Archive for August, 2007

From black board to spitzsticker

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Forgive me for yesterday’s wacky post. I’m rounding the final turn of a new wood block—the first I’ve executed outside the workshop environment. The spot I’ve set up in the little galley kitchen on the second floor is ideal. Painters need soft northern light, but the way the afternoon sun from the small window streams by my left shoulder is perfect for engraving wood. I can see each minute detail with total, three-dimensional clarity. Gray loaned me a magnifying visor, but I prefer the naked eye, as long as I have the proper light.

Why does wood engraving appeal to me? There’s something about the precision that satisfies an inner aspect, much in the same way that the spontaneity of collage appeals to another part of me. Perhaps Wesley put it best when he wrote, “Engraving is like drawing on a black board. Every line you make is a white mark on a black surface. You are adding light to darkness.” That hits pretty close to home for me.

On the other hand, it’s widely acknowledged that wood engraving is a demanding, unforgiving medium. I’m considered fairly decent for a “beginner,” but that’s because I can tap a lifetime of graphic investigation as I make each binary decision—black or white? I still have a significant mark-making technique to learn and “muscle memory” to acquire. I must also develop an even deeper resistance to haste. There are no shortcuts, “happy accidents,” or undo keys in wood engraving. Every mark must be deliberate. The process does not reward chance; it yields only to planning and tenacity. I find a challenge in all that, obviously, but I wish I’d been more strongly captivated by it earlier in my artistic life. After creating the lino block for Joan and Wayne’s wedding invitation, I abandoned printmaking for nearly 30 years. So be it. I’m slowly making up for a bit of lost time.

When did my world turn CrAz-O?

Monday, August 27th, 2007

Local headline:
Library offers $1000 for winning logo

What’s next?
Patient offers $1000 for winning diagnosis
—or—
Defendant offers $1000 for winning defense

I laughed back in the 70s when one of my UC professors proposed that graphic designers, like architects, be licensed by the state.

Need a Website?
You can get one from this chicken farmer.
—or—
Maybe you’re a chicken farmer, but can’t design.
—or—
Wait, you just need to look at an award-winning Website!

Hey, I’ll just change the name of our studio:

Dixon Design and Live Bait

So, you think this entry is a big joke?

Who’s laughing?
I’m being swallowed by a black hole of insignificance, as my achievements are being ascribed to an impostor.

AAAA-i-i-i-i-i-EE-EE-EE ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Spooky music

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

I continue to have a powerful belief in the synchronicities of life, but, for some reason, I’m astonished when they occur.

The wood engraving I’m working on will accompany a poem by a teaching artist who also wrote a book of verse about Daniel Boone, and it will be printed in Monterey, Kentucky.

Joan had a blind date with a teaching artist from Monterey, Kentucky, who is also the curator of the museum about Daniel Boone at Boonesborough.

Dana and I have talked for several years about the possibility of bartering for a painting by Irina, the extraordinary Russian artist who lives in Danville. irina.jpgRecently she chose Dana as the person to provide her personal assistance while recuperating from a broken hip. When we visited to pick out one of her works, she offered to loan me an art book from her collection. The first one I saw had КРАВЧЕНКО on the spine, a name that meant nothing to me. I thought it might be pronounced “Kravchenko,” but Irina seemed to be saying, “Kravkinkja,” so I looked inside. I was stunned by the reproductions. Who was the artist Кравченко? Without a doubt, one of the greatest Russian wood engravers of the early 20th Century.

Riding out the scorcher

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

Due to a stiff headwind for much of the route, this morning’s 40-miler felt more like 60. On the other hand, it was nice to wake up and discover a more moderate temperature plus a breeze, especially since it was 100+ degrees when we started out this past Wednesday evening. Ride turnout is down lately. If you intend to exercise safely out there, you have to be conditioned to this excessive heat. I never minded running during the peak of a hot spell, but I haven’t been doing it this time around. I’m thankful for the air movement that comes with cycling, which is all I’m clinging to for fitness these days.

Andante: at a walking pace

Friday, August 17th, 2007

The sense of marking time characterizes my days, although I know that personal progress is taking place. There is no standing still.

