Icons and meaning
Sep. 24th, 2008 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wileypeterIn response to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shigella.
This is the main reading room at Mount Angel Abbey Library, Mount Angel, Oregon. It was designed by Alvar Aalto, a man who managed the contradictory feat of being at once the most poetic of the Grand Masters of European Modernism and making the most functional buildings of them. It's my favorite building. Period. It is a space that is simultaneously spiritual, poetic, and a rigorous exercise in the use and control of natural light.
This is a Tapir. The Tapir has been a theme throughout my life, somehow. My brother and I were always fascinated by the Tapir at the Minnesota Zoo, my favorite place to go as a kid. The weird two-tone pig with the long legs was really odd. This one was at the SF Zoo, where my wife & I were the only visitors anywhere near the enclosure. It kept coming up to us, as if it wanted to be petted. Somehow my wife has associated this with my natural friendliness and when later asked what animal I was, she deemed me a Tapir. Thanks, honey.
Our forthcoming young'n. Scares and thrills me.
This is a self portrait, entitled "Erosion." I had two very similar photos of myself, took them into Photoshop, layered them over and over and something like this came out. When the final project for a graphics class was in its entirety "Do something, 18" x 24," I spent about three days awake running through different iterations, color schemes and media. I finished this, crashed, and was awakened by my wife's barely stifled yelp of terror when she walked around the corner and encountered it on the kitchen table. That's when I knew I was really done, a two-week project in three days, and the single best grade I ever got in an art class. It's oil pastels. Generally it means I'm not in a good mood, but sometimes I just toss it in for no reason.
The moon, altered by a distant fire. Particulate matter from hundreds of miles away and the light here has been wild and disturbing. Beautiful, but a fine reminder of the interconnectedness of this fragile, lovely planet.
Carla Kihlstedt. Ah, Carla. She's a very, very nice person. She's cute as a button. She's well-read. She's intellectually curious. Oh, and did I mention she's a total monster on the violin? Stunning musician of such a wide range of interests it's scary. She's been on at least one Tom Waits' album. Part of the mighty Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. One of her many bands, Tin Hat, accompanied old Russian silent films made with stop-motion insects, and I had the pleasure of seeing the same band play live with a circus. Classically trained, too. She could be huge in the classical world, but she has chosen a markedly less popular path, participating in all manner of improvised, heavy, quiet and twisted music.
shigella.
This is the main reading room at Mount Angel Abbey Library, Mount Angel, Oregon. It was designed by Alvar Aalto, a man who managed the contradictory feat of being at once the most poetic of the Grand Masters of European Modernism and making the most functional buildings of them. It's my favorite building. Period. It is a space that is simultaneously spiritual, poetic, and a rigorous exercise in the use and control of natural light.
This is a Tapir. The Tapir has been a theme throughout my life, somehow. My brother and I were always fascinated by the Tapir at the Minnesota Zoo, my favorite place to go as a kid. The weird two-tone pig with the long legs was really odd. This one was at the SF Zoo, where my wife & I were the only visitors anywhere near the enclosure. It kept coming up to us, as if it wanted to be petted. Somehow my wife has associated this with my natural friendliness and when later asked what animal I was, she deemed me a Tapir. Thanks, honey.
Our forthcoming young'n. Scares and thrills me.
This is a self portrait, entitled "Erosion." I had two very similar photos of myself, took them into Photoshop, layered them over and over and something like this came out. When the final project for a graphics class was in its entirety "Do something, 18" x 24," I spent about three days awake running through different iterations, color schemes and media. I finished this, crashed, and was awakened by my wife's barely stifled yelp of terror when she walked around the corner and encountered it on the kitchen table. That's when I knew I was really done, a two-week project in three days, and the single best grade I ever got in an art class. It's oil pastels. Generally it means I'm not in a good mood, but sometimes I just toss it in for no reason.
The moon, altered by a distant fire. Particulate matter from hundreds of miles away and the light here has been wild and disturbing. Beautiful, but a fine reminder of the interconnectedness of this fragile, lovely planet.
Carla Kihlstedt. Ah, Carla. She's a very, very nice person. She's cute as a button. She's well-read. She's intellectually curious. Oh, and did I mention she's a total monster on the violin? Stunning musician of such a wide range of interests it's scary. She's been on at least one Tom Waits' album. Part of the mighty Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. One of her many bands, Tin Hat, accompanied old Russian silent films made with stop-motion insects, and I had the pleasure of seeing the same band play live with a circus. Classically trained, too. She could be huge in the classical world, but she has chosen a markedly less popular path, participating in all manner of improvised, heavy, quiet and twisted music.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:04 pm (UTC)Him: "So, from start to finish, the process was three days?"
Me: "Yes."
Him: "How long did it take you to do the final piece?"
Me: "Um, about four hours."
Him: "So you're four hours away from having another one."
Me: "...yeah..."
He gave it back, but apparently shows slides in class. Of course, by the time he told me he was returning it I had done another one, slightly larger and on watercolor paper to further the chunkiness of the medium.
That building gets better every time I visit it.
I cannot imagine a place I'd rather be with a good book and a quiet stretch of time.