A while ago, on facebook a friend of mine posted a status which read as follows:
"Pay It Forward 2011 ~ I promise to send something handmade to the first 5 people who leave a comment here. They must in turn post this as their status. The rules are that the items must be handmade by you and must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011. Happy gifting!"
Thus far I have only received 4 comments since posting this, and am tempted to post it again, if only to see if different people respond. I think the idea of something hand-made is romantic and idealistic, if only because we live in a world of ready-made, cookie cutter consumerism. Everything is pre-packaged and sanitized for your protection. It is like a facebook status, or an e-mail. It is quick, and instant, and requires very little effort on your part. A hand-made something, even if it is a home cooked meal, has what feels like a bygone sentiment which I fear is getting lost in the melange of life.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Picture of Bryan and me: delayed
It has been a long while since I have painted anything that attempted to be remotely photo realist in more than 3 colors. Being a bit of a nit picker who likes to pick nits, I usually hold a very fixed idea when I begin a project. The exception to this rule would be my collage panels, since that is a jigsaw with no concrete answer, and i don't know I am done until I glue down something, look at the collage as a whole, and am satisfied with the result. I digress. I will have a very specific vision of what I would like my finished product to look like, and there is little room for error or variance.
Back in 2009, I had a brief and serendipitous encounter with one Bryan Anderson, Army Staff Sergeant, Retired. He was blown up by an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq, and his story was followed by many media outlets. He received a Purple heart for his injuries, and became a pseudo celebrity in the sense that he is one of the triple amputees who survived his injuries overseas. His story also helped me be at peace with the distinct possibility that if I were injured when I was in Iraq, and came home with a fraction of my physical self, that would be fine, as long as I came home. That is a rather dark and grim thought, firmly grounded in reality, and ultimately a pragmatic and crucial conclusion to come to when the alternative which you have to confront is death. In helping me accept this, Bryan Anderson was by example a hero. I had the opportunity to shake his hand, and his girlfriend was kind enough to snap a photograph of me with him. I have kept this photograph in my laptop and backed up on several different USB Drives, and external hard drives. After some time and wanting to increase my production output, I decided I wanted to make a painting of this photograph. I attempted to pencil in our figures on the canvas prior to painting, however I became increasingly frustrated at subtle variances in what I had drawn and what the digital image was. I would erase, and paint over the failed attempts several times before I resorted to a technique which I use with my students. My printer having bit the dust after many years of loyal service, I headed to a retail print shop and had a transparency of the photo created. I would use the overhead projector at school to project the image onto the canvas. This idea was foiled with the bulb in the classroom's projector being out. As such, I must wait until the bulb is replaced before I can proceed with this particular project.
Back in 2009, I had a brief and serendipitous encounter with one Bryan Anderson, Army Staff Sergeant, Retired. He was blown up by an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq, and his story was followed by many media outlets. He received a Purple heart for his injuries, and became a pseudo celebrity in the sense that he is one of the triple amputees who survived his injuries overseas. His story also helped me be at peace with the distinct possibility that if I were injured when I was in Iraq, and came home with a fraction of my physical self, that would be fine, as long as I came home. That is a rather dark and grim thought, firmly grounded in reality, and ultimately a pragmatic and crucial conclusion to come to when the alternative which you have to confront is death. In helping me accept this, Bryan Anderson was by example a hero. I had the opportunity to shake his hand, and his girlfriend was kind enough to snap a photograph of me with him. I have kept this photograph in my laptop and backed up on several different USB Drives, and external hard drives. After some time and wanting to increase my production output, I decided I wanted to make a painting of this photograph. I attempted to pencil in our figures on the canvas prior to painting, however I became increasingly frustrated at subtle variances in what I had drawn and what the digital image was. I would erase, and paint over the failed attempts several times before I resorted to a technique which I use with my students. My printer having bit the dust after many years of loyal service, I headed to a retail print shop and had a transparency of the photo created. I would use the overhead projector at school to project the image onto the canvas. This idea was foiled with the bulb in the classroom's projector being out. As such, I must wait until the bulb is replaced before I can proceed with this particular project.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Upcoming project idea
After a proverbial hiatus from semi-representational/naturalistic painting, I have bought a canvas to a scale I am comfortable with. There is a photograph I took a few years back which I would like to see as a painting. It has been a long while since I have done any sort of realistic painting, mainly because my skills as a representational painter are sub par. I might have to re-gesso the store-bought canvas as the surface is not to my liking... we'll see.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
in my nightmares I.....
