Feb 2 2024 - Roses

 

I went to a gallery opening yesterday - it was an art show at the Museum kicking off Black History Month.  The artist is black - a graphic designer and the show on Artificial intelligence generated images.   Sean is young, so his young friends were there - all from the arts community along with his family and relatives. There were lots of young black people present. I didn't look like Grimsby with a retired population - it made me think of when we lived in Toronto where the population is diverse and multicultural.  Grimsby doesn't have much diversity. Grimsby's most recent wave of immigration is post-war with the arrival of the Dutch so there is a substantial population of tall, slender, European descendants.  The Grimsby distinction to me is how tall they are. I was reminded of how filtered our experience of the everyday is.  Without us realizing it or thinking about it.    So I went to check on what we look like: "Males make up 48.6% of the population, while females account for 51.4%. Locals over 65 years old represent the largest age group in Grimsby (6,165 individuals), followed by those aged under 14 (4,680 people). The population density in Grimsby is 2595% higher than Ontario The median age in Grimsby is 7% higher than Ontario In Grimsby 1.68% of the population is South Asian In Grimsby 1.08% of the population is Black In Grimsby 0.66% of the population is Chinese When I looked at that density number, I can tell you it will be well over 3000% soon as we densify every bit of land.  Cole's - once a garden centre of plants will become a 7 storey condo filling the space.  That alone can push us past the 3000% mark.  Of course, the comparison is with all of Ontario and there's a lot of empty space in the North - that is empty of population.  What about this roses collage to advertise the garden club's speaker in February.  Aren't roses a delight!

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Nov 18 2023 - Puking Bird Winner

 

The Bird of the Century Contest (formerly known as Bird of the Year) in New Zealand has completed. Comedian John Oliver launched a "global effort" in support of the pūteketeke. The annual election is called Bird of the Year and held by the New Zealand conservation group Forest and Bird. Forest and Bird started the annual Bird of the Year competition to raise awareness for endangered native birds.  I wonder if that succeeded. Something has succeeded for someone, though. The British-American comedian pulled off a world-wide publicity stunt that got the bird voting system crashed.  More than 350,000 ballots were cast compared to 56,000 in 2021.  The bird is a crested grebe. They eat their own feathers to trigger their gag reflex so they can vomit up parasites.  That's the puking part.   What made Oliver take on this project?  It was elaborate - billboards in Paris, Tokyo, London, Mumbai and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. I think likely expensive as there were planes flying overhead with banners, Oliver in a bird costume, and similar stunts.   Washington Post's headline says he interfered with the bird competition.  I guess that's the motivation.  Lots of press.  The headlines are from everyone everywhere. And so the Puking Bird and not the Kiwi turns out to be the bird of the year/century. I wonder how many Black Friday's there are?  It is supposed to be November 24, 2023, but I've received notices of Black Friday sales on every Friday since the beginning of November. There are lots of Black Friday questions on google that may seem unrelated.  Here's one:  What is Black Friday in Catholic? And another:  Is Black Friday related to Jesus? Is there a Black Friday food?  Like these amazingly black cherry tomatoes?

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Jan 1 2023 - Predictions this year

 

What are the predictions for 2023?   Our great psychics are listed as: Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Jeanne Dixon, Ingo Swann, Sylvia Browne, John Edward, Doreen Virtue, Chip Coffey, VBaba Vanga and Esther Hicks.  That's according to the best psychics.club.  Today  it is Nostradamus' turn.  He's still making the news after all these centuries with over 6,300 prophecies: Predictions 2023  World War  Nostradamus wrote, "Seven months the Great War, people dead of evil-doing." Mars landing  The French mystic cryptically referred to a "light on Mars falling", suggesting that humans could possibly visit the Red Planet in 2023. New Pope  Nostradamus' third prediction for 2023 is a new Pope succeeding Francis. He suggested that Pope Francis will be the last true Pope and that the next Pope will create a scandal. New World Order  Nostradamus' final prediction for 2023 talked about the new alliance of two great powers coming together. The new alignment will potentially be between a strong man and a weak one or even a male and a female leader. However, the alliance's good effects will not be long-lasting. While there are more details for each one, his language is strange and vague  so I left most of it out.   Here they are with another author's own comments.

Our pictures today are abstracts - rain on the windshield in the foreground and a lamp post in the background.

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Oct 28 2020 Halloween Colours - A Retail Decision?

