Just when it seems that I am running out of friends to support, I stumble upon some new bloggers whose work I admire. Such is the case with this Friday’s featured “friend.”
While I don’t know her personally—and, thus, “friend” might be a bit bold of a claim—I’ve come to enjoy Joyce Jacobo‘s charming literature blog, The Literary Serenity Archives.
Last week was our big Fine Arts Festival at school, and part of the festival included an art showcase. The Fine Arts Department Head invited me to submit my little paintings for sale, which I happily did—all nineteen of them!
On the last night of the festival, I slashed the prices of all of my paintings, and ended up selling four that evening (“Ghostopus“; “Springtime“; “Feelin’ Froggy“; and “The Elixir of Life“). As such. I’ve lowered all of the paintings on Bandamp to $15 accordingly (“Valenween/Franketine” is at $20, but just because I like that one so much).
I haven’t had time to work on too many paintings since the festival, but I do have a few newer ones that might be of interest to readers.
In a move sure to incite riots akin to those that accompanied the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, I’m dedicating today’s post to the bizarre German Expressionist music of Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal vocal work Pierrot Lunaire.
Before my musically conservative readers begin rioting in the comments section, let me hasten to add that, as a rule, I do not like German Expressionism outside of film. The art movement has its moments, and I appreciate weird absurdity, but the movement is, at its core, nihilistic and anti-Beauty. It seems to be the bitter wellspring of postmodern art, much of which is meaningless trash. But at least the German Expressionists had technique; they knew how to make good art, but chose not to, largely as a reaction to the absurdity of the First World War.
I’m also not much of a fan of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone composing system, and the organized atonality it represents. I just love a good chord progression too much, and generally think there is more fun (and musicality) to be had tinkering with music inside the limits of traditional tonality, rather than abandoning them entirely.
In spite of all of that, I kind of like Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.
My good buddy and regular poetry contributor Son of Sonnet has some exciting news: this Monday, 14 March 2022, he is launching his new Locals page at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/.
Locals is a bit like SubscribeStar, but it’s more robust in terms of features, and the focus is on building up a sense of community between subscribers and the content creator. SubscribeStar allows comments, for example, but Locals has built-in incentives to encourage more engagement, such as certain users gaining additional posting privileges and the like.
Son is going full-in with Locals, hoping to build up a community of supporters who appreciate good poetry and the culture-renewing possibilities it offers (you can read all about his mission on his “About” page; appropriately, it’s presented in the form of a poem!).
Son is setting his sights high, as he should: he’s kicking off his foray into Locals with a special promotion he’s dubbed Race to 1000K.
I took a bit of a break from painting last week to finish up Péchés d’âge moyen, my short collection of twelve original piano miniatures, but by the time “More Little Paintings: Hearts and an Octopus” posted last week, I’d already churned out a total of fifteen of these little guys.
Rather than subject you to week after week of bizarre paintings, I figured I’d dump them all into one post:
I’ve kept plugging away at my little paintings, and have a slate of new paintings. This post does not feature all of them, but some of the highlights from my recent forays into primitivist doodle-painting.
I really do paint the way that I draw—poorly. But my distinctly grotesque style seems to hold a certain charm, as I’ve already sold and/or committed to gift two of the three paintings in this little post.
Like last week’s paintings, these are done on small, 5″x7″ canvasses. They’re very thin canvasses, but of a good quality, and they hold the acrylic paints I’m using well. All of the materials are very basic, including the cheap brushes and paints (which are leftover from the TJC Spring Jam), but they work perfectly for what I am doing.
As last Tuesday’s post suggests, I’ve really been getting into small forms of art: miniatures. Short musical pieces are fun to compose, and can be dashed off (and, hopefully, recorded) in mere minutes.
I’ve also always been a lover of bric-a-brac—little tiny figurines and collectibles and the like—and am drawn to them in part because of their tiny size. I have a random assortment of such bric-a-brac on my desk at this very moment—an R2-D2 figurine; a little pumpkin finger puppet; a LEGO Han Solo; a little ghost—and have other little figurines in various places in my home.
Not surprisingly, I’ve also come to really enjoy small paintings.
As I’ve noted many times before, one of the joys of blogging is discovering other writers’ work. As I’ve steered this blog in an increasingly arts-and-culture-focused direction, I’ve stumbled upon some excellent creators of all stripes—writers, musicians, illustrators, poets, etc. What I’m beginning to realize is that we’re all part of a wider network (I mean, besides the Internet), and the connections were just there waiting to be made.
At least, it feels like that sometime. That’s certainly how it feels with the subject of this week’s Support Friends Friday, the talented artist Mariella Hunt.
As I’ve surely mentioned elsewhere, one of the joys of blogging is the opportunity to discover the work of other bloggers. There are a lot of blogs out there, and in the few years I’ve been writing daily, I’ve been fortunate to stumble upon some real gems.
One particularly adorable gem is children’s book illustrator and writer Andrea Benko‘s blog, Andrea, Children’s Book Illustrator. She very smartly obtained the URL “edoodless.wordpress.com” (yes, there is a second “S” in the URL; some scoundrel took “edoodles.wordpress.com” and is doing nothing with it), and that’s what she does: doodles.
The Portly Politico 