I love the art of the ’20s.

“Black Prophet” by Winold Riess is part of the Brooklyn Museum’s show “Youth and Beauty“

It has already rained beautifully this morning.

I have a ‘nest’ in our living room, with a small couch facing our sliding glass doors. There is a view of the deck and the yard beyond facing north-northwest. So as the storm clouds move past they go over my head and away to the horizon.

The shadow of the house is inching toward me as the sun rises. The tree we left growing through the deck is shaded, backlit by sunlight reflected from the trees across our yard. So green!

Everything is glistening.

The air is full of birds.

Spanish moss dancing in the breeze.

This is my home.

These folk had just moved and, according to a post on Reddit, decided to use all the boxes to decorate. I think it looks great.

When I was a girl, we went trick or treating in my Grandparent’s neighborhood in mid town San Antonio. They lived in that area between Fredericksburg Road and IH10, Fresno and Sacramento. It was great pickings. Our prefferred candy bag was a pillowcase, and we did a good job at getting it really full.

There was an elderly lady nearby who loved halloween. She dressed up like a witch and had a haunted house. She gave us HOMEMADE COOKIES, and Momma let us keep them cause we new her.

Now even my children are overaged for trick or treating.

I guess we have a reprieve till grandchildren arrive.

My yard is full of trees, and John has decorated them with Spanish moss.

This bromeliad causes no harm but adds grace and beauty to the landscape. I love the gray color moving in a gentle breeze.

Last year we lost many trees to drought. Yesterday I visited the biggest carcass and gathered moss for our yard. In the wild it only grows on the really large trees. When we first came here I used it as a marker to discover the hidden giants on our land. The Spanish moss from fallen trees will die on the ground, but if it’s moved to new heights it will prosper.

So we continue the memory of our lost trees by dressing the youngsters in thier old clothes.

I think the temperature goes down just looking at it.

Gadgetsponge is right up my alley.

The birdhouses made from found objects are adorable!

This fine fellow was recently indicted in New Braunfels for armed robbery (knocking over a convenience store to be more precise).

Were I to give a talk to kids thinking of becoming armed robbers, I believe I would have to discourage aquiring facial tatoos as they MIGHT aid in identification.

Then I began to wonder if one might cover them with high quality concealer (as I’m sure Angelina Jolie must do in films) and thus ELUDE capture!

Your liability could become your alibi!

Best option: Cover the face with TEMPORARY TATOOS!

Win-win situation.
I wonder if this is old news in the knocking-over-icehouses community.

Fiberglass Giants as a good place to start exploring the flickr sets of Roadside Attractions.

Love this work!

John and Joe from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

This is the story of a retired firefighter and his two sons that died in the World Trade Center attacks on 9-11.

Right now, Texas is on fire and brave folk are working hard to keep us safe. Just like Joe Sr’s sons John and Joe.

I’m thinking about that today, and how these professions so often pass to new generations within families. It’s a beautiful thing, really, considering how the child of a firefighter or police officer knows what the life will bring. Good and bad. Rewarding and thankless. Tedious and dangerous.

They REALLY know. But choose to do it anyway.

I have two sons, and cannot imagine this father’s loss. I doubt I could live as graciously in the face of such destruction.

Soundtrack for this post:  

These artists have made a show of altered paint by numbers canvases.
Check it out, here.

My Mother made these. But she was serious about it.

I think she learned it while in “hospital” which is what we called the various mental institutions she stayed in. All my life she was sick. I never new her to be without mental illness.

Sometimes she functioned better than usual, but I never knew her to be “well”.

Seems like such a waste because she was smart and funny and very dramatic. She could take over any room, but she hardly ever went out.

She was mentally and emotionally crippled. And then, at about the age I am just past now, she became physically crippled with Rheumatoid Arthritis. After years of being bed-bound she developed a fatal lung infection. And died.

I wish I had taken some of her canvases from the estate when my Dad died. Not sure if there were even any paint-by-numbers left then.

