Tag: post a week 2013

F is also for Friday: Roz Chast

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univInGrainSand

the sound of gears turning

It is doubtful if anyone in the last three decades has more prolifically caricatured the odd and interestingly recognizable events of everyday life than Roz Chast. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, does not hesitate in calling the 58 year-old cartoonist “The magazine’s only certifiable genius” and the evidence is easily found in the watercolour-washed and inked panels that have graced its pages for the last 30 years.

R.Chast_Stuff_A2Zwe are all guilty

The appeal in the shaky, quirky style lies in its urban icons – the message is not lost in any perfect graphic portrayal of the parts, we instantly recognize the whole whether it is a situation we have faced, something we may have seen or just random stuff and nonsense that flies out of left field. In a black and white framed snapshot of the absurd, multiple panels spread out over a few pages, a magazine cover, even a hooked rug or pysanka, most of Chast’s work is self-explanatory, readers either laugh or just don’t get it.

5-deconstructing-lunch

don’t even think about starting with dessert

Chast has admitted that she is an anxious person, sometimes suffering from insomnia but rather than letting this have a crippling effect, it informs her cartoons and books with all those bits that we hate, have phobias of, secretly know and hide or have thought about while tossing restlessly around in bed at 3 AM.  Like the best social commentary, she lays it out like a royal flush for all to see – these kinds of reflections on existence are far from pedestrian, Ms. Chast’s style creates a neutrality, a world where we are all a little off and most of the time just as strange as our neighbours.

41_1pick one – or add your custom card to the collection

Life, whether it is domestic, family or work, provides sufficient material for Ms. Chast and more than enough to fill the pages of over a dozen books: one can lose many hours glued to the pages of the Theories of Everything: Selected Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons, a compilation of the cartoons published in The New Yorker, Scientific American and the Harvard Business Review.

chast_theories_04

this is the aftermath of a bad mom

This cartoonist’s perspective is as genuine as the characters portrayed in her work – the typical glossy “author photo” on the dustcover would seem inappropriate and so a cartoon of a woman much like Roz herself smiles quizzically back at us.

We find ourselves in Roz Chast’s cartoons for we are her “everyman”.

Read more on:

Roz Chast
Roz Chast at the Julie Saul Gallery
Roz Chast appreciates Art

Let’s see if this works…

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snowed in

Spring is far from being a reality in this part of the world. The squirrels have gone back to hiding and all those chirping little birds we saw flitting about are nowhere to be found. We are officially snowed in and messing about brought us to attempt something new and possibly interesting.

As if we don’t have enough to do already….

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Gifts – Week 2

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strawflowers

everlasting

There are those who have a special bond with the earth. Our uncle – Wojek – was just such a man: stubborn and suspicious, with eyes like an animal that would size a person up in a glance, he was blessed with the ability to nurture all things green. With no patience to engage in dinner-table discussions about the state of the world or the latest styles for longer than it took to clean his plate, he could spend hours carefully twisting the branch of a bonsai, coaxing seedlings to sprout out of their cotton-wool nests or just turning over the dark, damp earth in preparation for that year’s vegetable garden.  He was our source of botanical wisdom – if Wojek said the brown withered plant held sadly in our hands was beyond salvation, we knew there was truly nothing else to be done. More often than not he would just give us the look, take it and in a month’s time have it four times the size, green and thriving in his kitchen window. Wojek had come through life like a character in a Russian novel and throughout the years never saw the need or the use of being on the giving end when it came to assorted family holidays but a passing mention about a childhood memory of strawflowers resulted in a bed of blooms as variegated as the colours of a summer’s worth of sunsets. It was just who he was.

This fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – Gifts – is as much about the temporal as the eternal and last week, Across the Bored queried “What is a gift for you?” -A present, a prize, the look in her eyes, a talent to sing or big shiny ring, the love of a child or something more wild, the quiet of night or just waking up, right…… We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info or want to browse past themes? Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Lunchtime

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submarine

Ready to dive into a submarine
taken with the iphone 5 icamera no edits

Paper thin slices of steak, sautéed golden onions, fresh red pepper and Sunset Campari tomatoes, California Black Ripe olives, shredded lettuce, grated cheddar and Parmigiano-Reggiano, avocado mayonnaise, chipotle dressing on a warmed, toasty ciabatta loaf. The Ghost and the Inscrutable Dr. Fu get Sandwich 101 lessons – Culinary school Chez Nous.

Go and grab something delicious in the Weekly Photo Challenge: Lunchtime.

