Reflections On The Academy Awards

 Shortly before this year's Academy Awards an OP-ED piece appeared in the Los Angeles Tims that caught my eye. It asked the question, "Are Too Many Oscar pics too moody for you?" Clearly she had not seen an Ingmar Bergman movie.

In the piece Virginia Heffernan discusses the fact that even in color many of the nominees looked drained. Here is the article:

But after the Oscars, and I didn't see them all, I did reflect on them. American movies for the past few decades have been little more than rehashes of an original premise that goes on year after year. ROCKY morphs into ROCKY 51,  where they battle each other in wheel chairs? STAR WARS 235 where the great grandchildren of Hans Solo fight the grandchildren of Darth Vader. You get the picture. This leads me to the discussion of this years nominees:

1.  TOP GUN:MAVERICK. This one WAS a stretch. Twenty years later, really? For an action film it was heart pounding but, and it is a BIG but, we've seen it all before.

2. WOMEN TALKING was truly an original, gem as it may be. Mennonite Women in Bolivia were given cow tranquilizer then raped by their men. After the mens arrest the woman have to decide whether to leave or not. As I watched I could not help but think of men in this country attempting to control the bodies of women. There is a line from THE KING AND I where the king says, " it's alright for the bee to fly from flower to flower but NOT flower from bee to bee."

3. EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE is a fantasy and reality for the 1,000's of immigrants that come to this country. I have Chinese friends and hear and watch their struggles to make sense of what happens to them. It was a brilliant ploy to focus on the IRS and the dehumanizing processes it uses. Trump paid $750 in  taxes the year I paid over $8,000. I'm a year older and certainly a great deal poorer. No matter what was said Michele Yo and Jamie Lee Curtis deserved their Oscars for playing the every woman to the Tramp's everyman.

4. THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN was certainly one of the grimmest movies I have ever seen. That a friendship could go so horribly wrong and take the twists and turns to its bitter end ... well, it's not a world or friendship that I would want to have. To me it made no sense, yet it certainly was original and not American.

5. TÁR tells a sad disintegration of a brilliant female conductor who thought too highly of herself as she explored the music she so deeply admired. I didn't feel she was so evil as obviously others in her medium thought. I felt the young man who cared less for Bach and was into "modern"  music still had a lot to learn. But, as in every generation, the young have no time for the past. And I question if that is why societies around the world are in the moral morass they are in as they forget the past only to have to rediscover it again.

6. I didn't see ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT as I had read the book and seen an earlier movie. While well intended to remind us about the evils of war  (from the previews) an even gorier version was made to remind us of this fact. Nightly news reports of Ukraine bring this fact home to us every day.

7. AVATAR I also didn't see. I didn't much care for the original and didn't plan on spending 3+ hours more seeing its sequel, another sequel years away from the original. 

I also didn't see THE FABELMAN'S, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS or ELVIS. The first two weren't shown locally here long, if ever, and I grew up with Elvis and have spent an entire day at Graceland seeing everything you could ever want to see. Biopics tend to gloss over the less desirable aspects of the person and blow-up the known. As a Boomer Baby, almost, I will never forget his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show where they would not show him below the waist!

I love movie's and have built up my own DVD collection because you always CAN'T see it on Netflix or Prime. I had a wild hair to see CHARADE recently with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It was a $5.00 rental on Prime. Five dollars for a 60 year old movie? A few days later I was Big Lots and looking through their DVD items found the movie for $3.00. Not only did I get it cheaper, it is now mine to watch whenever I please!

I was lucky that my parents loved movies. Every Friday or Saturday from the second grade on we would go. I saw NIGHT TO REMEMBER and cried when the Titanic went down, saw all the Esther Williams swimming fantasies, SINGING IN THE RAIN and in the 8th grade saw PSYCHO a movie I couldn't get through again until last year when terrified of the shower scene, wrapped in a blanket like a mummy, I sat through the movie. I still remembered the college guys behind me screaming like girls!

Movie's can be a significant force in our lives. It can show the best and the worst of humanity. It can uplift like the recent RRR or it can bring us down as SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. As a movie lover, I may not and should not agree with say Rotten Tomatoes. I have found what the "critics" like or dislike is often at odds with the general audience and myself. A case in point was the movie DROP DEAD FRED. It was considered a terrible movie by Siscal and Ebert.  Desperate for something to watch something when my kids were small, I was shocked to discover I could identify with Phoebe because in many ways I had a mom like that as well. While I never had an imaginary friend like Fred I did have an imaginary world like Jack Lemon's DAD who escaped to his imaginary world to escape his harpy wife.

We all have movies we love and those we avoid. In a testing, it was discovered it only took a few first bars of movie themes for the listener to identify the movie. Movies can be an escape or they can reflect our lives and often solutions and pitfalls to our own daily lives. Yet the past few years have been staggeringly sterile, a collection of Marvel or super hero tales with no end. That's why I enjoy both the Palm Springs Movie Festival and Cinema Diverse where films from all over the world are shown and we get a glimpse of other cultures and ideas. Often a foreign film will be made in America but rarely with the same impact as the original because it has to  be morally correct. THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS  was a perfect example. A widower meets a man in Paris after the death of his wife and they become lovers. Too scandalous for Americans, the male lover becomes (to me just as scandalous) an underage female and it went on to titillate Americans the way LOLITA had. 

