Sometimes I'm sad about having to die, eventually, because I'm still discovering interesting questions. Life is like archeology--I don't want to stop uncovering new questions, such as, what images stand alone, making words entirely superfluous?
(It's a subset of the question I already ask, 'What makes a piece of art great?')
Recreating paintings with toys is making me wonder about that, and I'm experiencing some answers. You know, the answers aren't coming from thinking, but from the physical work of making the images myself (and then thinking about that).
This surprised me a little: I didn't like Manet until I'd worked with/ entered into his images.
They moved me. I was almost crying when I re-created The Dead Toreador, and I began to worry about the fate of the bartender in A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.
But the reason I love The Tailor of Gloucester, I discovered, comes from the words. Beatrix Potter's paintings are wonderful, of course, but I'd choose the story over the illustrations.
Recreating the tailor mouse didn't move me any further than looking at him had. The fun of this week's re-creation was problem solving–– thinking of ways to make the project interesting technically. Can I make this with a turnip?
I'd liked best the wood MOUSE block, so I returned to that and added a few lines of gouache this morning.
Ta-da!
And that's it for this week's TRP.
I'm off to work in a few minutes. Saturdays can be fun because Big Boss isn't there. They can be challenging too if we're understaffed, which we usually are, and it's busy.
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The Auntie Vi Memorial Weather Report
I'm biking--yay! The weather forecast for the next few days is temps in the mid-30s F (around 0ºC). Comfy, but the streets can be dangerously slippery, actually, as the top layers of thick ice melts. I think enough ice has melted in the past couple days to leave long stretches of bare pavement.
I'll see. If it's too slippery, I'll put my bike on the bus rack.
It's not worth taking chances. A bicycling coworker told me he'd once fallen on a wet wood bridge and broken several ribs and punctured a lung. "I was in pain for six months."
Tootle-oo, everyone, have a lovely day. Don't fall!
I was thinking yesterday about how we feel so much more virtuous if we're reading a "good" book than if we're scrolling through social media and perhaps we should BUT in the end, when we die, there is nothing that we learned from either source that will remain connected to us. Does that make sense??
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are other reasons to read a book rather than scroll through social media but eventually, the result will be the same.
Fresca here.
DeleteMS MOON: I think that feeling of “virtue “ is an illusion anyway— social media may be as meaningful (or more)!than a classic book.
I did NOT mean it’s “better to like Manet than a mouse. ☺️
I’m just curious about what I like —and why. Dolls and Star Trek mean as much to me as anything.
Nothing matters to us once we’re dead, yeah, but things sure make a difference while we’re alive, eh?
I want to continue to figure out what I like, and do that. (Not so easy!)
PS forgive me, Ms Moon, if I misunderstood you—please explain further. You raise a big issue 😀
DeleteI’m reading Michelle Obama's new book, and what she says about focusing on something small clicks with what you wrote here, Fresca.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember the talk about Beatrix Potter’s “soporific” in the play Wit? The prose in those books is really, really charming.
MICHAEL (Fresca here—on my phone)— Oh! I’d forgotten that in “Wit”— she, the Donne scholar— is too sick to enjoy metaphysical poetry, right? And comments on how great Beatrix Potter is instead (soporifics!).
DeleteI loved reading that play—should read it again—I think there’s even a copy on the shelf here at work!
It’ll be a good while before anyone donates the new Obama though. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for sure though.
NO- you got it exactly right. I was just having these thoughts yesterday about what we spend our time doing and your first paragraphs triggered me to write them down. I do so want my days here alive to be filled with the best things I can put in them. I suppose I was just being all dystopian and shit. This is a constant struggle in my life.
ReplyDelete