calimary
calimary's Journal
Oh yeah??? Baloney! You just haven't taken the right art class yet!
I'm a firm believer that EVERYONE has some kinda art in them. You just have to find the correct or best-fitting expression of it. ANYTHING can become an artists' medium. Found objects. Paint and brushes. Chisels and hammers. Sand. Paper and plastic cups. Glass. Globs of tar. Paper and cardboard. Rocks and pebbles - GEEZ don't get me started on rocks...
There's some middle-aged guy in our neighborhood who has taken it upon himself to create gardens in the dirt and cracked sidewalk areas around some of the older trees skirting the local post office. There was one patch of dirt where a tree had been taken out and just left. Other stuff was overgrowing, kinda ratty-looking, along the chain-link fence between the post office and a parking lot. So this guy decides to take that neglected area - where assholes had littered and dropped cigarette butts and wrappers and tree roots had broken through the surface and rag-tag weeds were sprouting here and there - and transformed it! I was just there this morning, walking my dog - and it's just so damn NICE!!!
He had designed these little gardens within that neglected space. Geraniums were growing. Scraps of colored and printed cloth were glued to the curbsides, turning them into interesting little bits of beauty. Succulents were tucked in here and there. A discarded pair of child's slippers were arranged together near clumps of "hens & chickens" and Indian Paintbrushes. He brings a couple of empty two-gallon milk jugs with him that are full of water and he probably takes more from the water fountain in the nearby dog park, and he waters his little garden beds, and they're flourishing! One little bed is "framed" with dozens of colorful plastic milk jug lids, like little teeny pavers or mosaic pieces inlaid into the dirt. Another little bed is outlined by carefully-arranged clouds of dryer lint. Another little bed is lined with pine cones and pieces of pine cone and magnolia pods and stuff. There are tomato plants growing in another little bed - and already bearing fruit! There's some mulching going on - evidently he added some wood chips and stuff. And there are nicely-delineated paths through there now, between the little separate beds in this garden. In some little spaces you spot a plastic dinosaur or toy from some kid's "Happy Meal," artfully arranged and tucked in where what's left of an old tree stump has some interesting little notches hidey-holes - almost like a leprechaun lives there. And this neglected, abandoned few square feet over along the edge of the post office grounds is suddenly a lovely little organized, fanciful, green, living, flourishing space that has curb appeal, beauty, originality, creativity, all kinds of neat little eclectic surprises and visual treats, and it's a WONDERFUL use of random materials! It's just CHARMING!!! And it's an asset to the neighborhood now. And this guy, whoever he is, just started doing it, working with a whole lotta NOTHING. NO WAY this is not art!
Damn... all that beautiful art, architecture, and design...
That treasury of art and culture and history. Just barbaric. The ugliness that religion can inspire winds up destroying the beauty that religion also inspires.
He's not to be trusted simply because he believes, basically, that less government is good but
NO government is even better. And believe me, he would not have external forces butting out of your private life, either. Remember: he's a republi-CON. The worst kind - a teabagger republi-CON. Women's rights wouldn't be any safer. He wouldn't be sympathetic to civil rights, immigration rights and reforms, consumer safety would go to hell, consumer protection would go to hell, and you think Wall Street runs amok now? Wait til somebody like the Kentucky Pipsqueak gets in and does everything he can to dismantle what meager safeguards and minimum standards and safety nets we still have left! Wait til it's someone of his mentality who's picking Supreme Court justices.
UGH!!!!! And this is the crackpot to whom Medea Benjamin hand-delivers home-made valentines? Sweet God in Heaven...
Don't draw the elaborate holy stuff anymore with the flying cherubs and goo-gaws
but I still indulge in various artistic activities as much as possible. I drew all the illustrations in this crazy little book I wrote about being a working mom (I think it's out of print now). Love jewelry-making, beading, personal adornment. Worked in polymer clay and also dichroic glass and wire-working. Made earrings out of my son's band's guitar picks and girls like 'em. We send 'em out to the female Street Teamers! I designed the band's logo, too. And when the kids were younger, I was the "art mom" at school - we did craft projects using all kinds of recycled stuff like newspaper and paper towel tubes and empty cleaned-out 2-liter bottles and stuff. Decorations for every school carnival over a three year period! THAT was great fun and the kids seemed to love it! So did their moms! I even did some recycled kids art on some HGTV shows at one point. That was ridiculously fun!
Welcome to DU, drventure!
Glad you're here!
VERY nice photo! I love those. They are a very cute couple, and you can tell from all the photographic evidence that they still truly love - and LIKE - each other. Having been married since 1976, I can tell you what a difference it makes when you can say you actually like the guy.
Good post! By 'n' large, I'm still pretty content with DU.
Yes it gets contentious here, but you deal with what you can deal with.
Dayum, I love this shit!
I swear, church art is what kept me in church. SOOOOOOooooo much to look at, study, meditate upon. I LOVED looking at the way fabric was rendered. The folds and wrinkles and drapery - I drew A LOT when I was in school. Always drawing. Most of it holy subjects like the saints, the martyrs, the Madonna and Child, Nativity scene, angels, cherubs, clouds, the Madonna without Child, what-have-you. Drawing drapery and fabric wasn't that easy for me, so I'd study it during Mass. Same for musculature, perspective, foreshortening, physical proportions, composition, movement, scenery, animals, and more. Just loved to draw. I still have a callous on my middle finger where the pencil always was braced when I held it. Always had a dark smudge along the heel and outer edge of my right hand where it rested on the drawing and got pencil marks and shadowing and other smudges on it. All through school. I'd just get lost in it.
Yeah, maybe so, but YOU obviously have a conscience, Jack Rabbit.
You wouldn't be able to look yourself in the mirror after having behaved that way. Sometimes I wonder if these individuals do.
And I hope you're correct. I SOOOOO want the GOP to go down, and go down HARD.
Indeed?
Reminds me of every high-profile republi-CON who was hellbent on impeaching Bill Clinton for the Monica thing.
Every one of them, newt gingrich, bob livingston, henry hyde, dan burton, the whole lot of them, had entire miserable strings of broken homes, broken marriages, broken families, serial mistresses, and even a couple of out-of-wedlock children in their dossiers - WHILE they were persecuting Bill Clinton for the Monica thing. EVERY ONE OF THOSE AFOREMENTIONED. That whole pack of jackals lived in bigger glass houses than anybody else on earth.
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Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,220
