40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty Two

Some people seem to like it.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty One

I'll miss the snow when it is gone.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Nine

I was recently at a group show of artists and as seems to be the case with contemporary art, I saw very little I was impressed by or even interested in.  As contemporary art has shifted from a traditional sense of craft to high concepts with ideas expressed that have the depth and subtlety of a political cartoon, I found myself getting impatient.  One piece consisted of lots of prescription bottles lying on the floor.  To conceive and execute such a work, it must have take the artist...minutes. 

However, as is also often the case, I enjoyed two pieces that used projected light to create a moving, ever changing artwork.  One room was dark except for long strips of paper hung in a grid formation.  Projected on this grid would be lights that changed in colors, patterns and gave you the sense of sharing the room with a kinetic sculpture.

The second room has a similar idea.  But here the room was filled with a wire mesh against which light was projected, creating an illusion like fog as you made your way through an eerie maze shifting light.  

It almost makes up for the stupid pile of prescription bottles littering the floor.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Eight

One of the people I work with who commutes from New Jersey mentioned that he saw someone on the train this morning around 7:30 already drunk for St. Patty's Day.   I think that sentence contains everything I hate about the holiday.  Just the same, my co-worker told me the conversation went something like:

Him: I see you got started early.

Drunk: Yeah.  I'm not even Irish, but I love St. Patty's Day.  It's probably the closest the Irish get to Christmas.

Him: ?

I would just like to point out to this unnamed drunk that Christmas is the closest the Irish get to Christmas.  Crazy as it may seem, the Irish celebrate Christmas.  I know.  I 've seen it with my own eyes.  Both the Catholics and the Protestants celebrate the birth of Christ.  It was one of the few things they agree on.  

Oy.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty

Halfway there...

40 Days of Lent: Day Nineteen

40 Days of Lent: Day Eighteen

I have no idea what is going on here.

40 Days of Lent: Day Seventeen

Foxes by Sandy Skoglund.

40 Days of Lent: Day Sixteen

Saw this picture online.  I don't see why the dog is being publicly shamed. At my church we ate Jesus every Sunday; some of us were practically force fed.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fifteen

Someone has thrown paint on the Calvin Klein billboard with Justin Bieber on Houston Street.

I only know this because my office window looks out on Houston and I see the billboard ever day.  It didn't take long for the vandal(s) to strike - I think the billboard had only been there for two, maybe three days at most.  I can't think of this as defacing because I think it makes the ad more interesting.

 
Just as makeup is worn to accentuate features, something about the bright yellow on the black and white makes for a more interesting image.  It's not just that I like it when advertising is subverted but the splotches of color somehow make Justin look sad.  They resemble tears or little wounds; it's a shame red paint wasn't used.  The picture somehow seems soulful rather than just another empty advertisement.  I hope someone vandalizes the other half of the billboard and manages to create something artistic with it, too.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fourteen

Setting for a story:

Story to take place in a hospital ward where long term catatonic and comatose patients are kept.  The families and lovers of these patients tend to decorate their beds and the surrounding areas with items that were once significant to them, in the hopes that should they wake, they will be comforted by familiar objects.  Some patients have so many mementos around them that their beds have begun to look like altars, perhaps appropriate given how much praying goes on at their side.  The families of poor patients might feel some shame when they seem the elaborate displays around the beds of the wealthier catatonics.  The hospital should be the one place they don't feel lower class, yet even here...No doubt some families would find themselves competing with each other.  Each would be determined to have the most impressive display in the ward, similar to those that try to out-decorate
their neighbors at Christmas.

There might be a young man, a newlywed whose wife became comatose shortly after their marriage, who realizes that they didn't have enough time to build many associations or memories around any common objects.  There would be a severe almost Puritan couple who would no doubt embrace minimalism for their loved one, preferring the peacefulness found in just plain clean sheets.  Their artful minimal aesthetic would put the more gaudy presentations to shame, not that the other families would notice.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirteen

My friend Andrea's blog By and Large is also posting something every day this Lenten season, namely work by artists in the Lancaster PA area.  Well worth checking out.

http://byandlargelancaster.blogspot.com

40 Days of Lent: Day Twelve

Conversation from yesterday:

"So what are you reading?"

"I'm reading The Travels of Friar Odoric.  He was a monk in the 14th century who traveled through what is now Iran, India and parts of China.  So it's not only a record of what life was like in those parts of the world back then, but it's a record of what they believed in: monsters they saw, a tree that spontaneously creates babies, that sort of thing."

"Oh.  I'm not much of a reader.  The last think I read was the Left Behind series.  Did you read that?"

"No, no....(After searching for something positive to say) I understand that, no matter what else, those are really good action books."

Politeness trumps honesty once again.