With the very little I recall of some of the dreams that I have had in the past years, an ongoing trend I have noticed is whenever I have a dream which I can undeniably consider a nightmare because if the true childlike fear and helplessness they leave me with are dreams in which I am back in the service during a training exercise which involves the use of, or possession of a weapon. usually what ends up happening is either I lose said weapon, have a first time user's non-lethal, not-necessarily-dangerous-in-a-training-environment-but-potentially-harmful-in-a-non-training-environment incident, like swinging a weapon in such a way that I basically put someone in the business end of a rifle unintentionally, or the weapon I have is not the serial number which I was assigned. Misplaced or lost weapons are serious security risks, and they will shut down bases to recover unaccounted for weapons. But with this dream comes the same sense of helplessness of you have a career making meeting or something to get to, and you lost your keys. You cannot remember where you left them, you have turned the house upside down looking for them, and they are NOWHERE to be found. In my nightmare usually, I am usually retracing my steps, and checking every nook and cranie of my environment for my weapon, or at least the weapon which has my assigned serial number. I usually end up either getting caught not having my assigned weapon, or I wake up from the sheer palpable fright which is physically making my heart race like I just finished a Tabata set.
A Really Late response to the Tucson Arizona Shootings and the surrounding politics
Last weekend a very unfortunate and gruesome event occurred in Tucson Arizona, when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot point blank range through the head by an unwell gunman Jared Lee Loughner. Loughner had a high capacity clip for his pistol which allowed him to fire 31 total rounds before having to reload, which resulted in 6 deaths, and numerous injuries. I have the benefit of hindsight and the distance of time and space from this event in which I had plenty of time to digest the on-goings as they unfolded in the news media and the responses of the nation and myself to the shooting.
My first thought for good or for ill, and a shortcoming in my own judgments was "what right wing gun-happpy nutbag is responsible?". That judgment is a very broad generalization as I know most conservatives while strong in their convictions, and sometimes misinformed (something I am guilty of myself) are generally not bad people. As more information emerged about the shooter various news networks tried to paint him as an extremist of either the right or left based on what is altogether an arbitrary and wide-spanning selection of "favorite books" from Loughner's myspace page. All judgments about the shooter's politics opinions and conjecture piece-mealed and selected by presenting what was altogether only a limited selection of his readings.
As more information about the tragedy unfolded, we found out that Representative Giffords was part of Sarah Palin's Political Action Party's site to take back twenty districts from Democrats who voted to pass the Federal Health Care Reform. The districts marked off under a rifle scope's cross-hairs (I don't care what spin you try to retroactively put on the images, they are NOT surveyor's graphics, I know a rifle scope cross-hairs when I see it.) There are people who believe that symbolism and language riddled with gun euphemisms, and metaphors. This sparked a debate as to whether or not the political rhetoric was responsible for generating an environment in which politicians play on the public's fears and that in turn results in acts of violence seeming justified; a "do onto others BEFORE they do on to you" kind of mentality. I thought it was amusing to see the response from either side of the political spectrum, as it is telling when someone feels they are being called out on the offending behavior. It seemed a lot of the conservative news media and politicians responded with a "what are you accusing us of?" kind of response, where as some of the liberal media outlets acknowledged what might constitute their own infractions and adjusted their speech accordingly. My favorite example of the adjustment is Keith Olberman's satirical segment "Worst Person in the World" usually poking fun at people whose disregard for their fellow man may not be necessarily dangerous, but certainly deplorable if comedic in how it is presented. Olberman did not run this segment in the past week, acknowledging that not everyone may be able to appreciate the segment's satire.
What has been brought to light as well in terms of the shooting was the long history and frequency of mass shootings which have occurred in the United States. I do believe we have the second amendment for a reason, however I think that we should look at the Right to bear Arms with reason and a sense of wisdom. What sorts of things are perfectly admissible in terms of owning firearms, and why is it justifiable. This week Congress has introduced a Bill which would ban the public sale of high capacity magazine clips. High-capacity magazines are not used by any part of public service. Policemen do not have them, and many members of the military do not use them, so why should any civilian individual need them? There is public acknowledgment that automatic weapons are also effectively banned on a federal level, and depending on the state, actually banned. What I mean by 'effectively banned" is that access to certain kinds of materials involve a rigorous process and series of background checks as well as some large fees which need to be paid and are a hassle. If you are willing to go through the process, and your state does not have an outright ban on automatic weapons, you can get a machine gun.
