Read about the photographer Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky and see more of his pictures on the Kuroisitias blog. He used a 3 color technique in which the image is exposed very slowly for each color. The pictures are of people in garments of the time. Rich people, poor people, people with hats. Lot of hats. There are interesting backgrounds along with the rich costumes. I love the red orange shade and texture of what I guess is a bridge. The lady below is just stunning.
I built this castle for a gal who is leaving the company to go teach. In a past conversation Mary had wished she had cube walls around her desk but the powers that be wouldn't give her any. On her last day, today, I made her a portable cube shaped like a castle. It was part of the conversation. Here's Mary with her castle cube.
Here's a shot with out the Shield of Knowledge.
The whole thing is cardboard, duct tape, paint and hot melt glue. It took a couple of hours to build. It's completely portable and folds up for easy travel or storage.
I finally scanned in the photo's that I took at the display back in 1986. I read on the Sogetsu School website that the show was part of a Walker Art Center program called Tokyo: Form And Spirit. I remember going to that show but I didn't find any pictures. I've posted more pictures of the Ikebana display in a Flickr set here. That's the poster above. Dayton Hudson Department Store used their 8th floor auditorium for a variety of events. The Rolling Stones appeared there in the 1960's. We saw a Hans Christian Anderson display up there in the 1980's. They used to have a Christmas display each year. Santa and his village. I knew a guy who picked up all the displays and had them in his shop for years. I wonder what happened to them.
Ikebana is a Japanese style of flower arranging. It's been around for centuries. Hiroshi Teshigahara was an art student and film maker. Woman In The Dunes and Antonio Gaudi are the only two of his films that I've seen. His father was the Grand Master and Founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana back in 1927. Hiroshi made films and created sculpture. He became the school's Grand Master after his father retired. Hiroshi's daughter Akane runs the school since her father died in 2001.
Because an old friend stirred up my interest in architecture I learned about Antonio Gaudi. I was immediately drawn to him and read several books on him. He didn't build a lot of buildings in his native Catalonia but the few he did build have become known the world over. People travel to see them. Since I'm prefectly happy with a picture, and wanted to spend my travel dollars on stuff I can play with, I never went to see them even though the thought had crossed my mind more than once back in the 1980's. Gaudi's work is like nothing you'll ever see anywhere else. He's got a unique style that evolved from his appreciation of nature, his interest in foreign art and architecture, and his strict Catholic faith. He was one of those guys, Frank Lloyd Wright was the same, who could take his influences, meld them together, build on them, and pour out something breathtaking. Both men where heavily influenced with forms and shapes found in nature but their styles produced a totally different type of work. They both liked a lot of decoration and felt the surfaces of their buildings were a fine canvas. There's plenty of places on the internet that you can go to see the works of these men. If you're interested in reading more about them, Google their asses and see what pops up.
Hiroshi Teshigahara is a Japanese artist and film maker. He's probably most famous for his 1964 film The Woman In The Dunes. It got him nominated for a best directing Oscar. I'd seen it in the 1970's at some theater or film society showing. I can't remember. This was back before home video and you were forced to go out and mingle with the masses. During the 1980's I saw two things that Teshigahara did. One was his 1984 film Antonio Gaudi and the other was his display of Ikebana at the old Dayton's department store auditorium. I have some pictures of the Ikebana display that I will scan in and post soon.
Antonio Gaudi appeared on dvd in 1999 from Image and eventually went out of print. I picked up a copy around 2000 and watched it a couple of times. In 2008 Criterion put the movie out in a nice 2 disc set. Criterion puts a lot of effort into the movies they release and they cost a bit more than a popular movie. Even discounting the $40 list price the price isn't always that great. The price for the Criterion set is currently 23 bucks on Amazon and it's about 33 on Criterion's site. Here are the features as listed on the Criterion web page:
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET
A couple of days back I was picking through the dvds at the local library and there was the Criterion set waiting for me to take it home. Now I can check out the extra material. Right after the movie, which did look great. I did enjoy looking at the extras. I liked the 1959 footage of Teshigahara's first trip to Spain. He travelled with his father and they visited Dali. Visions Of Space is a 2003 BBC program hosted by art critic Robert Hughes. Hughes mixes images of Gaudi's work with a bit of Spanish history, highlights of the life of God's Architect, along with personal feelings and reminisces. I found it very entertaining. The BBC short by Ken Russell was a nice short overview of Gaudi's life but the images are sadly in B&W. Here's Part 1 and Part 2 on YouTube. The short on the sculpture of Teshigahara senior is interesting enough but his work isn't something I warmed to. The interview with Arata Isozaki was also worth looking at. All in all a nice set. Still not sure I need one but glad to have seen it.
