Myles Sullivan's canvas art prints

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The visual arts are divided into two broad categories: fine art and commercial art. Fine art is what we generally consider art to be, an artist sitting in front of an easel slapping paint onto a canvas, while commercial art is understood to be advertising type of work. This distinction is blurred somewhat by artists using the canvas print technique to mass produce their artwork. 

Myles Sullivan is a painter/illustrator who sells a lot of work via canvas prints. If you search his name  you'll see many retailers selling his pieces. These examples are from a series of mid-20th century retro works he's known for. They're a sort of film noir style mixed with the feel of James Bond audition tapes. I picture them adorning the walls of hipster bachelor pads, but I might be misreading the demographics of his audience.

Barrio Calavera

Get ready for a reversed weekend with the Kumbiamerikan Rockers
featuring 'El Macha' Chico Trujillo.

 

Walking in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego

Previously we've strolled around Nuuk, Greenland. Today we head to the opposite side of the Americas to tour Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego. It claims to be the southernmost city on Earth. It was originally founded by British missionaries in the 19th century and later absorbed by Argentina. In the early 20th century it mainly served as a penal colony. Today it is a tourist destination, and its port handles a number of cruise ships.

The walk, which takes place in light snow flurries (which, as Florida boy, give me the heebie-jeebies), starts on a commercial street, wends down to the water's edge, and then back up into the town. It is a pleasant looking little city.

 

September 11, 2001

Firefighters responding to the aftermath of the 9-11 attack
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Adrienne Walsh, a fireman, on his experiences on 9-11 

You could see Manhattan and then not see Manhattan, and all of a sudden I looked up and there was just this explosion of confetti in the air. And I thought that was the strangest sight I had ever seen because, you know, confetti—certainly if there was a parade or something that you would have known of, but there was nothing I knew of. I thought, "That's bizarre." It was a tremendous amount of paper. And I couldn't see anything else because at this point, I had inched behind a loft building again, and of course, the radio came on and interrupted and said that there had been reports of a plane going into the Trade Center. And as we inched along again, I could see then three floors of fire in the Trade Center. And I thought to myself, "That's really bad." Because it's a self-contained building and fire—it should be fire on one floor, not fire on many floors. If you have fire on many floors, that's a serious, serious, serious problem.

When you got to City Hall, I was riding on the outside of the rig. 

And I remember when you got to City Hall, the—it's almost as if you entered—it's almost as if it was a curtain, and you walked into a curtain. The sky disappeared. There was air and bright light on this side, and there was just gray dust that you could barely see on this side. It was just like walking through a theatrical curtain. There's these six inches of dust on the ground. We parked right across from the plaza. And I remember getting out, I had no mask, because our rig was already down there, our guys were already down there. So I went to the back of the rig to try to see if there was another mask, another air-pak for me. And I remember going around to the rig, around the backside of the rig, and as I got to the backside of the rig, I looked up, and I don't know why I looked up, because I didn't hear anything.

But I saw what I can only describe as almost like a tornado hurtling at me. Just this cloud of dust that had to be over 100 feet in the air, and it was literally circling, and it was just bearing down. I mean, I'd never seen anything like that and anything move as fast as that, and I turned around and I yelled, "Run, run Cap, run!" 'Cause the captain was behind me. And he looked up—we all took off down the block, and I thought—I honestly thought in the midst of all that, "If this is going to come down and it's going to fall all at once as a building—if I beat the cloud, I'll beat the building." And I said to myself as I turned and started to run, "I'm not gonna beat this cloud. It's just moving too fast."

I remember making it through the cloud, and I remember walking, trying to walk through this—the amount of debris—it's unfathomable. And I remember drawing a line in the middle of my brain and putting those that I thought were dead on one side and those that I thought had a chance on the other. 

  

Allí donde tu sabes

Get ready for a languid weekend with Juanin Navarro, Felipe Huenuñir,
Jorge Lobos, Dante Escorza, and Elías Zamora

 

Rainy days in Nepal

These are a few videos of a village in a valley in Nepal on rainy days. The people seem to be primarily herders, although some cultivation also takes place. The scenery is frequently spectacular. That much rain would drive me crazy, but the villagers seem quite cheerful and unbothered by it all.

They are all from the YouTube channel VillageLifeNepal. If you're interested, there are longer and less rainy videos there.

