6: The Amazing Dowel
On Thursday while at a craft store on a hunt for a paint-by-number kit I came across a display of wooden dowels. Some of them were labelled as “ecologically sourced” and were made of various tones of wood, not just the usual pale tan that such dowels usually are. For some reason I became obsessed with this one particular 5/8″ dark brown dowel and decided to buy it as a gift for Ashley and Justin for this weekend’s (very late) family Christmas party. Kind of a joke gift, sort of, but at the same time, I was dead serious…I actually think the dowel is really great as a “sculptural” object. But it’s also functional! So I drew up this instruction sheet to accompany it.
The gifts were given this morning, and I’m proud to report that the dowel offered much amusement in prop comedy.
5: Forgotten Worlds
Today I suddenly remembered that I set up a Cafe Press shop in 2004. Nobody ever bought anything from it (why would they?). I can’t believe that all my “products” were still there (and that I remembered my account login on my first guess). So I tinkered with a couple recent drawings and made some new designs.
Here’s the shop if you wanna look: Bergman’s Bear
A few things I made:
I got a Boshi shirt printed up years ago and I’m wearing it now (which is how the existence of the Cafe Press shop was remembered). I actually like it a lot, but I’m unsure how the new designs will come out. Maybe the printing method or shirt stock has changed? And, I think the images I uploaded will work OK, but who knows? They look funny in those faked-up product previews. I want to order some and find out!
Boshi, for those who don’t know, was our rabbit, rescued as a stray who wandered into a friend’s backyard. She was one tough bun. The design is based on a photo of her. The text (“Thank you for thinking of me”) is based on some text I used to see on, if I remember right, a gumball machine at the now-long-gone Northampton eatery Gwen And Deb’s. I think the purchase of the gum benefited disabled veterans. I found it very moving, that the humble gumball machine expressed gratitude for your compassionate thoughts. The shirt is not intended to be a shirt about thinking about animals or animal rights or animal testing (though you’re welcome to see it that way), more just a weird expression of feeling compassion.
As far as this daily posting goes: I will be going to the Durand Family Late Christmas Celebration this weekend and I may not get it together enough to create self-publishing posts before I go.
1 and 2: Production Numbers
Over the past few days I’ve been sucked into an abyss of individually hand-stamping seemingly endless donor-thank-you/New Years cards for my place of employment (note to self: while this is very sweet, never never do this again…always take the shortcut and buy pre-made cards…oh my gawd…) and Terraria, an open-ended video game that I play by endlessly digging subterranean tunnels in search of precious ores which I can then craft into objects to decorate my virtual “house.” I’ve also had more than my share of nasty headaches.
I have this idea for 2012: to try to post the results of a daily creative activity. But I didn’t do one yesterday. I guess I can set these posts to go back in time and make it look like I did one…? But who would do such a thing?! Never!
Such possible activities may include:
- painting or drawing…the usual
- songs/music/audio of some kind
- improvised monologues or stand-up comedy
- puppets
- masks and costumes
- photographs
- video
- animation
- poetry
- write a review of something (music, movie, exhibition, etc)
- comics!
- instructions/how-to
- sculptures
- land art
- storyboards
- conceptual wingy dingies
- recipes I invented
- dioramas
- collage
- short stories
And such and so forth. Yesterday, while I did not post anything, I did watch Dancer in the Dark with the intention of writing a review of it. But I didn’t feel like writing a review after I finished it. I was especially moved by the transitions to the musical numbers (if you haven’t seen it: it is a musical, and partially about musicals. Bjork plays a musicals-loving Czech immigrant who escapes her difficult reality by imagining fantasy song-and-dance sequences). It’s a bit of an understatement to call it a sad movie, and it seems a lot of people hate the director Lars von Trier for this (among many other things)–blaming him for intentionally manipulating the story in “unrealistic” ways in order to generate such a tragic outcome (“…so many motions of sorrow and cruelty that the film turns into a masochist’s orgy” [source]). I have to say–I really do not see a problem with this. Sometimes you want to tell a sad story and connect your audience to sadness–OK! The “unrealistic” charge and its variations also really bug me: first off, terrible things do happen to good people, and people engage in bizarre and unsustainable behavior, both more often than I think we want to admit; and second, since when does a movie character have to be familiar or predictable, anyways? So what if their actions confuse you or make you uncomfortable? I think it can feel “good” to be manipulated in such a way, to feel that sadness, to dip into that part of the emotional spectrum. Lately my emotions have been pretty stable, which does not to me feel like a healthy way to live, day in and day out. I need a diet of some deep feeling. Does this make me a masochist in search of an orgy? Maybe I should write more in defense of sentimentalism, or explore what are the emotionally manipulative things that I’m OK with and those I’m not. Is it more that what people commonly deride as “sentimentalism” is actually failed attempts at generating sentiment? AKA, is this partially a language problem? And is my grammar even making sense? Eh, it’s late, I just don’t feel like saying more about it right now, though I have many thoughts percolating. And I didn’t feel like saying anything about it last night, hence the lack of a post.
I suppose that last paragraph is sort of a stand-in for my lack of a post yesterday?
Today I kept things pretty easy by making a little watercolor painting. Hex Dancer has returned, despite my brush with mega-frustration as described in my last blog post. But this time the Dancer is wearing fuzzy clothes and I think of it as a sort of kappa-ish water imp. I haven’t used watercolors in forever but I enjoyed it and will surely do more.
