Tuesday, February 08, 2011

5th Year Anniversary of "Little Hokum Rag"

"The Creature" painting, 2006, by Amy Crehore

On Feb. 18th, it will be Little Hokum Rag's 5th year anniversary. I plan to do some things to celebrate. Stayed tuned for another contest to win art. Meanwhile, have a look at my archives. For instance, here's a very happy memory from the summer of 2006, Santa Monica, CA:
If you don't see my archives to the right of this post, please access my archives by clicking on banner at top of page and going to home page.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Year of the Cat and Year of the Rabbit

Nip-Cat ukulele headstock image by Amy Crehore
Rabbit Foot Blues 1920s image- song by Blind Lemon Jefferson
You can still buy 2011 calendar with free CD at Bluesimages

"The Chinese word for rabbit is 'mao', which sounds like 'meo' in Vietnamese, where it means cat."

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Fascinating Human Forms

Sculpture by Li Xiaofeng
Sculpture by Anders Krisár

Artist Li Xiaofeng likes to buy shards of broken porcelain recovered from ancient archeological digs for his sculptures. There is an interesting article about him with more images at Yatzer.

At Yatzer, I also read about a new book called "Doppelganger, Images of the Human Being" by Gestalten which features artists who are interested in the human form, like Anders Krisar. His woven human torso is shown above.
Article plus more images: LINK on Yatzer
Thanks, Lori, at Automatism

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Dali Loved Harpo Marx


Top photo shows a harp with barb-wire strings that Dali gave to Harpo Marx as a gift. In 1937, Dali wrote a surreal screenplay, Giraffes on Horseback Salads (LINK), for the Marx Brothers. It never got produced. The drawing "Surrealist Gondola Above Burning Bicycles" is connected with that script. READ a fascinating article about Dali's love for Harpo and see more pictures at :


Friday, January 28, 2011

Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

Via Boingboing comes this beautiful collection of worn down and weathered children's playground folk art (from Russia with love) : LINK
Scroll and pick your favorite.

Dyed Potato Starch Grains Produced This Color

"Auguste and Louis Lumière, inventors of the motion picture camera, also invented autochromes in 1904. The process used a screen of tiny potato starch grains dyed orange-red, green and violet. Dusted onto a glass plate, the dyed grains were covered with a layer of sensitive panchromatic silver bromide emulsion. As light entered the camera, it was filtered by the dyed grains before it reached the emulsion. While the exposure time was very long, the plate could be processed easily by a photographer familiar with standard darkroom procedures. The result was a unique, realistic, positive color image on glass that required no further printing." Check out Autochromes set on the George Eastman House flickr.
(Thanks, Mr. Powell)