Finally, I would like to remind you that movies and the world's they create are still "designed." Once watching the extras on the movie MONSTERS INC. they showed all the errors and problems with the software to create their "monsters." It was at the moment I realized just how much a movie, a cartoon takes at least 5 years to make, is created, designed if you will. 

In this vain I urge you to look for original movies and don't accept more of the same old thing!

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!

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!

Finding Other Media

Here is the map to Welburn! It took us hours to 
get there. I have since learned to order online.
Shipping is cheap and it comes quickly!

 A few years ago a friend and I made the trek to Welburn Gourd Farm in San Diego Country. And what a trek it was too. As we wound down a narrow twisting road after exiting the I-15 near Fallbrook, CA, with NO phone signal, we struggled to find the place. In awe that there were so many homes, I wondered, who would live where there was no cell phone signal? They had power and land lines and, maybe, that is all they wanted.

Finally we found it, parked the car and wandered in. I I have never seen so many gourds in my life. Big, small, tiny some already to use, others needing some TLC (actually, a LOT of TLC to get them burnished enough to paint)and others ready to use!

We went in the store to find amazing examples of gourds transformed into works of art using electric tools to create on the gourd surfaces visions of indescribable beauty, some using the natural color and others using a kind of colored dyes I was not familiar with.

Truly, I had never seen anything like this before.
They even had gourd already to paint AND with 
holes already drilled for a birdhouse!

We loaded up and over the next year or so my friend turned two gourds into amazingly real looking, if not LARGE apples, and then using his ethnic Chinese heritage created two amazing gourds using dragon motifs. They were, even if painted, works of art and are proudly displayed in his home.

I was more reluctant not really knowing what to do with them. I purchased gourds already emptied of their seeds and drilled for use as a birdhouse with hanging cords. It was only when an ETSY customer asked if I could create a "Day of the Dead" birdhouse for a Christmas present that I tackled a gourd. I could help others but found it hard to  help myself.

I sketched out a birdhouse plan, got it approved and created it. I covered the entire birdhouse gourd in orange paint and then using an undercoat of cream acrylic paint that would opaquely cover the paint that would allow for the eventual design. It was an approach I HAD to use with both black and the traditional dark maroon of molas.

This was a trick I had learned with painting other dark birdhouses. If you want to use most reds, yellows and other transparent colors, you need to put down a very light, opaque paint and then paint over that. In this case just about the entire birdhouse had to be double painted. Many yellows needed a third coat. I finished it, the customer was happy and that was that.

Recently as I continue my Mola inspired journey of paintings, wooden birdhouses, tissue boxes, etc., I looked at my vast collection of things ready to paint and grabbed a gourd. Already smooth, drilled with a hole and complete with hanging cord, I spray painted the entire gourd with a flat black enamel. Having tried the enamel on a scrap overpainted with acrylic paint that worked fine, I sketched the design on the gourd of three desert parrots, something I had seen at the Tuscan Outdoor museum and added desert flowers that are abundant in the spring.

Example of white undercoat

 Then came the holidays and I created first one and then three more painted designs on canvas for a holiday card, one for myself and then another for a non-profit in town. That took hours and days to do. 

Then came an opportunity to submit a painting to the Desert Art Center in Palm Spring's February show and the birdhouse was put away again. The painting and the hours it took took precedence but also added one very important lesson. I had been using a regular black lead pencil to put down my designs and squinted and hunted for them when laying down the first white or cream undercoat. I realized there are white lead pencils and why wasn't I using them. Painting done I found and ordered a few on Amazon so that when I returned to the yet unfinished birdhouse and it's design I finished it with a white lead pencil. Since traditionally Mola's use a black or deep maroon base cloth, I wanted to be true to the design. Later I discovered that newer Mola's used a brighter and much more varied base color ... red, blue, orange, green, and egg yolk yellows. However, dark backgrounds make the sliver of bright colors pop and I was ALL for that!

 

After trying several smaller Mola type paintings including one for a local non-profit, I painted the painting below to enter in a local art showing at the Palm Springs Desert Art Center. While very colorful it really was a bit more than I think the locals were prepared for!

 That led me to finish the long ago started birdhouse of another Welburn gourd painted black and with the start of a, well frankly, who know what. Borrowing parrots I had tried before I envisioned three desert parrots in a wild spring bloom similar to something I had seen at the Tuscan Outdoor Museum. I started in black leaded pencil but finished with the newly arrived white Amazon pencils. Because of the parrots and flowers top and bottom and in-between the parrots I had to paint every line like shown above and then add colors. The more transparent the paint (that's you yellow) it might take up to three coats! But the result was more than I ever imagined!

