sunday koan

if "nature morte" is still life, what is the "living dead"?

nobody pays attention to me

fancy

other artists

these are some things i found at the library. i especially love the ledger art. it is a genre i didn't know about except that i have drawn in notebooks sometimes. at least one of the ledger drawings is attributed to Howling Wolf, but as for the others i can only say they are not mine. the dog sculptures are by artist Rick Bartow, a contemporary Native American artist. if you want to see more ledger art use the link in the previous entry.

too bad i have nothing new to say today.

link

go. http://plainsledgerart.org/

Candy Cow

touching chewed up now & laters and bubblegum makes me think seriously about the excessive consumption of sugar.

Thought of the Day

"The thinker thinks his thoughts through habit, through repetition, through copying, which brings ignorance & sorrow. Is not habit thoughtlessness? Awareness creates order, but it never creates habit. Settled tendencies only bring about thoughtlessness. Why is one thoughtless? Because to think is painful, it creates disturbances, it brings opposition, it may cause one's actions to go contrary to the established pattern. To think-feel extensionally, to become choicelessly aware may lead to unknown depths, and the mind rebels against the unknown; so it moves from the known to the known, from habit to habit, from pattern to pattern. Such a mind never abandons the known to discover the unknown. Realizing the pain of thought, the thinker becomes thoughtless through copying, through habit; being afraid to think, he creates patterns of thoughtlessness. As the thinker is afraid, his actions are born of fear, and then he regards his actions and tries to change them. The thinker is afraid of this own creations, but the deed is the doer, so the thinker is afraid of himself. The thinker is fear itself; the thinker is the cause of ignorance, of sorrow. The thinker may divide himself into many categories of thought, but the thought is still the thinker. The thinker and his efforts to be, to become, are the very cause of conflict and confusion."

J. Krishnamurti

ghosts

maybe this sounds silly but going through all these old things has made me jumpy & given me thoughts of ghosts & spirits around me.

objects

3 & 4- this makeup was only 50 cents and enabled you to adopt the attributes of any age or race of man/womankind. amazing! see the numbered list?

2- do you have a "Favorite" BEST & CHEAPEST letter & invoice file? It's also IMPROVED.

1- apparently Juicy Couture was making stationery in the 1920's. seriously though, this is beautifully decorated for a throwaway item. 

I don't like nostalgia for its own sake nor do I desire to imitate Art Nouveau; however, these objects hold a powerful attraction nonetheless. I wonder why... do I inwardly crave decoration, preciousness, kitsch, hyper-sincere branding, outmoded standards of beauty? Is it being in the presence of "the dead"? Is it escaping my own constraints for the while? am I- unbeknownst to myself- a genre person, like a Goth or something? Or, is it CRAFT? Is it wondering how these items were produced and distributed in a pre-digital age? I will ponder these questions in my sleep.

messages from beyond

"What shall I do, whip him or send him to West Texas? I believe I send him to West Texas." (Mr. Mag)

"Tsch bibble I should worry" (Bill)

This vignette was found in the leaves of a hanging daily proverbs calendar from the year 1918. It seems to be the property of a great-granduncle who was killed in military service in WWI. I just found out about the existence of this departed relative and this is a very endearing glimpse of him (because I do love the comics, especially of one's teachers).

AND- he can't draw hands!!! haha.

1894 pipe advertisement

In case you can't read the text from your screen,

it says it is made of asbestos. :)

This also reminds me of the oft-referred-to

Magritte painting. "This is not a pipe."