The World for Us: March 2009

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Picasso's Flashlight Bull

Fortune magazine recently featured this photo in the insert Moments in Time part of The LIFE Picture Collection.

I love this picture - for me it is about the genius and the freedom in the artist that Picasso embraced and that is present in so many artists and in a sense in all of us as unique individuals.

I first ran into this photograph several years ago in the book Talking Pictures by Kismaric and Heiferman. Several people were invited to talk about a picture of their choice that had a lasting impact in their lives. Tony Bennett chose this one by Gjon Mili of Picasso drawing a bull with a flashlight. Mili captured the moment with perfect balance and 'light'.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

In the Nest & Self Portrait

K loves her new art class. She drew a beatiful bird tending to its chicks in a nest.

After coming home she went on to try out her new markers and came up with this self portrait. She was actually wearing a red shirt and a purple skirt with black dots. This shirt and skirt pair is currently her favorite outfit. She picked it out at Talbots a few weeks ago. She would wear it every every day if she could. On the back she signed her name and drew a roller coaster.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Stardust

Last week I came across a March 09, 2009 post on Adri Mendes' blog comparing the work of William Blake and Stardust by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess. http://adrimendes.blogspot.com/

I did a quick search and found interesting articles at ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. Volume 4 number 1 (Summer 2008), The Comics Work of Neil Gaiman.

http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archive.shtml

Meredith Collins in the article Fairy and Faerie compares images of Vess and Rackham.

"A particularly strong relationship exists between Rackham's illustrations and Vess's. [...] The mood and content of much of Rackham's art appears in various modified forms throughout Stardust. [...]

Figure 3. Comparison of Rackham's illustration from The Wind in the Willows and Vess's illustration from Stardust, p. 171."

http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/collins/

The article of S. A. Reed is also pretty cool on the works of Neil Gaiman and Tori Amos.

http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/reed/

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

HMNS Blog Butterflies

The Houston Museum of Natural Science blog Beyond Bones has a great post on common butterflies around town (March 09, 2009).

http://blog.hmns.org/?p=3302

Monday, March 9, 2009

Yoga

I guess Venus and K inspired me. I went to a yoga class today and realized how much I missed it. K loves yoga. I want to encourage her to keep practicing it. I'm going to start working with her in a more structured way in the next few months.

Venus

From The Associatd Press @ Yahoo.news:
The planet Venus appears immediately to the right of a thin crescent moon as seen just after sunset Friday, Feb. 27, 2009, from Tucson, Ariz. The apparent proximity, while not a rare occurrence, made for an especially dramatic view because Venus is at its brightest as seen from the Earth--20 times brighter than the brightest star in the sky. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

More on venus at space.com
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090306-ns-venus-sun.html

Sunday, March 8, 2009

High Island

Migration is not in full swing yet in High Island. There were lots of very pink spoonbills but not many egrets or ibises at Smith Oaks. Alligators were out in large numbers. A few turtles and a bullfrog also enjoyed a sunny day by the water.

These spoonbills had a much darker shade of pink than the ones I saw in the Fall '08 at Addicks. I noted that some birds had some orange feathers on their tails and wings - mating plumage, I learned.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Day 8

Not much obvious change this week. The temperature did drop down into the 40sF on Monday night, would that be a factor? We're back to warm again - high in the low 80s today!