Today

Woke early. Need an equally early breakfast today. Taking Sheila to Gold’s Gym, then I head over to my 1st showing with Creative Arts Society since 2010 w/2 paintings. If I can head back soon enough to Gold’s Gym I might be able to catch a new SilverSneakers Stability class there & try it out. After, we make a return trip to Olive Garden after several years lapse for their special annual Veterans menu-offering for Veterans Day. With my new post-surgeries appetite, I’ll especially appreciate their bottomless soup and salad option ❤️ Then another stop, this time Walgreens, and finally home, to batten down for the afternoon’s freeze-bringing temps & winds! Maybe a little painting, hopefully a little walking, even if at the fitness center – we’ll see 😊

Yesterday

Listening to the quiet outside this morning, that stilled lull when opposing winds have equalized. The north wind will win we think later today. Meanwhile, Sheila and I leisurely drove ourselves to near exhaustion yesterday, ie, we were ready-ready for bedtime, lol!

(chores, art, creativity)
Today’s Yesterday in Pictures shows but a bit of it, I just didn’t think to snap pics of all the food samples at Central Market (too busy eating, lol!) Or much of anything til I was back home early afternoon for a full day at home.

I did prep final prep of my paintings for a new Creative Arts Society show I’m delivering to tomorrow morning. Test drove my new 1/4 oval mop on my seemingly perennially in-progress painting (which is okay, it’s still exploring and expressing ❤️) and finally tested out my new art projector with my newly arrived hdmi adapter.

I set everything up exactly as described, rechecked everything, and – with mini instruction manual in hand – went through the process. Several times. Many times. No signal. Unplugged and replugged and retried. Same result. I finally acknowledged it wasn’t gonna happen, packed everything back up, and sadly set up to send it back.

The newly arrived hdmi adapter I decided to keep, since it’s likely I’ll need it again for something else. I painted a bit with the last of good light, and called it a night. Time enough for a much needed hot bath, set the dishwasher to do its charm, and gave myself permission for a few minutes reading.

(reading / absorbing Notan)
Notan, is still my reading-in-progress, and am through chapter 1, and ready to start reading (doing?) the design exercises projected to awaken my (in my words) inner Notan 😊

I am very much enjoying the image examples and thesis, but beginning to disagree that there’s a total separation of what primitive people created – like for ceremonies, and designs in modern life – like razor blades.

That so-called primitive folks had a tighter connection to nature, and thus primal design impulse, in general, yes. That today there’s so much more freedom of how and what to design one must “work harder” and more consciously about creating a “gestalt”, a feeling, in effect a design, again yes. That today’s designs, though because utilitarian for (usually) money making purposes, are inferior to designs early people created for ceremonies, because they weren’t utilitarian, seems off, even if just a bit, I think.

My sense is, early people’s ceremonies, even if invested with more awe and appreciation for the forces of nature and fate around them then we folks today, with concerns for (example) shaving (and thus designs of blades for shaving that work and hold up), probably felt their ceremonies were quite utilitarian to them, ie, “designed to be useful or practical rather than attractive” – attract a good harvest, ward off evil spirits, insure a good reception in the afterlife.

Though, my true sense is, a true contemporary designer, like the ceremony designer of times past, will just as often create as attractive a design as practical that also gets the job done.

Why?

One, because nature seems to be repetitive in it’s formation-inclinations so to speak, from snow flakes and arteries in lungs, to diamonds and branches in trees, from eyes that see to spirals of galaxies.

And two, because attractive designs sell. They sell products. They sell feelings to be held close by to remind us of those same feelings each time we see those products.

Making something that makes us feel good, long term, vs punitively addictive and short term, is, I believe, part of what art is about.

Is it designed to be useful vs attractive?

Or —

Are positive emotional experiences and states of mind useful?

Are positive emotional experiences attractive?

Yes. And yes. 💕

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My Latest Blog Posts

• Update Using Spectrafix Non-Toxic Fixative Spray for Watercolors (The Earth is a Garden & Violet Blooms Cluster Varied Background) 02.22.20February 22, 2020
  “Now, is it just me (cause I just noticed this after I shot this pic, late yesterday evening at last light) that there two very friendly floral “spirits” facing / embracing each other as they come out of the earth-like sphere?”
• Adan’s Fine Art America Images # 7 – The Seine And Quay Beside Notre Dame, Autumn (Paris), Photography circa 2012February 21, 2020
  From archival prints to yoga mats and coffee mugs, see it all here – https://felipeadan-lerma.pixels.com/featured/the-seine-and-quay-beside-notre-dame-autumn-felipe-adan-lerma.html
• Adan’s Fine Art America Images # 6 – A Spray of Wild Onions, Photography circa 2001February 20, 2020
  From archival prints to yoga mats and coffee mugs, see it all here – https://fineartamerica.com/featured/a-spray-of-wild-onions-felipe-adan-lerma.html
• Adan’s Fine Art America Images # 5 – Place Saint Michel Paris, Photography circa 2012February 19, 2020
  From archival prints to yoga mats and coffee mugs, see it all here – https://felipeadan-lerma.pixels.com/featured/place-saint-michel-felipe-adan-lerma.html .
• Painting Update – My Lost Edges and Masking Fluid Ideas 02.18.20February 18, 2020
  This weekend, I reblogged two really interesting articles on the aesthetic or idea of employing lost edges, where the boundaries of given recognizable objects meld into the color space around it (side plane, background, etc). I’d already haphazardly begun working with the idea, wondering if I was off-base to even be considering it, when I … Read more
• Painting Looser III: Chasing the Lost … and Found Edge via Caroline Buchanan WatercolorsFebruary 16, 2020
  “Lost and found edges normally don’t just happen. You must plan. And you must use restraint. It is MUCH EASIER to complete an edge than to lose and find it.”
• The Power of Understatement (Lost Edges) via Dianne Mize Studio Feb 2020February 16, 2020
  “In the 1960's I attended an art show in which hung a huge mural size painting showing as its content the total of three words: "Say Everything Completely". I rebelled against that message then and I bristle at it now. The reason is that in my work, a part of my personal aesthetic is understatement.”

Thanks so much everyone! 😊

Adan

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