The first week of the month has become a week of waiting eagerly for the mail. Ever since I started participating in the Cyberscribes swap of Artist Trading Cards, I can’t wait to see what other people have done with the theme—this month’s was Equinox of where you are.
Though these are calligraphers, there are lots of other talents there too. The format is so small it’s manageable for a small edition.
This month’s theme is black and white. I’m pondering the skeleton.
Meanwhile, Beth of Cassandra Pages had a nasty Tuesday night; head on over and wish her well…
5 October 05
Adobe CS2
Mostly a new version of software is much like the old with a bit of razzmatazz thrown in so you’ll buy it.
There’s plenty of razzmatazz in CS2, most notably the incredible vanishing point in Photoshop, but how many buildings am I realistically going to change the siding on, unless I suddenly start DeChirichoising my newsletters?
Some of the new features, though, will save me a ton of work. The object style in InDesign, the live trace feature in Illustrator, and the new Bridge browser across the platforms. Installed today. I’m looking forward to having a bit of a design session indulgence over the weekend.
27 September 05
A Day at Adobe
I found out yesterday there was an Adobe conference in San Francisco today, so I joined some folks from the main UC Davis design office on a train jaunt down. Lots of interesting new features in CS2 but it was mostly a ploy to get us to buy it. If I’d had this earlier in the summer my big project would have taken a lot less time, at least if I knew how to use the features in question.
I did another doodle at one rare slightly boring bit. I’m too tired to scan it this evening but I’ll put it up tomorrow.
19 September 05
Orange Substrate
Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud, who taught for a long time here at UC Davis and whose paintings of cakes grace student dorm walls all these years later in print form, is probably responsible for the current wave of Central Valley landscape artists insisting on an orange edge to everything.
Part of this is in the landscape, of course: this is land-of-orange, orange dirt, orange dust, orange buckwheat drying to rust, orange sunsets that turn to deep purple with the dust in the air after the sun goes down.
It’s like a signature, this line. It says I’ve looked at Thiebaud’s landscapes. I’ve seen the orange. And now I’m going to teach you to see it too.
Whether this orange line is enough to constitute a school is not for me to say, but as I sit here looking at the kitchen window (it’s dark out) and see the marigolds, dried and hanging, from our wedding two years ago, I’m willing to see orange in things around here. I even bought some orange block printing ink over the weekend to experiment with some monoprints. I’ll let you know how I get on.
15 September 05
Doodling Away
A recent thread on the Cyberscribes list explored how some people found it difficult to doodle, or to know what to doodle. Clearly, I’m not one of them, at least during Audubon Board meetings…
For some real fun, take a look at what Danny Gregory’s mother’s been doing…
Postscript, 9-16-05: the link to “mother” above no longer works. See Hazel Kazan’s site to view her leafages.
11 September 05
Envelope and Letter Folding
For those who haven’t completely abandoned letter writing, this is an intriguing site.
7 September 05
Ouroboros, Tetramorph, Polycephalos
Back when I was at the Getty in LA a couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of Symbols and Allegories in Art by Matilde Battistini.
I grew up being taken to the Prado in Madrid which houses a fine collection of Renaissance Flemish and Italian art and managed to pick up along the way a lot of the Christian iconography, but this book is a gem.
What today must be studied, memorized, and recognized with a definite “aha!” when spotted in a painting was taken for granted. Just as lot of the allusions in Shakespeare would have been caught by even the hoi polloi at the time. Now, they’re the sign of an elite education and culture.
It’s a bridge, though, between this world and that, and I’m looking forward to reading more. And looking.
1 September 05
Fifty Years of Pigments
My cousin Gainor is having a 50-year retrospective show of her work at the Horizon Line Gallery in Tampa starting on September 23. Well done, Gainor. Thanks for being a luminous presence in my life. (Click here to see a painting by Gainor that hangs in our living room…)
25 August 05
More Lettering Fun
A package containing two wonderful books arrived today from John Neal Bookseller. The first is Logo Font & Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga, something I wonder how I’ve lived without this past year. The second is the book of a show we saw in San Francisco in 2001, Calligraphic Type Design in the Digital Age (an exhibition in honor of the contributions of Hermann and Gudrunn Zapf).
Both these books risk derailing me from myriad other tasks, pleasant and otherwise, over the next few days…
20 August 05
Gadding Round the Getty
I’m in Los Angeles for the weekend, seeing a dear friend. We hit the book arts show at the Getty today. It was fun to see recent Russian homages to early Soviet book arts, El Lissitsky’s One Only Kid, and a fabulous silk spool construction. A favorite was a single page printed 184 times, torn at a slightly further away spot each time, so the book formed a triangular wedge and the page was just legible.
Christina is a print artist of extraordinary talent and we have spent much of the day in breathless conversations about the possible. (And dreaming about unlimited studio space.)