Creating Geometric Planters and Furniture

Items such as this were inspirations!

For years now I have been fascinated by hand painted furniture that used wild colors and unusual shapes. When I started painting, years ago now,  I started with Pennsylvania Dutch inspired birdhouses. It could have been my German heritage or my love of primary colors and the fanciful designs that didn't have to be perfect. Visiting the Shenandoah Valley I hoped to see so much more only to find I was more enamored with the old designs than the locals!

     I did find though that furniture making was still alive and well and in one shop I saw a chair painted in something like the one on the left. I was hooked but it was years before I actually tried something like it.

Ah ... the possibilities

     Last summer I was wandering the local JoAnn's and checking out the closeouts as they got ready for Christmas. They sold wooden planters in large, medium and small sizes that I liked and thought about but were expensive. However, they were finally reduced and I grabbed two before I went overseas for a few weeks.

      While overseas I had time, lots of time, so I doodled in my sketch pad and designed patterns that would be used on the planters. Each side would be different and I knew exactly where I would put them ... in my patio outside of the French doors that lead into the dining room. 

     Rather than design eight different sides I pretty much designed one planter and tried to copy that design on the other. Easier said than done but unless you looked really close you might never notice. The bigger problem was that after doing the first one, you could be led astray on the other. And, I was!

I painted what would be the yellow "X" white
so it would stand out better.

     Because of the shape and the prominent "X" one had to be very creative. A turquoise "X" became a black one, a red one and finally a yellow one. In most cases, though, the design was different so I tried to use the same colors to tie it all together.

Here are two of the finished sides

    

     I had seen articles that showed the painter messing around with masking tape and thought pooh on that. Everything was sketched by hand and then painted by hand. If I wanted it perfect I could buy that here, especially in Palm Springs. I wanted real, hand painted art, my art.

The other two sides.

     As you can see, they turned out to be quite colorful. While it was fun to do them, to create them it took hours to do them both. The painting part took two audio books and now that I am Varathaning them, it looks like it may take another. Reading the can it asks that you let it age a week before applying another coat and since they will be placed outside I want to make sure they don't fade or age too fast, especially after all the work they took to create.

     Since they will go outside my French doors leading to the patio ... there's a breezeway that goes to a paver lined yard, I will see them every time I come home via the carport. It will definitely add some color to a rather dull area: tan stucco, a few boring pots, a collection of neutral plants. I had planned on putting a plumeria in each one but a friend suggested maybe something else. We will see.

     The other thing I might add is that don't be afraid to glue additional items on your project. Here I added wooden hearts and even some glittery pieces. A little sparkle never hurt anything and it makes the item even more yours. On the turquoise "X" I added thin but raised wooden hearts. It manages to give the piece some dimension, something paint alone sometimes cannot do. Experiment and see how it looks. For this piece the four hearts was all it took to give some body to the "X" without competing with the busy scalloped background.

The two planter boxes shown together

  Somehow, despite the differences on each of the sides, it seems to work. Probably the raised "X" on each side ties them together and there is just enough color and design elements that repeats itself despite being used in different shapes and different ways. The one thing I will say is that despite what the piece is, paint and some creativity can definitely breathe life into a tired old or boring new piece of furniture. 

     Now that I have gotten my feet wet, so to speak, I am looking for other pieces to try. At some of the donation stores here there are candidates like the sample chair at the top. Tables, chairs, chest of drawers are all possibilities. The best part is that the only limitations are your own minds!

     For inspiration check out Google, click images and then search for painted furniture. You won't believe what you will find. I noticed that ETSY.com had quite a few listings of things for sale complete with photos. January is a great time to get projects done, especially with the weather you might be having. Remember, despite all the snow, rain and wind you are having now, Spring and Summer will come!

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!

Just VOTE No!

