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My own private Salon des Refusés (Part Two)

November 21, 2013
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Here are some more self-rejected pages of mine. Ironically, there are yet more pages that I am yet again self-rejecting. The ones that don’t make the cut either are not visually engaging enough or are repetitive of themes or motifs previously presented.

Once upon a time the Phoenix Art Museum had a show of some of the stuff Claude Monet did at Giverny that was still unfinished at the time he died. Of the dozen-and-a-half canvases presented, there was only one that was worth looking at as a painting and not as a clue of Monet’s creative process; and “sketch and then fill in” about summed up his creative process on individual canvases. It was thin soup indeed, and if it hadn’t been Monet doing it the museum would never have shown it. Consequently, in the (I hope) far future when I start to get a glimmer of that Tunnel with the Bright Light, I hope I will have tagged those sketch-musings of mine that are not worthy of a viewer’s attention, that they may be consigned to the flames. (See Harlan Ellison’s ALL THE LIES THAT ARE MY LIFE for a more extensive discussion of this philosophy.)

Onward:

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Popefullness

Must’ve done this around the time the latest Francis tried on his funny hat.

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Struggle/Pinnacle/Afterwar

Comic book writer Steve Gerber, whose Howard the Duck made a great comic book but a horribly Uncanny Valley movie that misused Lea Thompson and Jeffrey Jones, once said something like “You know what there is at the top of the ladder? Another ladder.” And that’s where you Kick It Up A Notch or more aptly Take It To The Next Level. More irony: I wasn’t able to do that with this one; I realized it would take about five times the effort a ‘normal’ page requires.

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Involvements

Here’s one that would be easy to finish. I vote it Most Likely To See Completion amongst these Salon entries.

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Skeleton/Key

Gee, I just love bone configurations, especially if they hang together…

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Logarithm

Logarithm, I got music. I got Readers; who could ask for anything more? (See also Algorithm…)

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Collide O Hadrons

I’m sure this was done around the time scientists confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, the misnamed “God Particle.” I guess “Make-the-Universe-Possible Particle” is too much of a mouthful.

There you have them, for now. There may be a Part Three, but I’ll do a few posts prior even if there is one.

My own private Salon des Refusés (Part One)

November 20, 2013
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Today I was looking for an unfinished page I’d undone-edly done on Sally Ride. The Science Channel just showed a terrific movie about Richard Feynman’s involvement in the commission investigating the Challenger disaster, and watching it I learned that Sally Ride was the one who’d indirectly pointed Feynman to the O-Rings as the probable cause.

Alas, I’ve thus far not found the Sally Ride page. What I did find was a boatload of abandoned works. Either my enthusiasm for the idea had dimmed, or it was worthy but a lot of work to finish, or I was stumped for a rhyme or an image completion, or the drawing had gone sour, or Other. But all of the ones I’m posting here make me wish I could devote more time to them.

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Addled Wit Sharpener

Some day there’ll be a pharmacological solution to addled wits. Were this the day, I’d be a customer.

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Poetry As Motion

This is well started, but the figure depicted is the last of what would be several poetically posed–and moving–figures.

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Ultimate Gargoyle

I want to sculpt some imposing gargoyles before I die. (I have other plans for after I die. [smiles]) Here is a try at gargoyle design.

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3Deified

Intended as a quasi-discussion on the trend toward 3d in movies. But ulteriorly I wanted to immortalize yet another bad pun.

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Sixto Rodriguez/Sugarman Finder

This would have been a love song to the film SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN and its subject. I put it off because I would need a lot of time to do it right.

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Revolver Resolved

Earlier this year I was invited to participate in an art show entitled “Children and Guns.” I got this far with my would-have-been contribution before the pain of the subject compelled me to stop.

(End of Part One)

Priscilla Rubella Angster, Improbable Author

November 19, 2013
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A long time ago, in an Archie Comics feature far, far away, someone made up some book titles with author punchlines. The only one I remember from that feature was Over the Cliff by Hugo First. Slightly later (and at least one of these will be edited for television) and on the 4th grade playground, I learned of Antlers in the Treetops by Hoogoost the Moose, Under the Grandstands by Seymour Kiesters, Mad Dash to the Bathroom by Willie Maekit (illustrated by Betty Doant), and Revenge of the Tiger by Claude Nads. My own modest contributions to the genre include Worm Capture by Earl E. Byrd, Psychosis Geological by Sedda Mental, and FAIL Fail by Noah Vail. All of these helped bring to being the above character, whose full name includes two red herrings and whose book-jacket moniker is P. R. Angster. The book might be called You Talking to Me, Punk’d?

Tangerine Peel II: Subtler Cubism

November 17, 2013
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It’s over a hundred years since le Cubisme made its first appearance, spearheaded by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, with perhaps a precursive boost by Paul Cézanne. The movement purported to offer a different way of looking at things, by chopping up the image with different views of its subject. Then came Comic Books, which chopped up the page with different slices of represented life. Now comes the self-aggrandizing Gary W. Bowers, who presents the same subject at slightly different viewpoints and times, thanks to camcorder technology and nifty photo-editing software. (Andy Warhol gave me a precursive boost with his image multiplicities. Thanks and RIP, Andy!) New Cubism lives!

