People are Strange October 22, 2009

Oh, wow, look what I’ve found on Stumbleupon. A video of “People Are Strange” showcasing an amazing notebook full of artwork (Sturdy Heaven Blog). http://sturdyheaven.com/blog/2008/11/28/people-are-strange/

I love The Doors and Jim Morrison is a legend, not just for his music and personality, but his poetry as well. Check out The American Night for some beat poetry. (as for Beat Poetry my favorite is still Langston Hughes though. A Raisin in the Sun.)

The following portrait of the Mojo was a lot of fun to paint and is hanging in my living room along with some other portraits of other legends.

EscapeArtists gather here September 13, 2009

In an attempt to make this blog even more eclectic I would like to share another obsession of mine with you … Science Fiction … I am a huge fan of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in literature, film and art. But I am also an avid podcast listener. I love my iPod to bits, next to my iPhone it is my constant companion and I listen to podcasts on a daily basis. I might blog about them one day but today I want to get you all to check out an amazing story I listened to on one of my favorite Science Fiction podcasts ESCAPEPOD http://escapepod.org called “Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store” by Robin Sloan.

I won’t go into why the story is so great, go see or hear for yourselves.

Enjoy. … and go “make things that last”.

PS: This is my beloved iPod with a Gelaskin designed by Colin Thompson, one of my favorite children’s book authors  and illustrators ….

oh yeah, guess that brings me to another obsession, …. children’s books … but I’ll leave that for another post.

Cradle to Grave September 11, 2009

I saw an amazing exhibit at the British Museum in London when I popped in for a quick visit yesterday. Cradle to Grave by Pharmacopoeia is an art project where all the medications a man and a woman took throughout their lives were sown into small pockets in a long stretch of fabric accompanied by fotos of the man and the woman taken at various stages of their life.

This is not just an amazing piece of art it is also a biography, a cultural artifact documenting social change and most of all a history of health in the UK in the widest sense. In lieu of recent discussions on changes in the American health system with President Obama having to defend himself against accusations of having socialist tendencies (!) and especially considering how violently many Americans oppose a NHS-style health system …. this piece seemed especially significant to me.