The same old angst surfaces when we purge records and remnants of past projects. What is the underlying nature of this difficulty in destroying the evidence of how I spent a portion of my life? It is not, as Dana misinterprets, an issue of trust. I trust her with vast areas of my well-being, and have for decades. Perhaps it has much more to do with what Maurice Manning touches on in his poem, A Possible Blessing:

. . . the man who understands diminishment
will lay down in his coffin from time to time
and practice disappearing, like a bug
riding a twig on a stream: a speck of un-
belonging, immersed in careless undulation.
You lose your obligation to remember,
which frees you to the quickened world of matter.

—from A Companion for Owls, 2004

Salute to a cyclist in Louisville

Monday, August 13th, 2007

Over two thousand riders showed up Sunday to participate in the Memorial Ride for fallen bicycle commuter Chips Cronen.

Various & Sundry, part sixty

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

Oh, Johnny… no Johnny…
— Although I never did go out to Pioneer Playhouse for the closing performance (to roll the dice and hope for a Johnny Crawford sighting), we did make the last showing of Raintree County at DHS. Well, it stunk as bad as I was afraid it might, except for Lee Marvin, who admirably carried every scene they put him in. I even found the bull-whip sequence a let-down. I’m not sure Mombo thought it was that good either, knowing she would use GWTW as her standard of comparison. There are numerous reasons why this expensive production flopped fifty years ago, but the list starts with 1) Lousy Screenplay. The only way they could have made this picture more disappointing would have been to ask Monty Clift to take off his shirt. Nevertheless, plenty of people around town knocked themselves out to put on the anniversary festival. It would’ve been more than worth it had Eva Marie decided to make an appearance, but she wrote organizers and said she couldn’t. I did enjoy watching her on a big screen and imagining her time on location in Danville. ”Old-timers” all say she was just as sweet as Taylor was aloof. In any case, I’ve decided that if I ever get a custom phone tone, I want to have a Raintree recording of Eva Marie saying, “Johnny… Oh, Johnny!”

Hurry! Hurry! Step right up!
— Don’t know yet if the new issue of Arts Across Kentucky has been published yet, but I managed to get my revisions to our studio Website uploaded this morning. To somebody else, it may look as though I’m comfortable when tooting my own horn. Self-promotion is something I can’t avoid, but it’s never felt natural to me. I’d always rather be pitching someone or something else. I figured that eventually the output would sell itself, but, sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

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Bay-bo smile
to the rescue

— Recently broken hearts were soothed when new pictures of “Baby Molina” arrived. Everyone in my Clan already knows that the birth mother of the second hoped-for child made a decision to withdraw from the adoption process. Many of the indicators were suggesting that might happen, but it doesn’t make it any less painful for Janet and Jerome. No matter how philosophical I try to be, my soul aches for them.

V & S

Various & Sundry, part fifty-nine

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

— Month of July workout totals: Swim-0; Bike-6; Run-1; Lift-4; Yoga-2

— When stupid costs only time and money, while highlighting the blessings of friendship—clearly there are much worse blunders one can make. This is the moral of Brendan’s story. (I’ll be damned if that young man can’t write a superb blog entry!)

— Big Sis is in happyland with all kiddoes stateside, and many good things are happenin’ all around the Clan. I dug out a 1997 Hi-8 tape for Seth’s secret project and made the hand-off in Liberty this morning after a biz meeting at City Hall. Look out. The Medicine Woman gave Old Graybeard a haircut and he’s building an opera house where the mule skinner’s shack used to sit…

— My profile in Arts Across Kentucky is about to hit the street, so I’m frantically trying to finish a major revision to the Dixon Design Website. Whenever I’ve looked the site over, all I’ve wanted to do is scrap it and start over, but I’ve convinced myself that the smart thing to do in the interim is to build on what I’ve already got, until the urge to take a busman’s holiday overwhelms me. (No hotlinks today—rest that click-finger until my newest pages are live.)

— Well, two-wheeler fans, my favorite cyclists (both former world mountain-bike champions) came within seconds of winning the big one, but young Alberto held them off. None of them will get the credit due, given the fact that this Tour will be remembered only for those who dishonored the sport. Ok, enough for this year. You already know what I think about it… Shameless dog-fighters, a crooked ref, and lying, juiced-up sluggers… What pro sport can measure up these days? I even saw the Golden Bear on TV responding to questions about performance-enhancers in golf. Sheesh!

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V & S