 

What makes for Halloween's black and orange theme colours?  It seems obvious:  pumpkins and fall colours, along with the darkest night of the dead and ghosts arising ancient ritual.  There's a website to answer this question:  Isle of Halloween.  I took a look and it doesn't say much more.  I guess the commercialization of Halloween cemented the colour combination.  The Irish are credited with bringing Halloween traditions to the US in 1840. Postcards and die-cut paper decorations started in the 1900s and costumes appeared in stores in the 1930s and my generation remembers candies available in the stores in the 1950s.   What the Daily Mail calls a 'department store invention' seems to be the standard development of all of our purchasing holidays.   The marker for Halloween is Anoka, Minnesota, known as the Halloween Capital of the  World since 1920. It is the first city in America to officially hold a Halloween celebration, in an effort to divert kids from pulling pranks like tipping outhouses and letting cows loose to run around on Main Street. The town organized a parade and spent the weeks prior planning and making costumes. Treats of popcorn, peanuts and candy to any children who participated in the parade, followed by a huge bonfire in the town square. The event grew over time and has been held every year since 1920.  So here we are in the COVID year, finding out that Halloween turns out to be the most popular celebrated holiday of the year. More of the leaves images today.  The scanner is immense fun and very restrictive in space.  It demands simplicity in design.

Sep 7 2020 - Black Velvet

 

The blackest black Vantablack is compared to black velvet.  How is velvet woven and tufted to absorb light so much?  The cut threads are evenly distributed with a short dense pile, giving it a soft feel and by association a soft look.  This method creates two lengths of fabric.   Silk velvet is rare today costing in the thousands of dollars per yard.  Velvet can be made from linen, mohair and wool - all kinds of fibres.  There are many types - chiffon, hammered (crushed and dappled), Nacre (where more than one colour is woven in creating an iridescent effect), pile-on-pile (a double velvet). How did black velvet painting come about?  They originated in Kashmir, the homeland of the fabric and were religious.  Marco Polo introduced black velvet paintings to Western Europe and the Vatican Museums have some early works.  But not Elvis or dogs playing poker.  Ciudad Juarez, a town in Mexico, was a centre of the famous Elvis velvet painting in the 1970s.  Started by a Georgia US 'farm boy', they were created in a huge factory with an assembly line of painters.  There are lots of black velvet paintings available on the internet.  The dogs are still playing poker, Elvis with his black velvet hair, Jesus Christ, and many more portraits.   There are even video games that incorporate Velvet Elvis:    Black Velvetopia, is one dedicated to velvet paintings.  Here's our joke for the day: A man goes into an antiques dealership carrying a violin and a painting. "Hi. I found these in the loft of the house I've just bought. I'm interested in having them valued with a view to selling them." The owner, duly fascinated takes them into the back to give them the once over. "Very interesting." he tells the man on his return. "You realise, you've got a genuine Rembrandt and a bona fide Stradivarius here." "That's wonderful- I'm rich!" exclaims the man. "Not so fast." replies the dealer,  "Rembrandt violins are notorious poor quality and Stradivarius couldn't paint to save his life." Our railroad today is the Northern Central No. 17 York in Freedom, PA.  We visited in 2015 for a steam ride through history.

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Sep 5 2020 - Blackest Black is here

 

The blackest material ever made came about recently.  It is Vantablack, first developed in 2014.  It absorbs 99.8% of light.  It is made of carbon nanotubes.  These are rods of carbon that are much thinner than any human hair and so close together in a maze-like matrix that light goes in and can't escape. The name is a compound of the acronym VANTA (vertically aligned nanotube arrays). When light strikes Vantablack, instead of bouncing off, it becomes trapped and is continually deflected amongst the tubes, eventually becoming absorbed and dissipating into heat. People have since become fascinated by how strange the supposed colour is. It creates the optical illusion of flattening features and rendering objects two-dimensional. Here's one writer's summary: "My colleague Mark Wilson saw a sample of Vantablack and found it deeply unsettling. “It has no reflection, no contours,” he writes. “It’s like part of the world has been Photoshopped away.” Vantablack made its space debut aboard a satellite in low-Earth orbit, where it absorbs stray light so the camera systems can image Earth more effectively.  There's a video HERE. Scientists who discovered the material worked with artist Diet Strebe and coated a radiant 16.78-carat yellow diamond worth $2 million.  The diamond is considered the most brilliant material on earth.  I don't know what it was worth after it was coated, but its brilliance is now invisible. Where can you find Vantablack now?  The BMW X6 Series car.  Vantablack isn't a pigment or a paint, so you can't buy a bucket of it and paint your walls or the car.  The nanotubes have to be grown in the Surrey NonSystems lab.  It can take 2 days to apply to an object.  So I wonder  how long it took to cover a car?   It wasn't really covered in the labs.  It was covered in a variant VBx2.  The article calls it a super black, non-reflective paint, so it couldn't have been coated in the lab.  I wondered things like how you would find the door to open it - there is a little silver dot in the picture.  And what would happen when dust and mud got on it.     I found one outdoor image - all the rest are in studios.  It looks like velvet to me. I found this sculpture at Rodman Hall in St. Catharines - It is "The Race" by William McElcheran.  His sculptures are sprinkled around downtown Toronto's financial district.  They too are in the dark and eerie range of experience.

