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the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn
22apr2023
O hai, today's Earth Day.
Well, at least it finally motivated me to post something. It seems entirely appropriate, at least in my part of the world, to celebrate the Earth in general (& spring in particular): all the trees have begun to bloom—lime green fuzzies for the wind-pollinated trees, and the fabulous flowers of bradford pear, sand cherry, and magnolia; the weeping cherries presage the crabapples and dogwoods, which will be putting on a show soon. Old brown leaves are rotting down to fresh new soil, an endlessly fascinating cycle of the seasons.
In the spirit of reuse/recycle, it seems only fitting to feature a mixed media collage of discarded scraps, old stamps and bookmarks, reused tissue paper (that went to Japan and then came back...) with the major focal points being advertising. Even the envelope was going to be tossed by the thrift shop (they've given me a lifetime supply of blank envelopes...)
1apr2023
I've been helping my bestie sort, organize & tidy her attic storage, and we finished the task with a nostalgic trip down memory lane, looking at all the old xmas and other cards I (or my parents) had sent her over the years. My wedding invite. A sibling's birth announcement, that I'd calligraphed.
Lovely.
I'm not as organized as my friend, but I was recently spurred to think about the various (digital) cameras I've bought over the years: important tools for making an essential, external memory (cuz the one inside my head is pretty flakey.)
I believe my first digital camera was a kodak—mebbe 1 megapixel? It wasn't very good, because among other things it had a proprietary file system, which, once we quit windows, meant I lost all my images. Then there was something—possibly a panasonic, as the file system started with P (e.g. P0000001) and brief research suggests that back in 1999 and 2000 when I was taking pictures with whatever this mysterious camera was, panasonic dominated the market.
31mar2023
Heh, didn't so much on the posting front this week—I was pretty busy.
But as today is Trans Day of Visibility, I figured I'd better put something up, given the way absolutely appalling political attacks on trans people have been heating up. Because we're such a tiny minority, it's all too easy for us to be misrepresented as some sort of monsters, instead of really quite ordinary folks who are mostly interested in living their lives and being left alone—just like everyone else. As you may have noticed, I spend far more time focused on art than I do my gender.
I mean, I finally have a framework to understand why everyone else is so fixed on ‘being a woman’ or ‘being a man’, which I admit doesn't make a whole heckuva lotta sense to me (or many other nonbinary people) but hey, whatevs.
22mar2023
O hai, I saw somewhere that Ramadan starts at sundown today, so, Happy Ramadan if you celebrate it (& a lovely Wednesday if not.)
I unfortunately don't have any Ramadan themed links, but I rather like this catchy pop song I found via bb, which notes:
The music video for genre-bending pop singer Ashnikko's song Worms contains some pretty badass animation. Each shot is rich in detail, and the creativity that went into the character design is off the charts. The animation, although digitally rendered, looks like a stop motion film. I love the hand-made look to the spunky monsters in the video as well as the gloomy, post-apocalyptic setting that Ashnikko is driving through. The song itself is awesome, too!
21mar2023
I was sure sure sure I'd posted at least two links to cool fungi photography, but sadly can find only one but here's an overview that gets into some of the reasons why fungi are so wonderful, besides their admittedly wonderful forms.
I think it's helpful to consider these larger contexts, because otherwise people tend to divide them into two categories, ‘things good to eat’ (tiny) and ‘annoying’ (a larger category including diseases such as athletes’ foot, yeast infections, and stuff growing where it shouldn't, such as your live trees & (ought-to-be) dead baseboards.
I didn't think to incorporate any (obvious) fungi in today's art, but that's probably because I tend to associate them with autumn, not spring.
20mar2023
Today is the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring. I thought this meant the days were of equal length, which is a common but incorrect assumption (which assertion the Encyclopedia Britannica makes, so you could hardly be blamed.) What it actually means is that the Earth is half lit and half dark (at a certain point)—I thought the video embedded in this space.com page did a lovely job of illustrating the concept.
Of course, for folks Down Under, it's the Autumn Equinox.
So! Happy Equinox everyone. Have some spring flowers courtesy of the changing season, and a little bonus piece of lampworking.
