Sometimes I'm sad about having to die, eventually, because I'm still discovering interesting questions. Life is like archeology--I don't want to stop uncovering new questions, such as, what images stand alone, making words entirely superfluous?
(It's a subset of the question I already ask, 'What makes a piece of art great?')
Recreating paintings with toys is making me wonder about that, and I'm experiencing some answers. You know, the answers aren't coming from thinking, but from the physical work of making the images myself (and then thinking about that).
This surprised me a little: I didn't like Manet until I'd worked with/ entered into his images.
They moved me. I was almost crying when I re-created The Dead Toreador, and I began to worry about the fate of the bartender in A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.
But the reason I love The Tailor of Gloucester, I discovered, comes from the words. Beatrix Potter's paintings are wonderful, of course, but I'd choose the story over the illustrations.
Recreating the tailor mouse didn't move me any further than looking at him had. The fun of this week's re-creation was problem solving–– thinking of ways to make the project interesting technically. Can I make this with a turnip?
I'd liked best the wood MOUSE block, so I returned to that and added a few lines of gouache this morning.
Ta-da!
And that's it for this week's TRP.
I'm off to work in a few minutes. Saturdays can be fun because Big Boss isn't there. They can be challenging too if we're understaffed, which we usually are, and it's busy.
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The Auntie Vi Memorial Weather Report
I'm biking--yay! The weather forecast for the next few days is temps in the mid-30s F (around 0ºC). Comfy, but the streets can be dangerously slippery, actually, as the top layers of thick ice melts. I think enough ice has melted in the past couple days to leave long stretches of bare pavement.
I'll see. If it's too slippery, I'll put my bike on the bus rack.
It's not worth taking chances. A bicycling coworker told me he'd once fallen on a wet wood bridge and broken several ribs and punctured a lung. "I was in pain for six months."
Tootle-oo, everyone, have a lovely day. Don't fall!