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Black and Orange

Orange and black on Halloween:  orange symbols warmth and autumn and black represents cold and winter.  Is that it?  Yes, it seems to be. Things were simple in ancient times.   "Roughly 2,000 years ago, the Celts' calendar year began on November 1, coinciding with the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter. They believed their new year's eve was a time when spirits of the departed returned and priests could make more accurate predictions about the future, according to History.com. Thus, they built bonfires and wore costumes to deter malicious ghosts. " This explanation comes from www.womansday.com The transition of note is moving from jack o' lanterns made of potatoes and turnips in Ireland, to being made of pumpkins after Irish immigration to North America.  Wikipedia has a picture of a creepy traditional Irish Halloween turnip lantern on display in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland.  It looks like a mummy. The Association for Consumer Research has an article titled: "Halloween As a Consumption Experience".  It was published in 1992.  The article is HERE.  It has specific stories about parents forcing their children into costumes of the parents' choice. Here's my favourite - a very creepy story: "Walking through the Caravelle Square Mall, I noticed a large TV stand on wheels that apparently had a fish tank attached to it, judging from the seaweed on and inside the tank. Curiously, as I approached the tank, I saw something move inside. As I stepped closer, the owners of the tank turned it toward me. A sign read "Our Pet Goldfish." Inside the tank to my surprise was a small child whose movement was restricted by a large goldfish costume. The costume covered the child from head to toe with only his face visible. These parents had dressed their child up like an animal and were now treating him like one. The child thrashed around in the tank trying to break free from the costume much like a dog does when covered by a blanket. The child screamed and cried. He tried to get out of the tank only to learn that the tank walls were too high for him. After a while, the child was released from his cage, and his parents entertained questions on the design from other interested parents. Asked for a picture by a bystander, the parents quickly dumped the child back into the tank. The child wailed out and sobbed uncontrollably until the mother said, "Be a good boy and let the nice woman take the picture." On the calming side, we have a beautiful view of the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area.

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Big Black City

Here are some iPhone pictures taken in the early spring in First Canadian Place in Toronto.  No one pays attention to an iPhone picture-taker, so it is the camera for candid shots in the City. What fascinates me is the reversal of backgrounds and foregrounds in our current social environment.  Instead of the background being dark and non-descript with the people standing out like jewels, it is the reverse.  Most people are dressed in black and the building walls and floors are polished marble and gleam with light and reflections.  When did this happen that the negative space - the background - the canvas took over?  What I see are shadow shapes on the canvas, and it is interesting to capture this sense.  I pursued this line of thinking and read about Gestalt Theory and Visual Perception here.  While I found it fascinating, it didn't seem to relate until the principle of 'focal points'.   "The principle of focal points likely arises out of our need to quickly identify the unknown to alert us to potential danger."  So everyone would be in dark clothes to fit in.   It is the case that the dominant colour for clothing is black.  I found this site - The Color Black.  It says that the colour black represents mystery and power and control.  Perhaps our pictures are a representation of the struggle for dominance between the individual and large-city structures.

It's Black and White

This was a sign outside a store in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and I looked for it this year, but the store has changed and the sign is gone.  It made for wonderful abstracts with its distinct black and white curves and circles.

In the Key of Red

With the proliferation and abundance of graphic design and signage, there are often opportunities for abstract art in commonplace areas.  This was a Remax sign in Grimsby that had a bit of wear and tear from weather.  The proportions of the black shapes in the top figure make me think of piano keys, so this theme was in my mind as I composed the images.  Mostly I prefer to have even light without shadows to work with the textures and colours and yet the third image shows that shadows can create visual appeal and interest.