Labor Day and traumatized actresses

Rachel Zegler on the picket line
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If I’m going to stand there 18 hours in a dress of an iconic Disney princess, I deserve to be paid for every hour that it is streamed online. - Rachel Zegler 

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Labor Day is an odd holiday. For most people today it is just a long weekend that marks the end of summer. However, it had its birth in the late 19th century labor movement. In fact, the first Labor Day observances were actually strikes. It wasn't until 1894 that President Grover Cleveland, in an act of political pandering, signed into law the federalizing of the holiday.

The original labor movement, which fought for better working conditions, lower hours, and better pay, had a lot of support. That support has dwindled due to their goals being met and ever-increasing corruption in the unions. 

This Labor Day there are two prominent strikes happening: the Screen Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. I doubt anybody, aside from the picketer's mothers, really care about these two strikes. The studios finances are sketchy enough that the walk-out may have a point, but still, this is far from downtrodden blue-collar workers looking for a fairer labor deal. These are people in a highly sought after field -- supply and demand and all that.

Which brings us to Rachel Zegler, the actress pictured above. As one expects of a Hollywood actress, she's an insufferable bubblehead. Instead of standing in solidarity with the underpaid writers and other peons in the studios, she dragged out a molecule-sized violin and made it all about herself. Horror of horrors, she had to stand around in a dress for hours as they filmed her. Sounds to me like she wants to get replaced by an AI version of herself and just cash the checks. She such a babbling idiot that she's unintentionally entertaining in a 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' sort of a way. 

The reputation of Labor Unions has dropped so low that their holiday, Labor Day, isn't even about them anymore. At any rate, enjoy your Labor Day. As you grill your hotdogs and swill your beer, try to remember all the poor actresses forced to stand around wearing dresses and count your blessings. 

Don't be Cruel

Get ready for a plaintive weekend with Billy Swan.

 

Opportunity lost

This isn't a post about missed chances, it is a video of the end of NASA's Martian rover Opportunity. It is the final of a seven-part video series about the rover. Built to last 90 days, it more than exceeded expectations by functioning for over 14 years before finally failing after a bad Martian sandstorm.

 

Old forts

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A fort is a spot occupied permanently, or at least for a long time, by military forces. So, a modern military base, even if only surrounded by a chain link fence, is by definition a fort. However, in our imaginations when we think of forts, we think of forts from the past. We picture palisades, cannons by the ready and troops lining the walls. Here are some paintings and drawings of those older style of forts both as they were or in ruins.

Livin' on a Prayer

Get ready for a persevering weekend with Scary Pockets featuring Astyn Turr.

 

Riding coasters

Above is a front seat ride aboard the Twister at Noebels, Pennsylvania. It is a nice old wooden roller coaster. From there were head to Switzerland for two rides. The first is the Pradaschier Mountain Coaster in Churwalden which is a long ride down the side of a mountain. We then get off the rails to take a summer toboggan ride at Fräkigaudi on the Fräkmüntegg. Enjoy (if you don't get motion sickness from watching the videos). 

Advertising magic

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These are posters of old-timey magicians and psychics. Today magicians are understood to be slight-of-hand artists and to use props. They don't, with the exception of spoon bending frauds like Uri Geller, promote themselves to be anything else. However, as can be seen from these promotional posters, back in the day they presented themselves as possessing all manner of ancient Egyptian and Oriental arcane knowledge. I have no idea how seriously people took their claims, but it was common in their marketing. They managed to craft some wonderfully goofy personas in the process.

You Never Can Tell

Get ready for an optimistic weekend with Elise LeGrow.

 

Space food

As demonstrated by Homer Simpson in the above clip, eating in zero gravity is a problem. You don't want food particles floating about creating a mess, so since the start of manned flight ways have been created to provide food and drink to spacefarers in a controlled manner.

In the video below we go to the NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory where they expain the development, and some of the issues of space food packaging. That's followed by a video of a rather chipper young lady taste testing old-timey Soviet space food. The final video is about Japanese space food. It ends with a segment about some Japanese high schoolers making canned mackerel in soy sauce which they eventually send to the ISS. The jokes about American teenagers TikTokking themselves into terminal stupidity write themselves, so I'll just leave it at that.