I Netflix'd the two disc set of Stephen Fry In America the other day and really enjoyed them. I'd been a fan of Fry's since the late 1980's when PBS ran episodes of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie and The Black Adder. The Laurie is of course the most delightful Hugh. The two starred in the BBC series Jeeves And Wooster. I find them all highly entertaining but I grew up on a steady diet of British programming. I should get those discs out to watch sometimes soon. Back to Stephen Fry In America. It's a six episode series that aired in 2008. Stephen travels around to every state in the Union. I know people who have been to many of the 50 states and I've driven across and stopped at quite a few myself. I don't know that I know anyone who has been to all 50 states. Stephen drives a London Taxi and he stops along the way to visit with people or look at some interesting place. There's an entertaining stream of commentary about where he's going and what he's seeing. There are plenty of interviews with people, famous and not, and lots of great scenery to look at. Stephen even gets a haircut. You can watch it on YouTube. Here's the second episode, which I think is the one with the haircut. That episodes YouTube page should lead you to the rest. I enjoyed them and would watch them again sometime.
Here's the entrance to the Yoshiwara Quarter outside Edo. It's sometime in the 1800's. The guards of the quarter have found a dead man floating in the moat.
The quarter has high walls and a moat to keep the girls in and trouble out. That moat turns out to be a handy place to dump a body. That's why the guards keep a ladder handy. I built the thing on 6 32by32 baseplates. That way I can move it.
You can see more pictures at Flickr or MOCpages. The idea for this came from the movie Sakuran. Mike brought a copy to Friday Night Movies night. I honestly haven't captured that movies amazing colors but it inspired me to build this over the next 6 weeks. A lot of little things took a while to figure out. I wanted to use the printed wall pieces. I like them, they add a lot to a scene. Since they are 6 studs wide I needed to work out how many to use and where they go in relation to the edges of the 6 modules.
I really wanted to make the main brothel a red and black building. The balcony railing was the first think I figured out. I like the way the main bedroom turned out. I started thinking that was going to be the main oiran's room but it now I think it's the main room of the couple that own the place. They don't look too nice.
I am excited to see new HP sets coming and it got me interested in making some more HP works. I started wanting to make some bookends and it morphed into this. There are 29 minifigs and that barely makes a dent in the cast. You can see more pictures of some of the scenes at my Flickr photostream or on MOCpages.
I just love this comic cover. Soon as I saw it I wanted to keep a copy for later revisiting. I say that but I have so many things like this that I never get back to. Burn them onto dvdr's and forget about them. Maybe when I retire. The cover might be the best thing about the book. I sure like that pose and the creepy skull guy. I'd probably have bought that comic if I had seen it on a newstand but I wasn't around in 1952 to pick it up. It's an Avon Comic. They broke into the publishing world in 1941 and for a while they published a lot of comic books. I'd never seen a copy of City of the Living Dead for sale but it wasn't something I was looking for either. It doesn't have a number and looks like it was a one shot from the little mention on the internet. I don't know where my Overtreet Priceguide is right now or I could look it up. Maybe they'd have something about it. Oh well. It'll turn up.
I found this over at the Digital Comic Museum. It's a place, like the Internet Archive, that collects public domain material and puts it out for people to download for free. The DCM only deals in comic books, old comic books, ones published before the mid-1950's. They are better organized than the IA, but you've got to register before you can download stuff. No charge, easy to do, downloads are quick. The comics are sorted by company and title. Not all runs are complete by any means but there are plenty of entertaining books to be seen. In the Avon section I found several issues of The Saint, a comic book adaptation of the Leslie Charteris crime series about my favorite globetrotting rapscallion Simon Templer. They weren't as good as the prose work but entertaining for me who has always had a soft spot for the TV series with Roger Moore. I have read many of the novels and collections of short stories and pretty much enjoyed them.
I thought the ads were fun to look at. Here's the best from the issue. The story art is really colorful and interesting to look at, even if it's not all great. The first story in the book is the strongest in art and writing. It's titled City of the Living Dead and the art's by A. C. Hollingsworth. I don't know who wrote it. A group of archologists travel to Mexico, and against the advice of the locals, they go to a dangerous and forbidden city populated by the living dead. I know when I hear about that sort of place I immediately want to rush over and see what's up. Lots of people die. Like that's a big surprise. The stories are about average for a horror comic, certainly not EC quality but readable. There are three more stories and a two page prose story. It's a good reason to stop in at the Digital Comic Museum and take a look around. They have lots of other entertaining books to look at. Lots of horror, science fiction, crime, western, humor and romance comics to pick from. Here's the Hollingworth splash page and the one to the witches story. That's some weird ass shit, huh.
Sperhauk sent me a link to a video over on YouTube. It's by some computer guy who's taken the ships and sets from the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson TV show Fireball XL5, created CGI models of them, and then added some music to create a tribute to the original show. The video is in color and it's rather cool. Fun to watch. I like the headquarter building, all tall with wings, like a totem pole.
The 1962 show was in black and white and puppets were the actors. Not an attractive bunch let me tell you. And the eyebrows, man, they are something. I used to watch this show. I can't remember a thing about it. There were 39 episodes and you can buy them on dvd. The series was about a ship, the Fireball XL5, which was commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of World Space Patrol. That's their head quarters below with the XL5 ready to blast off to some adventure on a different planet each week.
The Anderson's did a lot of that sort of show under the Supermarionation brand. Thunderbirds, SuperCar, Joe 90 and later UFO with real people. I watched most of them when they were new to the world and haven't really wanted to go back and see them again even though I have become somewhat nostalgic about TV from the 50's and 60's.