F is also for Friday: A Comically Fine Line

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hoe

when communication leads in two different directions

Depending on the occasion, anyone one with younger members in the household will know how difficult it can be just to speak to one another in the same language. Inane bits of conversation ranging from “how was your afternoon” to “please put your boots on the mat” can lead to fiery flare-ups, snorts of derision with rolling eyeball accompaniment or the best of the bunch, the snappy answer. From either party involved. It was one of those days and the best option was not to say anything at all because if we did it would have been, inevitably, much worse.

A moment’s solitude was in order and we happened to be in the vicinity of the local greenhouse which we hadn’t stepped foot into since our own monsters were small and in need of some winding down. In our own childhood, the place had seemed enormous with exotic plants hanging off raised beds and a banana tree with fruit dangling within a monkey’s reach tucked in a wing off the back. As recently as 20 years ago the glass house, as the Ghost liked to call it, had a heavy warmth filled with the sweet perfume of tropical flowers in the dead of winter and a koi pond whose occupants would swim up to the surface in the hopes of being fed. Today the door opened upon nannies with strollers seeking their own few minutes of peace while their under-fives bent over a rather sad display of non-descript between-season blooms.  The air wasn’t as close and wet as we remember, the koi had been moved, their pond now filled with pennies and the dark water where they now hid from prying eyes didn’t invite closer inspection. The plants looked as though they had been donated by apartment dwellers with black thumbs – those that had once been green and fresh in some florist’s shop with all the promise of growth and sun and plenty of water had shrunk to shadows of their former glory, leaves a bit brown around the edges with blossoms trying vainly to shout colour into the wilderness of the hothouse.  Evidently the man who used to take such care, who had a gift for nurturing his green charges was long gone and his apprentices had learned little, didn’t care or perhaps just didn’t know any better. Two nurseries once filled with odd-shaped plants from far corners of the world were closed – hopefully they are filled with seedlings and bright buds for the upcoming Easter exhibition.  It took all of ten minutes to make the rounds and as much as we wanted, not even one photo opportunity presented itself – the iphone stayed sleeping in our pocket.

The library attached to this small botanical garden is in much better condition – clean and quiet in the adult stacks, a little more boisterous and chaotic in the children’s section, it boasts a lovely sitting room with floral scrollwork hand-painted around the edge of a coffered ceiling.   People come and spread out their books on the massive oak tables, study, look through thick art tomes or just breathe a sigh of relief in one of the comfortable, green leather reading chairs. That is exactly what we did.

chast new yorker coversitting quietly seems to have helped

More on visions of life as we know it by Roz Chast next week.

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Gifts

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laduree

sweetly unexpected

It used to be that we would pack our bags and trot off to some far-flung destination with nary a care, now our journeys have become more defined. Time is of the essence and as much as we are still taken away from the nest for vacation, work or duty, more often than not in the recent past we are the ones to stay behind and wonder how life unfolds for our own young travellers.  Luckily, the luxury of technology lets us remain close through our devices – our phones even ring, oddly enough, in the tone of the land we are trying to reach and voices coming from across the ocean are sometimes clearer than if they were across the country. At first the days seem longer, quieter, less filled with the big, bold noise of life and then suddenly they are past and once again we are standing in an airport waiting for our missed ones return from another most amazing and enlightening adventure.

We are glad to see them back with all their appendages intact, no wallets, cameras or even worse, passports pilfered from pockets or packs and in a good mood, happy to be home.  There are enough stories and pictures to last through quite a few dinners, their experience of the world and observations of the people in it the source of much amusement and sometimes, disbelief. Our offspring have found this form of indulgence satisfying but have also learned that the little things do count, like taking the time to find a sewer-rat hand puppet for a sometimes annoying sibling.  And so, unexpected as a lovely box of macarons, the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge gives you – Gifts.

“What is a gift for you?” –  A present, a prize, the look in her eyes, a talent to sing or big shiny ring, the love of a child or something more wild, the quiet of night or just waking up, right…

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, here are some guidelines for the challenge: HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Your point of view on the current week’s challenge can take any form: a quote, a motto or saying, an essay, poem or opinion of yours or attributed to someone else, a piece of music, a song, a video, a work of art, photograph, graffiti, drawing or scribble – but it has to be about the topic!
  3. Please, don’t just link to an old post… challenge yourself.
  4. The Challenge will be open for 14 days (there will be a reminder post at the 7 day mark) after which I will post another.
  5. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. If you would like your reader to see what others are presenting for the same challenge, add a link to the “Two Cents Tuesday” challenge on your own blog.
  4. Feel free to pick up your badge on the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge page
  5. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

