art – Page 137 – Almostfinnish’s Blog

Apples make me smile

“Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.”

Oscar Wilde

I don’t cook but I’ve been buying cookbooks lately.

Yes odd…but I did find that they do have some fun and intriguing facts. I’m all for new ideas these days. They have interesting ways to add fun and food to your next get together with family or friends or even just at home with the fam. My family would be very surprised if I showed up with a dish. I do have a bit of quiet adventure stirring inside of me these days with a touch of spontaneity and humor so this might be the change we have all been looking for.

The latest book that I bought is called the Complete Party Planner (yes it is a cookbook) by Annabel Karmel and this is where I began. The above picture is just a snack I threw together with apples and marshmallows. Called ‘Apple Smiles’. Simple and easy I like that. This book has over 120 ideas.

I’d like to mention another book that caught my attention the first purchase and my catalyst to this whole cooking endeavor called ‘Apples’ by Robert Berkley. Ever since I have been in search for the perfect apple. I can’t believe there are so many different names for so many different apples. This will be a delight. I guess you can compare apple to apples.

It’s only a paper moon

I was hoping to say something profound while I collected my thoughts here.

But I got nothing.

They say…

good artists borrow

and great artists steal.

I’ve been intrigued by some old postcard photographs from the 1900’s called ‘Paper Moon.’ They use an acronym RPPC meaning real photo postcard that originated during the dates between 1904-1918. There are a lot of these images taken with kids or couples; families and friends as they would get their picture taken with this life-size paper moon in the background. These photographs are still around and people collect them. The photographs are sepia maybe black and white or both I’m not too sure. I like old photography to begin with the cameras, the color and the serious faces. I like the whole studio effects and the flatness and how desolate things can look.

I just love this idea and feel the need to explore this topic some more. I just want to bring myself back to that era. In the process maybe bring a good original idea back to life with a new contemporary perspective or modern-day version. I’m in the planning stage to do a painting with this theme. I already have the person and image in mind I just need to get the moon and person sketched out together on canvas. I know some photographs will follow in the mix. How hard could it be to make a paper moon? What does it look like it’s made out of is it wood, fiber glass or foam core?

Of course I have to finish my painting in process before I start another…not.

I have so many paintings in process again. Three that I can think of off the top of my head but I know there are a couple more tucked away.” The fine art of finishing a painting.” Some will need some serious time to get done and I don’t have any serious time at the moment. So they will have to wait until summertime when the days are long. I thought if I worked smaller it would go faster but it’s just as much work to do a small painting as a big painting. So my creative process is divided but it is aways in play.

What’s next on your plate?

I have to laugh. I wasn’t very hungry the other night but my son made sure he let mt know that I couldn’t leave the table until I finished everything on my plate.

I stopped saying that.

*Just a note the flags are at half mast around here but it seems like they are always at half mast these days.

Awaken to my first robin(s)

It is definitely spring here I saw my first robin this year well actually I saw my first eight or nine it was a whole migration of robins and a very hearty bunch of birds at that. I never seen so many before.

My life as an artist has been so minimal these days that I haven’t been able to write about anything. I don’t want to write about a bunch of stuff that doesn’t pertain to the creative process which I know. Athough I am doing a disservice to myself and what wakens me as an artist to not speak. Knowing sometimes it is the struggles in between that create great art.

The United States is at a very interesting time…and the media here is not reporting much. The world has a lot of goings on and their plans are already in the making. I read…and I am not surprised more fascinated as it all makes perfect sense as it is slowly unveiled like a novel. I love a good book! Murder, mystery, deceit, scandals, protagonists and antagonist the whole ca-bash.

A must read…The U.S. military shift comes as the so-called BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – seek to create a monetary system to rival and even surpass the West. While it received little U.S. media attention, last week at its fifth annual summit the BRICS group unveiled what it said was a new development bank aimed at breaking the monopoly held by Western-backed institutions. Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/is-this-why-obamas-responding-to-north-korea/#EPYJ4WbVGo2Rh1XH.99

Another article about Cyprus-Style “Bail-Ins” Are Proposed In The New 2013 Canadian Government Budget!
read more http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/cyprus-style-bank-account-confiscation-is-in-the-new-canadian-government-budget

So life goes on and I know that God/Jesus Christ is in control and his plan is playing out. whatever happens to the United State will be nothing that I can stop delay maybe…but not stop.

Tweets by almostfinnish

Keeping our liberty and art spirit alive.

