Yes, because I’ve got a dozen other things I must be doing instead with deadlines being blown to hell left and right, and because there’s very little new content each week, I’ve been playing with a new theme. Makes sense to me.
The body font is Marcellus, and the headlines are in Cinzel. The background is “Mini Gravel Art on Gray” by Donna Mibus.
I hope you like it. And what little I’m posting. And the archives. By all means, check out the archives.
And now, back on my head.
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see.
– Anais Nin
Inspiration is the great con of art. You want inspiration? Work harder the day before so you know where to start today.
– Richard Kadrey
When the sun went down, her clothes came off. Night after night, I sketched her in the darkness until I finally got it right.
I met her in an art gallery and fell in love. Somewhere near The Persistence of Memory, she melted into the arms of another man.
We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.
– John F. Kennedy
Genius is in a certain sense infallible, and has nothing to learn; but art is to be learned, and must be acquired by practice and experience.
– August Wilhelm von Schlegel
This is about writing in the sense that writing is an art, and being an artist of whatever sort can help carry you through difficult times.
The link is to a beautiful, bittersweet National Public Radio piece about a Smithsonian art exhibition titled The Art of Gaman.
“Gaman means to bear the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity,” says Delphine Hirasuna. She is a third-generation Japanese-American and was imprisoned with her family in one of the rude internment camps during the fearful days after Pearl Harbor. The exhibition is of art created in the camps by American citizens who were deprived of their livelihoods and their liberties because they looked like the enemy. (N.B.: Neither German-Americans nor Italian-Americans suffered similarly.)
The story and the exhibition remind us that art can, in some ways, triumph over the darkness. It can keep us sane and even something resembling happy when happiness is but a distant memory. And out of the darkness can come beauty.
In one week, a massive hurricane swept up a continental coast, flattening and flooding; an art museum burned to the ground, taking priceless treasures with it; a national leader and his family were assassinated; drought deepened across a formerly fertile region; and the seams of a cruise ship opened and hundreds drowned.
As his mother watched, he lined up automobiles on a bridge just before creating an earthquake.
She shook her head. “He’s so hard on his toys.”
His father smiled indulgently. “Yes, but he’ll grow out of it. Besides, it’s just a training planet.”