Desert Parrot Birdhouse

Since the gourd already was drilled with a hole and included a jute cord on top to hang it all I had to do was drill a hole and cut a round piece of wood to make a perch.  Of course this is not the way most gourds are used, at least from Welburn. They have samples and wonderful photos of their gourds transformed in to sculptured works of art on par with examples I saw in markets in China. 

The beauty with natural items is they are already somewhat ready for a life outdoors. With a wooden birdhouse you have a whole bunch of pieces that are either glued or nailed together each one of which can fail no matter how well they are cared for. A gourd might loose it's decoration but unless allowed to sit on the ground un-protected will last for years. To preserve it if it is decorated just apply a fresh coat of an outdoor acrylic varnish and it will return to it original beauty!

An example of the varieties of gourds available!

 If you are interested in trying a new type of surface media, here is the information to contact Welburn:

Welburn Gourd Farm

40635 De Luz Road

Fallbrook, CA 

Open Wed. - Sat. 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

www.welburngouardfarm.com

There may be similar places like this where you live                                                                                                but I think you will be satisfied with both the quality and the prices! Please forward the information to me. I am always looking for something new to try!

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!

Revisiting The Movie NETWORK In The Era of Fox News

I recently had a nagging desire to watch the movie NETWORK, a wonderful work of movie fiction origninally released in 1975 that won multiple academy awards in 1976. The movie tells of a failing newcaster's descent into madness. In fact, the term, "I'm mad as hell and can't take it anymore" is the notable comment in this madness. It's a comment that during the Corvid pandemic makes as much sense today as it did then during our first gasoline crisis in the mid '70'. The best actor award went to Peter Finch, playing Howard Beale, as a newscaster who is fired as his ratings are falling. Finch was given his award after his death. 

Beale was considered a mandarin of news casting. However, as his ratings fell, his fourth place network decided they needed "younger" blood, and Beale who had become a childless widower, took to drinking and became less and less a presence. At the news of his dismissal, two weeks hence, he goes on the evening news and states "next Tuesday I will commit suicide right here on the news." As you can imagine the ratings go up and everyone wants to see the "suicide." Sensing rising fortunes, the network instead decides to keep him on and as he rants and raves, ratings climb higher and higher. 

I believe this sinister movie, a movie that should be shown again today, has three parts. It portrays corporate greed, making money at any price, secondly, creating social tensions and finally capitalism run amok. The fact that Rupert Murdock, who founded FOX News in 1986, used, I believe, Paddy Chayefsky's tongue-in-checck script as a blueprint has been noted by Chayefsky as well. 

FOX News was the highest rated free network in the 18-49 demographic from 2004-2012 and again in 2020. Millions tune in to watch Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others espose their fictions and blatant untruths nightly. It was a faithful news outlet for former President Trump and is for his minions today.

Faye Dunaway's character, Diana, as VP of programing wants control of news. She is fended off by Max (William Holden), the current News VP who has been told he has the back of the network President. However, the CBC Holding company that now owns the network, one among many, wants it to grow so it can sell it to an even wealthier owner in the middle east. This of course is a reflection for oil crisis in 1975 when the Saudi's were in ascendence and petro dollars ruled the day.

Beale is given his own news spot and news has becomes a circus sideshow along with a soothsayer and other silly segments of the "news hour." Beale is given to his madness and often collapses in a faint after his latest "vision."

This plays well, until it doesn't. When he urges his followers who are "mad as hell and won't take it anymore"to turn their TV's OFF, he is summoned by Arthur Jensen (Warren Beatty) the CEO to a special boardroom for a "discussion." Sitting at one end of a loooong table, ala Putin and Macron is their recent discussions over the Ukraine war, Beatty gives the performance of a lifetime! Roaring out to Beale:

    "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature Mr. Beale...that is the atomic and subatomic 

    and galactic structure of thing's today! And, YOU WILL ATONE!"

Beale atones but soon looses his edge and ratings drop. Since Jensen forbids his removal from the stage others conspire to get rid of him before profits drop! Their solution is to kill him ... on the air by hiring a radical group they have given voice to (today's Hannity, Ingrahm and Carlson?) who assassinate Beale live as he's broadcasting on the air.

When I saw this 47 years ago, I thought it was a funny but cynical look at TV broadcasting. The broadcasters of the day were generally respected and Walter Cronkite was the first newscaster to admit we had lost the Viet Nam war. This was all before much cable, the Internet, even cell phones. Those all arrived later. News was generally on the three networks and available in the daily newspapers, and on radio of the day. In a word, NETWORK was a work of comedy.

Secondly, NETWORK is about the social tensions of the day, tensions that still remain today. Max fell in love with Diana leaving his wife of 25 years. Ultimately he realizes Diana has no capacity for love and that his wife, who truly does love him, has been shattered forever. Corporate greed has, if nothing else, become even more predatory and we are yet unable to staunch it's march. American companies had begun their forward march to foreign locales using the term Global Economy as their crutch. The only people who profited were the CEO's and management. No one was asking for cheaper prices. Manufacturing moved notably to China where labor costs were lower and America's millions lost their middle class, blue collar jobs in the search for cheaper labor. In my outdoor manufacturing days, I noted that when Brown-Jordan, a high end outdoor casual furniture maker, moved to Mexico, their prices in fact went up, not down and the quality suffered. 

