5 x 7 inch paper cutting with black paper and tissue paper. Sold.
First spring-like rain in Kansas today after a long, long winter. I love winter, but when there’s still snow on the ground in March, I start to feel like Kerouac in “Big Sur”, only with a lot less ocean and a little more mud, and possibly equal amounts of donkey.. depending on where I’m hanging out. The early markings of spring are like a breath of fresh air, so to say.
One of my favorite books of all time is Candide by Voltaire – in my opinion, a perfect reflection of the nature of humans and evidence that humanity doesn’t evolve and history repeats itself (I’m a cynic at times). One of my favorite lines comes at the end when Candide says, “We must cultivate our garden.” A marking of the end of their misery, the characters that withstood are able to embrace happiness in hard, simple labor.
I think in my utopian dream world, I’d be self-sustaining. I’ll start by growing my own herbs for cooking: I spent my snowed-in Sunday afternoon watering and fluffing 72 peat moss pods and filling them up with Thyme, Rosemary & Lavender seeds. It was refreshing. I can’t wait to smell them.
This is the Valentine I made for Heart for Hearts – an annual event organized by Jessica Simorte, a senior art major at the University of St. Mary, to make and distribute Valentines to children in hospitals throughout the Kansas City area. This year, participants made over 600 cards! Check out Jessica’s photography at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=200741924681&index=1.
It’s almost a new year so I’m going to ring it in with a gift to myself – something I’ve been wanting for a lonnggggg time… An 18 x 24 inch light box for backlighting silhouettes for some new stop-motion animation work. Also, a copy of iStopmotion from Boinx software. That’s the software I used to capture the animation I did back in 2004 (see it HERE!). Of course, after 3 complete computer failures and taking a long time to learn my lesson (always backup your stuff!) I’ve lost any and all software so I’m starting afresh. I had built my own light box/ camera rig for that animation but it’s since been dismantled and left for the dust back in NYC… Here’s some of my favorites on Youtube (and some of my main inspirations!):
Part 1 from “Princes et Princesses” by Michel Ocelot. Buy this and watch it over and over and over.
A fragment from “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” by Lotte Reiniger. My all time favorite – I did a portion of my masters’ thesis project on her. This was the first full length animation (Disney might disagree) ever produced (completed in 1926) and took Lotte three years to make.
I also recommend doing a search on Lotte Reiniger on Youtube to see other things she’s worked on (Hansel & Gretel.. Cinderella.. Jack and the Beanstalk)..
Here’s a few more stop-motion animators that I can’t leave out:
• Ladislaw Starewicz
• Yuri Norstein
• Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame)
I’ve also long admired the animation work endorsed by the National Film Board of Canada – you can watch animations on their website, and there’s also quite a few selections on youtube.
I think I like it.
I’ve had a busy week getting ready for next weeks exhibit and organizing a few other things to come over the winter months. I did manage to get out on some old country roads and see the multi-colored trees before all the leaves blew off’em. Beautiful time of year around here… I think autumn shows off best what the midwest has to offer.
Shot at 1600 ISO, f/3.5, 30s exposure at 18mm. I was basically hitting the shutter button every minute – 30 seconds exposure, 30 seconds processing time… Much better show than last night in this part of the world. I captured 6 on camera – this was the best shot – the others were pretty faint. And of course, my battery died about 10 minutes before seeing the longest prettiest one of the night which would have been right in the middle of my camera viewing field. Go figure.
Looks as though it began years and years ago, around the age of 6? I’ve been rummaging through a box of papers that my mom saved from my childhood and found several things that indicate an early interest in cut paper art.
In 2nd grade, and I remember this pretty well, we had occasional art classes with Sister Helen Buessing who was a pretty renowned artist in the area. I made this picture of a caterpillar out of cut construction paper (the dark stripes) and crayon. The original work was more colorful than this. The lighter colored stripes consisted of multiple layers of crayon colors covered with black crayon which was later scratched off to reveal the smooth mixture of colors that lay underneath. Sr. Helen chose some of the works to make into greeting cards, including mine, and this is the only copy I have left. It was pretty neat seeing my work in print back then, and I think I still feel the same excitement seeing it today.