Siege - Day 75

Saturday!  And pretty weather.

Oh, and here finally is the color version of that birthday certificate that took all those days.  Now in a gold frame, trucking its way westward toward the birthday party.  Be safe!

copyright Clare Floyd DeVries

Siege - Days 69-74

I love the typo-title of my last post!  It was not, however, actually Day 64068... it just felt like it.

Since then?

Well, my companion in coronavirus-safety is now back at the official office.  Although doing as much as personally possible to stay safe, some of his clients - first responders! - are requiring in-person meetings and not social distancing or wearing masks or taking this health threat at all seriously.  One Head of Response to Epidemics says that since it's mostly those folks catching it and he's a healthy not-old white guy he's not worried.

So that's good.

(Insert horrified face emoji here... maybe that face from The Scream?  Or this innocent below - This is How I feel All the Forking Time lately.  The world has gone mad.)

public domain image of me, being shocked, all the time

If Texas survives this plague I swear it will only be because of the heat of our weather saved us in spite of ourselves.

Meanwhile the Texas sun is ripening my tomatoes.  We've eaten, so far: 3 lovely ripe cherry tomatoes and 1 big tomato! (Okay, slightly bigger than ping pong ball sized.  Delicious.)

I've been continuing with writing and finishing up that colored birthday map and listening to Masterclasses... right now I'm listening to director Ron Howard.  

Every theater director should listen to Ron Howard's segments on collaboration.  Especially toward the beginning of "Collaboration Part I" where he explains the proper relationship between the director-as-decider and the creative team - which in film includes the director of photography (who does lighting too) and the production designer and composer etc.  I'm paraphrasing here, but it amounts to the director knowing the effect they want, then freeing the design team to make suggestions that get really listened to.  A collaborative director multiplies their imagination and problem solving abilities.  And - my favorite part! - the director should strongly retain their roll of ultimate chooser and decider... because that frees the designers to spitball and make crazy suggestions, knowing that these will be evaluated sensibly.  YES!  That freedom is worth gold.  THAT is the attitude that I, as a designer, hope for in a director.

So the Ron Howard class is great so far.  Steve Martin's was also very good - focused on standup comedy mainly, but with a lot of insight into writing too.  His comments on films like Roxanne were enlightening.  Honestly, I haven't hit a dud class yet.

Neverending Siege? - Days 64068

The big project lately - which has shoved all others off my board as I desperately try to make a deadline - is a big hand drawn and colored birthday certificate.

(I just hope Blogger will let me upload this... it's been cranky and difficult lately... which is why that last post had no illustration.)

Here goes...

So far so good - the photo loaded to the page, we'll see if it loads to the website.

What you should see is the B&W under-drawing.

Otherwise... Well, there hasn't really been any otherwise, just this for the last week.  

Though we did risk a barbeque run yesterday - take out, of course.  The BBQ was very tasty, but we won't be going back to that BBQ joint again until the virus situation calms down.  They just didn't have their act together.  I was one of only two people out of twelve wearing a mask correctly (the bartender had hers protecting her chin and eight had no mask at all).  There was some space between people, but in spite of ordering and paying ahead by phone, I still had to wait a long time in line (with the unmasked lady who said she was going to spread word of their food - and virus possibly - when she went home to Nashville).  And I still had to use their grubby pen to sign my receipt, so what was the point?  And open several doors.  Just not good enough.

Frankly, I think we're in trouble here in Dallas.  (And Nashville will be shortly.)

Seriously people!  Take this pandemic seriously.  Wear a mask at least, for everyone else's sake.

Siege - Day 63

Oh, this is great!

The BBC has released a bunch of documentary photos of their sets for people to use as Zoom backgrounds... a scenic design dream!

BBC's "The Joy of Sets"  HERE.

Siege - Days 59, 60, 61, and ... wait for it... 62

Ouch.  That's a lotta days in seclusion.

Actually - and this could change without notice! - I'm feeling okay with my sequestration right now.  Texas' statewide stay-at-home order and perforce Dallas County's orders have now expired so, theoretically, it's the wild west all over again.  But prudent people - who can - are staying home anyway.

That's me.

(Though I did, daringly, eat lunch Monday at an outdoor terrace restaurant.  Great burger!  But nerve-racking.  Won't repeat anytime soon.)

