The Guild is a very professional looking website that sells artists’ art. I was glad to see they offer a variety of ceramic works. Via TechCrunch, who reports that the “Madison, Wisconsin based The Guild bills itself as the ‘leading source for artist-made home décor products shipped direct from artists’ studios to customers’ homes nationwide.’”

A green remodel in D.C. Real Estate agent Amy Levin remodeled a historic home in Washington’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, and is hoping for a platinum certification from LEED. While gutting the house, she uncovered a hidden fireplace which is now the centerpiece of her living room, as shown in Heidi Glenn’s following photograph from NPR.

[The photograph mentioned above has been removed per the request of a representative of NPR. I didn't expect this at all, especially since I made a specific effort to give credit to the photographer. This is a personal web diary of my own, and from what I understand I was in the right despite NPR's protest. Regardless, I have no desire to argue over such details with the blind, "old media" and removed the photo immediately. I'm very disappointed, however, in NPR's reaction to what was basically free publicity. Do the marketing and legal departments not talk to each other in their organization?

The NPR rep offered up a "passive link" in place of the photo, which is amusing on a number of levels, not the least of which is that this post already contained such a link. Further, if I recall correctly this isn't the first time I've used an image from NPR's website. Oh well. Eventually big media will realize they won't be able to fight the changes the internet is making to information creation and dissemination. A reminder of this from an older TechCrunch post:

"Societal ideals around what constitutes ownership over art are changing. People who try to protect and silo off their work are simply being ignored. Those that embrace the community, and give back to it not only allowing but asking for their work to be mashed up, re-used and otherwise embraced are being rewarded with attention. At the core is a basic implicit understanding - if you want to be part of the community, you have to give back to it, too."

I expressed my strong disappointment in a reply to NPR's email. We'll see if they respond. Also see a post of mine from December on the ownership of art (photography, in this case) along a similar vein.]

An interesting excerpt from the story:

Green means easy on energy, durable and efficient, but not necessary natural. There are many synthetic materials throughout Levin’s home.

“There are some natural materials that are very appropriate for use in 21st century houses, but there is a lot of neat stuff we’ve made, particularly as it relates to energy efficiency, that does a better job than Mother Nature does,” Yost says.

Of all of the green virtues, the greenest is durability, he says. For people looking to build more environmentally friendly homes, Yost advises installing something that lasts a lifetime and consumes less energy, rather than something that’s more efficient in the short run but must be replaced several times.

I personally hope for the best of all worlds: Natural materials, durability and sustainability.

The price of gas is higher than it’s ever been.

The cost of rice went up 141% last year.

The cost of wheat went up 77% last year.

The ABC World News spot that prompted this post, not the first of its kind on this blog, played interview footage of a Texas man who is now using the bus. He used to put gas in his automobile seven or eight times a month — which is unimaginable for myself — and is now down to three fill-ups. I try and bike to the office as much as I can, although I’m not forced into this mode of transportation as much as I have been in the past. In truth I prefer to bike; the car is just too convenient.

My wife tagged along to Wal-Mart with me last night and couldn’t believe the tiny amount of food we got for $70. I usually do the shopping in our household. Most all of what we bought fit in the child seat of the cart. $20 of the bill went towards meat and cheese from the deli, and I don’t buy the most inexpensive of the turkey. Further, local sales tax — yes, we pay sales tax on food — is quite high. Our checkbook is feeling the pain.

Will the financial strain actually change the way we live? Will we be, if I can put it this way, a more reasonable culture? Will we forgo the debt and consumerism that enslave so many of us? Will we adopt a more sustainable way of life all around?

Adding: A couple snippets from a book review by David Taylor:

The enemy to this vision is Suburban Sprawl. Call it the Anti-Urban Experience. Bess reckons it a manifestation of fallen modernity: a functionally secular, therapeutic, individualist, technologically enamored vision driven by an oppressive demand for novelty and the “bottom line.”

Suburban sprawl, Bess contends, dissociates daily communal life from physical place. It is environmentally unsustainable and unjust; it makes people slaves to their cars. Usually it is also ugly; useful and mostly durable, yes, but architecturally unbearably dull.

I might contest the “usually durable” comment, but that depends on the exact part of automobile-slash-suburban culture we’re talking about.

