Nictating Language: Language That Winks
I have long believed that a rich vocabulary could be used as code to imbue a risque glow in everyday text. Nudge nudge. I’ve …
Blog 2000-2021
Deep Pattern
Look at these four Jeff Koons sculptures. What do you see? The more attention you pay the more specific you can be. Size, …
Facing It
Muscles of the human head from Gray’s Anatomy. via WikiMedia. Pattern, Sloan Nota. The muscles of the …
A Flavor of Realism
Before the Journey by Charles Bell, 1986 via Louis K. Meisel Gallery Realism comes in as many flavors as cheeses …
Drawing Shape: Contour Lines
Game store carpet, Paris via keepbusy Earth isn’t flat but this carpet is. Curving lines produce the illusion that the …
Poem for Your Eyes
There’s a kind of art that might be called focus knob aesthetics. You know it on a microscope? You’re looking at the merest smear …
Exalted Monk
Exalted Monk (Monk at the Moment of Enlightenment), 14th century Chinese polychromed wood. Now on view at the Seattle Art Museum’s Asian Art Museum. …
The Blog’s 1-Year Birthday
Today marks one year since this blog began its hurly-burly tumble through a world of art and ideas. Thank you readers for reading along …
A Dragon and Two Birds
Images from CG Textures A dragon and two birds, a haphazard choice. Or say the images attracted me so I used them. This isn’t science, …
Midnight/Sun: Painters at Personality’s Poles
Midnight sun at Nordkapp, Norway, by Yan Zhang via WikiPedia (GFDL license) At northmost Norway during a Midnight Sun you could stand at …
Deborah Barlow: Blogger, Painter, Force of Nature
Nearly a year since I started this blog. Back then I was given help by a veteran blogger whom I told I would thank …
Kristallnacht Folk
Kristallnacht by Sloan Nota Some eggs take a long while to hatch. This post has required the incubation of a Stegosaurus egg. My reason …
A Proper Bostonian
Dogface, painting by Sloan Nota I’ve been searching among my artworks because I can’t articulate in words what I feel about Monday’s tragedy in …
Blitzkrieg and Equipoise
This is a third episode of Smithereens part 1 & part 2 that I posted before going to New York. _______________________________________________ Here are two artforms worth pondering …
New York City Pleasures
* Links to New York food and attractions are at the bottom of this post. Leap ahead to access them. Detail of a dress …
New York City, Splendid Things
I’ve been in New York since last Tuesday and have interacted with so many individual images that I appreciate not having a photographic memory. …
At The Met: A Feast of Snows
New York New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibit Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity has some glorious paintings assembled from far-flung collections. Every artwork focuses …
Dateline: New York, March 20: Chelsea
Today was my first full day in New York City. Spent it in Chelsea, cruising the galleries. As usual a few remarkable pieces, some good …
Smithereens, part 2 — Breakage and Contemporary Suchness
This tale starts in the 20th century with two world wars and the atomic bomb. Europe, Asia, North Africa, rubble. Dead heroes, wraiths with numbers …
Smithereens, part 1 — Kintsukuori & Wabi-Sabi
To my readers. I’ve wrestled with this piece overlong so I’m splitting it in pieces. Appropriately, yes? Here is the beginning. posted on Facebook This …