Blame it on the Comet

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COMETNo end of computer-related problems today ranging from the ridiculous to the absurd with absolutely no help to be found in tortuously long and convoluted supports, help pages and discussion forums until the muses deigned to illuminate with an elegant and simple solution… as usual.  Got it all cleaned up nicely and was feeling most proud of ourselves when, just to add insult to injury, we discovered that the photostream on iPhones keeps all those lovely photos that weren’t on your camera roll for a mere 30 days and then sends them off to join all the flotsam burning up in the tail of the comet now passing through our neighbourhood.  That’s what we get for not reading the fine print…

F is also for Friday: Views of Castel Gandolfo

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Lake Albano


John Robert Cozens the18th century British painter of romantic watercolour landscapes often visited Italy finding the tranquil vistas, and that of Castel Gandolfo in particular, inspirational to his work. Although John Constable considered him “the greatest genius that ever touched landscape” his work was rejected by the Royal Academy, no doubt contributing to the nervous breakdown which eventually led to his hospitalization at the Bethlem Royal Hospital Asylum. In June 2010 Cozen’s Lake Albano (c.1777) sold at a Sotheby’s auction in London to David Thomson the Canadian media tycoon for £2.4 million, a record for any 18th-century British watercolour and quadruple its estimated price.

Lake Albano with Castel Gandolfo

The above detail of Francis Towne‘s panorama (1781) is a lovely example of a watercolour-tinted drawing: soft tints of colour are layered over the dark ink wash with the details picked up in pen and ink to sharpen and highlight the details of the foreground. Unlike Cozens, who inspired William Turner and other English contemporaries, Towne’s more lithographic and antiquated style seems to have had little influence (apart from perhaps John Varley and John Sell Cotman) on the succeeding generation of romantic artists. His elegant loose drawing style and almost abstract wash designs nonetheless convey the serenity and warmth of the region of Lazio.

Lake RemiSelf-taught landscape and portrait painter Joseph Wright of Derby is best known for his canvases capturing the spirit of the Industrial Revolution. Some twenty years after Cozens, he must also have felt the call of warmer climes and the less frantic pace of the countryside surrounding Castel Gandolfo. Although a frequent contributor to exhibitions at the Royal Academy, he declined becoming a full member due to a slight he believed had been directed at him by members.

Like many other French painters of the early 19th Century, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot journeyed to Italy in 1825 to refine his skills. He was extraordinarily productive completing over 200 drawings and 150 paintings during his three-year stay.  Corot made two return visits to the country where he had been so prolific and each time returned to the same spot to capture once again the scenery of that had so entranced him as a novice.

Castel Gandolfo

The American painter George Inness spent almost eight years in Italy in the 1870s perfecting his picturesque and panoramic style.  Influenced by the old Masters, Nicolas Poussin, and the Hudson River and Barbizon Schools, his  paintings are meticulously composed, saturated with colour and include precise detail. The wide open skies and views from the hillsides surrounding Lake Albano seem to have nurtured his predilection for the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg for upon his return to America his work became infused with a more abstract, mystical component. Inness died in 1894 in Scotland where, according to his son, he was enjoying the setting sun when all of a sudden he threw his hands into the air with the exclamation “My God! oh, how beautiful!”, upon which he fell to the ground and passed away minutes later.

A multitude of artists, past and present, famous and unknown, have set up their easels and balanced sketchbooks on their knees to capture Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo – though the details of the landscape may change with the passing of the years and man though managed encroaches, its beauty like the art it inspired remains timeless.

Read more on Landscape Art here…

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Graffiti – Week 2

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graffiti

As the world becomes smaller and more information is made available to us, hopefully making us more tolerant of different points of view, it seems odd that there are still many places in the world where self-expression is frowned upon. Persecution of those who dare to assert their opinion in a creative manner is an old story that is being repeated daily as Malina Suliman, an Afghan graffiti artist, can attest. This form of art being practiced, sanctioned or not, is at its core statement-driven and this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – Graffiti – would submit that it transcends borders.

Last week, Across the Bored was curious “What does graffiti look like to you?” –  Political comment, die-hard declaration of love or mash-up missive to the world, cursive or abstract, community code, floral ode, tag on a train, scribble near a drain, Art or eyesore… We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info or want to browse past themes? Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.

Read more on what other WP bloggers are saying about graffiti at:

Forged in Sheffield: Faunagraphic
Graffiti Alley: An Oasis of Color
Arctic Graffiti