Not a big fan of “elective surgery” for dogs beyond spaying and neutering. Docking tails seems primitive, clipping vocal chords seems barbaric. (If barking is that much of a problem, maybe you should stick to hamsters.) Here’s The Gerret’s newest video, a paean to dog tails. Via gerretswirled.com
White Liriope, digital image on canvas, 32x16, 48x24
The liriope is in bloom. It’s bit late at our place because we don’t get a lot of sun, but no matter. Make some art.
Purple Liriope, digital image on canvas, 32x16, 48x24
This is a Kodak Kodachrome Film Test from 1922. Love the color. Love the portraiture. Relieved it isn’t in 3D. via kottke.org
I know, I know, but once I’d come up with “Bourbon, Dog and Art” I had to make bourbon dogs. At least once. You take maybe a cup of barbecue sauce (my choice, many recipes use ketchup), a cup of brown sugar (I just threw in a pinch since the barbecue sauce is already kinda sweet) and at least (emphasis mine) a cup of bourbon and simmer it down to a thick brown liquid. I also chopped up a bunch of onion and threw it in. Then you add mass quantities of tiny weenies. The longer it simmers, the more flavorful it gets. A couple of hours is a minimum. Be sure to sample your remaining bourbon at various points during the process to make sure it isn’t going stale.
This is the sort of dish that half the people I know would love, and the other half would rather starve than be caught in the same room with. Don’t know what that says about me.
Anyway, it’s more fun to cook with bourbon that with wine. Now that I’ve conquered the basics, I’m sure there’s more sophisticated recipes.
Red Mushroom, digital image on canvas, 32x16, 48x24
Here’s a new artwork just completed. It’s yet another red mushroom. (A coincidence given my last art post. I’ve only done two. But it is the season.) I’ve decided to refer to this recent series as “animist portraits” since they have a certain portrait quality to them. I don’t want them confused with work done by botanical illustrators or macro-photographers. I just find things around our place and make them look good. I manipulate these images just like a Playboy photographer to create something that looks real but is maybe just a hairs-breath too-good-to-be-true. I’m not heading down that road where I’m going to look up scientific names, genus and species of the little bits of flora and fauna I start with to create these images. Biggest problem I have is naming these portraits. Relatively generic words like “leaf,” “seed,” “weed,” “grass,” etc. dominate my titles and as the series grows they fail as a useful reference. I’m going to keep thinking about it. Any suggestions?*
*Note that at least for the time being I’ve forsaken irony, which may come as a shock to folks who’ve known me well (and would thus think this is ironic). I just feel I’ve lost the desire and commitment necessary to be a respectable player in an Internet-assisted universe dominated by competitive irony. Somebody’s gotta just say normal stuff.
