Effie and the captured spirit
October 30, 2009
Psychically, I’m as deaf and dumb as they come–zombies and poltergeists could hold a hoedown in my lap and I’d never notice–but I do like a good Halloween yarn. This year’s is about the time I spent in a little Indiana town as a child; if you’d like to read previous years’ yarns, try a search on chicken ghosts or Esther’s chest or Halloween candy. For now, though: Read, enjoy and Happy Halloween!
Oh, and…is this a true story? Yup.
————————————-
Effie Hayes was 90 years older than God, crotchety as hell and mean as they come.
Or at least, that was my impression. Since she liked my sister better than me–a LOT better–I may have been biased. Still, if anybody in Spencer ever needed a candidate for a storybook wicked old witch, they didn’t need to look farther than Effie’s spotless front stoop.
Perched on the banks of the White River in Indiana’s Sweet Owen County, Spencer wasn’t all that far from civilization. It had tucked itself between Terre Haute and Bloomington, in the woods an hour or so south of Indianapolis. Practically, though, it was centuries away.
Ticket Talker 3000
October 29, 2009
So, cruising the Web this evening I came across an ad for Ticket Talker, a free iPhone app that helps you talk your way out of a traffic citation. It’s sponsored, the ad says, by ConocoPhilips 76 because “we’re on the driver’s side.”
Uhm….I’m sure the cops will be happy to hear that.
I suspect this is one of those ideas born in the bowels of a late night brainstorm, when the deadline is 9:00 AM, the boss is already on your case for failure to produce, and after no sleep and three too many beers somebody says, “I KNOW! What if we…”
Everyone nods enthusiastically–anything to go home to bed–and another cutting-edge lame “viral” campaign crawls out of the woodwork.
In all fairness, the copywriter did acknowledge that there could be a public image problem with this one, and weasel-worded the copy:
76 gasoline reminds you that the only way to avoid getting a ticket is not to speed. Ever.
But have you wondered if there might be an excuse that could get you out of a ticket? If there is, it could be in here–the Ticket Talker 3000. Download it and you will have a litany of original justifications, rationalizations and outright prevarications at your fingertips. At the very least it will put a smile on the highway patrolman’s face as he hands over your citation.
The Ticket Talker 3000 is another tool from your friends at 76. We’re not just TOP TIER gas, we’re on the driver’s side.
Uh-huh. Go ahead and try it. I’d love to see the smile on the highway patrolman’s face when you do.
Would somebody PLEASE tell all those sophomoric ad execs turned iPhone hipsters and social media bananaramas to go back to the Swedish bikini team?
Next.
The art of evolution
October 25, 2009
What’s the right level of evolution for an artist? (And I know, I know, it depends on the artist. Bear with me.)
I was invited to preview an opening for an artist I’ve admired for maybe 20 years. I eagerly slurped in the entire virtual show…and midway through it hit me: The work hadn’t demonstrably changed in 20 years.
I could put any image, from any time in this artist’s career, in the current show and it would fit right in. Be indistinguishable from the others, in fact. And I started wondering why.
Caricaturia
October 25, 2009
Ever get so busy doing art that you’re not actually doing art?
That’s been me for the last two months. It’s been that long since I actually sculpted. Made molds, fired glass, did a lot of coldworking and waxstuff and display designing and openstudio-ing, but actual SCULPTING?
Nope. No wonder I was getting antsy.
Yesterday afternoon I hauled out the clay, sliced off some bits and started in.
She’s the first in a series of nine caricatures, part of an idea I’ve had brewing for at least a year. She’s a lot smaller than I normally work, only about a third life-size. I get this terrible “what if I don’t really know what to do” anxiety whenever I open a new bag of clay, but she pretty much flew out of my fingers, as if she’d been waiting right at the tips.
Update: Finished her brother, #2, and am halfway through #3. I think I’ll just keep posting these in the same slideshow as I get through them. I’m not gonna jinx it by talking about who these people are, but I suspect you can tell if you look closely enough.