Erika Stearly's interiors

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Erika Stearly is a Pennsylvania based contemporary artist. Painting in acrylic and watercolor, she specializes in painting home interiors. I quite like her wild use of color and shapes to render the settings. As well as selling her paintings, she also sells reasonably priced matted prints of her works.

Amanecio

Get ready for a debauched weekend with El Mayor Clasico and Elvis Martinez.

 

The Mandate of Heaven

It is a little odd for me to do back-to-back posts, but the current flooding in China is horrific. A couple of typhoons hit northeast China. The flooding was already bad, but then Peking, including the Forbidden City, started to flood as well. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) couldn't have that, so they opened flood gates and completely swamped the surrounding cities and villages. This obliterated a lot of their homes, businesses, farmlands and the current crops.

The officials haven't done much of anything but film propaganda videos supposedly showing their amazing rescue efforts. Meanwhile, food and goods that have been donated for the people in need have been taken and locked up in warehouses where they'll no doubt turn a tidy profit for corrupt officials. Needless to say, the people are not happy at all.

It's all quite horrible. It brings to mind the Mandate of Heaven, the Confucian version of the Divine Right to Tule, and how it can be revoked. These are ideas that still have some purchase among the Chinese.  

Mencius pointed out that "Heaven does not create people for the sake of the sovereign. Heaven made the sovereign for the sake of the people". The ruler must, therefore, at all times be guided by the principle of benevolence or jen. He is both the mother and father of the people. Further, if there were suitable omens such as floods and droughts and the ruler was proving less capable of fulfilling his mandate than he ought to have been, then Mencius considered it legitimate for the people, if not actually to overthrow their ruler and find a new one, then at least to show their disapproval through rebellion and protest. World History Encyclopedia.

 

Walking in sunny Nuuk, Greenland

This is a walk in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. He claims it is on a nice sunny day, but all the snow and what-not lying about makes it look like a frigid hellhole to me. The walk starts on a boardwalk on the seashore. The houses lining it look nice. 

Eventually he enters the city and the first thing I notice is a group of picnic tables outside of what I assume is a restaurant. There is a group of diners, in parkas, sitting at them and presumably enjoying their lunches. I think to myself, "wait -- these lunatics are trying to eat outside in the midst of a polar vortex???"

As we walk further into the city, we come across a public beach. To my amazement there is a group of people, again in parkas, frolicking about on the water's edge. I begin to entertain the possibility that prolonged exposure to cold causes brain damage. I am thankful that I escaped to Florida before I lost too many IQ points.

He then climbs a hill above a scenic church which gives him a good view of the city. A walk into the city's business district shows it to be a very pleasant, modern and well maintained. It looks, aside from the freezing cold, to be a nice place.

 

Rasputin's daughter

Maria Rasputin with a picture of her father
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Grigori Rasputin, the infamous Mad Monk of Tsar Nicholas II's court, started as a preacher in Siberia. He gained a reputation as a holy man and eventually made his way to St Petersburg where he caught the eye of the Tsarina Alexandra. Because she believed that Rasputin had healed her sickly son Alexei, he became a favorite of hers and soon moved into the court. Rasputin had a wife, two daughters and a son. They moved into the court as well, and the children were tutored in social graces and became friends with the Tsar's children.

By 1915 things were not going well for the Russians in WWI. Rasputin, who was a drunkard and a womanizer along with being a charlatan, was unpopular and blamed for discrediting the royal family. In 1916 a group of conspirators shot and killed Rasputin (the stories that he was also poisoned and tossed still alive into an icy river are almost certainly embellishments). 

His family continued to live in the court until the October Revolution of 1916. At that point the Tsarina gave them some money and suggested that they flee from Russia. Only Maria, the eldest daughter, escaped to Europe. Her mother and brother disappeared into Russian labor camps and her sister died of mysterious circumstances in St. Petersburg.

Maria first returned to her home in Siberia where she married Boris Soloviev. The two of them led a fugitive existence in Russia until they fled to Europe where they travelled from city to city as refugees. They finally settled in Paris where Boris worked in a soap factory, as a night porter, and as a car washer. They had two daughters.   

In 1926 Boris died and Maria was left alone with her two daughters. She made ends meet by working as a maid and a companion to a wealthy fellow Russian expat woman. She then, because of her father's notorious name, got an offer to be a cabaret dancer in Bucharest. I think her act may have involved dramatizing her father's lunatic reputation, which could not have been pleasant for her. Still, she spent several years dancing in Europe. She also published her first book, The Real Rasputin, about her father.

