A Roar of Chalk

Image by Carol Hufstedler | Used by Permission

If there be such a thing as past lives, then I am pretty sure I must have been a cave/rock-painting artist at some time.  There is something about a vast stretch of space -- wall, street, or really large paper -- that calls out to me with a kind of intensity that always surprises.

From The Google

Beloved Spousal Unit and I live not quite half a mile from one of Milwaukee's lovely boulevards. 

A boulevard (French, from Dutch: Bolwerk – bolwark, meaning bastion), often abbreviated Blvd, is type of large road, usually running through a city. In modern American usage it often means a wide, multi-lane arterial thoroughfare, divided with a median down the centre, and perhaps with roadways along each side designed as slow travel and parking lanes and for bicycle and pedestrian usage, often with an above-average quality of landscaping and scenery. [From the Wikipedia]

Once a year the neighborhood association puts on the Boulevard Bash. Several blocks of the street are blocked off.  Tables and chairs are put out, small music stages are set up, and food and craft vendors are strategically placed along the boulevard.

 From the Neighborhood Association's Photostream.

And there is always a swath of pavement left open for people -- usually kids -- to do chalk drawing.

 From the Neighborhood Association's Photostream.

My Beloved and I walked down to The Bash a little later in the afternoon.  Most of the pavement had been drawn upon, but there was one nice, large area that was open.  Ooooh!  I just had to draw something!  There weren't too many kids around. (I try to make sure kids always have first dibs in cases like these.) But as soon as I started to draw, a little passel of wee ones immediately came in close to watch.

Kids: What is she making? (Love that third person approach, when I am standing about 3 feet away.)

Me: See if you can guess!

Kids:  An eagle? 

Kids:  Is it a hippo?

 Kids:  A snake?

 

Kids:  IT'S A DINOSAUR!!!!

One little boy said, a slight tremor in his voice, "But Barney doesn't have sharp teeth."  "You're right," I said, "But this isn't Barney. It's just a T-Rex."  That seemed to be okay with him. 

                      Barney image source/credit

Once the big therapod was finished, they kids walked around it and on it for a few moments . . . . and then wandered off to find something else to entertain, leaving the dino to bask in the fading daylight. 

Postscript:  Sidewalk chalk is fun, but it can be pricey.  

Image source/credit

Fortunately, it is rather easy (if a bit messy!) to make your own. If you are interested, check out this Public Broadcasting System's Crafts for Kids page. 

 Image source/credit

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NOTE: The black/white images of the eagle, hippo, and snake are from the Florida Center for Instructional Technology. ClipArt ETC online resource.

A Clipper Sails West

Image source/credit

Aye, she was a bonny lass and when she set off, sails unfurled and wind-filled, a sigh escaped my lips; I would see her perhaps nevermore.

Which is a fanciful and literary-sounding way of saying, one of my typewriters moved on to another home.  Even better, however, in this transfer, a new Typospherian was born!

Friend and Colleague in all things mad and wonderful, Hoja, visited this weekend.  We call these get-togethers our Art Days. Some days art is made; some days we look at formal art; some days we talk story making and world building; and some days we simply play.  This weekend we did it all! 

A visit to see the 30 Americans exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was rich, complex, sobering, and deeply moving. 

 Milwaukee Art Museum, Quadracci Pavilion, 2002. Credit: John Hursley.

(Left) Nick Cave, Soundsuit 
(Right) Iona Rozeal Brown, Sacrifice #2: it has to last
(after Yoshitoshi's 'Drowsy: the appearance of a harlot of the Meiji era')
[from the MAM 30 Americans Exhibition Gallery]

We also drove North to visit the John Michael Kohler Arts Center; located in Sheboygan, WI. There were two large installation pieces that had the both of us laughing, sighing, and looking so very interested that the museum guard kept a very close eye. We signaled that we would not touch by keeping our hands in our pockets or behind our backs (but, ooooh, we so wanted to touch the works!).

One exhibit, titled Emery Blagdon: The Healing Machine, filled a large room. 

 Installation view of Emery Blagdon: The Healing Machine at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

(All images courtesy John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin)

Emery Blagdon, “The Healing Machine”
(installation view John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2012) (detail),
(c.1955 – 1986), dimensions variable. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection.

[From the exhibition website]

"Emery Oliver Blagdon (1907-1986) grew up on the Sandhills of Nebraska. The intense lightning storms of the Great Plains were a source of wonder for Blagdon, who pondered the immense power of lightning and other natural energies.

In 1955, Blagdon inherited an uncle’s farm and found he had a place to explore his interests as he chose. Having watched both his parents suffer terminal cancer, he hoped he might discover a way to heal pain and illness. Blagdon believed that the earth’s energies might be put to just such a use. He believed they held the inherent power to heal, and he set about making a “machine” to properly channel these powerful forces.

A pastime of bending hay-baling wire into geometric forms grew into a consuming passion for making increasingly complex constructions that incorporated salvaged copper wire, metal foil, magnets, vials of earth, waxed paper, and myriad other substances and materials to collectively charge and heighten the machine’s power. In the early 1960s, Blagdon began installing his fabrications in a barn on the property, later building a workshop with an adjoining shed designed to permanently house the entire machine.

