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!