So, you know, mostly hanging at home.  And okay with that.  A friend used the phrase "hermit energy" to describe this state. That's perfect.  That's what I feel.

So I'm hermiting... which turns out to be rather scholarly.  A couple architectural continuing ed. seminars.  And, as I mentioned in the last post, I signed up for those Masterclasses you've seen advertised and have been enjoying them.  First listen was architect Frank Gehry - very good, very personal and honest.  Second, and even more useful to me at this moment, was writer Neil Gaiman.  Surprisingly indepth, with good illustrations of his points using his work.   (All ones I've read before - big fan.)  There's a lot of information, including a workbook, so it's taken me a few days to get through it all.  Now I'm listening to a quite different writer, Dan Brown, whose thrillers I've read several of... who hasn't?  Completely different experience to Gaiman's, but equally earnest about helping the aspiring writer with useful suggestions.  My goal with all this is primarily to improve my writing, but I plan to listen to as many and as varied presenters as I can find time for in the next year.

Otherwise, I'm working on a huge, overly-ambitious map for an upcoming birthday...

And two ripe cherry tomatoes!

A teeny, tiny cherry tomato salad - mozzerella bocconcini, small basil leaf, teeny tiny cherry tomato

Siege - Days 57 and 58

More progress on Alice (the book not some girl).  The photographer,  Jordan Fraker, has agreed to let me use his photos in the Case Study chapter about Kitchen Dog Theater's production of Alabaster!

Woohoo!

(That's me woohooing in the photo...not.

Actually KDT Ao-Artistic Director Tina Parker as Weezy the goat.)

Alabaster at Kitchen Dog Theater - photo by Jordan Fraker

The last couple days have been filled with little concerns: research on a new computer and can-I-finally-afford-a-pen-display (not yet).  Banking.  Laundry.  Today's lunch will be yet another architectural continuing education Zoom meeting etc. etc. etc.

Siege - Days 55 and 56

An unsettled day today.  My office mate here at home is back at his official office... and it feels all wrong.

Part of this feeling is because at present a routine is comforting and my newly established routine is now scrambled.  Part, of course, because not being in lockdown is obviously riskier than being (you hope) safe at home behind the newly blue door... so I'm feeling anxious.  For no reason I hope.

Meanwhile, being unable to settle to anything major today - not even one of the stack of books I have waiting - I've been watching some of the Masterclasses I signed up for.  Right now it's architect Frank Gehry, giving a personal view of his design thinking and practice.  Very interesting!  Next I plan on listening to the whole roster of writers, including Neil Gaiman.  (Big fan.)

Siege - Days... oh heck... a lot... 52, 53, and 54?

Time passes...

The exciting news here is mainly that I'm making good progress on the Case Study chapter of my set design book - the second (and expanded) edition of Alice Through the Proscenium: more scenic set design (to be all formal).  Anyway.  Real progress on the hard, new writing part.  Smaller triumph, the front door is now blue!  

But the big excitement is that all the fantastic folk art from my last Kitchen Dog Theater show, Alabaster, is getting auctioned off starting tonight!  Our big fund-raiser for the year, so bid big!

Here's the link to ebay:  https://www.ebay.com/usr/kitchendogtheater

Siege - Days 50 and 51

Sad news in today's paper.  Not the universal sad and frightening news of the coronavirus that we all see every morning, but a particular tragic loss, the accidental death of an actor and playwright I've worked with; Donald Fowler.

There needs to be a word between "acquaintance" and "friend" to describe our kind of friendly glad-to-work-with-you-again! relationship.  I knew it would be a good show if Donnie was in the cast.  I hope he felt the same about me.  Respect and liking and some great conversations over the years... and sometimes years between conversations.  I was starting out on my set design career just as he was starting out in musical theater - we cheered each other on.  Donnie played Pirelli in the WaterTower's Sweeney Todd; I designed the set.  His Pirelli the Barber arrived riding a forklift (it was a wild version of Sweeney!).  It was Donnie, as Pirelli, who - unrehearsed, unannounced - leaped up onto a chair in Sweeney's barbershop to sing...  an unsecured chair, on a raked platform, a second story platform, right next to a pit that made it a three story drop if he fell.  Oh, and that basement pit was filled with rusty steel trusses and lighting instruments.  

