Kurt Vonnegut

A carpenter was commissioned to build some boxes for a SPCA cat shelter. This is what he did. He did not even bother to pretend to do a half decent job.

This guy have a three-year apprenticeship, cutting pieces of wood, using a drill, sandpaper and a saw. Screws juts out on the inside of the cages, the doors do not close. Distressed animals will injure themselves on these. I could have done a better job! It would have taken me ages, but I would have done a better job.

I was a teaching assistant at the university college, and one of my students came whining one day, that he had to read. That there was books with words in them. That he was expected to read. He actually said, and I quote, “I canna do it! I try! I open the first page and there are all these words!”

I smiled sweetly and said, “well maybe you should do something else. Maybe you should become a bus driver or a carpenter instead”. He was deeply offended, his classmates rekindled their hatred of me.

I regret that comment now. It turns out you can be as incompetent as a carpenter, as you could be unfit for anything vaguely academic, such as reading. The difference between rubbish carpentry and shoddy academic work is depressingly obvious. A bad house will fall down. A bad thesis will have no impact on anything. You can set fire to both, though, and you probably should.

Art can be made out of any old rubbish. Craft cannot. If you are not in fine art, you are in craft, and there is a quality gauge. If you cannot sign your work with excellence, at least do not inflict injury on homeless kittys.

I haven’t touched a pencil or a brush in years. Not properly, not committedly. But in this situation of pressure, essays to write, video to edit, processes to define, compose, structure, books to read, technology to decipher, articles to consume – here, now, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a deep melancholy need to find out – do I still have it? Is it really part of me?
Once it is established that so-and-so is good at this-or-that, it is hard to rock those perceptions, and I was always defined as “good at drawing”. A blessing and a curse.
But drawing is about practice, a collaboration between hand, heart and head, it is about proportions, about light. It is about shapes and negative space and intuition, but most of all it is about shadows.

(“Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act falls the Shadow”).

Most books that teach drawing start out with sketches of The Whole. I have always started in one corner and worked my way around haphazardly. A dangerous strategy, as it might not add up, when you connect lines at the other end of the page. The secret lies in those tiny shadows and getting them right. Then it will add up, and I will have finished a drawing of a whole I haven’t really looked at until it is finished. It is a little magic, it is deep meditation, but I doubt it is art.
Tricky things to draw: glass, water, hands. I always come back to hands. They never look right, but sometimes they are. Look at your own, see the fingers foreshortened, twist a little, and you’ll realise that good old Michelangelo was not far off.

But do I still have it?
I fumbled a little. It got better. I did a few hands, and the last ones had that familiar quality. Recognisably my hand, nicks and scars included; familiar handiwork. Drawing a beat-up transparent plastic bottle at an angle was a tad early, it seems a little practice will do it.
I am comforted; I am relieved. I am also hooked again.
It is not great art, but it is solid craft, decent draftsmanship.

Good enough for me.
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as a ps. A current work in progress. I’ll leave portraits for a bit, methinks.

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The kiln fires the gooey, soft, sensual clay into stone; it is a non-reversible process, and the object dies a little for me – I tend to lose interest in the finished product. It is the clay part of the process, and firing kilns that attracts me. The transformation is total, the pot will never leave earth, it cannot be broken down to the original materials. Ages hence, my pottery shards will still be around. Longevity. Infinity. A mindblowing thought – and one that (should) keeps potters constantly reminded to not fire substandard pots in the first place. We won’t get rid of them.

The few pots that lives for me, have that magic all potters hunt for: that perfect, perfect balance of shape, texture and colour.

It sounds simple. It is impossible. It is chasing stars and fog. It is processes with so many uncontrollable variables you cannot do anything else but expect the unexpected. To make it really easy for myself, I fell in love with the microcrystalline glazes. The initiated will laugh at this. Microcrystallines will keep you pulling out your hair for the rest of your life. It will ruin the kiln shelves, it will stick, run, be too thin, too thick; the pot too high, thick, thin, small. The kiln fires too evenly, not evenly enough, there will be tiny variations in the core temperature, there will be a draught. When they work, they are gorgeous, though. From a full kiln, I’d be extraordinary happy to get one single pot that lives.

There is a virtue in it too, to control what you can, and then be able to leave yourself at the mercy of chance. Passing that point, imposing will is not so important anymore.