Anyway, I want to get these churned out, mastermolds made and waxes set up so I can start playing with these. I haven’t decided exactly how I’ll cast them yet–there are three good possibilities fighting for dominance in my brain right now–but I have plenty of time to think about it.
Mendelssohn and PBO and me
October 23, 2009
Boy. Monica Huggett sure strokes a mean fiddle. Mom and Dad and I went to hear her (and the rest of the Portland Baroque Orchestra) tonight, playing Mendelssohn.
I’m not a huge Mendelssohn fan, although his music is undeniably pretty. Most of the time it reminds me of 1940s Bette Davis movies. Most people (IMHO) overplay it. Done well, though, it’s like the best Bette Davis movie you ever listened to. And tonight was done very well indeed.
I have a soft spot for a good fiddler, having played violin in my youth. Well, I should qualify that: I massacred violin in my youth. Along about the fifth grade I took up the violin with ambitions of being first seat, first violin in the school orchestra.
The pendant
October 19, 2009
“Hi, Cynthia!” Andrew calls gaily, as he pounds up my driveway, “Can I come in? Wow, cool!”
He gazes around my studio with wide eyes, taking in the art hung on the walls, the pendants pinned to the black velvet drape suspended from Oliver Wendell Kiln’s gantry, and me, covered in plaster, making a mold. “Grandpa said you were doing some kind of art show and I wanted to see.”
Ring-a-ding-a-ling
October 17, 2009
Even Home Depot starts to look gorgeous in a Portland autumn
There are undoubtedly ugly parts of Portland but they’re hard to find; this has to be one of the prettiest cities in the US, especially in fall.
I keep taking the long way ’round to see my favorite mist-shrouded trees, trembling on the verge of fall color. It’s not very efficient of me–the freeway would be faster–but who cares? The sugar maples are glimmering with that incredible, near-neon vermillion, the house-dotted hillsides look like a folk art painting..and I’m so absorbed in driving the city that I miss three phone calls.
I blame my ringtone. Whatever happened to plain old mobile phone ringing? I remember sitting in meetings when a mobile phone rang; everyone grabbed up their phones to see who actually had the call. [Read more]
Recovery and Dewey
October 15, 2009
The slightest blip on the economic radar these days, and analysts trumpet the end of the recession. But down in the trenches, where the rest of us live, it’s hard to tell the difference, says Dewey.
Dewey runs a small metal fabrication shop in the industrial district (one of my favorite hangouts these days) and he’s making steel mountings for my sculptures. His shop is fast, accurate and relatively inexpensive. The fast part, Dewey says, is because business, frankly, just isn’t what it used to be.
The Fun Theory
October 13, 2009
‘Way back when, I had a janitorial business. We cleaned offices and medical clinics and along the way I learned a few things about human behavior:
- Health care professionals may be the messiest folk on the planet (the stories I could tell about one doctor’s clinic would turn a pathologist’s stomach)
- Women have a peculiar need to kiss mirrors and an inability to hit the trash can
- If it’s in a bathroom, men can’t hit anything, period
I got so tired of scrubbing the unspeakably nasty walls behind one mensroom’s urinals that I bought a giant red permanent marker and drew targets, dead-center, on each urinal. Then I hung a sign on the wall just above:
Can YOU hit the bullseye?
Believe it or not, it worked. Next night, for the first time in three years, the walls were clean and dry. Apparently, I’d discovered something called The Fun Theory: Turn it into a game, and more people will do it.
Volkswagen’s got a brilliant European campaign along those lines right now. So far they’ve gotten more people to use the stairs by turning them into a piano:
…increased litter pickup by adding sound effects to the trash can:
…and they’re going to try to increase container recycling with a new kind of vending machine. They’re also opening up a competition for other ideas along these lines.
Thanks to my friend Nina for finding it. Definitely worth a look.
Time to evolve a bit?
October 13, 2009
Last night I dreamed I went blind while driving down the freeway. The world went white, just like a blizzard.
In the dream, I crept the car to the side of the road and listened to the angry honking, wondering if they’d still honk if they knew the driver, suddenly blind, had done the best she could to get out of the way. Probably.