The director and I froze in our seats, horrified!  I mean, Sweeney Todd is supposed to be kind of scary But Not That Scary.

 Donald Fowler's Pirelli 

For a long time WaterTower's scene shop had a habit of stapling one of Donald Fowler's head shots somewhere on a set.  Not sure how that joke started, but it when on for years.  (I placed it a couple times myself.)  

Later on Donnie wrote a musical called Creep about Jack the Ripper that was developed at several theaters around town and generated a lot of excitement.  

He knew everyone.  He was good with people.  He was talented as an actor and writer, but he also had what designers call "an eye."  Very refined taste.  I remember we had a few long conversations about merchandising - he selected and displayed goods for Stanley Korshak, for an exclusive shop called The Nest, and ultimately for the Nasher Sculpture Gallery's gift shop.  (Speaking of refined taste.)  Always a pleasure to talk with him.  

I'm upset.

Siege - Day 49

Well, morning 49 anyway...

Two things struck me so far today:

1)  This quote from T.S. Eliot from The Sacred Wood on the topic of "borrowing" (okay, stealing) from other poets.  Like most writerly advice, if you substitute the word "poet" with "artist/designer" it continues to make all kinda sense:

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

My thanks to Austin Kleon - author of Steal Like an Artist for bringing this to my attention.  I'm enjoying his weekly newsletter.

T.S. Eliot is right of course.  Especially as a young artist it is important and necessary to steal from other poets/writers/artists/designers whom you admire.  But, like a young watchmaker, it's important that you take the stolen watch apart - what are the moving parts? what makes it tick?  And - most important of all - how can you put it together better?  Perhaps not even as a clock... maybe as a calendar? a colander? a colonnade?

As an artist develops, their theft becomes more subtle and transforms (somewhere in the journey) into rivalry.  While the inspirational collection of cogs and gear wheels just grows and grows...

public domain images... messed with

2)  Tomatoes!  I have a dozen plus tomatoes growing!

Siege - Day 48

Sunday quiet...

The pace is slow around here today.  There is, actually, a little theater stuff going on, mainly getting contact information and questions answered that will help in the expansion of my set design book, Alice Through the Proscenium.  A little progress there.  Plus an out-of-the-blue idea on another book that's been simmering awhile.  (I'm going to have to develop illustrations waaaay outside my comfort zone.  Probably good for me.)

Otherwise I've been spending some time in Minecraft, developing a new community out in the far northeastern Coral Sea.  (I may call it Coralton.)  It's a series of coral towers rising from the seabed into the air, where they open up into gardens and dwelling places.  

The trick to building in coral is that coral blocks must be in contact with water on at least one face... or they die.

Dead coral turns gray.

These towers are vibrantly red, or yellow, or blue!  (Because I've hidden water inside every wall and column.  Trickier than it sounds!

Coralton's towers

You can see the lineup of Coralton's towers here: Red Coral Tower has the biggest garden and living quarters, Blue Tower is really just a sort of gazebo on the path linking it to Yellow Tower, and the Magenta Pavilion is still developing.

Below is the undersea view of Red Tower - it's Dining Hall is at left.

And here's it's upper, above-water levels... at sunset.

All that red coral is still red only because hidden water keeps it alive.  So far I haven't seen anyone else building with live coral on Reddit or You Tube or wherever...

Siege - Days 45, 46, and 47

May is here.

The weather is blustery and that makes the new 80+ degree days comfortable... you can feel summer advancing on us implacably.  And in Texas summer is serious.

Since last my writing the home-sick experience is still continuing, but maybe we have a handle on it now.  Who knows?  It has meant that our rather nice dinners etc. have dwindled a bit, down to toasted English muffins and pudding cups and the bland stuff of recovering health.  All good.  A little wood glue and everything's like new!

A package of ceramic pigs and face masks went out - the UPS store was big excitement!  Surprisingly crowded too.  And, when visiting the pharmacy, the accidental discovery of my favorite brand of coconut frozen fruit bars was even more exciting!  (Delicious coconut frozen fruit bars, mmmm.)  I almost lived on them last summer.

For fans of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens (see the cute coronavirus shut-in video HERE),  I join with Crowley in saying:

"I'm taking a nap and setting the alarm for July."

Addendum:  Here's the rather dorky video interview for WaterTower Theatre the other day: