It Only Takes One ....

   

The Cranston fire begins and by nightfall reached 7,500 acres.

 

This past few days have been hot in Palm Springs, no, let me rephrase that, it's been HELL! Days of 118º, 119º and finally 120º with unusual humidity have pretty much sapped the energy of just about everybody leaving in its place a kind ennui that is hard to snap. I even have to rouse my poor dog to go out and do her duty!

     Walking my dog, this morning at 5 a.m., through the smoke and ash it was 88º, down from the 93º of the day before. After a certain point, hot is HOT! Barely able to see the mountains to the west because of the smoke, I began to reflect walking towards them the effect one person has on our lives.

      This fire had been started the day before by a single man who was seen and caught after throwing three incendiary devices from his car. Not even a resident of the community he was forcing to flee, his actions caused in it's wake the evacuation of thousands, houses being lost and untold damage to the forest in this mountain eerie that is often a refuge for those that live in the desert below.

All highways in and out of the mountains were closed.
All highways are two lane, twisty, winding roads.

   His actions made me reflect on the actions that one person can cause and the consequences they set in motion.

   One of the first person's that came to mind was Alexander the Great. Through his energy and force of character he conquered, in his time, most of the known world. With his actions, he set in motion a force needing thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands to make his actions take flight. What he started changed history, changed the world. It ALL started with just Alexander, one man.

     There are many historical figures that through their actions and energy have caused great movements in history. Julius Caesar, Christ, Mohammed, Genghis  Khan, Charlemagne, Napoleon, our own George Washington, Queen Victoria, Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Winston Churchill, FDR, John F. Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King; historical personages that left their mark on the world changing it in ways barely imagined in their own time.

     In the world of business there are many figures that have probably eclipsed elected figures. The Medici, the Lords of England with their far-flung empires, The East India Company, the Astors and Vanderbilts, the Mellons, J.P. Morgans, Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie, men that all changed the world of commerce and oftentimes the directions of their very nations. In our own times consider what people like Bill Gates, Bill Grove an immigrant that founded Intel, Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo, Wozniac and Jobs co-founders of Apple Computer, the world's most valuable company, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook,Stever Bezos, founder of Amazon and now the world's wealthiest person .... have created.

     All it takes is one, sometimes two.

    What is not understood though is that while one or two figures have a creation, a vision, a message, for it to succeed they need followers, believers. While the person that started this fire most likely acted alone, he has fellow fire-starters that think much the same way he did. A firemen in this county was recently convicted and sent to jail for doing the same thing. His reason? More fires meant more days of work. We may never know the why, but we need to be vigilant to reduce another such action.

     A great leader, a single person, can cause many to follow them and their vision. That vision can be for the benefit of all or harm many profiting only a few. History is filled with these figures. They can be so wonderful creating a form of admiration they are forever admired or so vile as to inspire continuing revulsion. The sad part, even these people, horrible as they may be, still are remembered. However, that is not all bad. They set the standard for what we as a people should never want or ever follow. They remain the signposts of what one person can do and show us the path that should never be followed.

     You may wonder how can such vile actions be considered art. They may not be art for most but these actions are definitely a form of design, just not one most people would ever consider. Make no doubt, every one of the actions required to start a fire were done with a very definite design. For a people, a country or a world to survive the impulses of the "one" at the expense of the many, we need to be vigilant. Vigilant for evil as well as for goodness, but even more vigilant to distinguish between the two.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! 

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!

Zentangling A Teapot Birdhouse

     Right now it's hot in Palm Springs. Friday it reached 118º and cooled down to, you ready? 93º. So to avoid the heat (even my dog will say no to a walk outside to pee) I paint.

     After an orgy of painting to get ready for Halloween a friend suggested I do an inventory and number all the items I had created. I did just that; an inventory of all the items I have completed in the storeroom. Then those painted were logged in and numbered in an Excel spreadsheet. It was creeping up to 300 items. In the last 6 - 7 weeks I have done more than 30 items.

     Tired of Halloween's black and orange and fresh off of inventorying all my items, I decided to clean out and arrange my studio yet again. I still couldn't find anything and in the process of putting books and paintings away, creating files for items I wanted to do, styles to study, I happened on a book of Zentangles, after finding page after page of them I had printed off the Internet and filed.

     Looking at that book and the birdhouses I had purchased at JoAnn's, two shaped like a bird, two as teapots, I thought, why not take the two dimensional Zentangle's and put them them on a birdhouse? While they are everywhere, I had never seen a Zentangle on a birdhouse and here I had two different designs that begged for for this treatment.