Today is one of two weeks of cleanup performed by the city in Siloam Springs. Place anything you want to dispose of by the road and by Friday it is supposed to have disappeared, carried off either by the official crane-truck or by citizens hunting for treasures.

And there are some treasures. Two houses down from my own were two pieces of furniture that caught my eye, one a decent looking table top. Both were gone within hours of being placed roadside. I didn’t even wander down to examine them after thinking about the storage nightmare they would create — this on a weekend I spent cleaning and organizing. In fact the pile in front of that particular house dwindled down to almost nothing before being restocked this morning with a beastly, legless pool table among other odds and ends.

This post, however, refers to the darker side of the twice annual junk-fest. I couldn’t help but think of the wasteful society we live in as I passed by pile after pile of stuff. Regular readers know this rant already. In our mass-producing, mass-consuming culture little consideration is given to how many of these trinkets will end up in landfills. With the environmental movements of recent years this is changing to a degree, but very slowly.

Take the chair in the above photograph for instance. We’ll ignore its lack of aesthetic appeal in this particular dialogue. First off it’s not in that bad of shape. Why is it being thrown away; did the owners trade up? The dog got a hold of one corner and the fabric is a bit faded, but most college students would love to have this in their dorm room. So it might be missing its feet; what are bricks and two-by-fours for!

I can imagine, just by the looks of it, that is a cheap chair — like so much factory fare in our day and age. The company’s bottom line drives design and choice of materials. Everything has to be as inexpensive as possible in order to maximize profits to pad the CEO’s bonus and keep the shareholders happy. Further, the shorter the life-span of a gadget or appliance the sooner it will need to be replaced, thereby ensuring future sales for the company — so long as they can create brand loyalty and/or attract new buyers.

Can’t companies come up with ways to create more enduring products and still make money (Or do we first need to get them to agree to make less money?). Do consumers need to be convinced it’s worth it to spend a little more for a chair or dining room table (or house, for that matter) that possesses some staying power?

This is slightly outside the scope of this blog, but I found it humorous enough to post. Global warming is a loaded topic I purposefully avoid, although once or twice I have given my opinion on the matter. If it weren’t for my interest and thoughts published here from time to time dealing with sustainable living I wouldn’t be bothering, but . . .

My blogging friend Tim Jones over at Old World Swine alerted me to an amusing NPR spot via this entry. The NPR story is called The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat. The story begins with this paragraph:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

Even before Tim pointed it out in his post, my mind arrived at the same conclusion: “Or it could mean there is no such thing as global warming.” NPR, which I listen to almost daily — and enjoy listening too — is unashamed about its biases. I’ve learned to digest their stories with this in mind, though it’s sad that an investigative journalistic organization such as public radio doesn’t even seem to attempt a more balanced kind of reporting.

In other global warming related news, the Southern Baptist Convention recently launched a website dedicated to care of creation, The Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative. Read their positions here. The following explains my own viewpoint on global warming and care of the environment, taken from a comment I made on Think Christian’s report of the SBC’s new policy:

My problem with global warming is that the data they draw from is very limited — esp. if you’re of the mind that the earth has been around for millions or billions of years. So temperatures have gone up a fraction of a degree in the last 150 years (basically during the history of meteorological science); they may go down a fraction of a degree over the next hundred years.

That said, I personally believe every believer should do their best to steward the earth God gave us. The word “sustainable” has significantly clearer implications IMO and is less politically loaded than “environmental,” so this is the term I default to. Regardless of any global warming, we who are charged with stewarding this planet ought to do our best. Our best does not include stripping it of its resources (unsustainable vs sustainable), living wastefully and frivolously by producing and mass-consuming disposable products (and my definition here is broad) etc etc.

Lastly in this rambling post, I will dare to broach the topic of Intelligent Design. Actually, I’m going to mention a new Ben Stein documentary that broaches ID. The film is called Expelled: No intelligence allowed. I was privileged enough to see a screening of this film while in Nashville last week. The premise, as laid out in the trailer, is that academic and scientific freedoms are being squashed by the old guard in order to protect their own personal convictions. I mention this because the same thing seems to happen in discussions about global warming. Those who, in our frightened (read “tolerant”) and politically correct society, dare to suggest that global warming has yet to be established are lampooned or just ignored.