And finally it shows Capitalism run amok. In order to make more and more money, more value, a newer generation driven by none other than greed, attacks an older generation that wanted order, dignity and responsibility first, before profits. I am not so naive not to understand to succeed AND survive you need profits but to attain them at all costs, well, that was not the way I, and for the most part, we were raised. In my generation, a house was your home, not a profit center as Millennials and such believe. Here, the newer generation IS clamoring for more and more profits. They can see only one way out ... eliminating Beale in the most sensational way possible, as assassination on the air. Ratings are ALL!

And isn't that what we are seeing today? While we are not seeing literal murders, FOX leads the pack in dissemination of false news, even as they claim it's not. They all force us to ask Socrates' eternal question - "What is truth?" We ask today, what is news and "false" news?

NETWORK forces us to consider many factors in how we allow information to enter our lives. TV hasn't quite the impact it once had. Today, social media governs our lives and allows anyone to express what they think and feel. In a sense we are all Howard Beals and are mad as hell and can't and won't take it anymore. However this freedom also demands the question, Can we have too much freedom? Can we allow an 18 year-old with a grudge, real or imagined, to buy an assault rifle and murder 19 10-year-olds and their teachers without any accountability? Can we allow hate speech to spread that has consequences be allowed to flourish without any consequences? I think not. For a jolly good time watch NETWORK and see what it asks you about reality. I think you'll be glad you did.

If You DON'T LOOK UP It Still Comes Down

Every now and then there comes a movie that is a reflection of the times, you know, how we are living now. The first such movie that I can recall was the movie NETWORK. It's the story of a fictional network that predicted the creation and rise of Fox News almost to a tee. It recounts the unhinging of a popular news anchor who utters the famous, "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore!" He passed away before the film's release but still won best actor for this film.

The screen play, written by Paddy Chayefsky, was a tongue-in-cheek comment on how he felt broadcast news, especially, was going in 1976. He later commented on watching Fox he never thought TV would head in the direction it did. I wonder, what does he think now especially since Fox News is far more entertainment than news fact.

Another movie that comes to mind, to me, the perfect ending for a dreadful century, was AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999). It tells the tale of a middle class suburban man dealing with a mid-life crisis as the world he knows (as the rest of us discovered) crumbles. Forced out of his job during the "re-structuring" American companies forced on their workers as they moved manufacturing offshore, he reverts back into adolescent behavior that leads to an untimely end. 

Netflix's newest and at the moment most popular film is their very own DON'T LOOK UP, a sweeping commentary on our lives today where reality TV and life have become so blurred you don't know which is which. It features an amazing cast: Meryl Streep, Leonard DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande and many others.  While billed as a comedy it is essentially a disaster movie made funny as it parodies events happening in this country today. 

The comet's path

While looking at the stars a student working on her Ph.D (Lawrence) discovers a huge comet heading our way. She takes her finding to her teacher (DiCaprio) who brings the coordinates to his class and they work out the trajectory. Suddenly he realizes the comet will be a direct hit on earth and the massive size of the comet is a life ending event when it hits earth.

They hurry to tell NASA and others in the government about the impending disaster ... 6 months and 14 days away ... and that's when the comedy begins. 

You may ask, "How can a disaster movie be funny?" Trust me, once you realize that this is a parody of our polarized times it makes perfect sense. Streep, who plays the President, is outrageous, not unlike recent events here. Her chief of staff, her son, Jonah Hill, is as clueless about the real world as a recent president's own sons. He dismisses University of Michigan people and wants to check with Harvard, Yale and such.

To cap it off, despite the military's of the world sending rockets and a retired space shuttle to strike the comet in an attempt to deflect it's course, that too is deflected because a crazy billionaire thinks that it can be mined for the trillions of dollars of rare and valuable metals it holds. I mean if you have a billion, why not two ... right?

I've read the critics comments and wonder, do they really understand the message? Did they with the other two movies mentioned? Are critics and today's "influencers" so wrapped up in themselves (yes) that they can't see the forest for the trees? To me this movie speaks volumes about how shallow our times have become. You will believe a quack of any stripe over the reality of scientific data.

The closing scenes say it all. The president leads rally's nationwide with the slogan "Don't Look Up" as if what you might see is true until finally someone does look up and as they do, the reality of what is going to happen becomes real.

When it becomes apparent that they are, in fact, doomed the billionaire hustles off to his interstellar spaceship, President in tow, where after 22,000 + years in space they find and land on an inhabitable planet. 

While our president does get her just reward, so do the citizens of earth. There is no happy ending, there is just ... an ending. All we can hope and pray is that we, in our stupidity, don't do something that will end this very same way.

