Month: December 2010

Dies Luna
Luna wx 50%v

PRO MOU ARETE
KHAIRE, ARETE
OPISO MOU MNEME
KHAIRE, MNEME
EPI DEXIA MELETE
KHAIRE, MELETE
EPARISTERA AOIDE
KHAIRE, AOIDE

Today has been all about tiny parts, and fitting tiny parts together. File and saw fatigue have hit, so am taking a break from that. The next bit involves more pattern-making, hopefully the last of that for this piece. I’m super-itchy to do some more carving in wood or bone but am exercising restraint and finishing this first.

At the end of January I will begin two classes- an OCAC independent study in metals course on Saturday mornings and figure drawing at Hipbone Studio every Wednesday (except tech Wednesdays) from 1-4. This should satisfy the need for mentoring until March, when I’ll resume the search. This will be the first time I’ll be committing to these while in full show schedule swing, so we’ll see how that goes. I would like to add in a beginning Latin or Greek course, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find a suitable online course for that. No success in locating one that is workable yet, but I’m not too worried.

The above tells me that before mid-January, I need to:
1) Take my list of potential metals course projects/foci and elaborate on at least three of them so that when it’s time to plot my course with the instructor I have several options to talk about.
2) Finish what’s currently on the bench.
3) Do the budget for winter-spring.
4) Take the opportunity NOW to relax a little. Because once the courses start it’ll be a very busy three months.

Culture Warning: Fall Arts Guides may be dangerous to your health

by Barry Johnson over at Arts Dispatch

Dies Saturnus

Luna wn 1%v

“The simplest way of refusing any concession to gold is to have some oneself. With gold it becomes quite unnecessary to “engage oneself”.[work for hire under direction] A hero does not engage himself anywhere! He is the very opposite of a servant. One really must have teeth covered with Sartre not to dare to speak like this! So let us be prudent, as Saint-Granier recommends, if we want to permit ourselves to be Nietzchean. All the concrete values of modern painting will remain eternally translatable on the material level into that thing that I personally have always loved: money!”

“In compensation, the pure critics who have consistently despised money and been afraid to dirty their hands by touching it may rest assured: the abstract values that they defend in modern paintings will inevitably be converted into absolutely clean, wholly inoffensive and immaterial money. It will be purely abstract money.”

-Salvador Dali, 1956  (from Dali on Modern Art, French & English transl. Haakon Chevalier)

Avidadollars!

(“As everybody knows, Andre Breton baptised Dali “Avida Dollars”. Dali claims that this anagram was his talisman which made “the rain of dollars fluid, gentle and monotonous.” -Chevalier, ibid.)

Dies Mars, Hora Sol

Luna wn 28%v

Disk Talisman for S

bronze 220, copper, sterling silver, brass

5cm x .35 cm / 2 in x .12 in.

obverse: bronze, copper, silver.  Wings pierced and lifted slightly from disk plane along leading edge.

reverse: etched copper

This talisman was created for a sound designer preparing to take his work to the next stage. He has applied for designers’ union membership and is planning a move across country.

The obverse is a glyph of the Solve et Coagula formula. The four wings form a widdershins swastika, a whirling force of dissolution and release. In the next circle inwards and moving in the opposite direction, the motto VIRTUS UNITA FORTIOR- “United Virtue is Stronger” refers to his singularity of desire, focus, and action in accordance with will. The motto reads sunwise, a motion of growth and manifestation. In the center, an opening, a gate. The four stars represent the four royal stars of the Solstices and Equinoxes.

The reverse is a depiction of the various spheres and influences in play for the desired outcome. As lack of connection was stated as the main obstacle to the goal, here each sphere is shown connected to each other sphere. The layout of the connecting “cables” makes a pattern reminiscent of waves, that the patterns of communication between the spheres may have a strong and rhythmic flow.