Siege - Days 26 and 27 Eastertide

Happy Easter!

It's a perfect Easter morning here: overnight showers have stopped and blue sky peeks through fluffy white clouds, sunbeams make the new leaves glow impossibly green and sparkling wet.  The strange little flowers that have been returning from bulbs planted thirty years ago are blooming - they look a little alien - but the red-orange begonia looks homely and familiar.  The tomato plants are getting scary-tall!

It's Spring.  It's Easter.

Enjoyed a Quarantine-Easter brunch with dyed eggs (we were out of red food coloring so used beet juice for a pretty pink) plus just a few chocolate eggs.

What else has been happening?

Well, Kitchen Dog Theater put out a call for home videos for a project... letting our fans and theater family know what we've been doing in our unexpected off time.  Here at the DeVries Architecture, Theater, Design, and Video Studio we - eventually - pulled off our 30 seconds of cinematography.  (It would have been easier to have sketched my video by hand... as a series of storyboards maybe?  Seriously!)  But it's in the can.  A virtual can.

I don't think I want to become a vlogger.  But maybe Kitchen Dog's video will be as much fun as Tom Hanks' SNL quarantine video collage...

More satisfying than video...  Books!

Just read a very good, useful, even wise book on creative work: Keep Going by Austin Kleon.  I'd read a good review so ordered it (through Half Price Books, based here in Dallas), but I'll admit to feeling a little dubious when the mini-sized book dropped out of its mailing envelope.  Sorry, but its size and zippy graphics just screamed those gimmicky gift books you find by the checkout stand...  Fooled me!  Because this is full of good stuff: advice, observations, quotes, and (while recommending old books) this book is very of this moment .  Honestly, exactly the book I needed to find at this time.

I won't try to boil-down this already slim book for you - just read it - but tidbits?  One favorite quote:

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

Annie Dillard

And the unexpected image of Salvador Dali taking naps... but with a teaspoon in his hand so that the spoon's clattering fall would wake him in the midst of a dream-like state, the better to paint his dream-like surrealist paintings.

Real People Collect Art

Art collecting sounds like a rich person's hobby - something waaaay out of budget for ordinary people.

Not so.

If spiffy art galleries are too expensive, there are unpretentious galleries too.  And venues like antique or craft stores and art and craft fairs that often display lower priced artworks.  Look in thrift stores!

My best thrift store find ever?  At one nasty-dirty thrift shop where I was looking for picture frames for set dressing - flip, flip, flip, through the art, then - wait... What was that, back a of couple frames?  An etching by Salvidor Dali that I bought for less than $5.  There are bargain treasures!

Dali by way of a thrift shop - gotta love it!

For less expensive art, look at art that come in multiples, like posters or prints.  Work on paper tends to be less costly than work in  paint on canvas or, for real sticker-shock, bronze sculpture.  Look for work by less well known artists or in less popular genres.

Let me make a plea for "real" art.

If you buy art made by living artists (from a gallery or direct from the artist's studio), you help support the Art Of Your Time, help support the lives of the very people who, a hundred or even a thousand years from now, will define our era.  "Real" art is work that real people put thought, care, skill, and intention into.  Sure it will pretty up your rooms, but living with art also enriches your life.  Serious art never goes stale - it continues to delight and enlighten.

Live with something you love.

Who says the fine art is not for us regular folks anyway?

I love the story of art collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel - a librarian and a mailman - who put together one of the greatest collections of contemporary art.  Listen to Our Roving Art Critic talk about the Vogels at KMUW Wichita HERE.  (There's a great clip of a documentary film about them too.)

More on tips for buying inexpensive art on my Squidoo page Thrifty Shopping for Home Decor.