It's no secret that the United States, land of the free, has one of the worst voting records of any democracy on earth. Partly because we don't have to vote as they do in some countries and partly because we don't care. If I have heard that "they're ALL crooks" once, I've heard it a thousand times.  Since we were one of the first countries on earth to vote for our president, our leader, we designed an electoral system giving the people, in their states, the opportunity to choose their leader. While there are times "they are crooks" probably is true, like several of the corrupt governors now in jail in Illinois, I spend little time talking to such people because I feel they have no right to complain if they can't take the time to vote. As has happened all too often in the last decade, "every vote counts."Ask Al Gore!

Clinton at campaign rally.

Trump ... well, you decide.

     Years ago, now, in college I came up with an idea that would give voters, somewhat like a multiple choice test we were taking at the time, a choice. You could vote for candidate one, two or three but added as a last choice was, "None of the above." IF none of the above won or got 50+1% of the vote, none of those candidates were elected, a new election had to be held in 90 days (similar to elections in England) and none of the losing candidates could run in the re-run election. Why? No one wanted them.

    Least we forget, the 2016 election was held with two major candidates who had over a 60% DISAPPROVAL ratings on the day of the election. It was, literally, a choice between the lesser of two evils. While Clinton may have won the popular vote, she lost the electoral vote partly because she didn't even bother to go to several crucial states thinking she had them in the bag. If there is any lesson in politics, its DON'T assume anything. If you could vote for none of them, few would ever make that mistake again.

     I bring this up because the Sunday DESERT-SUN newspaper here in the Coachella Valley had on its editorial page an article about Sam Chang, a retired banker from Taipei who has, as his mission in life, begun a campaign to add "negative" vote in Taiwan, hardly a bastion of democracy. "The right to vote no," says Chang, is a fundamental human right." I couldn't agree more. 

     He has carried his message around the world but struck gold in Berkeley, CA the home of liberal rights in an already deep blue state. Chang proposes to give voters the ability to use that one vote to cast a ballot against the candidate instead. Each candidate's tally of votes would be a net - between the number of positive and negative votes. Too complicated. I say ... vote for the candidate you like or, if you don't like any of them then check "none of the above."

     While I agree that it would most likely improve voter participation, I feel that it is too cumbersome. If you don't like any of them, just vote against them all. If you like one of them, then just vote for that candidate or that proposition. Let's not beat around the bush.

     I bring this up now because given the government shutdown essentially over a wall the President wants and over 2/3's of the country doesn't want, hundreds of thousands of people are out of work (do not forgot far more than 800,000 government employees are not working because others depend on their livelihood on those that work too), maybe it's seriously time to consider how we vote.

     Many want to scrap the electoral system saying that it isn't necessary anymore. However, be careful what you ask for. The system was designed to give every state a voice in the election process. States like California, Texas and Florida have far larger populations than Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, or even a huge states with few people like Wyoming or Alaska. Thus a candidate must win not just the popular vote nationally but in each state giving that state a stake in the process. 

     Chang, though, has a point. He hopes the world will become more positive by going negative. It would give voice to many who feel they have been left out of the process. It definitely would make candidates more accountable and sift out the characters who have no right to run based on their personal histories  and hopefully give heart to a better selection of electable candidates.

Palm Springs FilmFest 2019

     I love movies. I always have. Its probably because my parents did too. That was one of the few things they could agree to do as a family. In fact, my name, Alan, came from my mother's adoration of the actor Alan Ladd. When I met the infamous Scotty Bowers last month, the pimp for the stars, he noted that Ladd had a place out here in Palm Springs. I didn't know that nor did I ask if Ladd was Gay too.

     I grew up in the golden era of film. Stars like Grace Kelley, Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Esther Williams, Ethel Merman, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and so many more graced the screen every week as I grew up. I can still remember crying as the Titanic slipped below the waves in "A Night To Remember," or the screams of two college boys in one of the slash scenes in "Psycho." I couldn't go upstairs into my dark bedroom without every light on for months!

     Movies, even though we know are manmade, designed if you will by scriptwriters, cinematographers, actors, directors and editors have the power to move us and in some cases move a nation to action.

