Yarn Bombs Away!

Found a terrific yarn bombing the other day! Don't know who is responsible, but it is fantastic. Great colours and mix of textures and materials.  It's in Basil Grover Park at Commissioner's and Wharncliffe in London, ON.

The really great thing about this particular yarn bombing is its high visibility. We first noticed it driving on Commisioners Road east toward Wharncliffe.  We could see it from the road, and when we happened to get stopped at the light, just made the whole thing more enjoyable. Most yarn bombs I've seen in the city tend to be small intimate encounters, but the scale of this one really worked for me.

And after the last post with the "solar tree", this is a much more wonderful artistic expression.

Enjoy!

Solar Tree

The solar panel tree

I know, I know, I have MANY opinions, but this is one thing that really gets me going.

On Wellington Road in London Ontario, there is this , well lets call it what it is, .. blight on the visual landscape.... It's just the ugliest possible thing imaginable set right out there, "welcoming" visitors to our fair city. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea. As a concept, it's great. Somewhere though between design and execution, someone or more likely some committee, really failed to consider how it would actually look. The idea is that of a tree.. (we are the forest city), that collects solar power and sustains the information centre. Great concept, brilliant even, if you consider it as a conceptual public art piece. Just like leaves collect sunlight to convert into chlorophyll, to sustain the tree, this tree collects energy. Metaphorically, it's beautiful.

Why then is it so damn ugly?

Seriously, it's as if they had no one with any artistic sense at all involved with this project. The solar panels look like they are just stuck on top of the leaves with no concern if the leaves are even big enough to hold them. And really couldn't they have been recessed into the leaves, so that they were flush? Even that would have improved the appearance. The edges of the panels are silver, couldn't they have been painted to match the tree? Again, that could have helped make it look less "stuck on".  The panels just look like they don't fit. I realize that the ideal solution, making them leaf shaped must be either impractical or prohibitively expensive, but surely they could have applied some principle of design to improve it.

I don't know, it just gets me going every time I drive by it.

Love the concept, hate the finished product!

Dragonfly

I've been playing around with some old watch parts, springs and the epoxy/rice paper/wire stuff. Here are the results. Dragonflies! Defininately fun to make, and I like the way they've turned out. I'm going to post them to my etsy site very soon.

Still Trying to Tame the Beast

So it still seems like  I am more than a little buried in stuff to do. I'm trying to sort it out, but there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day. But then, there's the old axiom work expands to fill the time allowed. Very true. It's like a living organism. So today, well actually last night, I made a list of just the things that I need to accomplish today. Just today... don't worry about the rest. Just get through today's list. I can do it. So far I'm on item 3... this blog. I'll get there. Breathe deep Marijo, breathe deep.....

This is a cross post from  http://ofpaintandpixels.blogspot.com/

What could be better

Sitting on the deck with the dogs. Gracie wants to play frisbee and Emma is happy just to curl up. Nice!

Funny how things change

The day started out ok, but then by the end of the day, everything has shifted dramatically.  This whole year has been that way. Just when you feel like you've finally got a handle on things.... whoops there goes the rug, right from under you. Sometimes I am amazed at how we figure out how to deal with things.

One of my weird little ideas...

Today, I made a little something for a friend of mine for Christmas. He too is an artist. He recently got a computer and a copy of Painter, and so I'm hoping will do some experimentation with it. In any case, I thought I'd mod a flash drive for him for Christmas. So I found a small drive and set about tearing apart an old paint brush. It took a bit of effort and a flat screwdriver to get the bristles out without wrecking the ferrule. I kinda had to work on prying open the ferrule and flattening out the crimping. Eventually (only a couple of swear words later) I managed to get it. Then wth some pliers and a bit of wrestling, I managed to pull out the bristles. There was a silicone casing on the flash drive which I cut off with a knife and then jammed it into the ferrule, just far enough, so that the cap can still fit on. I had to add a bit of glue to the handle where the ferrule joins, because of all my pushing and tugging I guess I loosened it a bit. It was an old brush after all. Then I took my pliers and crimped the ferrule back down around the drive, to keep it in there. I used my dremel, to even out some of the metal (cap on the drive.. to make sure no dust or crap got in). I think it's not too bad so far. I still want to clean it up a bit, but there's the idea.