Thank you for reading my blog! Please be sure to visit on a regular basis or contact me at KrugsStudio@gmail.com. New blogs are added all the time. In conjunction  with my store I feel that “design” is an important part of our lives. Everything we use or live by was designed by someone. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates design about my blog.

Please be sure to visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com on a regular basis. New birdhouses, craft items, photography and canvas paintings are added all the time. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates local handcrafted items about my store.

OWN or GIFT an original work of art this year!

The Challenge of the NEW!

This was a long way from designing birdhouses yet fun to do in many "new" ways!

Last year,  when I asked my daughter what she would like for Christmas for herself, husband and my granddaughter she thought awhile and then said, I would like you to create a Hanukkah Village for us to put on our mantle. While my daughter is a born and raised United Methodist, he husband is Jewish and I knew they were combining faith traditions as they raise their daughter, my granddaughter.

She sent me a photo of the houses she wanted to use, (left) three different sizes of paper mache houses that had removable roofs. The Hanukkah tradition is for each day the candle burns, 8 days in all, there is a small gift for a child each day. With these, they could put a gift inside. I loved the idea but the challenge was that Hanukkah was less than a month away!

I hurried over to the craft store to get two sets of the houses and thought I would use a wooden birdhouse (that really didn't look like a birdhouse) and use a wooden tree I decorated with snowmen skiing down a hillside to a frozen pond for the seventh and eighth pieces. There was room in the birdhouse to hide something and a space in front of the snowman tree.

The challenge? How to design each one so they were unique and yet festive enough for the Holiday Season.

A birdhouse converted to a synagogue

I first tackled the wooden birdhouse that I made into a synagogue. I found some Hanukkah decorations and used them on the birdhouse keeping the synagogue as simple as I could. It turned out to be a kind of Spanish style synagogue but with a few simple additions it was passable.

It was fun and that made me learn to use my scroll saw because the next item was a big, formal house with columns! I added lintels, feet became attic windows and of course you needed holiday decorations. 

I had amassed a collection of items and for the first time I found that I was able to use them to embellish the items with more than just with paint. My two story houses with removable roofs were put to the test.

A little adobe house with removable roof

What was so fun was that I got to do all kinds of detail work with a variety of objects that I found new uses for. I had never done anything quite like this and found that I would spend just about all night working on these fragile houses creating a kind of village from as you can see above, from nothing!

The challenge was to decide HOW to decorate each piece. The Hanukkah tree was already done and the synagogue was finished but now what? I two two large houses to do, two mid sized and two small houses left. I wanted each one to be different but how?

I was given free reign on how I wanted to decorate them and I didn't want them to all be too formal. I next tackled one of the small houses and converted it into a Southwest adobe style with visible wooden beams coming through the walls, front and back, Southwest colors and details complete with cactuses. It was fun. I did the other small house more in the Spanish Territorial style you would see in New Mexico!

The two midsized houses were a challenge. I finally decided to paint one in the Pennsylvania Dutch / Bavarian style with dark walls and hearts and flowers similar to what I had seen in Bavaria on several trips. It was dark yet remained colorful with large red hearts and tulips adorning front and back. Adding a tree also added a German feel.

The second large house I decided to decorate in my wildly colorful "crazy-quilt" design incorporating both Hanukkah and Christmas elements. While I am not all that familiar with Jewish traditions some decorations at the craft store helped. Here I used Christmas colors and each base color had it's own design. The rub was that I used Christmas and Hanukkah wrap instead of fabric prints. It was a challenge with an amazing amount of detailing required.

The last mid-sized house I made blue with snowflake patterns with a small birdhouse decorating the front. You "know" I had to get a birdhouse in somewhere. As you can see from the photo at the top the village is quite colorful and was a hit at my daughters house.

Packing them all in a box was yet another challenge. The miracle was that they managed to arrive with little damage despite the damage to the box. Pieces that fell off were easily glued back on and it was unique as displayed on their fireplace mantle.

Sometimes you need a little, in this case a huge shove, to use your talents in new ways. This would be a wonderful gift for family, friends or yourself, something unique that you created! With tender loving care, this would be a decoration that could be used for years and handed down to the next generation. Who doesn't have Christmas things from years and generations past? 

With the holidays just around the corner I hope that I have inspired my readers to attempt the same thing!

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!

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!

Vincent van Gogh: A Journey

Out of the blue one day recently I got an email from Taschen Books about a sale they were having. Luckily for them, they featured a photo of a book about Vincent van Gogh they were having a sale on. Even at $50.00 it seemed a bargain as it would include ALL of his works, sketches, pen and inks and every painting he ever made. Of course, I bought it.

When it arrived I realized that it was huge. Over 750 pages not including index and oversized pages. As I started to read it though, I was struck by facts that I did not know and I already had a number of books about him, including his letters. I glanced through the letters but never sat down to read them.

I knew he was the second son born with the name Vincent but did not know he was born on the same day as his brother's stillborn death. There was a small cemetery in front of the vicarage house he grew up in and each day he could see his name sake's headstone.

