Vintage Family Vacation
Art in queue, knives warming. Here’s an old family photo for your viewing pleasure.
Vern Ostdiek
I was just browsing through my pictures, and came upon some pictures taken by Vern O. – longtime friend of the family – that I had “borrowed” off my mom’s computer. Vern was a physicist, astronomer, author, hang glider pilot and teacher. You’d usually find him dwelling in a farmhouse in the outskirts of town with his cat, or sometimes cats. Many many cats. Vern was a big influence in my life and in the lives of many that I know and don’t know. He left the world in October of 2008 way too young, but nobody could ever say he didn’t live 1000 times more than most of us. Here’s some views of the world from Vern’s lens:
Jalal ad-Din Rumi says…
“Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.”
Never Satisfied
See that new Rural Pearl header image up there? That colorful one? .. I’m working on something new.. something cut from paper. This one is temporary. Like all things really.. oooooh.
Concerning Ray Pearson
“The beauty of the country about Winesburg was too much for Ray on that fall evening. That is all there was to it. He could not stand it.”
From the chapter “The Untold Lie” in Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.
Bill Ham, oh man
© Bill Ham (from billhamlights.com)
I’m not great at transmitting information, but I will say that I think Bill Ham’s “action painting” is rather breathtaking. View his website here: billhamlights.com
© Bill Ham
I remember seeing the image above as one of the promotional images used for the “Summer of Love” show at the Whitney Museum in NYC in 2007. I can’t believe I didn’t make it to that show. I digress. I’ve been leaning towards working some watercolors into my cut paper work and want to achieve a ‘pseudo-psychedelic’ effect with the paint. Bill Ham’s work will serve as a source of major inspiration.
Treasure Trove of Sherwood Anderson
A whole online collection of works by my favorite author, Sherwood Anderson, is available on The Literature Network.
Here’s their intro to his biography: “Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), American author, poet, playwright, essayist, and newspaper editor, wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919), “The Book of the Grotesque”. A collection of excellent examples of the short story genre and set in small town America, the stories are loosely connected by journalist George Willard writing of the sometimes “grotesque” sides of the human condition including poverty, marginalisation, love and romance. Many of Anderson’s contributions to American Literature reflect his own struggles between the material and spiritual worlds as husband, father, author, and businessman and also cover issues as wide-ranging from labour conditions to marriage.” (online-literature.com).
Not only will you find Winesburg, Ohio and The Egg (seemingly, in my opinion, his most represented works online), you’ll also find Windy McPherson’s Son, Seeds, The New Englander and much more! Here’s my personal THANK YOU to online-literature.com. I’m going to have my nose on the screen for the next few days…
The Philosopher (an excerpt)
“If you have your eyes open you will see that although I call myself a doctor I have mighty few patients,†he began. “There is a reason for that. It is not an accident and it is not because I do not know as much of medicine as anyone here. I do not want patients. The reason, you see, does not appear on the surface. It lies in fact in my character, which has, if you think about it, many strange turns. Why I want to talk to you of the matter I don’t know. I might keep still and get more credit in your eyes. I have a desire to make you admire me, that’s a fact. I don’t know why. That’s why I talk. It’s very amusing, eh?â€
-Doctor Parcival in Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Goethe says…
“Whatever you can do or imagine, begin it;
boldness has beauty, magic, and power in it.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson says
“I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds – the one inside us and the one outside us. As the result of a constant reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate.”
-From The Mind’s Eye