Mother Earth is glorious

Sometimes I get completely lost on Google maps exploring the world. Fractals rivers and what looks like layers in a quartz rock and little man-made watered dots in the desert. 

Story of China

I have been watching The Story of China on PBS and it is fantastic. I have to watch them a couple of times to take all the information in ;) The last episode was talking about the gardens of a palace and one place caught my attention so I had to go investigate. The description was "Pavilion of Fragrant Snow and Azure Cloud". I mean really, how does THAT not stop you in your tracks? Humble Administrator's Garden had many Pavilions and honestly, I wish I could visit each one at peak season and just sit there for a day and take in the fragrances.

Celestial Spring Tower: An octagonal tower with flying eves, built around a preexisting well called the celestial spring. 

Fragrant Sorghum Hall: A five bay hall open on four sides with hipped-gable roofline. The name comes from sorghum fields that once existed near the garden. The windows are decorated with boxwood carvings of scenes from Romance of the Western Chamber. 

Orchid and Snow Hall: A three bay hall internally divided by a lacquer screen engraved with a map of the garden. Orchid and snow are symbolic of ritual purity. 

Pavilion of the Leaning against Rainbow: An attached square pavilion with hipped gable roofline and flying eves built in front of the main entry to the central garden. This pavilion is the vantage point for a borrowed view of North Temple Pagoda.  

Pavilion of Lotus: A terrace open on two sides with a hipped gable roofline and a portico on all four sides. It overlooks a lotus pond and was named for the verse by Yang Wangli, "To the horizon green lotus leaves seem to extend infinitely; under the sun reddish lotus flowers go bright scarlet." A scholar stone is mounted in the middle.  

Fragrant Isle: A landboat structure, named for the smell of the lotus blossoms in Surging Wave Pond  

Listening to the Sound of Rain Hall: Named for the sound of rain on banana trees. It anchors an enclosed courtyard with rockery and pond. 

Peony suffruiticosa Pavilion: Also called the Embroidered Silk Pavilion, it is a square pavilion open on three sides. It is sited on top of a yellowstone rockery and forms an ideal vantage point for viewing the islands.

Busy week

I did three illustrations on top of other work. I  have a little too much fun at my job. ;)

 

Finding focus

I have never been more disgusted to be an American citizen than I am this day and all the days since November 8th. 

I have taken myself off of Facebook. After unfriending 90% of my friends and family. Literally deleting most of my family from my life. I am intense, too focused on what this present administration is doing to our country. This is NOT a joke. This is NOT normal. This is NOT a religious movement, as some of my Texas family believes. I understand Republicans voted on abortion ... but really, do you give up your entire decent belief system just to get abortion illegal in this country. Do you allow a maniac and his family to use the United States as their personal ATM machine while breaking every ethical law in the book? 

So, now. I am trying to focus on some beautiful things again. It is hard. It is hard to find a smile when someone tells a joke. I think to myself ... this is not a joking time in our country. I don't want to watch the Today show and segments about the best mascara or how to cut up a watermelon. I think ... how shallow can we be right now? Our country is falling apart and they want to concentrate of trivial crap. So I have given up watching morning news shows and opt for CNN, MSNBC, BCC, Cspan, and any other news organization that will focus on what is going on in this country's downfall. 

I have never felt the need to own a gun but I told my husband the other day that I want to buy a couple of guns and learn how to use them. I see and hear of the "next civil war" and I am not convinced that we are not heading for one right now.

The alt-right is so far away from anything decent and true. That I am not sure what is going to happen next in this country and I am truly scared.

I keep thinking ... what would people have been doing when Hitler was taking over Germany? Some would sit back and see nothing unusual going on. And some would say and see ... we live in a dangerous time right now and speak up against it.

Color

RABARI. Doshi Levien for Nanimarquina from Maite Felices on Vimeo.
Dresses with mirrors Deepak Perwani bridal spendlor

Purple explosion

WoodSwimmer

A music video made entirely from wood for a song by bedtimes.xxx/music, WoodSwimmer is based on a concept I developed while designing a new stop-motion universe where wood is the primary element. The sequences are cross-sectional photographic scans of pieces of hardwood, burls and branches. It is a straightforward technique but one which is brutally tedious to complete.

