On Saturday night we went into the City Centre for the final night of Luminox, a public art piece in Oxford by Ted Dewan. The atmosphere was amazing - it felt medieval. Kudos to whoever managed to get approval for this event, in a regulatory environment where the office toaster is sometimes deemed a hazard.
Just as I get my machine ready for some real graphics work, I find myself suddenly pursuing athletic and political activities. Anyone who tries to do creative work will be familiar with the syndrome - anything other than sitting down to produce something seems fascinating and urgent. I will say that I really enjoyed skating at the local ice rink with some people from work the other evening. I had no idea whether, after a 20+ year hiatus, I could still ice skate, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could. The whole experience was rather jolly, the perfect antidote to the clouds of gloom that gather when one ponders civic life in modern Britain. Happy citizens of various ages/abilities/ethnicities/hairstyles were enjoying themselves on the ice, moving to the bouncy pop music, and periodically “snow” descended from globes in the ceiling. The Oxford city council comes in for a lot of criticism, but someone is doing something right here.
And politics: on Saturday I went on my first ever protest cycle ride, from Oxford to Radley Lakes. Thrupp Lake is in danger of being filled in with noxious fire ash from the nearby power plant at Didcot. The campaign seems to be gathering strength and it was a very good-natured yet determined event, complete with children in bicycle trailers and friendly dogs. I was particularly happy that I got to wear one of the terry cloth frog outfits handed out by the organizers before we left Broad Street.
Oh, and I’ve decided to start sewing.
Yesterday I was reminded of one of my favorite aspects of the Web, the ability to look up dimly remembered items from childhood and find out more about them, thanks to fellow enthusiasts. I was chatting with my mom about a new mini-dehumidifier I’d bought - it is filled with silica beads that are initially blue but turn pink when full of water. The reminded me of a postcard I had many years ago, that changed color (between blue and pink) with various weather conditions. This in turn led to a recollection about “Things of Science” - a kind of Fruit of the Month Club for geeky kids that my parents gave me. I loved it - every month you were sent a box containing everything you needed to conduct a scientific experiment.
There were a variety of subjects, but the one I remember most clearly was the one about how photocopiers work, complete with a packet of black powder (this must have delighted parents). A quick search led me to this page (who is surprised to find it at MIT) and sure enough, there is my experiment, Xerography, in 1979! Turns out that Things of Science, as the quaint name might suggest, has been around since the 1940’s. I’m sure these kits were responsible for my interest in science and particularly chemisty, although much of the credit must go to my extraordinary chemistry teacher at MDI High School (”A Latex Free School - no Balloons or Rubber Bands”), Joan “Dr. D” D’Agostino. OK that bit about latex is just too wierd, but true, I just looked at the MDIHS web page. I knew things had changed since my time, but, no rubber bands?
I did want to mention a couple things that happened while I was AWOL from the blogosphere… my mother came to stay in August and we had two really great outings, despite a recent article in one of the newspapers here detailing how miserable and expensive days out in Britain could be. We visited the Cotswold Wildlife Park, which definitely exceeded expectations. The setting was magnificent - the plants alone would have been worth a visit, but the animals of course stole the show. I particularly liked the enormous giant tortoises working their way slowly across the lawn while munching grass, and the slightly scary fruit bat exhibit.
The other event was a performance of The Tempest by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Patrick Stewart. A colleague very kindly gave us two tickets for a matinee that she could not use, and off we went. I had recently read a rant by Germaine Greer about everything that was wrong with Stratford, but I honestly could not fault it. We parked easily, had a lovely lunch in a small restaurant in town, saw the pretty riverfront which is dominated by the theatre, not a shopping mall as in Banbury, and enjoyed the play enormously. I would recommend it to anyone.
It’s still light out at 9:45PM - I do like summer. I’m way too interested in watching the World Cup - there is a brief respite from it today and tomorrow, then the action starts again on Friday. I have also (between matches) been doing some work in Flash - a rough animation of a woman cycling has been my first project. Difficult, but not as harrowing as I’d anticipated. The plan is to to work on various individual elements that I can incorporate into Flash movies later… things that I never have time to work on when I’m rushing to do the Tate illustrations. I’m also trying to develop a logo for the new site - I’ve moved from advent-calendars.com to catwholaughed.com and want a good graphic look for a site redesign. One benefit is that I lose the hyphen, the other is that I can broaden the appeal of the site a bit, beyond the annual December story (which I will still do of course…). I was hoping to blog some photos of our garden, but either the weather has not been cooperative, or I have had the laundry drying out there when it’s sunny. I will persevere.
river
Originally uploaded by bgaloot.
Yesterday I started early and took the bus to London to see two exhibitions that are ending soon, Andre Derain’s London paintings at the Courtauld Institute in Somerset House, and Henri Rousseau at Tate Modern. An added bonus was a small show of Hockney watercolors at the Gilbert Collection, although I didn’t find them as strong as much of his other work. The Derain was really the highlight for me, I have always loved the Fauves and German Expressionists, with their bold colors and brushstrokes. When I did a month-long internship at the Tate (now Tate Britain) in January 1986, I saw Derain’s The Pool of London frequently. Later, back at college in the States, I did a copy of it for a painting class. Seeing it again yesterday, I was surprised that the colors were not as vivid as I’d remembered. The constrast of red and blue is still vibrant, and, as I could plainly see when I walked along the Embankment, nowhere to be seen in reality.
My trip along the river had a somewhat melancholy quality for two reasons - I was retracing (backwards) some of my steps from the anti-war demonstration of February 2003, and I also was thinking of the sad journey of the London whale the day before.
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