Winter stays center stage
The winter of ’14 has been the coldest in recent memory. Lake Erie remains frozen, as can be seen in this recent photo from my bedroom balcony. Take cheer! Summer will return and transform the lake into scenes like this one:
Poem: On and on played they
In the corner of the ruined room, she was crying, frightened of herself and angry at us. ‘Freedom is full of monsters. Just get out.’ I ran to summer in the next room, where the Goes Orchestral band members, led by the red-haired midget on saxophone, made intricate, drug-induced patterns on the stage. On and
In the studio 1/26/214
Considering today is Keith’s birthday, it’s fitting to be working on paintings for which he posed. Both paintings are almost finished. My wife laughs when I say this because I am notorious for reworking ‘finished’ paintings. I’m liable to pick up a finished work at any time and start in if I see something that
Awakenings
Do you remember your first encounters with great art? I vividly recall my introduction to certain artists–life-changing discoveries that revolutionized my views about art. The composer Berlioz recalled his introduction to Shakespeare this way: “Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me like a thunderbolt. The lightning flash of that sublime discovery opened before me at
Main Street x2
Today I worked on these paintings. Both are titled ‘Main Street.’ Each is taken from a one-block area of–you guessed it–Main Street in our small town. #1 (bottom painting) might end up being called ‘Antique Shop,’ or some-such. While not identical, both are roughly the same size. As you can see from the photograph, both
Lunch at the Cleveland Museum of Art
Due to the bad weather, the usually crowded Cleveland Museum of Art cafeteria was practically deserted today. The fare isn’t good enough to fight jostling lines, but today’s peace made the none-too-good food perfectly acceptable. Especially hungry, my designer salad was delicious, piled delightfully high with anchovies and blue cheese. After lunch, I did my
Lunch with my daughter
What could be better than lingering over lunch with a beautiful young lady? My daughter Jane and I had lunch in a cozy restaurant near the Baldwin Wallace campus. Jane started her second semester there this week. Over Philly-cheese steaks and fries, she described her courses for the semester: religion, philosophy, psychology (taught by her
New computers
For Christmas, my son and I built new computers. For ease of maintenance, both computers have the same specs. We used Haswell-type motherboards (Asus Z87-A) and, of course, Intel processors–Core i5 4670 (4670K for my son). I’ve had good results with Asus products in the past, and I love my Nexus 7 tablet (Google brand