She then moved on to, of all things, being an animal trainer in a travelling circus. She published a second book at this time. In 1935 while working with Ringling Bothers Circus she went to the United States. She was a successful draw. From Atlas Obscuras post The Many Lives of Maria Rasputin, Daughter of the 'Mad Monk':

Americans were unsurprisingly fascinated by Maria, and papers across the country carried pictures of her with captions like, “European wild animal trainer and self-declared daughter of Russia’s ‘mad monk’ tries to hypnotize a circus elephant in Philadelphia.” She was also featured along with other Ringling Brothers stars on the back of a Wheaties box, extolling the cereal as “the breakfast of champions.”

Maria formally immigrated to the U.S. in 1937. After being mauled by a bear she quit the circus, got married and settled in Los Angeles. The marriage did not last. To support herself she became a machinist in a shipyard, becoming one of America's wartime Rosie the Riveters. 

When she retired from the shipyards, she supported herself with Social Security and the occasional babysitting jobs and interviews. She also published her final book Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth. She died in 1977.

Altogether a remarkable life: from a Siberian village to the Russian imperial palace, on the run from the red army, cabaret dancing in Europe's capitals, animal training acts in circuses, a machinist in the U.S., and an eventual peaceful retirement. She certainly didn't lead a dull life.  

Blue Moon

Get ready for an effectuating weekend with Heidi Feek.

 

CH-47 Chinook heavy cargo transporter

Above is a good explanation of how a Chinock's rotors and blade pitch is controlled to maneuver the helicopter. Below we one take off, go through some maneuvers, and then land. 

Robert Mitchum movie posters

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Robert Mitchum is one of my favorite movie actors. He was active during the 1940s to the 1960s. Playing both heroes and heavies, his sleepy-eyed, detached cynicism was the epidemy of 1950s cool. The tagline from the above poster, "the toughest private eye who ever wore a trench coat, slapped a dame and split his knuckles on a jawbone" nicely sum up his early film noir roles. 

His career started taking off in the 1950s, which was a difficult time for the movie industry. The old studio system was starting to come apart, with the studios losing the vertically integrated monopoly over theater chains which impacted their revenue and complicated distribution. Also, television was gaining greatly in popularity and that cut into how people were allocating their discretionary entertainment dollars.

Mitchum started in the stable of RKO, one of minor studios. At the time RKO was ran by the increasingly eccentric Howard Hughs, which led to a fair degree of dysfunction at the studio. Mitchum also had an early scandal when he was arrested, and briefly jailed, for marijuana possession in 1948. However, due to his image as a rebel and an outsider the arrest did not hurt his image. 

These images, and those after the jump, are taken from 100 Years of Movie Posters. There are more at that link.

Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky (From Now On)

Get ready for a kooky weekend with Madeleine Peyroux.

 

From paddy to table

This is a video that shows rice cultivation from planting, harvesting, processing, packaging and eventually cooking. It is a Taiwanese commercial farming operation and equipment they use to plant and harvest the rice is pretty amazing.

  

Peking opera costumes

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These images are from a late 19th Century album, One hundred portraits of Peking opera characters, showing the costumes and characters from Peking operas. The collection is housed in the MET. The operas feature mythological, historical and social themes and have elaborate costumes, masks, singing, dancing, acrobatics, and stylized martial arts. To western ears the music is jangling, and the high-pitched timbre of the singing can be off-putting. 

There are more images after the jump, and the full album can be viewed at the above link.

Funkytown / I Feel Good

Get ready for an exuberant weekend with Lucky Chops featuring Leo P.

   

Milking a spider

The Australian funnel-web spider is one of the most venomous of all spiders. In this video their venum is collected to make an antidote for their bite. It is not a job I would want to have.

  

Albert Bierstadt's landscapes

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Albert Bierstadt was a 19th century American painter who specialized in landscapes of the American West. He was born in Germany and moved to the U.S. at a young age, although he did return to Germany for a while to study painting. He was part of the Hudson River school and, because of his use of light and color, was part of the luminism painting style.

Albert Bierstadt

Blue Yodel #7

Get ready for a pariah's weekend with The Stray Birds.