Serendipitous Semi-Seahorse

November 17, 2013
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Sometimes mundane living delights us with a surprise. This morning I peeled a thin-skinned tangerine, meeting the challenge of keeping it in one piece, and found a Quasimodo of a seahorse in the peel’s underside. Scanner-capture yielded the above result, which comes with the lesson that Life is chock-full of visual wonder–so keep your eyes peeled. [mischievous smile]

trajectoral traditions

November 16, 2013
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Here’s a poem I wrote today to a challenge: “Write a poem about falling.” Paging Michel Lamontagne! Hey, Michel, want to illustrate this one?

trajectoral traditions

conjectural parabolae
ejectional ballistics mark
conjunctival affinity
adjoins the contrapuntal dark

in launch mode is debauchery
testosterone definitives
aborted mission’s mockery
on cnn such spin it gives

in orbit geosynchronous
a lost&found of gps
in vehicles propinquitous
a glockenspiel’s evoked and blessed

a paratrooper plows the air
nefariously various
the chute deployed avoids abyss
a blissful floating down
a kiss

Step Hen King

November 15, 2013
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I think I’ve read more words that Stephen King has written than words by anyone else. (Robert Heinlein and Herman Wouk might be close.) That includes CARRIE, THE STAND (both the cut and uncut editions), THE DARK HALF, THE DEAD ZONE, CUJO, FIRESTARTER, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, CHRISTINE, MISERY, PET SEMATARY, INSOMNIA, GERALD’S GAME, DANSE MACABRE, collections SKELETON CREW and FOUR SEASONS, THE SHINING, the entire Dark Tower series, and most recently, DOCTOR SLEEP, sequel to THE SHINING. I also read ON WRITING, which I’d recommend to creative people of all media.

Naturally I want to pay some sort of tribute to a man who’s provided me with numberless hours of imaginative entertainment. A few days ago I got this far with a draft of the Stephen King page:

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This draft was doomed, but I felt bad scrapping it: I really liked some of the character portraiture, and since I’m an erratic portraitist, when I get it right it breaks my heart not to use it. So here it is.

And here are the words to the acrostic:

SPIDERS help weave his tapestries–hence dyers use batik
Thrown in: all AND the kitchen sink; a float evokes Caltiki
Ectoplasmics & ashenness get kith & kin & kine
Paranormal phenomena are fodder for his Shining

Caltiki? Well, there’s a bad half-Italian movie of the late 50s entitled CALTIKI –THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (or, when in Rome: CALTIKI — IL MONSTRE IMMORTALE) that I’d be willing to bet 500 to 1 Stephen King has seen. He’s got a similar flesh-devourer in one of his short stories; it floats by an anchored raft. (It’s dissimilar enough to be considered an independent creation, though.) The name of the King story escapes me.

Steve, if you ever see this, I echo my apologetic chicken regarding the awful “poultry-geist” joke. I needed to fill up the space. Keep up the good work, man.

It Is What It Is? –What ISN’T??!

November 14, 2013
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Ayn Rand must be turning over in her grave. A long time ago, she proclaimed that A equals A. Now people everywhere are saying “It is what it is,” and not giving Ayn any credit. (Nor, to my knowledge, did John Prine tip his hat to Rand when he put “You are what you are, and you ain’t what you ain’t” in his lyrics to “Dear Abby.”)

“It is what it is” is a semantically empty phrase that usually (in this neck of the woods, anyway) connotes that something not-great but unchangeable exists. As Robert Heinlein was wont to say, “You can’t argue with the weather.”

So why use it for an acrostic? Well, ten years from now it will remind me of the way people were talking ten years ago. (Fifty years ago, kids my age were calling Cool stuff Boss. Cool survived; Boss died.) Also, the end-letters work out fairly well for acrosticization, and enabled a reference to Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, heroic mongoose of the Kipling oeuvre, as well as the Robert Mondavi vineyards, which I was privileged to visit in the mid-80s, enjoying their five-course meal accompanied by five different wines.

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

It pays a Cobra to BEWARE of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
The savage Truth would humble the most cock-eyed optimist
It’s like an alcoholic at a vineyard of Mondavi
So many vampires want to taste the blood of whom they kiss

Opus #300 and/or Eleven Twelve 2013

November 12, 2013
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Two things make this unlike a day like any other. One is that month, day and year in the mm-dd-yy format are in numerical sequence for the second-to-last time this century; the other is this is the 300th time I’ve punched “New Post” at WordPress and deemed the result publishable. Since I’m forever enumerating and otherwise manipulating numbers, the two phenomena are a good fit for “A very SPECIAL episode of ‘One with Clay, Image and Text.'”

Opus #300

Of course the Cosmos has my #
Pale penumbra; 1-2-3
Undercut the Grand Vizier-0
Seek ye Wisdom NOT from her-0

(Some ambiguity is built-in, and some is added. The Pound sign is now employed in referral, and it and a given phrase then referred to as a ‘hash tag;’ it also means both Pounds and Number. FYI: it means “number” in the acrostic. The zeroes are pronounced “Oh,” and, oh, by the way, they do not mean “zero” in the acrostic; they are a syllable dependent on their surroundings. “Her-0” should be pronounced “Hero.” As for the stuff in brackets, Googlers of “Lord William Not-from-here” will get a very SPECIAL lowdown on an intriguing character in the Instrumentality of Mankind mythos according to Cordwainer Smith.)

Eleven Twelve 2013

Endearing 2-some says À Bientôt
Leave 2lips in the sun to bloom & glow
Elopement’s zer0 hour makes them pale
Vivacious c0uple shakes but does not bail
Enlisting Space 13 for their RV
Now Wedded Bliss yields 13 forms of Glee

What better thing to do on this special numerical day than to get married? Truth is, a couple got married on today’s Today Show.

As for the illustration, attempts to deconstruct it may well prove it indeconstructionable. [proud-kid smile]