You can see photos here.

WoodSwimmer from bfophoto on Vimeo.

Tamae Mizukami

I am struck by the beautiful simplicity of Tamae Mizukami's illustration of trees. I can't turn away, I want to see more and more. 

More of her art on Flickr

Oliver Jeffries

I know it is hard to be an artist full time, but Oliver Jeffries seems to be a master and having a great time creating the most fabulous kids books! 

Instagram

Requiem For A Soldier

With or without lyrics the Band of Brothers theme song, Requiem For a Soldier is one of the most beautiful songs ... always makes me feel like I am hearing a heavenly chorus of angels. I echo what what was said on the video, stay safe out there wherever you may be. For my uncles, grandfathers, cousins who served in war. Strangers who sacrificed all to make us safe. Thank you! 

"You never lived to see 
What you gave to me 
One shining dream of hope and love 
Life and liberty 
With a host of brave unknown soldiers 
For your company, you will live forever 
Here in our memory In fields of sacrifice 
Heroes paid the price 
Young men who died for old men's wars 
Gone to paradise 
We are all one great band of brothers 
And one day you'll see we can live together 
When all the world is free 
I wish you'd lived to see 
All you gave to me 
Your shining dream of hope and love 
Life and liberty 
We are all one great band of brothers 
And one day you'll see - we can live together 
When all the world is free" 

Envelope Poems

I want this book: "The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems" 

Browse the Emily Dickinson Collection, Amhearst College, online.

Listening room

I really need to get back to listening to Audible (I even have two credits) ... instead of the news and screaming obscenities at the radio. 


I might try this as well, LibriVox, Free Audiobook Collection. They have a nice blog for monthly picks. Sanity, is important and there is nothing better than to escapte into a book story on the drive to work in traffic.

“Seeing Nature” typeface

Celebrate natural shapes and flowery letterforms with this fanciful nature alphabet called “Seeing Nature.” This font is a bit different from other OpenType fonts we usually feature at Chank.com because it is provided to you today in the form of a great big image file, where you need to select each letter, then copy and paste the full-color letter images to create new colorful words. It is an image file you can open and use in Photoshop. These letters word create at the Minneapolis Institute of Art as part of a fontmaking workshop at the museum’s Third Thursday event recently, in conjunction with AIGA-MN and the MN Landscape Arboretum. Seeing Nature typeface here.

More fun fonty things here on my pinterest board.

Owen Davey - dots, lines, patterns

Dungeness Crab Timelapse from Owen Davey. Isn't that fantastic? 

Dungeness Crab Timelapse from Owen Davey on Vimeo.

Marie-laure Cruschi

I want to come back as this illustrator ;) - Marie-laure Cruschi.


Live Illustration with Marie-Laure Cruschi (Cruschiform) 3/3 - hosted by Michael Chaize

Sticky situation

My obsession with cactus art continues. I really, really need to make or buy some of these. I have a couple of birthdays coming up ... I am thinking a sticky present. 

 These very graphic wooden cactus from Urbanmasquerade ... are just too adorable. 

Ready-to-make, precut poplar wood Cactus. Do not expect it to grow, but count on it to make a very good impression by PAPIER TIGRE. 

DIY: Wooden Succulents over at think.make.share.

Wooden sculpture made of pine wood from Aminadav forest near Jerusalem.

And yes, I just bought two of these, wooden cactus building toy set.

Cactus Christmas tree! YES!

West Elm : Wooden Cactus.

 

Cactus Sanya Opuntia coat rack ...

DIY Christmas Cactus
 

Wired cactus

More cactus on Pinterest.

Sand and stone

For 20 minutes I was whisked away to Acacus, Libya; Petra, Chad and was grateful. To remember the beauty that has been left for us to discover. Thankful to the internet that I can visit and see these remarkable places without leaving my living room.

I don't really want to be ranting about politics every day. I don't like politics. Like most artists, I just want to get lost in my studio to play and create. The last year+ my anger and frustration has taken over my creativity, except what I create for work, all else has taken a back seat. A better description would be "playfulness". I feel guilty if I am feeling happy and distracted from the appalling corruption going on in our government. I even get mad at the morning news shows for daring to have something trivial on, like the best, newest lipstick. They are all laughing and cajoling, while our country to going to hell. I feel frustrated that we, "we the people" can not fix it. 