But if there were, and I had one, I would try to express how she was struggling to see the world like others do. How maybe she thought she could understand how life works if she just had better instructions. She always wanted to present a healthy image of herself to the world, like the happy people and lovely images on the canvases she worked on.

I would add the reality, the darkness we all try to hide. The fear and shame that make us unable to move sometimes. The ugliness behind our false fronts.

Accepting how we are is vital to change. Change is vital to growth. Growth is what I live for.

Growth and Love.

You may soon be awash in ‘shrooms.

Psilocybin mushrooms especially. John sent me an article about how wonderful that is, and how good they are for you. Which may actually be true.

Of course, here in Texas, mushrooms of any kind growing naturally are but a distant memory from the time that water fell from the sky and the earth was green.

Hope all the Yankee hippies make the most of this opportunity.

From the Uneo Zoo in Japan.

I was just reading about a New York city worker who killed a 3 foot rat in a housing project.

And I started thinking that if the subways and other underground spaces flood, the vermin will be heading for higher ground.

To me, that’s scarier than a hurricane.

As seen from outer space.

A peacock farmer in China made this dress with over 3,000 feathers.
Unique!

Calabarte makes lamps from gourds.
Intricate and beautiful, they cast a complex pattern of light.

Ray loved gourds and thought them to be a perfect bridge between art and utility.
We still have seeds for the gourd patch he and John planned so carefully. I want to make something with gourds, but haven’t found the right idea yet. I hope my idea comes as an extension of the gourd, like a natural step in gourd evolution.

But what would that be?

It could hold a bath set – loofa , soap, etc., but could be hung as art when the products are used.
Or be a hat (image cannot be expressed in words – will try to draw later)
It could be stuck with dowels like a porcupine & hold jewelry (I think it’s been done, but hey, everything has probably been done by someone, somewhere!)

Ouch.
If your leg falls asleep is your body trying to tell you that your post is too long?

Okay.
It could be a lovely box. Perfect to hold someone’s ashes.
We’ve got Raymond’s in a mason jar in the living room.
That’s almost as good as a gourd.

Link via BoingBoing

Great work, by Chris Thornley. Proceeds from this one go to a cancer charity.

Wallpaper made with stickers!

I would probably make a free-form thing. Like a wave that’s dense along the middle line then thins out & gets dense again. Or maybe a spiral.

But this is cool because it’s a traditional form executed with unconventional materials.

via BoingBoing

Salt flats in Bolivia, still and endless. Make beautiful photographs.

I’m so fascinated with water. Look at it in this photograph.
More smooth than other liquids. Surface tension, I think.
See how it has evaporated and cracked the soil beneath it?
Imagine changing from a liquid to a gas, reforming as a liquid and falling. Again and again.
See it there. The clouds.

Don’t get me started on ice.

Roy Lester, 61, was fired from his job as a Jones Beach lifeguard after more than 40 years because he refused to wear a Speedo.

“I wore a speedo when I was in my twenties,” Lester said, “But come on. There should be a law prohibiting anyone over the age of 50 from wearing a Speedo.”

To which I can only concur wholeheartedly.

Our dog Dodger loves cicadas. I mean to eat. All our German Shepherds do, but he’s a fanatic. I fish them out of the pool and it  makes him very happy. Today I found this article from National Geographic about how yummy the critters are to people!

Wouldn’t this Empress Cicada from Malaysia make a nice meal?

In The Fall from Steve Cutts on Vimeo.

I have such a deep respect for those who make things by hand. Nothing like beeswax coated threads being pulled through fine leather.

Quoddy Workshop – Lewiston, Maine from Oliver Wilkins on Vimeo.

Adorable

I love how the “tail” is hanging out of the mouth.
And no, I cannot make these as I only knit and it is crochet. Sorry.

Vladamir Kush

I like representational art. Also surrealism, whimsy and symbolism.
Plus it’s books. And trees.