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There is not a lot of photos from this period in my life. Fine electronics do not go well with clay, dust, glazes and blazing kilns.
But memories are good too.

microcrystalline green tea bowl

microcrystalline blue glaze – “purple perhaps”

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newly thrown plates, before turning

the dead fish is my stamp, id and trademark

I was never big on moulding and modelling, but Gregory is always nearby

googly espresso mugs

I was never a fan of symmetry. Throwing wobbly pots is in fact incredibly difficult

In europe, the oldest fabrics are all dyed in shades of red. In fact, they say, in Roman times, the latin word for ‘coloured’ and ‘red’ were synonyms. Greeks and romans rarely dyed in blue, but the celts and germanic tribes did – using woad (that yellow plant you see all around temperate europe). Hence, blue was seen as primitive and barbaric.

Blue dye were used by the ancient people of the Middle East. They imported indigo from Asia and Africa. Indigo was used in biblical times, but it was expensive, and used only for the finest cloth, and for the wealthy. In europe, it was not used much, partly because it was expensive, but also because the colour was not … appreciated. It was also assosiated with the rabid celts and germanic people (Don’t say Braveheart – I detest that film. But I suppose the blue is correct).

In the bible, colour is rarely mentioned, but translations have made words that relate to luminosity, density, light and quality into colours. This of course, have ended in a lot of – to an atheist – delightful, snickering misunderstandings in the «life of Brian»-genre («it’s a sign, it’s a sign! he wants us all to remove our left shoe and follow!»)

The best bit is that in the english version (and others), words that describe force, richness, love, beauty, prestige, death, blood, fire etc are simply translated as «red». Excellent ground for misunderstandings… and I shall not even start on the jewish tsitsit shawl, Cleopatra’s sails or the temple of Solomon. Brilliant stories they are – go forth and research!

The high middle ages is a period we can begin to recognise the outlines of our own society and you should think that at least the painters would use blue. The sky is blue. We see the sea as blue (which it is not), but the painters in the high middle ages painted the sky white, red or gold. Emperors and nobles in the 9-10th century fancied Roman customs, and wore red, white and purple (purple is another story – an enormously fascinating one!). So ignored by nobles, blue was worn by pesants. And it would stay like that until the 12th century.. Blue was described by the rich and wealthy as sickening, unnatural, barbaric and ugly.
(is’t this exciting?!)

There are remarkably few references to blue in liturgy, placenames and people. Mr. Brown, Mr. Black, Mr White, Mr. Red. But no Mr. Blue. In latin, there are apparently no name with the root in ‘blue’ (this of course being contagious, the same goes for a lot of european languages).

Christianity: you would think that with all that emphasis on the heavens and all, christianity would expand blue. But no, the church stuck to the social and religious symbolisms already in place for regulating society.

Liturgical colours are discussed in sheaves and reams, and all sorts of colours are mentioned- except blue. Even though it is around in stained glass, enamel, paintings and in clothing. Blue is simply not part of the liturgical colour scheme or symbolism. Blue is not really entering the stage properly until the late 12th century… when blue turns up in stained glass windows, and then only as a backdrop to sacred figures.

Up until the 12th century, the virgin Mary was depicted in dark colours, to represent suffering and grief, and never in blue. Then something happens, and today, blue is associated with the virgins robes. A good example is the Wilton dipthych from 1395.
This combination of the cult of Mary and the idea of divine light, blue becomes wildly popular. (It is of course a long story, what happended – it involves an squillon church meetings, a split on the view on colours – «if colours are light, it is divine, the work of God. If colour is substance, it is the work of the deceiving devil»…. chromophobes versus chromophiles, with axes to grind, a God to justify them, and unproveable points to prove… Besides. Ultramarine pops up in Italy as the most expensive colouring. Money talks).

Colours change importance and associative power. Blue changed from being a non-colour to represent loyalty, truth, courage, and the fact that the king of France chose the well-known coat of arms: azure with golden fleur-de-lis dotted around (and yes, king Arthur pictured with a blue shield with three golden crowns) surely drove the popularity of blue.
And here’s a good piece of ancient gossip: in the thirteenth century, wealthy red dyers asked stained-glass artists to represent the devil as blue, hoping this would discredit the newly fashionable colour that was threatening their precious profits. From hardly any coats of arms having any blue in 1200, at the beginning of the 15th century one in three coats of arms had ‘azure’.