The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high function, a moment of existence. We make our discoveries while in this state because than we are clear-sighted.

Robert Henri-The art Spirit

We have a magic bullet it’s a smoothy maker. We did a combination of eggs and green peppers and well the eggs turned out green by accident so in the spirit of Dr Seuss’ birthday I said oh look we are having green eggs and ham for breakfast. The kids said no thanks. I said you can’t say no you have to say…I do not like green eggs and ham. I will not eat them here or there I will not eat them anywhere. Personally I wouldn’t eat them with a fox or in a box either note to self never do that again.

This year will go down in history, for the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safe, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future. Adolf Hitler 1935.

This is why Congress will not pass any gun legislation in the USA. We have the 2nd amendment for a reason. “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” Thomas Jefferson

Boo Radley lives across the street.

It’s that time of the year. When my daughter who will stand at the corner of the lot peering across the street for long periods of time according to my watch shivering and whispering to her little brother who follows her around faithfully. It reminds me every time of the book To Kill a Mockingbird you know the part where Scout and Jem would wait to see if Boo Radley would come out of the house. Not that this house looked run down, overgrown or there were any rumors circulating about the neighbors that I care to mention, but instead the haunting decorum of Halloween that they displayed in their front yard religiously ever year antagonizing my daughter as she looks to see and not see at the same time. At night it only got brighter as she peaks through the curtains. I’m sure the neighbors were amused and look forward to her curiosity every year.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was a coming-of-age novel told from the point of view of an adult looking back at her childhood something I keep wanting to do myself. Scout was 9 years old an age I remember very well and she was, as the saying goes, ‘wise beyond her years’. Another familiar line ‘Roaming freely all day, coming home only for meals or the bathroom.’ An era we will only remember as a child and never repeat.

Taking photo 101 is not the same

Photo by almostfinnish

I take a lot of pictures. It’s a habit I learned not on my own. I have two sisters that insisted I take photo 101 in high school probably because they thought it was an easy credit and all you had to do was show up and then leave to go take pictures as they would laugh ‘skip class’. So it was my sibling duty to follow in their foot steps. I intern took this very seriously in learning to break open your roll of film quickly, transferring it onto a reel and then into a case of solution while being in complete darkness hoping that no one comes in and turns on the lights by mistake. More importantly the challenge was at developing a good image in the dark room under some faint light while being all consumed with these vinegar smells that filled the air and trays. You needed to know by smell which one was which because when adding more solution in the dark your sense of smell was more important than your sence of sight. There was a beginning and an end and you can not mix them up.

So once I was set up and ready I was in no hurry to go and could be there for hours. Each attempt was earnestly made a little lighter here darker there and even the pictures that didn’t turn out had some intrinsic value. I regret I don’t have them now tangible and in hand but in memory I see them a building, a pier, people I knew and pets we had. Black and white, some grainy but all from an adolescents point of view.

Now I take pictures download them into adobe where they show up in a matter of minutes. I enhance them in a matter of seconds and then upload them to another site and have them available for viewing. The images are very nice. Digital has not lessened the image. They are sharper and clearer and more dynamic than ever.

I value what I have learned and have a better appreciation for the camera and photography over all. I look forward to what the future brings.

I fear I haphazardly painted over masterpiece by mistake.

photo by almostfinnish

I love the crisp smell of morning when the air is still cool. There’s a distant murmur that the town is waking up and on the road. The hum gets louder and I smell coffee brewing. It’s Saturday I wake up with no regrets. I ponder the day in my studio with one cat by my side the other one is still in bed. It is very dim in here but light is creeping in through the curtains as the day approaches. I feel the room warm up. My paintings sit right in front of me. I see the mistakes I see the progress.

I’m kind of ruminating over one of my latest comments.

art is nothing but paintings. i really cannot stand how people will go to an art gallery and stand there for so long trying to figure out what the painting means. Give me a break!!! Art is nothing but a hobby. i cannot believe people pay so much money fro drawings.

emps79

I for one could only hope that someone would stand there in front of a piece and wonder for a moment it’s meaning while quietly being mocked and disapproved of by its meagreness. Because the process it took for me to get there was more work than I had bargained for. More confidence than I realized and more money than I had anticipated. I still got there whether someone was inspired or not. I’ve personally heard everything from the drunk that came in off the street, from the niceties of blatantly being indifferent to the art, to subtle comment of trying to understand and last the one person who pull you aside and hands you a drink and says you look parched.

