Saturday, August 27, 2011
endless tide pools
mono lake, on the eastern sierra
caves and beach house ruins at crystal cove
maguey flowers & Tom finds some pickleweek, gooseneck barnacles
some big sea hares!
and did you know that this creature is an anemone?
not, as I had always thought, an "anenome".
right. I know. I feel like I've been saying "liberry" all these years.
related: capybaras & barnacle geese, cacti, the snout, the obliging cephalopod, (endless pools), august moon
Friday, August 26, 2011
firmament
this will appear along with two other images as part of an article on Mormon mysticism in the next Sunstone magazine.
related: dream mine, 3 grand keys
Thursday, August 04, 2011
wide conqueror
the GIANT robots & dinosaurs at this Tokyo tire park
there's Dr. Mars J. Läns’ Earth Tire Foundation
(Check out Mars & Rita in the studio, tricking out a shopping cart, and posing with mayors and senators.)
Inspiration Green (a beautiful and killer site!) has a page cataloging all kinds of uses for tires in art and design. Here's just a little selection.
And, finally, there's Go Play!’s fabulous open-source playground movement. If you like this, you may also want to visit Arcady's playscapes blog.
So by the time I finally found the celebrated Ray’s Tire Exchange here in town (under the Wells Avenue overpass) I already had a general idea of what I wanted to do. I was thinking of something a 40 lb kid could bounce and climb on, but also crawl under/through. Something that might get them dirty, but not that they were going to cut or strangle themselves on. Also, if I could make it look like some kind of monster, all the better.
While I was in getting the tires, Ash and Tom did a good job waiting patiently in the truck--partly because I told them this was about building something fun, and I think partly because it was an unfamiliar part of town, where they felt more inclined to sit tight than to get out and wander. Sure enough, Ray’s had heaps of them, and the perfect “whatever. over there’s the scrap pile. help yourself” attitude.
We took home 6 tires and, for now, this is what we came up with. I worked a few old bike tires into it too and, aside from those, there was no sawing or chopping of rubber or steel belts here. But if you’re looking for encouragement in this direction, here's a short, surprisingly soothing video about how to cut up tires for stuff like this.
Of course there's no guarantee that anything you make will stay that interesting for very long, especially when there's hanging laundry to play in; it gets hard to compete.
related: clothesline, toys, edward burtynsky
Monday, August 01, 2011
roundup: earwigs, sabotage
Actually, maybe I should back up here and begin by revisiting some stories I’ve been neglecting for the last couple years.
First of all, remember, Muntadhar al-Zaidi? The Iraqi journalist who put the shoes back into sabotage in Dec. 2008? After a 90 minute trial, he was sentenced to 3 years in prison, then released for good behavior after 9 months. Beatings. Routine torture. He’s been out for a couple years now. There’s even a play about it all that opened last month.
On the other hand, nobody’s staged any plays about Tim DeChrisotpher, unless you count the farce of a federal trial that pronounced his two year sentence and $10,000 fine last week, or the protests, demonstrations, and zip-tie sit-ins that happened in response. First of all, if you only read one thing about DeChristopher’s actions, motives, trial, and sentencing, read his official statement from his sentencing last Tuesday. It’s not short, but it’s one of the most honest, articulate, badass and polite things I’ve ever read on civil disobedience and the US legal system, our energy economy, environmental justice, and the ethical and civic imperatives of climate change.
But over the last month, some of the best coverage of the story has been, probably not surprisingly, from the Salt Lake Tribune. For starters, Brandon Loomis gives a very nice summary of things here. They ran a couple short letters from locals Terry TempestWilliams and Scott Carrier. There’s a great piece from Bill McKibben. And Paul Rolly’s column pretty well nails the hypocrisy and inconsistency of Utah’s selective enforcement of federal law when it comes to land use in the state.
Looks like they’re making a documentary. Here’s a trailer.
Bidder 70 from Gage & Gage Productions on Vimeo.