My Blog

I love my iPhone!

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 18:39:50 -0700

I've had it for a year now and it's my constant companion - like carrying a little computer at all times. News, email, maps and a phone, too. It takes great pictures of my work and anything else that happens . .
What an elegant, ingenious invention.
It seems only yesterday that I struggled with my provider, Winternet, in Minneapolis, to establish an account for email. They were not user friendly, everything had to be done in code. Took me 2 days. Hardly anyone had heard of the World Wide Web. My friend Carolyn and I felt like pioneers - we kept in touch through email but didn't know anyone else who was online, except some kids.

Oh, if only other parts of our lives were that innovative. Like transportation, for instance.

I'm looking forward to doing a combination of computer prints and monoprints this fall. Another way to use technology.

Stephen Fry

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:15:43 -0700

Stephen Fry, the Renaissance man (Author, actor, wildlife preservationist and so much more) wrote a comment! I feel deeply honored and terribly pleased. Thank you, Stephen!  Check out his website here

Marching to Canessa

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:51:42 -0700

Here is a preliminary copy of the press release:

cyber prints

Thu, 1 May 2008 08:26:21 -0700

Here are a couple of the new computer-generated prints. They are printed on velvety watercolor paper and the reproduction quality is AMAZING!

A new medium.

Tomorrow I’m off to LA, to visit LACMA! Hope to see great art especially some of those large Hockneys.

Lots going on

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:46:22 -0700

I’m desperately working on my 6 panel red/white and black painting. Stopped by the woodworking shop today to commission a frame with 6 compartments. I’m not sure the piece will be any good.
Shipped 2 of my old children’s books ( I did the illustrations) off to my daughter Julie. They are selling online for about $100!

Well, darlings! I wish someone would pay me now . .

Going off to printmaking class. I’m doing a combination of monotype/photoshop. I think one of these is a winner!

working

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:43:44 -0700

Working hard to produce good pieces for upcoming shows: One at city hall and the other a bi-yearly juried exhibition of East Bay art. 
At right is a monotype made in collaboration with Kathy Alma Peterson, my poet friend.

And just for fun, here is
Dino, the Italian poodle,
enjoying the spring sun.

the house where I was born

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:01:18 -0700

It stands five stories high, on a busy street in a midsize town in Austria. Its windows look out on the Danube and the lovely, green mountains that lie to the north.

For most of its existence it has been a hotel. It was a hotel when my grandfather bought it, after a long career as a builder in Vienna. He thought it might be a good place in which to retire. Eventually my parents took over the management of the hotel. I grew up within its three feet thick walls.

At night, lying in bed, I looked up at the elegantly vaulted ceiling and imagined the previous occupants of the space. In the 19th century a grand ballroom took up the entire floor and I almost could see the lights, the dancers in their finery and hear the strains of waltzes by Lanner or Strauss.

Even in the 18th and 17th centuries the building functioned as an inn, as a place to shelter weary travellers. In those times it was tucked behind the walls that circled the city in an effort to keep out marauders and other enemies.

Mozart walked the cobbled streets of the neighborhood and composed a symphony ( the 'Linz", in 1783 ) in a house just three blocks away. Johannes Kepler, the famous astronomer, devised his third Law of the Heavens here in 1629. According to local legend, while walking along the bank of the river, watching freight and barrels being unloaded from the ships lined up in the harbor.

Before it became an inn, in the Middle Ages, the house was said to have been a monastery. Sometimes as a child I thought of monks floating through the hallways, with hoods pulled low over their faces and ghostly voices rising in song.

Long before that, Roman soldiers built fortifications here, to guard their garrisons against the germanic tribes to the north. My father found a Roman coin in the cellar and the beginning of a tunnel that once led under the river to the far shore.

People have lived on this spot, in this place, since prehistoric times.

Walking the cobbled streets around the house, it is not hard to imagine oneself back in the 17th or 18th century. Most of the buildings date back to that time and the beautiful Medieval or Renaissance facades have been lovingly preserved. Some of the buildings that had been destroyed by bombs during the Second World War were completely rebuilt to reflect their former glory.

The Danube flows by on its way to the Black Sea. At times shrouded by fog, at times providing summertime entertainment for generations and generations of children growing up along its shore, and at times wreaking devastation by overflowing its banks.

Life goes on.

Now the hotel rooms have been turned into apartments. And in the place where once my parents ran a thriving restaurant and wine bar, a pizza restaurant is advertising its specials.

Somewhere in the bowels of City Hall there is a very large book. It contains a written record, from the Middle Ages forward, of all the people who were stewards of this house and of all the houses around it. My name, along with the names of other members of my family is in this book.

I am part of history, forever linked to the house where I was born.

4/17/08

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:27:36 -0700

Thursday, April 17, 2008
On this beautiful spring day, with temperatures nearing eighty, I’m working on several projects: updating my veryfineart.com website, adding to my new website on .mac, finishing/tweaking a painting of a woman sitting on a couch and, finally, trying to balance a 6 panel red/white/black abstract painting. Too much really! But sometimes I find it helps not to get too anxious about any one project and to jump from one thing to the next. I’ll publish whatever works out.