Month: February 2017

Charles M. Schulz: “Running Frantically Down the Road”

Photographer Unknown, (The Abandoned Truck)

“There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive.”

― Charles M. Schulz, You Don’t Look 25, Charlie Brown!

Richard Brautigan: “He Started Crying When He Saw the Ferris Wheel”

Photographer Unknown, (Carnival)

O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.”

― Richard Brautigan, A Boat

E. Lundahl

E. Lundahl: Master Bookbinder from Finland

Bookbinding is an artistic craft of great antiquity. It combines skills from other trades such as paper and fabric crafts, leather work, model making, and graphic arts. It requires knowledge about numerous varieties of book structures along with all the internal and external details of assembly. A working knowledge of the materials involved is required.

Reblogged with many thanks to the artist: http://veterokforbooks.tumblr.com.

Visit the site. Inquire. Hardbound books, leather, herbs and arcane ephemera.

Bernie Wrightson

Bernie Wrightson, “Frankenstein” Illustrations

Frankenstein was a comics adaptation of the novel of the same name, first published in 1983 by American company Marvel Comics, with script and art by Bernie Wrightson.

This edition reprints the full novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published in 1831, with illustrations by Wrightson. It includes an introduction by Stephen King and from Wrightson himself. The illustrations themselves are not based upon the Boris Karloff or Lee films, but on the actual book’s descriptions of characters and objects. Wrightson also used a period style, saying “I wanted the book to look like an antique; to have the feeling of woodcuts or steel engravings, something of that era” and basing the feel on artists like Franklin Booth, J.C. Coll and Edwin Austin Abbey.

“I’ve always had a thing for Frankenstein, and it was a labor of love. It was not an assignment, it was not a job. I would do the drawings in between paying gigs, when I had enough to be caught up with bills and groceries and what-not. I would take three days here, a week there, to work on the Frankenstein volume. It took about seven years.” -Bernie Wrightson

For the 25th anniversary of the first edition in October 2008, a new edition was prepared and released in 1994 by Dark Horse Comics in an oversized (9″ x 12″), hardcover format scanned from the original artwork. It is still available through Amazon books.

W.C. Richardson

Paintings by W. C. Richardson

W.C. Richardson has been making abstract paintings for over 30 years. He received a BFA in 1975 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an MFA in 1977 from Washington University, St. Louis, MO. He began teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1978 and is currently an Associate Professor there. Richardson’s awards include four Individual Artist’s Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. Since 1976, his work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the U.S., as well as in Russia, Belgium, Turkey and Jordan.

“Color is one of the most intuitive aspects of my work. I build the color in my paintings through trial and error, responding to unpredictable interactions. I’m conscious of the spatial properties of different hues and values, and use their advancing and receding properties to locate them in space. I also use color to differentiate or connect elements in a complex surface. I commonly play intense, saturated colors against neutrals, with black and white used for emphasis and punctuation.” – WC Richardson

Cat Netsuke

Carved Ivory Cat Netsuke

Traditional Japanese garments—robes called kosode and kimono—had no pockets; however, men who wore them needed a place to store their personal belongings, such as pipes, tobacco, money, seals, or medicines.

The solution was to place such objects in containers (called sagemono) hung by cords from the robes’ sashes (obi). The containers may have been pouches or small woven baskets, but the most popular were beautifully crafted boxes (inrō), which were held shut by ojime, which were sliding beads on cords. Whatever the form of the container, the fastener that secured the cord at the top of the sash was a carved, button-like toggle called a netsuke.

Netsuke, like the inrō and ojime, evolved over time from being strictly utilitarian into objects of great artistic merit and an expression of extraordinary craftsmanship. Such objects have a long history reflecting the important aspects of Japanese folklore and life. Netsuke production was most popular during the Edo period in Japan, around 1615–1868. Today, the art lives on, and some modern works can command high prices in the UK, Europe, the USA, Japan and elsewhere.

Jim Butcher: “It Defies the Gravity of an Entire Planet”

Artist Unknown, Computer Graphics, Film Gif from “Casablanca”, 1942

“Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean when you think about it jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research blood sweat tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.

But get on any flight in the country and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who in the face of all that incredible achievement will be willing to complain about the drinks.”

-Jim Butcher, Summer Knight