My stuff: Animals, birds, books, Colin Morgan, cute stuff, Doctor Who, Eoin Macken, food, feminism, Merlin, music, nature, poetry, science fiction, silliness, Star Trek, and occasional deep thoughts.
In the Peristyle
Lawrence Alma-Tadema
1866
Alma-Tadema might be my second-favorite PR.
Days of Creation: The First Day
Edward Burne-Jones
1870
I think Burne-Jones has always been my favorite PR.
(via Bird Poop Chandelier by Wyatt Little | Design Milk)
A friend of mine shared this with me. I wonder why “bird poop” made her think of me…?
*g*
Alphonse Mucha
I love Mucha. When I was six or seven, I saw Mucha’s work for the first time in the lobby of a small amateur theatre where my mother was doing a play, and I have loved him ever since.
(Source: jolieing)
Drawn by a dear friend of the Covert Convent, this little cartoon depicts the aliens who must not be forced to work on the Sabbath, according to the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17). The shirt on the alien at the right says “Aliens 4 the Sabbath,” and even the donkey is getting into the protest. You can find more pro-Sabbath aliens here.
Now, why am I suddenly craving Chick-Fil-A?
Study for The Moon, 1902; Study for The North Star, 1902 by Alphonse Mucha
I have adored Mucha ever since I was a child. My mother and I did some amateur theatre together, starting when I was only six or seven, and there were Mucha posters in the lobby. I think I was imprinted like a duckling.
A Cow of Zurich
(City art project, 2004. Local businesses were invited to decorate “blank” cows in a way that had something to do with their businesses.)
All hail! bow down to the golden calf! *g*
We had a similar project here in Baltimore involving fish and crabs.
Birds at the Temple of Horus in Edfu, Egypt circa 2007
See, I belong here. Look, there’s a picture of a bird over my head.
An excellent opinion piece on why handmade art costs as much as it does — and usually costs nowhere near enough given what goes into it.
The opening of the article:
I recently did my first craft fair. And at that craft fair, one woman picked up every one of my hats, tried them on, and made a sort of a noise in the back of her throat indicating disgust. Then she muttered, “I don’t really like these hats” before looking at the price tag for one of them and looking at me over her glasses: “Do you really charge this much?”
Ok, I managed a retail store for many years, so I’m used to this type of customer. I’ve met hundreds of them, and I know it’s less about whatever she is looking at and more about what is going on in her own crazy brain. Some people just have this need to be nasty. But this was a little different. What she was cruelly and callously saying to me was that what I created had no value. My art has no value. It is worthless and ugly. And I won’t lie — it stung a little.
It is a brute fact that handmade, individually crafted things, whether clothing, furniture, jewelry, or whatever, are far more time-consuming, more energy-consuming, and more costly to produce than industrially manufactured equivalents. Factories meant grinding and risky work under bad conditions, at long hours and for little pay, for many people—but they also meant higher-quality goods available to more consumers. We can’t get rid of factories (maybe we can’t get rid of industrial agriculture, either, and still feed current populations), but I think they can and should be made more humane for the workers, less damaging to the environment, more sustainable overall.
