Archive for the ‘iPhone art’ category

Dancing in the Dark (Pink Elephants)

March 10, 2011

Followers of this blog may notice that I’ve descended into the world of elephants and iPhone art over the last few months.  (Those who disagree with my views on art and politics may consider this an ascension.)

I genuinely like elephants!  (I’m guessing you’ve noticed.)

I’m also having a hard time writing blogs lately.  Part of the problem is that the news feels almost as grim to me as the weather.  The outbreaks of protest and democracy in the Middle East are pretty amazing, but there still seems to be a pall over much of the world, or, over this country at least–bifurcated clouds of threat and slog.

Of course, there’s always poetry!  Fiction!  Important loves (besides elephants.)  However, in the face of a world of publishing which seems increasingly fragmented –divided between an impossibly crowded field of micro-sellers and a few celebrity blockbusters–even these have, for the moment, lost some of their glint/promise/appeal.

I tell myself: change happens!  Transitions are messy!   Dispiriting confusion is part of the mix!

Yes.

And too, there are elephants.

Which, when they are not stampeding, have a certain timeless sweetness.

In my book;  on my iPhone screen; dancing, pinkly, through a (temporarily, I hope) darkened mind.

(PS – the elephant book is 1 Mississippi; the poetry is Going On Somewhere. Both are available on Amazon.  Check them out!)

Old dog, night walk

March 10, 2011

My old dog, increasingly blind,

My old dog Pearl is increasingly blind, especially in darkness.  The leash tends to provide reassurance rather than restraint.  Sometimes, I find myself completely leading her on a walk, as if I were her seeing eye person.  I have to be careful to avoid the bottoms of park benches, the sides of steps.  (She frequently veers to one side, which leads her into such obstacles.)

Other times, scent takes over and she, with canine persistence, pulls me along, avidly reading a kind of olefactory hieroglyphic.  I never am sure of what she actually sees, only that she knows exactly where she wants to be.

Unexpected Harbingers of Spring

March 8, 2011

Not exactly Robin's egg.

 

Many wonders–as in bare sidewalks, sun, snowdrops(!)–now to be seen in Battery Park City, NYC.

Belated Happy Birthday Michelangelo Buonarroti! (With Elephant)

March 7, 2011

He'd be 535 today. You'll have to imagine the candles (and elephant.)

 

Errr…. actually that was yesterday (March 6th)….  I mean, the day before yesterday….    (Time flies at 535.)

Charlie Sheen- Some people just don’t listen to their guardian elephant.

March 7, 2011

“Waiter, What’s this… ‘not a fly’… doing in my soup?”

March 5, 2011

"I think, ma'am, it's the backstroke."

Have a nice weekend with good soup and better elephants!

If you have time, check out Going on Somewhere and 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson (and BackStroke Books) on Amazon.    (And buy a copy!!!)

Gogol’s “Diary of a Mad…. Elephant?”

March 5, 2011

Not quite Geoffrey Rush at BAM

Re-Kindling a love for books/ Resisting the Inner Polar Bear

March 3, 2011

Speaking of gadgets (yesterday was the iPad2), I have been a victim of the Amazon Kindle of late.

Aging/sore eyes are difficult.  I had not realized until receiving a Kindle for Christmas how my ocular limitations had inhibited my enjoyment of reading of printed matter.    That and a relatively recent addiction to electronic screens had really limited my span.

I spend my work day in front of a computer;  and yet I still couldn’t turn away from the screen–not before work, not after work, not in the middle of the night.  I seemed to be like the polar bear at the Central Park zoo–you know the one who swims back and forth and back and forth and back and forth–determinedly submerging myself in a groove that ran through a small reflective surface.

With Kindle in hand, however, and my need for connection with the digital world somehow satisfied, I find myself reading constantly – not scanning bits of newspapers, blogs, videos, my own manuscripts–but reading.  In an extended fashion.  Books.

The only problem is that there’s so much ease in downloading a book (you can do it from thin air), that I hardly feel like trying to write one anymore.

But reading is good for writing, right?

Sure, but writing is necessary for writing.

Agh.

iPad 2! Me Too! (Abashed.) With Elephant.

March 2, 2011

I am enough of a child of the Sixties to hate to think of myself as an avid consumer.   I never had a dishwasher until my fifties (and the old one I now use leaves a dried seedy residue that I try to convince myself is at least heated through.)

I have never ever had a microwave.

Forget about a GPS;  one window on my second-hand car sometimes falls off.

High def TV?  My daughter did not know that Big Bird was yellow until age five.

My Birkenstocks are peeling.

And yet… and yet… today I found myself chomping at the bit (ha!) for a new electronic gadget.

I tell myself it’s all about art.  Followers of this blog will know that I have devoted the last couple of months to pictures made on an iPhone that has been entrusted into my care.

I will be so happy not to have to zoom in and out anymore.

But hey!  I have pencils, watercolor, paper, on which I could draw and paint to heart’s content without zooming one inch.

Yes, it’s very silly, childish, materialistic, irrational.

March 11th!

Dissing Teachers- A Long Tradition (With Elephant)

March 2, 2011

The Death of Socrates by Jean-Louis David (with ManicDdaily)

Society has often been unfair to teachers.   (But the current scapegoating is ridiculous.)