His was a tortured journey that we have all heard about. But seeing all, not some of his paintings showed his slow but steady development as an artist. None of his work in Holland and with the miners in Belgium showed the brilliance that was to come. The authors of this book call his THE POTATO EATERS his first masterpiece but also note that it is a set piece, each face has been posed and that it was not truly an actual scene. Yet, in its own way, captured the essence of their lives.

My introduction to Vincent was as a 5th-6th Grader taking art classes at the Portland Art Museum. My

Blossoms: Almond Tree In Bloom

father was naturally gifted and watching my doodles decided that I needed some training. For some reason the van Gogh collection was at the museum on a world tour as they were building a new museum dedicated to his art in Amsterdamn. So every Saturday I would walk past this vast collection as I went to art class. Often I would have to wait for my father who was the manager of the Schick Electric Shaver Shop in Portland, OR. He had to work half day Saturday's. I would wander the gallery and look at each painting. My favorite of all was Blossoms: Almond Tree in Bloom. When I finally saw the "second" new museum I was surprised to find this image prominently displayed on everything ... scarves, notebooks, coffee cups. It was like visiting a long lost friend. Then when my friend in lockdown in China showed me a picture he hung from his purchases in Shenzhen, China, I was stunned to see it was a faithful copy of BLOSSOMS he bought there. Our tastes were more alike than I realized.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art had a show a few years back on Expressionism. The first painting you saw, one the curator worked five years to get and use, was a van Gogh painting. She felt that he represented the beginning of a movement of artists who went beyond the Impressionists and created what was called Expressionism. She had a point.

It is clear that when Vincent went to Paris his painting palette changed but his style became more forceful, more distinct. Yes, he dallied with Signac and Seurat's Pointillism, and some of Cezanne's increasing abstract's. He was enamored with Japanese wood block prints, even organizing a show of them, but all in all he was faithful to his own style. There was no one painting as he did.

The world's second most recognized painting, behind Leonardo's MONA LISA,  is Vincent's STARRY NIGHT that now resides at MOMA in New York City. While I think it belongs in Amsterdam, we are lucky that we need only go to New York City to see one of man's most recognizable masterpieces. I read somewhere that astronomers say he even has the stars right the night it was painted. The painting is not huge, like say Seurat's SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE GRAND JATTE, but to stand in front of it you find yourself drawn into the swirls, even floating above the town in blue and yellow splendor.

THE RED VINEYARD by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent is famous for only selling one of his 1,000 plus drawing, etchings and paintings. THE RED VINEYARD was sold for 5 Francs that he soon gave away. He was aware that in death his paintings could become more valuable. Millet, an early mentor, had died and he watched his paintings that could be purchased for a pittance suddenly fetch amazing sums. Dependent on Theo, his art dealing brother who financed his career from his own income and from the inheritance he received from his father who cut Vincent completely out of the will, van Gogh wrote and talked about the fame of artists after they died.

He was forever grateful to Theo who in fact had most of the paintings stored in a warehouse and would now and then enter them into show competitions. The first two paintings that were ever shown were THE POTATO EATERS and IRISES that is now in the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

IRISES by Vincent van Gogh

I have a funny story about that painting and was surprised to learn it was one of the first paintings he would show to the world. The Getty bought the IRISES for $56 million long before the Getty Center was built. It was, at the time the most any painting had ever fetched at an auction. The now Getty Villa in Malibu was the first museum built with Getty's oil money. His house was torn down and an accurate copy of a Roman villa, patterned after a real villa in Herculeum was built. It caused a storm when it opened but was soon accepted for what it was.

 My family and I went out to see IRISES but we could not locate it anywhere. It was the first such painting the Getty had ever bought and looking back, there was really no room to hang it in. Finally giving up my kids found the new media room with Wi-Fi and 20-30 computers all hooked up. My 10 or so year old son immediately latched on to one and my daughter and I looked around the room. I spotted a painting at the end of the room almost in total darkness and walking towards it realized here was the van Gogh. The woman in charge came up and asked me if I knew what it was. Speechless I just nodded. Getting closer she turned on the lights and I probably gasped. Looking at it I said, "I certainly have a better place to hang it than here!" "Where?," she asked. "My living room over my fireplace." After a good laugh she explained the dilemma they were having on hanging it. It was then and remains today one of my favorite paintings.

Vincent knew many of what are now famous Impressioinists of the day and lived for a short time with Gauguin. They were too different in style and temperament. He learned from and somewhat copied all their styles yet never let his own go. He was aware of own style and was liked by his fellow painters.

The mental breakdowns hit him hard and yet during his time in St. Remy and outside of Paris, in Arles, where he died, he produced some of his greatest masterpieces. Painting usually outdoors there is an amazing video on YouTube where they have found bugs, always a constant threat, buried deep in his paint. After he came back to the north of Paris, just before he died, he painted 80 paintings in 60 days. Many are considered some of his finest masterpieces.