The blank teapot. Here it looks like a birdhouse.
Do I try to fool the birds?

     The challenge with any project we do is, what will we do with it? How can we design it to its best advantage? So I picked one up and started sketching on one of the teapots. Since I had already done two cutout bird shaped birdhouses, I wanted to get even more serious in converting a Zentangle. The first teapot was pretty good but I had bigger plans for #2.

     The first thing was trying to decide what designs I wanted and then where I would put them. I didn't mind that they were different just that they would work together. And that is not always easy to do.

     After discovering the black Sharpie pens would blur, and feather in the raw wood, I put a seal coat over everything and then sketched out the various designs. After trying several in each area with the trusty pink eraser nearby, I finally got what I thought would be attractive and create a co-hesive design. 

Here you can see the pencil marks on top of the seal coat
and the beginnings of the marking.

       The beauty of a Zentangle, no matter how complicated, is the contrast of black and white. I have however, also noticed the power and effectiveness of black, white (in this case light raw wood) and red. Playing with it as you can see to the left, this would create a strong yet attractive image.

     So with black Sharpie in hand, with an ultra-fine point, I began to fill in the pencil lines listening to a James Lee Burke murder mystery audio book.

     As the item progressed I added a few more lines and flourishes that brought the various parts, the spout, the handle, the body around the hole for birds more and more together.

    Nearly everything I do has a heart in it somewhere and so, it wasn't all that hard to add them to the handle and around the entry to the birdhouse opening. Yet it is not paper; now and then imperfections of the wood would cause a wavery stroke.

Here you see much of the ink has
covered the pencil outline.

     With the exception of the one red heart, all the black lines and fills were added first. Once I had a complete picture of the lines, the line weight and placement I felt that it would be easier to add another color, in this case red. It is a temptation to add more colors, alá adult coloring books but I felt a three-color palette was the way to go.

Color makes the difference

jewels add a bit of sparkle.

     I added the hearts around the bird entry first and left only the single red heart on the handle.

     The last problem was how to tie the lid and the base to the rest of the design. Since Zentangles are basically doodles, I played with the base using lines and arcs to echo the curves of the base and black and puffy paint red as lines on the lid echoed again on the base under the design above.

     I tried using a Sharpie for the red hearts but it just didn't cover like the black. So with a liner brush in hand, and DecoArts Traditions Naphtha Red paint, I painted inside the lines of each red heart.

     Art is alway an experiment. You get a blank surface and then try to fill it. Each time you paint or draw is an experiment even, as I saw in Shenzhen, where artists paint two, three or more paintings at the same time, of the same subject, you have one experiment even if there are multiples because we are human, no two are ever exactly the same!

The completed Zentangle Teapot Birdhouse

     It is this challenge that inspires the artist, the challenge to see what you can do, if you can create something that is both new and unique. 

     As a final touch I decided that some of the small "jewels" I had would both fit into the small holes near the entry and give it a bit of glitter. When it hangs there is a bit of sparkle that is just right ... not too much or too little.

     Am I a good Zentangle artist, probably not. But I am not bad at finding a raw, blank surface and seeing its possibilities.

     Finally you have the back. You can leave it plain but I felt that as this is a hanging birdhouse, the back had to have something, some color. I opted for a grey color so that it would not distract from the front ... the design, the color.

     When you walk the craft aisles, be aware of the possibilities. Take a chance as I did. You might be surprised at what you can do!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! 

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!

The Age of Intolerance

     America, from its inception has always had its own form of intolerance. The Pilgrims so revered in our history were Puritans, the loathed English religious sect, that under Cromwell, ruled England after a civil war that beheaded the English king and practiced a form of religious intolerance that finally got them kicked out after yet another civil war that led to the restoration of the English monarchy. Hated at home they fled first to Holland and then finally arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Not an easy group to live with, bigoted, intolerant, they first befriended the local Indians, themselves in trouble because European diseases had decimated them then ultimately stole their lands and tried to rid New England of its indigenous peoples.

     Since the election of 2016, the levels of intolerance between just about every group in this country has reached heights not seen in 50 years, maybe even earlier. It is as if all the gains we've made as a nation had suddenly been wiped away. Watching the daily news we see it everywhere in this country. However, it was this image, seen on Facebook, that has caused me to finally address, as they say, "the elephant in the room:"

No matter who and what you are, in an X-ray you all look pretty much the same!