 

A Sumo wrestler's morning

This video shows a morning of the Sumo Club at Kinki University. Most of it involves a couple of underclassman cooking breakfast for the club. We are also shown some of the morning training activities.  

 

Insane asylums

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Some people are so mentally deficient that they cannot, on their own, function in normal society. This is the result of greatly diminished mental capacity either through natural causes or from significant substance abuse. The question has long been, what to do with these people? How to tend to them?

In old agrarian societies somebody with mental problems would be considered to be extremely stupid and to hold ridiculous ideas. They would be slotted into the role of 'the village idiot'. Still, they were familiar to all. They had a role in that society and would be accepted as part of it and tended to. As we urbanized caring for them became more problematic. Rather than just being the simple-minded and foolish neighbor, they became an unpredictable stranger who may, or may not of, be a danger.

From the 19th through the early 20th centuries they attempted to solve that problem by housing them, and caring for them, in large institutions. While well intentioned, it did not work well. Housing so many delusional and/or mentally deficient people led to too much chaos to be easily controlled, and so the places naturally devolved into rigid and frequently inhumane confinements. It is an issue we still struggle with.

These are a small sample of engravings about those old insane asylums. The cruelty and bedlam (a word derived from these asylums) of the places are depressingly captured by them.

Chahe Maya Gara

Get ready for a slipped through your fingers weekend with Shiva Lamichhane and C-waz.

 

Small change to the blog

The widget I used for Followers stopped working properly. I couldn't find a solution or work-around to the problem, so I've removed it for now. Hopefully this won't inconvenience anybody who was following this blog. I'll keep looking for a solution.

Rambling thoughts on the 4th of July

4th of July fireworks

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

The above words are from the Declaration of Independence. They were written by Thomas Jefferson, with an assist from Benjamin Franklin. They are a distillation of John Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers' thoughts. 

It is a tremendously revolutionary statement, one that we often underestimate. In the bulk of human history, and its societies, individuals have been neither autonomous nor equal. There is the King and his underlings, and below them a stratum of ever more insignificant souls. Each in his own place.

This will seem like an odd detour for a 4th of July post, but bear with me. I've read one Chinese novel, the Story of the Stone (a.k.a. Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cáo Xuěqín. It's set in the 18th Century and follows the affairs of two clans of the Jia family that live in mansions next to each other and are at the peak of their power and influence. Aside from some mystical tomfoolery framing the novel, it is actually a very naturalistic look at going-on of the households. It is thought to be autobiographical in a lot of its details.

To get back to 'all men are created equal', that is certainly not the case in this story. There are some 440 characters in the novel, and each has their place in the social order. They range from the Dowager at the top, down through her children and grandchildren, their wives, husbands and children, and eventually to the consorts, maids and servants who are all either slaves or peasants.

The social order is very strict. The second volume takes place during a summer and the dowager is always throwing tea parties (which invariably turn into drinking parties). As each character enters the party, they have to calculate which chair to sit in. This is not a trivial choice; sitting too close to the matriarch is a gaffe because you are assuming a higher status than you deserve, while sitting too far away means you're losing face because you are minimizing your position. And if you're a maid? Screw up and you'll get a beating or, if worse comes to worse, you'll get tossed down a well.

I did that detour into the Story of the Stone because throughout human history, in some way, shape or form, almost all societies have been structured that way. Each person has their place; some will eat gruel while others sit at banquets. That is the way it is, and the way it should be. It is a sobering view. 

That's why on the 4th of July I am always drawn to Jefferson's 'all men are created equal'. It is a truly revolutionary thought. It levels castes. Further it states that all men, no matter what their station in life, are entitled to life, liberty and to pursue whatever path to happiness they desire. That passage, so plain and clearly stated, has planted a seed that resonates so powerfully that even despots feel they need to pay it lip service.

So that first 4th of July in 1776, in spite of the twists and turns that emanated from it, is an inflection point. You and I, and all the rest of us, are equal. While there are many would-be masters who would like me to worry about what chair to sit on, I'll not be bothered to make their desired choice. Happy 4th of July.

The humble picnic

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Summer and the July 4th weekend is upon us, so we are well into the picnic season. Picnics can be either social, family, or romantic events. These paintings, and those after the jump, are a small sample of art showing picnics. They are from different places and times. Enjoy.