onehouse

Buildings

Immaculate Renovations: These are fun to look at.

Picture Bogging: Day 29 & 30: Atlanta

My sister had to run into a lighting store and as we headed back to the car I noticed a small store that hosted the works of a grassroots arts collective raising money for literacy work and after school projets. I was immediately fascinated by the folk art pieces - tables, benches, bird houses made out of scrap wood and painted brightly in all colors. I am not normally a fan of "word art" where some one paints around a pithy motivational phase commanding me to have joy or hope or whatever. But in this context, the message hand painted on an object made of found objects, it all seemed to work for me.

Most of this work was done by an artist name Ralph Slaughter. Since my sister was moving to Canada, I purchased one of his tables.

The text says "Don't burn your bridges...you never know when you have to cross back over quickly.

Picture Blogging: Day 28: Storytime

This print now hangs over the fireplace in my office. It's by Katy Horan and called Storytime. My friend keeps threatening to steal it so I'm thinking of adding a big bike lock.

Picture Blogging: Day 27: The Arrival

The Arrival: Another beautiful Shaun Tan book that wordlessly draws the reader into an immigrant's experience of a strange new world. I spent a lot of time staring at these intricate landscapes. Book as art object and one to own.

Picture Blogging: Day 26: Comics Yay!

Just for fun check out Zip and Li'l Bit, an online comic. Start with The Upside Down Me.

Lines and Colors says:

In describing these gentle, well crafted adventures, the word “charming” springs to mind, both in terms of being charmed by the characters, setting and unhurried pace of the stories, but also in terms of being charmed by Loffler’s drawings, which are deceptively simple, but reward closer inspection.

Closer inspection is conveniently provided using one of the site’s great “only on the web” features. Clicking on any of the panels produces a pop-up enlargement of the panel in which you can see it in detail. This works particularly well in Loffler’s chosen format of uniform panel shape.

You can click through the enlarged panels with a hidden arrow at the upper right of the panel, until the end of the page. Notice, in the enlarged drawings, the loose but restrained linework in the backgrounds, accented with a bit of texture and a carefully controlled color palette.

Notice particularly, though, Loffler’s nicely varied and beautifully controlled ink lines on the figures and foreground objects.

Zip and Li’l Bit was originally planned as a print project, and I hope it makes it’s way to print at some point. The strip would charm children at bedtime just as much as adults at their computers.

Picture Blogging: Day 25: Indian Church

Emily Carr
Indian Church, 1929
oil on canvas

Switching gears from photos to paintings and illustrations.

It's funny what people see in this painting. Some find comfort in the familiar geometric shape of the little white church holding off the wildness of the forest. I wonder if this is how many of Carr's contemporaries, little Victorians busy carving out their comfortable piece of civilization surrounded by water and the unknowns of the green world about them, ready to drive the natural world into submission as they felt their Christian God had commanded them to in the opening parts of the book of Genesis.

But I have heard that Carr's intent was to show the intrusion of this building into the wilderness. More here.

This is what I see now when I drive through cities with churches hosting empty and large parking lots barren of any kind of vegetation. "How smart we are to be in Here and not Out There. How civilized we are to be inside this Building. How lucky we are to have found the Truth." And all the while a green world grows on outside of all the other large parking lots playing host to other large buildings.

I have a small print of this painting leaning up against the wall on my shelf of contemplative books downstairs. I'll be getting rid of a quite a few of these books soon as they keep my mind inside the little white box sipping tea with the so-called smarty pants. I want to get out into the trees.

Picture Blogging: Day 12: Just pretty.

That's all. Just mellow and pretty. (4:36)

Picture Blogging: Day 7: Rock Drill

I liked this piece. It called me over and asked me to spend a little apocalyptic time.

Jacob Epstein
Rock Drill
1913-1916

Picture Blogging: Day 4: Singer/Songwriters

My mother gave me a gift certificate to Uppercase Gallery for Christmas and yesterday I bought this print by a local artist.

After a few years of having future conversations with bunches of folks across the land, I realized that I didn't even know the birds in my own yard. How do you talk about place and neighborhood if you don't pay attention to what's in your own trees? So I bought a secondhand Alberta bird book and quit what I was doing. I still don't know too much but these singer-songwriters have helped me me along this new and different way.

Picture blogging: Day 3: Perspective.

          

Untitled (Head of a Baby)
Ron Mueck

I took these while visiting the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Since then the gallery has added another piece by Mueck called "A Girl".

More Mueck works here.