chutney talky acquaint

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, 

doesn't come from a store.

Dr. Seuss

love this doggie-patience

Contemporary artist Clinton De Menezes hand painted 6,000 figures and then purposefully set each one into the plaster in order to collectively form an almost 30 foot wide map of our planet.

Al Loving   Al Loving, “Self-Portrait #23″ (1973)(all images courtesy the Gary Snyder Gallery unless otherwise noted)

Al Loving (1935–2005) was born in Detroit and studied art at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and the University of Michigan. Like many art students then and now, he kept up with what was going on in New York through art magazines. In 1968, when he moved to New York City, he was fully versed in the hard-edged abstraction and shaped canvases of Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland.  Al Loving: Torn Canvas at Gary Snyder Gallery (November 1–December 22, 2012) is the first exhibition of the artist’s work since his death in 2005. It is accompanied by a catalog with an insightful essay, “Self-Made Painting”, by Katy Siegel. Made of strips of colored cloth that have been sewn together, and hang down from the wall, the torn canvas paintings are what Loving did to get outside of the box. He literally cut up his own work. Sometimes a change requires an artist to destroy earlier work, to cut it apart or cover it over, as Less Krasner and Philip Guston did. The five torn canvases in this exhibition were done between 1973 and ’75. A selection of collages made between 1976 and 1990 rounds out the show.

In her delicate crafted porcelain sculptures conceptual artist Kate McDowell expresses her interpretation of the clash between the natural world and the modern-day environmental impact of industrialized society. The resulting works can be equal parts amusing and disturbing as the anatomical forms of humans and animals become inexplicably intertwined in her delicate porcelain forms  

A tattooed corset-  which could be more painful-  the tattoo or the actual corset? I don't want either, but I do have to say this is a beautiful job of art...I do wonder what the front looks like.

Unless you come from cranberry country, you may never have see the bogs or the harvest.  You probably haven't see anybody wakeskating on the bogs even if you grew up near them.  Now you can see it all at once.  Very interesting video, hang in there.

And as a treat for learning about cranberries, here are today's trees:

book stacks

a red pencil

Florida house decorations-  Yup, they wrap the palm trees here.

origami

a giant pile of lights and tinsel

I was up at 4:30,walked the dogs in the pitch black night, drove TY to the airport at 5, stopped at Starbucks and waited for it to open at 6 so I could get coffeefied, then went to FedEx where I waited for that to open at 7 to mail out Christmas gifts.  Then I headed home to walk the dogs again i the light, and eat pancakes leftover from yesterday.  By 7:30 I was done with that and off to the studio to beat all my pals at the industrial park at looking INDUSTRIOUS.  I got an idea for the Serial Killer book cover that I am itching to try out, hope it works.

If it doesn't you will never hear another word about it.  Wish me luck.