In fact, there was a fight whether the colours of the rainbow should include blue – and the fact that indigo is squeezed in between blue and violet, well, that seems to be more thanks to stubborn Newton than anything else.
…since then, blues popularity have, erm, sky-rocketed. Today, it’s topping the favourite colour scale.

And by the way- blue is not just blue…: Azure, baby blue, cerulean, cobalt, cornflower, dark blue, denim, Egyptian blue, electric blue, indigo, light blue, lapis lazuli, Maya blue, midnight blue, navy blue, periwinkle, Persian blue, powder blue, prussian blue, royal blue, sapphire, sky blue, steel blue, ultramarine…

And no, it’s not my favourite colour.

(Purple is facinating, though. Royal tyrian, slaves, snails and religious blunders.. and yellow – to us, a warning, the colour of hospital bin bags signifying harmful contagious waste; to the chinese, the colour of the emperor. Ah. it never ends.)

(all images either own or from wikipedia)

And then, there is a piece on christmas aromas… or whatever. Ralph Lauren, to my horror, creates christmas scents. To perfume your xmas tree. I gag. But it gets worse. The curiously anonymous gentleman interviewed, proudly says that the scents are only stocked by a few shops around the world and only sell to a few select customers. One shop is apparently in London, and they call him when a new scent arrives. So that he can dash over… and spend a ridiculous amount of money on a tiny flagon of fashion.

I deeply wish I hadn’t read it. This is too much information.

I’ve been told that there is a hair product that gives your hair the “beach look”. Cool, eh? How?
Salt. Salt water. I kicked myself when I heard it – this is genius, this is selling sand in Sahara. This is the final proof that people are idiots, and that they’ll buy anything. Sand in Sahara indeed. Also, I was told that “if you use too much, you hair gets a little…ermm .. ” salty!? …kind of when you’ve been swimming in salt water…. kind of. There’s a surprise.

It makes me despair.

I get a certain feeling of fall-of-the-roman-empire when I hear these things. I try to shield myself from too much of this, but sometimes, some things slips under the radar. We are simply so decadently bored and occupied with trivialities beyond measure, that we can conceive of, produce, design, package, transport, sell and buy this stuff… in reality, or metaphorically. Or worse, spend a few hundred quid to go to London to buy it. It makes me reel in horror.
Wandering around in a dressing gown guzzling champagne all day, sighing in a dramatic manner simply doesn’t stand up to this. Decadence without…. without what? Style? Class? Art? History? Meaning?

Dumbing down never had it so good. Idiocracy is a documentary.
Laugh or cry?

Forgive them not, for they know what they do.

Find five faults – or more (article here )

A little note on interior magazines b’shit. In fact, my little cabin in the woods where subjected to this treatment, after I moved out. The tiny kitchen. They are going to tear down the cabin, so some interior twat took the opportunity to repaint, rebuild part of the kitchen for the benefit of a few pics and a laughable article. Have a good look at the eight-picture series.
Here’s what’s wrong:

* The sink is not connected to any water supply or drain. If it was connected, the cute little shelf with baskets would have a nasty pipe going through it. It is not possible to camouflage pipes it behind the wall, as there’s a massive fireplace. The tap is not even glued in place, neither is the sink.
* There’s not room enough for the gas tank under the sink. And anyway, there should be orange gas pipes sticking out. In fact, I doubt the gas top is a gas top.
* The lid for the chimney, a crucial thing for cleaning, is impossible to open, as the bench with gas top blocks it.
* Hardly possible to go through the door because of the knobs. They dismantled the whole thing after taking the pictures to get out the door, and left it in bits there. The cabin will be torn down soon.
* They have removed the floor from the pictures, or thrown rugs over it. It is painted linoleum, cracked, split, peeled, with severely water damaged floorboards showing through.
* They have ‘missed’ the awful lamp in the ceiling, and the pre-war bakelite light switches and very dodgy cabling. Good idea.
* Some of the photos are taken from outside, as the room is simply not big enough… with the kitchen door open to give that magic sunday-lunch light.
* The curtain was attached with staples. And you cannot open the cupboards with the curtain raised.

They tell you you could do this yourself in a day.

Everybody lies.