Beyond Rivalry - art_and_photography

Christmas at Our House

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 13:36:07 -0500

Snow

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:36:00 -0500

Not sure how much we got -- between one and two feet, I think -- but it's pretty. And kept us busy most of the day shoveling ...

Thanksgiving Photos

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:39:00 -0500

Our Thanksgiving was leisurely. Watched the Macy's parade and football and Miracle on 34th Street (the new version, which I much prefer to the old one, though I know most people don't), took a walk with the dog, and then commenced prepping and cooking the dinner, which took about an hour total (the Pommes Anna bakes for about 45 mins.).

The Crab au Gratin seems to have been improperly named. Technically, it's true, it was crab with browned breadcrumbs and cheese on it. But a more accurate name would be Crab in Sherried Cream Sauce. It was a Mornay sauce, with crab, sherry, Worcestershire sauce and Old Bay added to it, and so even after its 20 minutes of baking at 400F (with Ritz cracker crumbs and Parmesan cheese atop), it remained more a bisque or a dip than a solid mass. Still, it held its own on the plate along with the spinach sauteed with pine nuts and garlic and the Pommes Anna. And it tasted luscious.

Of course, I forgot to take photos of any of the prep or the finished products, until we were halfway through with them. In fact, we had eaten all the spinach already when…

Out and About This Weekend

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:01:00 -0500

We spent most of Saturday driving around a part of the state a couple of hours away from us, where we used to spend a lot of time. Our main destination was an herb farm's pre-holiday sale, and we stumbled into a Christmas craft fair in a small-town B&B. The rain, which began on Thursday, was alternately a light mist, scattered and steady showers, and occasionally a torrential downpour, and it gave a blurry, atmospheric feeling to our journey of revisitation.

Below, a magpie duck, sheep happily eating, JB the llama, and an herb shed and garden sale area ...

Carve a Pumpkin -- Online

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:45:00 -0400

Carve a pumpkin online -- fun!

Also:

Scary Stock Ticker Jack O'Lantern (not for the faint of heart, or for those who can't "program and test [a] microcontroller")

Extreme Pumpkins (scroll down for many photos)

Pumpkincarving tag on Flickr

Pumpkin Carving the Martha Stewart Way (yes, having a cordless drill helps) and photos

(Photo by mysticmaggatha on Flickr)

Ideas and Looks

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:30:00 -0400

Creative Design, Beautiful People. Too funny.

"As a beautiful person, I pretty much live a consequence-free life. I believe that's why I'm such a fearless designer. I can create disturbing, controversial imagery, and in the end people just say, Wow, she's hot."

What inspires me? "Death. Sunflowers." "A really nice handgun."

Glamour: Mysterious, Translucent, Transcendent, Idealised

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:50:00 -0400

Watch Virginia Postrel's 2004 TED talk on Glamour. At first it seems there's not much here, but by midway, I was having to pause and backtrack to get it all, words and images.

I love glamour, particularly in its architectural and photographic forms. I find the Poirot series with David Suchet extremely glamourous -- the visuals, the voices, the music, the movements, the styling, the sensibility. Postrel says that glamour is about being transported from the real world to an idealised place, as through Art Deco streamlining. Trains, planes, and cars can be very glamourous, for this reason, as can arches, spiral or curved staircases, and other shapes that merely hint at something beyond. Current movie stars and celebrities completely lack glamour for me, perhaps because black-and-white seems so much more glamourous than colour; Postrel says that glamour is partly about editing out the 'grubby details,' at which b&w is so adept, and colour not so much.

Some elements and 'locations' of glamour that Postrel mentions in this 15-minute talk are mystery; grace; someone like us but at the same time removed; evoking a perfect world; transcendence, transcending the everyday; concealing and revealing at the same time; translucence -- inviting us…

Fermenting

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:13:00 -0400

Malcolm Gladwell writes in the 20 Oct. New Yorker about University of Chicago economist David Galenson's theories of creativity, which Galenson divides into two types, conceptual and experimental. Conceptual geniuses bloom early, experimental geniuses later, not because experimental geniuses are late starters or because they are simply discovered late, but because "they simply aren't much good until late in their careers."

Speaking of Cézanne, the art critic Roger Fry says: "'More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex, and conflicting natures as Cézanne’s require a long period of fermentation.' Cézanne was trying something so elusive that he couldn't master it until he'd spent decades practicing."

I think that's me. Not Cézanne, more like Wallace Stevens (49% of whose anthologized poems were written after he was 50), but not that, either. I feel I am practicing something intangible, and creative, sometimes enormously tiring and even monotonous in a certain way, without known product so far. 'Fermenting' and 'elusive' describe it well. Sometimes I feel very frustrated, mostly I feel excited to be part of whatever this experiment is, in some way, and to continue with the brewing metaphor,…

New York City Photos

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:36:32 -0400

NYC Photos are here.

Trip Photos

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:18:00 -0400

Savannah Photos

Jekyll Photos