     When you X-ray anyone, be it at the doctor's office or the TSA checkpoint, our bones are pretty much the same. Some taller, some smaller, some wider and others narrow. What we may see on the surface as "different" is very little different inside, unless you're a pirate with a peg leg! It could also include: Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Hebrew, Taoist, Hindu. Them bones are pretty much the same.

     Even more interesting are the recent DNA studies of modern Homo Sapiens and their relationship, genetically, with the previous humanoid, Neanderthals. Where we were taught, as kids in school, that we had "killed" them for domination of the earth, it has been discovered that modern humans contain up to 4% of Neanderthal DNA. My recent DNA test said that I had 3.3% Neanderthal markers, that I was 100% European primarily of Northern German / French blood with a quarter of English-Irish-Scottish blood. 

     Studies have shown that Asian groups even have a higher percentage of that old DNA. The real irony is that Africans have very little or none of that old DNA "stuff" at all! Humanoids have been originating in about the same place in Africa for millions of years. No one knows why.

     When Spencer Wells came out on the stage, at a speakers talk I attended, and said, "There really was an Adam," the room was as silent as a cave." Then he added, "...and he was black!" The oxygen was sucked out of the room.

     To be intolerant, to find another cultural group less than equal, you have to be taught. I can remember watching my children as they grew up with the multi-cultural, multi-racial cast of friends that were in our lives. A local Rotary president when my son was born, my wife would have missed all the activities so we just brought him along. He was always up anyway, he thrived with groups of people, and still does. One African-American in the club took to him as if he was his own son. A big, fit man, standing at least 6'5", my son's arms would fly out to be held by this man. My ex-wife has a Kenyon AFS (American Field Service) sister from Kenya that always visited us to help with the babies. We had Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, Black and Korean friends who we would see at our home, our work and our church.

     I just finished the book CHINESE AMERICA by Peter Kwong and Dušanka Miščevic. While this book talks about the treatment of Chinese in America, and it was pretty dismal, it also talks about all immigration to this country. They stated flatly that the United States of America was founded by white protestant men for white protestant men. One of George Washington's first acts as president was to sign restrictions on immigration.

     We've all heard about the Irish migrating to survive the potato famine there in 1847. What we don't talk about are all the other large immigrations that occurred and the way they were treated. Touring Ellis Island, a place my father and family went through in 1925-6, I was so surprised to see the posters, cartoons and newspaper articles of the 1910's and 20's decrying the massive immigration of Italians. Change the people and it could be Hispanics coming here to survive the oppressive regimes at home that the United Nations seems helpless to stop today.

     Our first massive immigration, a forced one, was the importation of Africans that were bought and sold as slaves. What many Americans don't realize was slavery was not outlawed in New York until 1795. Nearly every colony had slaves and indentured servants. The servants were freed after 7 years of labor. The slaves, until freed in 1865 after our own civil war, never were.

     In order to farm the land, vast lands unlike anything seen in the old world, you needed many hands. Since the Indians were killed through battles or more likely by disease, someone had to work. We all know the sordid tale of slavery and how it demeaned humans ... ultimately both slave and owner. Slavery in the new world was unlike anything ever seen in the old. That white men could say, as is written in our Constitution than anyone other than a white person was three-fifths of a person, well, it boggles the mind. Yet we did.

     Much has been written about race and culture and many other things about humans. What has not been written much about is that each one of us has the potential to change the world, to mate and create another human that come into this world unknowing but with the simplest needs to survive. Just like the old line about the church is wonderful but then you have to let in the people, ALL peoples of the earth have the potential to make a change, a difference and can mate and, as the Bible talks about in the Tower of Babel, differentiate. 

     When you look at that Hispanic fleeing to save the lives of their children, the Muslim praying, a man of color, any color, who appears different remember the image of those bones above. Inside we are far, FAR more similar than we are different. We need, as a people, as Democrats and Republicans, Christian and Muslim or Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant that there is more than binds us together than tears us apart. The tearing only succeeds when we let it.

     This is not to ignore the bullies of the world. There are many and even in my own lifetime we have lived through many. They must be confronted be it here at home or anywhere in the world. Yet, we have to opportunity to find what keeps us together as much as we do that tears us apart. My favorite line from the New Testament is when confronted by the adulterous wife and those who would stone her, Jesus utters, "He who is without guilt cast the first stone." One by one they disappeared and Jesus asks the woman to go and sin no more.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! 

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!