     For Christmas this year friends gave me tickets to two Chinese movies from the list of over 230 movies shown at Palm Springs 2019 FilmFest. Curious about other films that would be playing I grabbed the schedule from a booth at the Thursday Palm Springs Village Fest and looked it over. There were some interesting films so I went online and went from two movies to ten. Over a period of 11 days a movie a day would fit in. Here is what I saw from best to worst with some strange and confusing films in-between. Festivals like this are driven by critics, people I generally feel have pretty poor judgement ... you know, who died and made them king or queen? Here's my critique:

THE GUILTY

    THE GUILTY. Rarely does a film have the kind of power to hold you where you see the actor in every frame and those he is talking to are never seen. Directed by first movie ever Director Gustav Möller, its a thriller that starts sarcastically when a disgraced cop has been grounded in a 911 like call center. When an apparent abduction happens this film never, ever lets you go. Möller was there to discuss the film afterwards and few left after this exhausting film. At a crucial moment in the film when its apparent what's happened the woman next to me yelled, "No, NO" and was echoed by many others.

 This Danish film is a good contender for a nomination for the Oscars Best Foreign Film. See it, it's that powerful.

    CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME, an American film starring Melissa McCarthy is the story about the fall and disgrace of author Lee Israel, a noted biographer on hard times. A chance letter found in a book about Fanny Brice starts a new career of fake letters from the stars. McCarthy is perfect in the role, smart, sharp tongued and believable. Rarely has the fall from grace been captured so well.

  BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee's latest and I think best, tells the story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first African-American policeman hired to the Colorado Springs, CO police force. It relates how in a moment of daring he responds to an ad in the local paper looking for new recruits for the KKK. He speaks with the local leader and when a meeting is required uses a white, Jewish cop (Adam Driver) as his surrogate. The film succeeds because in 50 years not all that much has changed. The filth and venom David Duke and his fellow followers spew here has not changed much or maybe at all. Echoes of Charlottesville from the past and times that we thought were gone are not. What made the film even more interesting was Stallworth was there after the movie for Q & A and noted that he carries his KKK card to this day as a reminder.

Winogrand on the street

   GARRY WINOGRAND: ALL THINGS ARE PHOTOGRAPHABLE brought to mind this noted image maker and the reasons I didn't like his photography.

    I got my first camera at age 5. Somewhere are photos of me taking photos with an old Agfa box camera my father brought back from Germany after the war. In high school I took photo class and in fact printed many of the photos used in the yearbook I was editor of. 

    I never liked his, to me, discordant images, tilted in strange angles and views. Yet, I also realized that his photos are a time capsule of the past. He captures people and trends many younger viewers had never seen. I'm glad I saw this documentary but you won't find a book of his photos in my library.

Dumping DEAD PIGS

     DEAD PIGS sounds like a strange title for a movie but this Chinese movie of greed and corruption is actually quite good. It relates the tale of a brother and sister who struggle to get ahead in modern day Shanghai, China. Having recently been there, I recognized many of the places.

   The brother borrows money to make an investment is a shady brokerage firm and loses everything. Then his and everyones pigs start dying so he can't sell them to pay his bookie. His sister, sitting in the last raining house of a planned new development, that is worth millions of yuan, won't help. The tale spins deeper and darker until near the end it all becomes clear. Pay close attention as all the clues are there only it took a day of reflection for me to realize what had happened and when.

     Now we enter the questionable:

Our hero? and his evil twin sisters

      DIAMANTINO was a Portuguese entry about a famous soccer player that was lovely eye candy with twin evil sisters and, for me, not much else. The critics may have loved this film but I and others who talked about it waiting in line for movies were as confused as me. All I got out of it was the sisters were greedy.

     ASH IS PUREST WHITE was another Chinese entry about a local thug and his girlfriends fall from grace. Using a gun to save her thug boyfriend from serious harm, she spends five years in jail (no private citizen in China is allowed to own a gun) and when she gets out, the man she saved has moved on, well, until he hasn't. None of the characters are sympathetic or likable. Interesting view of criminal justice in China.

Guns in China are a BIG no-no!