WHEAT FIELD WITH CROWS by Vincent van Gogh

While we may never know for sure, many believe this was his last painting. To me it represents a direction that he was moving, moving to abstract expressionism something that he didn't understand and yet moved towards it with each painting. While there is no doubt there was an element of insanity in his death, his new doctor in Arles, Paul Gachet was experienced with patients like Vincent. That he didn't see anything alarming in the behavior just before the fatal shot on July 27, 1890, something happened to put that bullet in his stomach, and his refusal of medical care that led to his death two days later.

Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and he and many others considered himself a failure. He only became famous after his suicide, something that he felt would happen and soon was seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination. His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. Germany  missed the Impressionist period completely and quickly artists changed from the salon style painting favored in France as well as Germany to a vibrant form of Expressionism. The German art world moved from staid Dresden to growing, libertine capital Berlin and it was there that Vincent's art was shown, admired and started a movement.

There Vincent first attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Is every derided, ridiculed, criticized artist another genius? We can never know. But, unless we try and continue to improve our craft we may never know with our own art. If you were, even today, to compare Vincent's work to what the French, the British and German Salons were exhibiting, they would probably be considered the scribblings of children. Some today might make the same comparison. Does the majority of the art world we see them that way today? No.They are visions of the world without restraint and for many, that is enough!

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!

Remember When "Mail" Meant a Personal Letter?

Mail today is anything but the kind of mail I remember as a kid. In those days, the 1950's, getting the mail generally meant getting a few letters from family, bills and The Saturday Evening Post. There was no email, junk mail to speak of or anything like the materials we receive today. I remember the highlight of the year was getting the Montgomery Ward and Sears regular AND Christmas catalogs! There was no Amazon. We got the newspaper every day too. And post cards! Remember those post cards from exotic places? I do.

Yesterday, July 7, 2021 I received, for once, only letters, well, of a sort. Each and every one of them was some kind of a plea for support or beyond ridiculous,  claims.

Since I have bought a few things through catalogs during Corvid I now average, in a month, about 100 catalogs, many for women. I am a single, 75 year old single man.

Let's go through yesterday's cache.

First was the 2021 ASPCA Membership Card. I lost my dog to age and illness last January. I have never joined or even been involved with the ASPCA. My enclosed Membership Card also requires a donation. The trouble is if you send a donation now in a month, even a week, you will be solicited again for more. There is a never ending cycle once you give that never stops. I know; I donated to Habitat For Humanity and get solicitations every or every other week.

Then there was the Luekemia & Lymphoma Society with a nickel enclosed along with address labels. Even $18.25 would do so much. Yes. today until the next solicitation for double that.

I need to explain that I am not a mean hearted old crouch. I do believe in supporting certain charities and organizations that are close to my heart. What makes me angry is that the people you want to help sell your name and address to others until your mailbox resembles a tsunami of paper crying for help! If you look up these charities, as I have, the amount that actually goes to the charity you "want" to support is pretty meagre. Some that have good records with the funds they receive have abysmal records on the people they will and do not support.

Next was a post card titled DR OZ CREATES. What did he create? A pill that, and I quote, "creates enormous erection, increase in thickness and width and crazy length increase and it gets biggest deal in medical history!" I think the medical profession needs to pull his doctor's license. I have prostrate cancer and ALL the limitations that comes with that. No pills for me.

How about "HEALING HIDING IN YOUR HOME?" Yup! I too can have Supermarket Super Remedies for only four payments of $7.99 after a FREE 21 day preview. For my effort whether I keep it or not I get the FREE Get Energized. And in case you want to know, a stomach cramp can be solved with a cookie, a gingersnap no less.

An "Important Notice to: ALAN KRUG" came from Consumer Reports a magazine I have talked about before. I don't necessarily trust them because what they test is now, in this moment. The true test is what happens 6 months, a year down the road. And for me, it has not been good. After your yearly subscription you get letters like this asking for more money. They also send you tickets asking that you support a raffle they have every year as well. Since my luck as a gambler is zilch, I don't support that either. The only thing I have ever won was a contest for something I designed and I paid for the birdhouse and paints that created it.

United Service Organization is next and I think a new one for me. The letter included an American Flag magnet and the back of the letter says there is a FREE 3-by-5 American Flag saved for me. Since I already have my uncle's and Mother's service flag's I won't be needing that either. I have nothing against the USO and believe they provide needed entertainment from the troops but if I donate I will only get even more mail!!!

Finally this one really caught my attention as it screams SECOND NOTICE and warns that DEADLINES ARE ENFORCED! Inside it notes that it is an OFFICIAL PRIZE COMMUNICATION re: $10,000.00 a week awarded for 52 weeks. I was even given an Authorization Prize number. All I have to do is call 1-888-588-4027 and provide the secret number and confirm my address. I don't think so. On the back are the STRIKE IT RICH XII SWEEPSTAKES "Official Rules" you need a magnifying glass to read. Also in small type, no purchase necessary to win, you find that it is sponsored by National Magazine Exchange. How many magazines do you think you buy before you get off that phone call?