I mentioned this same documentary in a previous post which I lived to regret; I got into a somewhat protracted conversation with a scientist who took issue with my personal belief in Creation as well as Ben Stein’s movie. The conversation was civil but completely off topic, and thus I wish at this point I would have let the second commenter’s comment hang (or used a different example in my post to begin with). At one point this person used the term “mockumentary” to describe Expelled. Just to clarify, the film is nothing of the sort if the commenter was at all using the word denotatively. Look for Expelled in theaters April 18th.

James Kunslter, author and critic of suburbia and proponent of New Urbanism, said something very interesting and important in a podcast referred to me by a friend:

“Please, please stop referring to yourselves as consumers, OK. Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.”

He goes on to suggest that by referring to ourselves — I might add that even by subconsciously thinking of ourselves — as consumers we are “degrading the conversation.” More than degrading any conversation about the future of America, we’re degrading ourselves. Are we to be defined by how big businesses and billion dollar corporations look at us? Should we continue to pay so much, if any, attention to things like the Consumer Confidence Index? How important is it, really, to a successful and happy life that the economy be always heading up, up, up?

We’re naive to think that the American economy is foolproof. This is especially true in light of the insane amount of federal and individual debt that owns us. Credit card and mortgage companies in their greed possessed no more foresight, it seems, than the automobile makers of 80 years ago, unless their intent involved the possible ruination of the most prosperous economy on the planet.

Kunstler’s premise in the 20 minute lecture is that the future of America, sans big oil, will be forced to look more like the America of yesteryear: We’ll have to live closer to each other, to our work, to our food supplies.

I’m probably not as militant in my thinking as he is, but his suggestion needs to be considered very carefully by all of us. It may not be that far from the truth depending on how willing we are to press for change today.

Clive Thompson’s Wired column in the March issue is a great testament to working with your hands. He starts the piece by talking about his struggle in trying to put a steampunk clock together; his soldering skills were deficient.

“Why am I so inept? I used to do projects like this all the time when I was a kid. But in high school, I was carefully diverted from shop class when the administration decided I was college-bound. I stopped working with my hands and have barely touched a tool since.

As it turns out, this isn’t just a problem for me — it’s a problem for America. We’ve lost our Everyman ability to build, maintain, and repair the devices we rely on every day. And that’s making it harder to solve the country’s nastiest problems, like oil dependence . . . . “

Wasn’t it just last week I talked about the importance of innovation, wondering where it had gone in America? And a couple weeks before that, didn’t I mention a verse in the Bible that exhorts us to “work with our hands?”

Apparently there is a bit of a do-it-yourself (DIY) revolution here in the states as we speak (or type). Scientists, according to Thompson, have discovered how important it is to use your hands — to be mechanically apt — which uses a different part of our brains than “sitting and cogitating.” I recall something in the news last year that pointed to the success of places like Lowes and Home Depot, typical stops for DIY-ers purchasing products for the projects.

I wonder about the accuracy of applying the word “revolution” with respect to the popularity of steampunk and profit margins of big-box home supply stores. Regardless, this resurgence is good news.

Personally, I feel the need for both sitting and cogitating (which is largely what this blog amounts to) and working with my hands. In a culture supersaturated with electronic media, computers and computer related employment opportunities it can be very difficult to get hands-on time with anything. Our jobs are done in front of a computer and our recreation regularly involves televisions, computers and video games. We are a quite sedentary society, which is unhealthy physically and mentally according to the neuroscientists Thompson cites. We use electronics to a fault, perhaps, instead of treating them as tools they act as a crutch. “Notably,” Thomson concludes, “all this is happening outside our broken education system. America is healing itself at the grass roots — rediscovering the mental joy of making things and rearming itself with mechanical skills.”

I happened upon the website of woodworker J. Alexander this morning and thought it warranted props and a link. Basically, the guy builds custom furniture. Here’s a screenshot from his gallery:

What I found noteworthy on this website were a couple of blurbs on the information page, speaking to our generally bland, homogenous, mass-produced visual culture:

Finishing Process

The finishing process is what makes a custom piece of furniture really stand out from its mass produced counterpart. There are no short-cuts around here. Each item is painstakingly finished to accentuate the beauty of the wood and ensure its overall durability.

Cost

Custom furniture is of course more expensive than a lower-end mass produced item, but when compared to high-end brands such as Ethan Allen, Thomasville, and others, my prices are usually very competitive. On top of that, your funiture will have been painstakingly created by hand by a local craftsman.

