June 17, 2006
Ya gotta dance with who ya brung!
So Ursula and I head down to Crown Beach in Alameda to "watch" the famous sand castle competition. We hit the beach and immediately bump in to brother burner artists; kevin, Justino and Hazmat.
They have a plan... Build a set of forms and ram it with compacted sand to make a carvable monolith which would then be shaped into a penguin.
Sounds plausible.
Ramming complete, they pull the forms and reveal a beautiful 5' block of sand. The cheering lasted about 20 seconds until Justin touched the block which fell over and broke into three large blocks. They are very bummed. Game over! Lets get to the tiki bar!
But wait... I see a glimmer and come up with a plan. I join the team with gusto, regrouping the guys behind the principle of "when life hands you lemons...get some tequila and salt."
Plan "b" is thus put into motion with only 30 minutes left.
Windows are carved into the broken block to make it in to a fallen skyscraper, Ursula is sent out to forage for shells and the surrounding sand is troweled smooth to receive a large tectonic crack. The coup de gras is however the name of our sculpture...
"SAND ANDREAS."
We beat the 50 strong field to win the best of show prize, the judges wowed by the "inventivness and clean execution of this masterpiece of planning and organisation."
We haven't stopped laughing.
I often qoute an an old teacher of mine who said that "Art is a process of happy accidents... and corrected mistakes."
How true that is!
Posted by Andrew at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2006
Carnival Day at the Child Development Center.
It was the annual carnival day at Ursula's school the other day.
Just as with every other school, we had 3 bouncy castles, face painting, a story teller, coast guard launch tours, fire truck, dog display team and two helicopters.... ok, these are exceptionally lucky kids.
I was asked to donate a portrait of one of the kids for the silent auction, and needed to show one as an example. It was about time I sketched Ursula. My offer made the high bid for the auction of $150, and the carnival made a total of $4000 for the school.
Posted by Barbara at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
Strange stuff indeed!
Look at the center cross for a while, and the pink dots will disappear, to be replaced by a single green dot.(the pink dots are winking out in sequence, and there is no green at all).
I found this while I was doing some research for a lecture I just gave on color theory at Berkeley.
A few things are going on here like the effect of peripheral information hitting the fovea (blind spot) on the retina, but the most interesting effect is a good example of Itten's rule of simultaneous contrast, where "for any given color, the eye requires a complement and if it not present, the eye/brain will generate it spontaneously."
It still freaks me out though.
Posted by Andrew at 10:50 PM | Comments (6)
May 27, 2005
Dork Wars.
Posted by Andrew at 10:08 PM | Comments (1)
Why I Am So Tired!!!
I've been blaming it on fatherhood;
paint fumes, lack of sleep and recently fixing up the new house.
But now I found out the real reason:
I'm tired because I'm overworked.
Here's why:
The population of this country is 273 million.
140 million are retired,
There are 85 million in school,
29 million employed by the federal government,,
2.8 million are in the armed forces
14,800,000 people work for state and city governments
At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals,
As of today, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.
That leaves JUST TWO PEOPLE to do all the work...
YOU and ME!!
And there you are sitting on your butt,
at your computer, reading my blog.
That leaves just me...
Posted by Andrew at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)