I join the local "resist" movement, read everything I can about the state of our nation, tweet, post, repost, comment, rant. Read the NYT, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Time, Rolling Stone, PBS Newshour, Bill Moyers, exhausted just thinking about it. I watched Bill Maher last night when I realized he was about to lose it while begging the GOP "to do something". I saw in his face and heard in his voice, that  "I want to explode".  I feel it, just as many of us are feeling the frustration of having to sit back and watch this debacle unfold. Honestly, I keep expecting Trump to have a news conference admitting we have been "Punk'd", we all laugh and get on with a normal state of affairs.

So today when a friend of Robin's emailed that she was at Petra, it gave me a minute to think about something else. Something bigger than Trump, Bannon, Conway. 

Places in the world that have been there forever. Built out of sandstone, worn down through time and wind. "Petra is a famous archaeological site in Jordan's southwestern desert. Dating to around 300 B.C., it was the capital of the Nabatean Kingdom. Accessed via a narrow canyon called Al Siq, it contains tombs and temples carved into pink sandstone cliffs, earning its nickname, the "Rose City." Perhaps its most famous structure is 45m-high Al Khazneh, a temple with an ornate, Greek-style facade, and known as The Treasury." Can you imagine seeing this in person!

Rock-Art of Tadrart Acacus - Prehistoric rock paintings. The Acacus Mountains form a mountain range in the desert of the Ghat District in western Libya, part of the Sahara. Where there were once palm trees and giraffes.

Rock art of Botswana. Most of Botswana is located in the central part of southern Africa and is bordered by Namibia to the west, South Africa to the south and east and the Caprivi Strip to the north. Most of the country is covered by the Kalahari Desert/Sands. The only mountains or rocky hills are either on the eastern side of the country near the border with South Africa or in the extreme north east of the country near the borders with Namibia and the Caprivi Strip, west of the Okavango Delta. This is where the Tsodilo Hills are located, now a World Heritage rock art site where some 4,500 paintings have so far been recorded. Although some of the paintings were made by San/Bushmen most are believed to have been made by Khoi (Khoe) people and also by Bantu immigrants like the Hambakush who arrived there about 1,800 years ago. It is possible that most of this art was made during the last 2,000 years. In eastern Botswana a lot of the art is San art but there is also some Khoe art in the east.

 

"Rock Carvings and paintings in Northern Chad are prolific and relatively little known. They range across a vast and mostly uninhabited region. During this trip we covered just a few of the important sites in a small part of the east of the Ennedi Massif in the southern Sahara. A vast area remains unexplored and unmapped and there has been almost no archaeology in the region Dating the sites is complicated and in need of serious study." From Factum Foundation. Images from TARA | Trust for African Rock Art.

This is a beautiful account of the search for rock art in Chad by Ferdinand Saumarez Smith for The Economist’s 1843 magazine.

"It’s dusk and I’m walking through one of the world’s most surreal landscapes. Towering above me are slender 50ft - high stacks of rock that stretch into the distant desert like some kind of ancient Manhattan. The pillars are the remains of mountains whittled away by wind over millions of years, but this landscape has more recently been subject to change that is, on a geological timescale, swift. Only a few thousand years ago, the desert was a green home to past oral people. One of the ways we know this is through the beautiful, graphic artworks they made of their lives and their herds – the sole remaining evidence of a lost civilisation."

FORMS IN NATURE: Understanding Our Universe

Sometimes I see something that makes me tear up because it is so beautiful, and that happened today when I watched FORMS IN NATURE: Understanding Our Universe: Through scientific study and understanding, we deepen our connection to the natural world. An audiovisual collaboration by Kevin Dart // Stéphane Coëdel // David Kamp // Nelson Boles. More about his process here.

 

FORMS IN NATURE: Understanding Our Universe from Chromosphere on Vimeo.

Make Beer Great Again

Yes, we have a large gathering once a month, hosted by different departments to "come together" and chat. Some really timely and great ideas for posters just don't make it the cut. SHAME! I though this was one of my greatest ideas all year. ;) My first version has less appropriate tweets.

I love my job

And my coworkers.