Do you Doodle?

Another day and a new meeting... Many results in doodle drawings such as this. Do you doodle? And is it rude to doodle in a meeting or not?

Spots, threads and snippets from the internet and media

From my forays and wanderings around the internet the last couple of weeks (months, maybe...):

Newsweek has an article about rich people buying modern art, more to show how rich they are more than because they like it.  One of the artists they say is overvalued and will not last is Damien Hirsts with his paintings of colored spots. The same week (= today), New York Times has a long article about Damien Hirsts and his marketing scheme and moneymaking art.  I can definitely live without a spot painting in my house, but I think they are cool.  The kind of cool that would fit in a modernly designed library or hotel foyer. If I had something like that in my living room it would b dizzifying and disturbing, and probably reminding me of ads for M&M candy or something.

A famous needlework woman just died, Erica Wilson, and I unfortunately didn't know about her until now.  Being in a family filled with embroiderers, I immediately notified he other side of the Atlantic (Sweden). Here is an example of Erica's design.  I wonder if she is related to the incredibly talented Erin Wilson, who makes the most artistic and amazing art quilts I have ever seen.  We bought a tiny sample from Erin at our visit to the Philadelphia Crafts Show, which I will write about later.  But her quilts, oh wow! But Wilson is such a common name, so probably not a relation. Example of one of her quilts (my own photo, so not that great):

Some exoplanets might be made up of lots of diamonds.  You think they sparkle like diamonds then? It must be hard to dig there, the shovels loose their edge pretty fast.

For those of us that still write and draw by hand, think and take notes, there is Moleskine.  A company that is doing better and better.  It is the backlash against the techno-stupid, I am convinced of this.  While some people follow their GPS' directions literally and take a right turn straight into a church, others are contemplating life with carefully (or sloppy, it is OK) drawn lines generated by real thoughts. It is your choice: be real, or be a automaton, copycat, and online addict.

That's all for now.

Doodling while listening is OK, say scientists

"People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate," said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. "We might not be aware that we’re doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream." Read more here.

(Photo and art by red5standingby on Flickr.)

I used to doodle with a pen on a paper when talking on the phone, and I still doodle, during boring meetings mostly. I have been in many boring meetings.  Some people in meetings have a knack for repeating things over and over, saying the obvious, and not listening to what was said just a few minutes before.  They would probably have been better off if they had doodled more. What I doodle?  Oh, grasses, sedges in water, geometric figures, inca temples, coral like shapes, tiny flowers, spirals and diamonds, alpine mountains.... hmmm, sounds like everything is very scientific.  I don't doodle steam engines, horses, faces, or sushi, but I am sure others do.. I wonder how the brain decides what it want to draw, how the things come out through the pen.

Meet Lynd Ward

 This is what I got for Christmas.  A boxed set of Lynd Ward's painstakingly made woodcut graphic novels (6 in total), without words, and published first in the 1920s to 1940s.  We saw his art for the first time at the James Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania in their great Graphic Art show (which we visited twice, it was that great).  His stories and art connect back in time to medieval church paintings telling bible stories for illiterate farmers, to revolutionary imagery such as Diego Rivera's and Japanese woodcuts.  Imaging making a story without any words, just pictures, and each picture has two colors, black and white, and has to be 'drawn' in reverse on woodblock, line by line, for later printing by hand.  He didn't make it easy for himself, but he sure did great art and literature.  His book God's Man is about an artist that leaves America for another country and tries to make a living, fails, and then sells his soul to the devil (marketing? commercialism?), finds the true love of his life, runs off with her to a foreign coutnry, but eventually his debtors catches up with him and meter out the punishment for not paying his debt.  A millenia old story, and still valid today.  There is a great foreword for this set of books by Spiegelman.
I wonder if those two flowers are gentians?  They could be!

It turns out that some of the woodblocks for his novels are here in New Jersey at Rutgers Universities Libraries, what a coincidence.

You can read more about God's Man here.

(Thanks PP for a wonderful Christmas gift) 

Fishing for ideas?

 

Go over to AREA's art blog to see some more of what she has created in the last few months.  I love this octopus-headed lady... and all the other gorgeous, interesting pieces of art.