FAST COLOR, another American film, tells the story of a Gaia type character who is chased by the government to harness her powers to change the earth. It never explains how and why and echoes too many other movies and books with similar themes. It isn't nice to fool Mother Nature.

It was a very, VERY Long Day here!

  LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT may have won awards in Cannes, China and elsewhere but soon after it started the exodus began. I brought a Chinese friend who made it thorough 70 minutes of this 140 minute film, leaving just before the 3D portion began. 3D didn't make it any better. The main character, to me, wandered in search of a film. We watched and wondered the same thing. 

     I hated DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE. In fact I felt that I too had been dragged. How this Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn film had even been made is a mystery to me. The tale is about a recently released prisoner hired to take part in a gold bullion heist and two disgraced cops planning the same thing had all the senseless violence you could ever ask for. ALL of the characters were despicable and that the original criminal survives and get most of the gold and lives in the lap of luxury sends the message that crime is good, why work when you can steal? Play your cards right and you can live like me. That the actor, who portrays the character that survived, could barely speak before this evening film, set the tone. I hope it never makes it the mainstream theaters. 

Crime pays in DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE

     It was fun though 10 movies is a lot. A friend here saw 21, almost 2 a day. I saw two back to back and was wiped out. The overriding question though, to me, was, after talking to others that saw their fair share of films, who are these critics? How did these films get so many awards? As a close follower of Rotten Tomatoes, I've noticed an uptick of films that critics love and the audience hates, movies the audience loves is often hated by the critics. It appears that, just like current politics, there is a definite discordance from the self declared "pros" and the public.

     I feel a movie should stand on its own, that the story it has to tell should be unique. Festivals such as this at least give us a chance to see what other cultures, countries are saying. I, and many of my friends are tired of ROCKY 253, of the fourth iteration of A STAR IS BORN as good or bad as it may be. Even the movies I couldn't understand were at least born of new ideas, new thought. The worst were old themes or played to audiences that didn't need to be shown that sloth is good because they had already settled on that.

     I will say one thing though, now that I have dipped my toe into the waters, I can't wait for the next round of films!

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!

  

Watching "Longmire"

As a kid growing up born just after the war in 1945, Westerns on radio and in the movies ruled the day. I can remember hearing episodes of "Gunsmoke" on my Grandmothers huge old vacuum tube radio. It sat in the dining room but it could be heard throughout the house. It was a grand old radio, 4 ft. high, that I wish I had today. It had huge vacuum tubes and I can remember going with my grandfather to buy new ones. Boy, have times changed! The Western, designed, if you will, brought new fare for a victorious America using Westerns as a metaphor for the defeat of the Germans, Italians and Japanese ... and sadly Native Americans.

Deputies Ferguson, Victoria, Sheriff Longmire and Deputy Branch

      We had one of the first TV's in our neighborhood and Saturday mornings were spent watching, serials, "The Lone Ranger," "Sky King" a cowboy who flew a plane, and during the week "Have Gun Will Travel," "Gunsmoke," Bonanza," and "Paladin," all cowboy serials that ran on TV for years.

     My friends and I all sported cowboy chaps, hats, and holstered toy pistols that fired caps. The cowboy character in TOY STORY is dressed exactly the way we dressed after school or on weekends. We all knew bad cowboys wore black hats, the good cowboys wore white. In fact my mother adored the actor Alan Ladd famous for the movie SHANE and that is where I got my name, Alan.

     Then came the 60's and 70's and space, peace and love and silly comedies ruled the airways. Westerns generally disappeared though maybe there would be a breakthrough but as a popular TV fare cowboys "bit the dust!" When STAR WARS came out in 1977 many noted that cowboy clothes had been replaced with space suits ... different garb but the same plots; good vs. evil.

     Now in the 21st Century it seems that what was old is new again. "Magnum P.I.," "Roseanne,' 'Will & Grace,""Dynasty," the list goes on and on. There is even another A STAR IS BORN!