These events of course are not without their heroes. For every sociopath who has no regard for their fellow man, there is a selfless courageous individual who you would swear has ice water running through their veins, and the well being of others becomes tantamount. In the Arizona shooting, this person is Daniel Hernandez, a 20 year old, Latino intern who happens to be gay. Three traits which are no more important that any other, but given Arizona's recent controversial political history, three traits which should not be left out of the dialogue about the shooting (Also three traits which as one reader of the Dan Savage Blog, will guarantee a teabagger's head to explode). Daniel ran TOWARD the gunfire once he heard bullets and attended Gabrielle Giffords' injuries, keeping her upright and applying pressure to the wound. Danile has been lauded as a hero by the nation, including President Obama. During the Memorial, Daniel Hernandez while appreciative of the sentiment "humbly rejected the mantle of 'hero'" to a standing ovation of everyone in attendance. My thoughts on his response were ironically "spoken like a true hero". He really is, in spite of his rejection of the title. I certainly sympathize with the rejection of the sentiment.
Overall, the events are unfortunate, however they are just another series in a chain of a bloody and violent history of shootings here in the state. The shooting in Tucson is horrible, but it is anything but inconceivable.
My first thought for good or for ill, and a shortcoming in my own judgments was "what right wing gun-happpy nutbag is responsible?". That judgment is a very broad generalization as I know most conservatives while strong in their convictions, and sometimes misinformed (something I am guilty of myself) are generally not bad people. As more information emerged about the shooter various news networks tried to paint him as an extremist of either the right or left based on what is altogether an arbitrary and wide-spanning selection of "favorite books" from Loughner's myspace page. All judgments about the shooter's politics opinions and conjecture piece-mealed and selected by presenting what was altogether only a limited selection of his readings.
As more information about the tragedy unfolded, we found out that Representative Giffords was part of Sarah Palin's Political Action Party's site to take back twenty districts from Democrats who voted to pass the Federal Health Care Reform. The districts marked off under a rifle scope's cross-hairs (I don't care what spin you try to retroactively put on the images, they are NOT surveyor's graphics, I know a rifle scope cross-hairs when I see it.) There are people who believe that symbolism and language riddled with gun euphemisms, and metaphors. This sparked a debate as to whether or not the political rhetoric was responsible for generating an environment in which politicians play on the public's fears and that in turn results in acts of violence seeming justified; a "do onto others BEFORE they do on to you" kind of mentality. I thought it was amusing to see the response from either side of the political spectrum, as it is telling when someone feels they are being called out on the offending behavior. It seemed a lot of the conservative news media and politicians responded with a "what are you accusing us of?" kind of response, where as some of the liberal media outlets acknowledged what might constitute their own infractions and adjusted their speech accordingly. My favorite example of the adjustment is Keith Olberman's satirical segment "Worst Person in the World" usually poking fun at people whose disregard for their fellow man may not be necessarily dangerous, but certainly deplorable if comedic in how it is presented. Olberman did not run this segment in the past week, acknowledging that not everyone may be able to appreciate the segment's satire.
What has been brought to light as well in terms of the shooting was the long history and frequency of mass shootings which have occurred in the United States. I do believe we have the second amendment for a reason, however I think that we should look at the Right to bear Arms with reason and a sense of wisdom. What sorts of things are perfectly admissible in terms of owning firearms, and why is it justifiable. This week Congress has introduced a Bill which would ban the public sale of high capacity magazine clips. High-capacity magazines are not used by any part of public service. Policemen do not have them, and many members of the military do not use them, so why should any civilian individual need them? There is public acknowledgment that automatic weapons are also effectively banned on a federal level, and depending on the state, actually banned. What I mean by 'effectively banned" is that access to certain kinds of materials involve a rigorous process and series of background checks as well as some large fees which need to be paid and are a hassle. If you are willing to go through the process, and your state does not have an outright ban on automatic weapons, you can get a machine gun.
These events of course are not without their heroes. For every sociopath who has no regard for their fellow man, there is a selfless courageous individual who you would swear has ice water running through their veins, and the well being of others becomes tantamount. In the Arizona shooting, this person is Daniel Hernandez, a 20 year old, Latino intern who happens to be gay. Three traits which are no more important that any other, but given Arizona's recent controversial political history, three traits which should not be left out of the dialogue about the shooting (Also three traits which as one reader of the Dan Savage Blog, will guarantee a teabagger's head to explode). Daniel ran TOWARD the gunfire once he heard bullets and attended Gabrielle Giffords' injuries, keeping her upright and applying pressure to the wound. Danile has been lauded as a hero by the nation, including President Obama. During the Memorial, Daniel Hernandez while appreciative of the sentiment "humbly rejected the mantle of 'hero'" to a standing ovation of everyone in attendance. My thoughts on his response were ironically "spoken like a true hero". He really is, in spite of his rejection of the title. I certainly sympathize with the rejection of the sentiment.
Overall, the events are unfortunate, however they are just another series in a chain of a bloody and violent history of shootings here in the state. The shooting in Tucson is horrible, but it is anything but inconceivable.
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