I  long for the good old days. To me, and many others in  my age group, there is nothing quite like holding a letter, seeing the writing and enjoying the occasional photo. I keep them and treasure them many times before either filing them or throwing them away. I just purchased a Canon scanner and I find that is a wonderful way to keep those letters and see what they looked like. Need it again? (I hate reading things on my huge iMac screen.)  I can reprint each and every letter, including emails, should I have the urge to see them again.

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!

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!

 

The Beauty and Challenges of Mola Design!

 Since I started craft painting, I have become enamored with a variety of folk styles. As a break from my graphic design business I started painting birdhouses with traditional Pennsylvania Dutch design, probably as a result of my German heritage. My German father was quite gifted but never in my memories of him did he make or paint things in this style.

The mola that inspired it all!

            Yet, when I bought that first birdhouse those many years ago, that is the style I choose. The irony to me was when we went to Amish country in Pennsylvania I was stunned to see that nothing was in that style anymore. I was the sole "Pennsylvania Dutch" artist.

            Next I became smitten with quilted things. My ex-wife had been doing quilting and looking through her books and viewing a friends antique "crazy-quilt" realized there was something timeless in these designs that could be transferred onto 3D objects, i.e. birdhouses! My first "crazy-quilt" design was a hit as I won a national contest in design and received a bunch of paints and materials from DecoArt for my trouble. Starting an ETSY store a short time later it was one of the first things to sell. I have since created a variety of birdhouses, trays and boxes with these "painted" fabrics including a metal mailbox that proudly hangs somewhere in Germany right now! 

        However, after helping a friend and his partner finish hanging a variety of paintings they had collected over the years including Mola’s. The gift of one of his mola's, shown above, after owning them for years when I was married, made me realize these designs would and could easily be adapted to 3D objects from the 2D objects that they are. Created by the Kuna, now spelled Guna Indians of mostly Panama, these colorful textile items are made in cloth appliqué where design are cut through the top cloth to colorful cloths below creating patterns and amazing designs. One look that night of this gift made me realize this was a style I had to try out. So I did.

          No sooner had I finished it and posted a photo of it  on Facebook that a friend offered to buy it. I discovered, though, that these designs are fiendish in their creation. 

      The old, "traditional" molas had either a black or deep burgundy top cloth layer. That makes sense as it allows the colors that show through appear brighter and more colorful. So, I too decided that my items would start off being black or deep burgundy. I even went to Lowe's with a burgundy mola to get an exact match of the color! 

  However, I soon discovered that many of the bright colors, the reds, oranges, yellows and even some greens and purple were transparent or semi-transparent and needed to be painted twice or even three times to be clearly seen.

   To proceed you had to paint the wood a base color, then sand it as the paint raised the grain of the wood, then  sketch your design in pencil and then, and only then begin to paint in the sketched lines with white or cream colored paint. That ensured the reds, oranges, yellows and other transparent colors would show. Lines of white or cream needed to be painted where transparent colors would be. The other challenge was taking two dimensional designs and putting them on a three dimensional object. 

            The birdhouse at the right below has designs on both sides of the roof, the bottom, the spout as well as the four sides. You try and hope that the design will create a cohesive whole. And trust me there  is no guarantee. The PARROT BIRDHOUSE was first tried as a photo frame to test for the procedure, laying down of colors and design. That was easy. Then to take that design and put it on a wooden watering can birdhouse was probably madness but something I just had to try.

            As you see many of the elements of the frame are now on the birdhouse. The parrot is on the front and back around the hole for birds, the floral motif on the left of the frame is used on the front top, back of bottom of the watering can creating a cohesive design despite the fact it is 3D now. I even used the same colors. Is this successful? I don't know, you judge. However, what this suggests is that there are ideas out there everywhere; we only need to know where to look and when we look analyze how else they might be used. I am going ahead full steam with more mola designs using this motif because I enjoy  the  challenge, am happy that I can use all the colors I love and hope that others will like them too. 

   To me, today has become very boring. All you see is white, grey, black in cars and now even homes and what people wear. The United States has to be one of the worst in the way of color use. It's as if people are afraid of color. Where are the vermillion, the white pink & black cars, brilliant blues and enchanting reds I remember of my childhood? 

    Here are other examples of things I have created using the mola style.A metal roofed birdhouse with three front opening with roosts in its wood base. Again the sides, front and back plus bottom are decorated with mola inspired designs. I used a  paper marché cactus in a mola pot for this cactus pot. The pot is painted with the traditional burgundy and the paper cactus is painted to look like the real thing. No watering required. The finishing touch was adding real sand at the cactus base. A small eagle faced but bird top and both sides 3" x 3" x 3" box decorated on all sides in a mola design. The same technique for  all these items is  required. Whenever a transparent color is to be used you must paint a white base line first, then add the color. And even that is no  guarantee that it will work on the first round of color. Another interesting wrinkle is to add puffy fabric paints. They leave a little texture and are washable when wet with water just like acrylics. To keep all colors fresh and like new for a long time, each item is painted with an outdoor satin Varathane varnish.

            Good luck!

 

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!