     Ironically, a Gay movie, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, a short story by Anne Proulx may have kickstarted an interest in Westerns. BROKEBACK was one of a series of stories in her two short story books, CLOSE RANGE and BAD DIRT, that chronicled the lives of those living, working and visiting Wyoming in the late 20th century. One story followed another as you met and would meet again the lives of farmers, truck stop waitresses, Easterners trying to live a western dream and ranch hands struggling to live in a beautiful yet desolate land. Here the old West met the new and whites had to contend with the Indians they displaced.

     I spent several weeks a few summers ago literally driving around Wyoming and was struck at how big it was, how beautiful and how empty.

     It was while catching up on the Netflix series "Gracie & Frankie" that Frankie in breaking up with her new beau asked if he and the new woman he was seeing were binge watching "Longmire?" He said he had been watching it with her but was lonely as he wanted to live in Santa Fe and she wanted to stay in California. Not knowing what "Longmire" was I decided to look it up.

At the Red Pony Saloon

     All it took was one episode of "Longmire" to realize I was hooked. Based on the stories of Craig Johnson, memories of my childhood "westerns" returned, memories of good and evil where good won was now transformed into todays Wyoming I had read about and seen and it's struggling sheriff and its inhabitants with conflicts that mirrored our own as a nation in crisis.

     It starts with a grieving sheriff whose wife died a year ago, the conflict with the neighboring Indian Reservation where the white sheriff arrested the Indian Sheriff for corruption and both sides are estranged from each other. Of course they must work together but this conflict mirrors so many of the conflicts we see in local, state, and federal governments. To add to the tension one of the deputies is challenging the sheriff in an election while they both have to work together.

Acting Reservation Chief Mathias

   In "Longmire" we clearly see the conflicts between shall we say the Wyoming County of Absaroka and the Cheyanne nation next door. There are other Indian reservations as well. One source of conflict is the new Indian Casino trying to be built.

     There is no love lost between the sides. Cheyennes came from the east coast having tried to assimilate their heritage to the new European model. However, their land was too valuable to plantation owners and they were evicted by President Jackson to the west during the infamous "Trail of Tears" nearly 200 years ago. Indians angry at how the federal government has treated them for centuries with whites still hungering and wanting more. Wyoming, even today, is a mirror of old cowboy days.

    So the stage is set. Even in the hinterlands you have greed, corruption, oil drilling, gambling, drunks, rustling, PTSD, anti-government whites, and more. You meet, as Clint Eastwood did in his spaghetti Westerns, the good, the bad and the ugly.

     Sheriff Longmire is the kind of hero we all want ... wise, calm, amazingly well read, able to delegate and both sooth and accuse when the situation demands. We soon discover there is no clearcut right and wrong. The guilty often escape and it is only through Native American enforcers that the Cheyenne feel vindicated. You see the best and the worse in both sides.

Rainier Beer! The Sheriff's only beer fit to drink!

The question remains however, what is right, what is wrong. Taking a life is wrong ... is wrong unless it addresses a wrong. Or does it? Whose sense of justice is right? Is fair?

     History is written by the winners. It has been since the beginning of time. However, during the past 20 or so years, historians have been studying the records of both the winners and the losers and what they see is often different than what we were taught as children. I remember being told the Americas were nearly empty and ripe for the plucking of the Europeans. Now we realize the Americas were home to 50 - 75 million people; maybe more than all of Europe. They were decimated by diseases they had no immunity to brought by the explorers. What is now Mexico City was a huge civilized city filled with over 1 million citizens that even the Spanish explorers admitted was finer than any city in Europe.

     The same can be said for much of the world the Europeans discovered. They brought with them disease that killed millions. The Black Death of the 1300's which decimated 30 -50% of Europe with disease brought from Asia can be considered just revenge. However, no one understood the cause while entire regions were stripped of all human life.

     "Longmire" is good escapist fare but with closer inspection has been designed to inspire closer contemplation. Who is right? Who is wrong? Can both sides learn and benefit from the lessons they can teach each other? Only time will tell us the answer but I am glad that I have watched this and can consider the questions it raises. This is script writing at its best.

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!