Blagdon ultimately created a complex art environment in which paintings and mixed-media sculptures comingled with mineral elements and electrical conductors. Sufferers of pain or illness were invited in to let the unseen forces work magic. Blagdon called his project The Healing Machine, a work in constant progress wherein he fashioned, arranged, adjusted, and added to the complex installation every day for the next thirty years.

Blagdon’s Healing Machine, comprised of roughly 400 individual elements, is part of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center collection. This exhibition presents individual components as well as an installation evoking the original shed environment."

(John Yau has written an expressive review of the exhibit. You can read it here.)

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The second piece -- Rush to Rest, by New York artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen -- was massive and filled the two largest gallery rooms of the museum.  

 Image source/credit

A near life-long resident of Wisconsin, one of my keenest pleasures has been to see the wintertime ice formations along the Lake Michigan coastline.  Kavanaugh & Nguyen captured not just the vibrancy of the shapes but the deep emotional qualities of frozen movement.  The image above simply cannot capture the grandeur of the work.

[From the exhibition website] Artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen (NY) discuss their new work, Rush to Rest, part of the Uncommon Ground exhibition series at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, April 12–September 22, 2013. Video produced by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

[From the exhibition website] "Rush to Rest, by New York artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, is a response to the colossal seasonal ice sheets that take shape on the Sheboygan lakefront in winter. This immersive installation is not a literal rendering of the accumulated ice pack but rather an aggregate of its physical characteristics. Rush to Rest exaggerates the mass and color of the frozen expanse as well as the tangible manifestations of wind and water that generate it."

NOTE: When "Rush to Rest" closes Sept. 23, the exhibit will be dismantled and recycled.

In the evening, back at home, there was talk of typewriters.  Several times over the past few years I have offered a machine to Hoja.  This time she took me up on the offer and asked if she could try out several to get a feeling for their "personalities."  So I laid out several on the dining room table for her to test drive.

 

  

The Skyriter (bottom, lower right) was not part of the offer, but I wanted her to try that one as most of my friends who spend most of their time on computer keyboards find it the easiest to type on initially.

In the end, she decided on the Smith Corona Clipper.  I was able to locate a near-era user's manual for it in my typewriterly stash, and also threw in a learn-to-type book and new ribbon.  

As you can see, Hoja was delighted!

 We welcome her to The Typosphere!

Tales Only Dreamed Of

Image source/credit

My brother, The Captain, had mixed feelings about St. Patrick's Day.  By day he was second in command for large-ish university's Department of Public Safety.  He knew that on March 17th, and the week in which it fell, he'd be a busy man - watching out for, caring for, helping, and, when necessary, saving the undergrad and grad students from the own over-imbibings.  "The Immortals" he called them; the young people who never thought anything could happen to them.

But The Captain had another side to him, a very whimsical and good humored side.  Every August he served on the stage crew of the Aer Lingus music stage at Milwaukee's Irish Fest. Although one of ten children of the same two parents, he claimed "all the Irish" had descended to him alone. He loved Celtic music and befriended many of the performers through the years.

He also loved reading Science Fiction, loved making up stories, and entertained himself and the world with his fictional postcards.  And he would have loved, and been hugely amused, by the work of Bradley W. Schenck, a.k.a. author of the Thrilling Tales website and fantastic artist of all-things SciFi and retro.  And a damn savvy marketer of his work.

"You, too, can create a customized pulp magazine cover with the astonishing PULP-O-MIZER, right here in Cornelius Zappencackler's Derange-O-Lab!"

Mr. Schenck has created the Pulp-o-Mizer, a web-based designer of retro SciFi magazine covers.  One can create and download without charge.  But he hopes you will appreciate his work and his generosity with a donation.  I certainly plan to.  Anyone who gives this much joy with such absolute brilliance, technical mastery, and unmitigated wit deserves patronage.  Thank you sir!

POSTCARDS FROM THE CAPTAIN: When Evil Attempts Good

As kids, my siblings and I much enjoyed The Rocky & Bullwinkle animated TV series.  One of the segments in the show was the ongoing saga of Dudley Do-Right. 

"Dudley Do-Right is a dim-witted, but conscientious and cheerful Canadian Mountie who is always trying to catch his nemesis Snidely Whiplash, more often succeeding by pure luck than anything else. He romantically pursued Nell Fenwick, the daughter of Inspector Fenwick, the head of the Mountie station." [from the Wikipedia article]

My late brother, The Captain, was inspired by this when he wrote this postcard to me back in 1998.

TRANSCRIPTION

Dear Mom and Dad,

I know you taught me to be evil and mean is the real joy in life but Dudley keeps rescuing Nell from the tracks and I am really getting depressed. I am thinking of giving up evil to open a beauty shop: "Whiplash Eyelash So Fast."  What do you think?  Should I give meanest one more try?

Snidley

(your son)

Postcard #1 of the series

Postcard #2 of the series

Postcard #3 of the series

Postcard #4 of the series

SENT OUT: First Class Hotel

Addendum to this post, which was prescheduled:
The Mars Curiosity Rover landed successfully some 9+ hours ago. 
Here's NASA's animated video that shows what had to happen for it to work . . . . it did!


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I found this postcard in an old moving box.  

Looks to be at least 40 years old, maybe more.  

Perfect for a letter game.

SENT & RECEIVED: The Adventures of The Monsters Continue

Image source/credit

Back in April I posted the first postcards from Jackson & Marcus.  

Now, along with colleague Margo, the plot thickens. 

Sent Out

 

Received