It’s a time-consuming hobby and an expensive one too.

But no seriously I think once marketing comes in play isn’t it automatically elevated to be something more? When you open yourself to criticism and critique you are now no longer that quiet hobbiest who paints for enjoyment and relaxation. And having to frame all your pieces and many of them I have to stress for the world to see for a short weekend or a month is now an investment and not just an expenditure. Lastly the number of rejections you have to go through before someone agrees to give you a show is far from comforting.

They are not all going to be masterpieces.

Many are not going to be liked.

My masterpiece has not have been painted yet or I fear I haphazardly painted over it by mistake.

I like watching old movies that well-known stars were in and I think they were pretty bad, young and you know rough but someone seen something in them so they had to start somewhere.

I think a hobbiest doesn’t really let his work see the light of day. The rest of us who try have earned that right to call ourselves artists.

Come visit me at my website at www.cedarlodgeportraitstudio.com

Dillinger lives out back.

This week after little attempt to discourage our newly arrived ground hog that moved in around back of our home to please leave we reversed our decision after hearing the pros in keeping him. He’s quite a handsome and lengthy little animal nothing compared to the rabbits, squirrels and chipmunk that habitat our back forty. There are dogs on all sides of us which should give us some comfort but they seem to not mind him or are oblivious to him as we were.

Its presence seemed so sudden and rudimentary as we notice a pile of dirt a yard long and a foot wide along the back of the house. Thinking to our selves what kind of animal could do that?!? We have no idea when he arrived and even though we thought he might have gone it appears he is still here and liking it. How could our lives get so busy that we would missed such a creature walking back and forth to the garden. Now the cucumbers we had noticed something and were happy to share but obviously they didn’t particularly seem to like them from the sampling of a few and all tasting rather the same. So as we sit here now watching him and evaluating the situation a name that is fitting was all that I could think of. He’ll be hibernating soon and in the spring if we make a bunch of noise like we always do he might then decide to leave on his own behalf. In the mean time I seen that someone put cauliflower on the grocery list.

Otherwise I want to say school is back in session and things have gone back to normal but one can never predict normal when change comes into effect. The freedoms that come with time seem to have some invisible strong holds that we have to battle amongst ourselves. Once won masterpieces will be made.

I call one cat Houdini because he never fails to get outside.

I was up very early this morning not something I normally do but the cats kept me company even after I fed them. Very social animals always in the same room that we gravitate to. They are identical in color like a couple of bookends but not in nature.

We had talked about getting cats for Christmas one year under the condition that we wanted kittens and we wanted two so that they would keep each other company. I was thinking this was a big order to fill and unlikely to happen but it turned out a friend of mine gives me an ad for free kittens available for pick up on Christmas Eve. In disbelief I call and there are two left so I said I’ll take them. She says don’t you want to see them? I said no kittens are cute no matter what. So my husband picked them up late on Christmas eve and they stayed under the tree all night until morning and after Santa came.

One is named blue and the other bear although I wanted to call them Picasso and Pollack. I had a photographer friend who had two cats one was called Kodak and the other was Fuji.

They keep the mouse population down don’t know where they find these mice but they get one every year. Were not sure who’s catching them but we suspect one over the other although they both get rewarded and praised.

I call one Houdini because he never wears his collar and he never fails to get outside.

They are also a couple of pack rats. They can scoop up a necklace and run downstairs before you know it. And hilarious to to see them grab a balloon with there teeth run trying to squeeze it through the cat door repeatedly forwards and then backwards until they make it or pop it. What else do they have downstairs?

They communicate very well for cats loud at times like the rest of us. But don’t shed much. They are worth the 16lbs of cat food we buy every month for them. They are very thin stealthy cats and can put up a pretty mean fight between the two of them. They keep us informed with what is going on outside this house which is comforting. A chipmunk comes and talks to them every morning and some of the neighbors cats come to tease but that groundhog that moved in near by the other day has got them and me both worried.

Full of adventure and kool-aid.

Photo by almostfinnish

It’s another scorching day here in Wisconsin. Bearable at best the shade is a must the breeze a blessing. The clouds at times look like a storm is coming but don’t amount to anything. We are trying not to run our air conditioner. This heat wave won”t last long and knowing were all in it together makes it not so bad and unversal. These days just remind me of when I was a kid. Hot breezy days full of adventure and kool-aid. With the cloud shadows rolling across the yard as the sun peeks in and out.