Kudos to the handmade, to enduring functional (and/or decorative) objects worth keeping around for generations. My great grandfather built two library tables — among many other objects — during his lifetime, either of which I’m sure anyone in my family would love to end up with one day. He crafted a base for one; for the other, my grandfather — his son — hand-carved legs in the shape of elephant heads, the trunks supporting the tabletop, a few years back. Both are beautifully and intricately inlaid, the one in my father’s possession having as a focal point a detailed rose.

I learned this weekend that my father finally has a closing date for a building in downtown Grand Island, Nebraska. He’s been looking for a couple of years now. His original idea was to find a place with room for an apartment upstairs and store frontage downstairs. I mentioned his interest in downtown real estate in an August post as well (The building mentioned in that post, which he made an offer on, didn’t pan out.).

Without rehashing the myriad of details he considered while looking for a commercial property, I present to you the structure he finally has a contract on — the elegant building in the middle of the picture:

Amenities include marble stairways to the second floor from the street and alley, a bonafied civic shelter comprising 2/3rds of the basement (complete with thirty empty water barrels) and rental income totaling $900 per month. It seems his patience paid off as he found a building slightly under his budget. The drawback is that the store frontage is being used by one of the renters — who have three years left on their lease — so he will have to peddle his antiques from the second floor for the time being.

This post isn’t so much about this one building though as it is about the ruination of once stately downtowns in American communities. Compare the above photograph to the following historical photo of the original bank building:

The original facade is presently obscured by modern renovations allowing for two street level entries. These economy grade renovations seem to pay no attention to the well-crafted, elegant pilasters and cornice they so haphazardly obscure. The same goes for so many buildings in the area. Look in the first picture at the wild green building to the right of my father’s [future] property, and compare it to the same building in the second photo.

Ugh.

My complaint here is not so much a distinction between modern and more classically influenced architecture as it is a distinction between quality of craft and design. The modern overlays on these buildings look cheap, cheap in the sense of it’s not going to last. They also exhibit poor form in not paying respect to their surroundings. The bright green steel and glass structure seems to completely ignore the materials and colors around it, looking like a flakey marketing gimmick nestled among more serious contenders. One of the things that was made very clear during the two years I studied architecture in college was the importance of the plot. My professor went so far as to suggest we take our sleeping bags to the vacant lot assigned to us and spend the night there.

The modern iterations and modifications also seem to, largely, lack attention to detail. Sure, modern architecture is generally spare — indeed, often cold — in comparison to classical, but it doesn’t have to look like a shoebox with cutouts for doors and windows.

I’d like to help my dad take that stark tin awning off of his little building someday, and I hope the former glory of these buildings is still intact under their present clothing.

This is my response to Tim Jones’ post earlier today on abstract or non-representational art; read his entry here.

*************************

Ah, back to it I see. Fabulous!

See my post earlier this week about delegation of art. In it I posited that concept is more important than craft in contemporary art. If concept is indeed more important than craft (which I think would be easy to affirm), I can easily see how abstract or non-representational art proliferates.

There are corners of the art world that are “rebelling” as it were. Last year I noted on this blog a group in the Northwest that gathered to learn classical painting technique.

Saying that the importance of concept is the only reason for the proliferation of abstraction, however, is almost guaranteed to be overly simplistic. I wouldn’t be surprised if such umptions in the art world aren’t also proffered by other parts of the culture, whatever they may be. The use of found objects, for instance, could be a reaction to a wasteful culture. In a society addicted to cheap, mass-produced goods with intentionally short life-spans, it’s very easy to find and utilize (visually and creatively) discarded and disregarded objects. Joel Armstrong does this when creating his small sculptures. The reuse of these found objects adds significant depth and interest to his abstract works.

I more or less finished a few pieces this weekend, some new wall sculptures out of my new clay work. The wood (or horizons, if you wish) was all salvaged in this case. I used Gorilla Glue to stick the clay and wood together; it was my first time using this adhesive and I think it will do really well. It does expand, however, so using too much can ruin a piece.

These works are very similar to my work from five years or so ago, when I last had access to a kiln. I like the way they turned out. It feels good to have some finished sculptures as products of the kiln. Finally.

None of these are titled yet.

Clay with inlaid cabochon sapphires, mounted
on salvaged, rough-sawn mahogany;
8 x 17 inches.