Saturday, January 20, 2007 C

"Quilt Show Highlights"
7:52pm

I knew it was about time for the annual quilt show, but I wasn't sure when exactly. So I googled to find out. Was I ever surprised to find my little quilt page right at the top of the results!


http://www.aztriad.com/quiltdex.html

There were so many excellent quilts this year, but even though I have a new camera with much better capability, I still managed to get mostly fuzzy pictures. There was a lovely bed quilt featuring all the states of the country, each with its own state flower and bird, and although I tried several shots, they were all too blurry. But I did get good shots of these few:


Fairy on a Crazy Quilt by Cathy Norris (larger underneath)


Fairy Detail...

This is when it's nice to have a good camera, for the full size versions really reveals the details, sometimes even better than my own eye could see them.


Kimonos by Joyce Frietas (larger underneath)

When we saw the kimono quilt, Julia fondly remembered an old kimono she had many years ago, and said how she'd like a new one, because the large sleeved garment is easy to put on.

She'd like me to make her one, so she could have it in bright colors. Someday...


Julia by "Floral Heart" by Gwen Christensen (larger underneath)

I hope I've got that one identified correctly. I only had the catalog to go by, as magnifying the label didn't reveal anything.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

"Super Hero"
3:48pm

Super Hero is this week's Friday Illo theme. I was inspired quite a bit by the recent DVD we'd watched called "The Hero's Journey".

You can be a HERO!

©JAL, 1-21-07

The quote to the left is from the case of "The Hero's Journey", a DVD featuring Joseph Campbell. The larger quote is as follows:

"And so Galahad decided that it would be a disgrace to set off on a quest with the other knights. Alone he would enter the dark forest where there was no path. This is the myth of the Hero's Journey."

Elsewhere, Campbell says:
"Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation..." (Hero with a Thousand Faces)

Thusly, each of us can choose to be a hero! The adventure is within. It does not matter so much what the circumstances of our lives are, but rather how we deal with them.

I've placed other symbols within this piece. The sun and moon suggest the importance of both light side and dark side. Each must exist in balance to each other. The "X X X" is for the Egyptian phrase "Xepera Xeper Xeperu" which means "I have come into being, and by the process of coming into being, the process of coming into being is established." The arrows there help augment that meaning, the backwards pointing arrow stressing the PAST actions which have gone into the "I have come into being", and the forward pointing arrow suggests that this is an ongoing process.

The person in the meditating pose has muscular arms. This suggests it takes both physical rest and action to achieve our ends. Also, the person exhibits a bit of androgeny, with a feminine face and a masculine body. The evolved person is in touch with both aspects within themself.

The hero here with one hand is grasping a question mark to express ever seeking the Mysteries, and the paint brush denotes the role of Creativity on the Hero's path. If we are on a quest by ourselves, not following 'the other knights', creativity will be required to handle the challenges that life presents to us.

This piece is available in a high quality photo lustre print!

Monday, January 22, 2007

"Let's Eat Three"
11.06pm

I was pondering what to do with an art piece that doesn't seem to conform easily to standard print sizes. So when I was at Micheal's getting more Micron pens, I went over to the framing department to get some clues. I noticed they had all sorts of pre matted pictures in the bargain bin. The odd size pictures were simply dropped in the middle of a huge matt. I thought, well, I can do that, and did so with the Breaking the Ice picture.

Then I took thought of what to do with a square piece. I like the squareness of Let's Eat! because it suggests a 'square meal'. But such is not easily frameable. So I went and got inventive:

Along the way, I learned a new thing about Photoshop. There's a choice when you change a picture size. You can 'resize image, bicubic', which seems the default choice. But there's also a 'resize image, nearest neighbor'. I tried that on this version. It produced a much cheaper K version than the earlier attempt. I wondered why the web size version (72dpi) should be so much bigger K-wise than the original print size version (200dpi), 150K vs 91K for the print size. It's because that 'bicubic' thing renders a great many variants of colors in reducing the lines, whereas the 'nearest neighbor' adds no new colors but decides from the ones that are already there.

I have to tweak both versions, to come up with something that most clearly displays the original effects. Still, after tweaking, the 'bicubic' in Saturday's picture takes 150K and today's result, larger with more details, takes 43K. However, the bicubic version looks smoother, though, with less jagged lines.

I think for the one that goes in the art gallery, I will pick the bicubic version of the one with forks and spoons.

Note of January 23, 2007
I noticed another option, called bilinear. I think I like this one best:

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

"A Sort of Carnival Mood"
9:24pm

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