I told my significant other it was time to get some life insurance. He was understandably confused, since our topic of conversation was health insurance and the cost of medical treatment. He has health insurance. I do not. Niether of us can afford to go to the doctor. A simple diagnosis can easily cost $4,000.00 after insurance. A heart attack will cost around $40k, if you have good insurance. I can’t afford health insurance or a doctor… I figure I’d better get some life insurance.

I am all for health care reform. I just don’t want it to be managed by the fed, thank you very much. Govt management of anything has a track record of miserable failure.  From parks and wildlife to social security, to public schools, to farming…. the folks on the hill have managed to obliterate potential. Welcome to the machine. Put your life right here in the hands of the machine. It does not compute, and it does not respect.

Seven states – Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska and Louisiana – have had both houses of their legislatures sovereignty resolutions. Alaska Gov. Palin and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen are currently the only governors to have signed their states’ sovereignty resolutions.

The resolutions all address the Tenth Amendment that says: “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

“Now more than ever, state governments must exercise their Constitutional right to say no to the expansion of the federal government’s reckless deficit spending and abuse of power,” Sen. Baker said. “With this resolution, our Legislature can send a message to Washington that our state’s rights must be respected.”

The full text of Florida’s memorial is available on http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/07/16/florida-senate-to-consider-state-sovereignty/.

I recall college crits, those awful deconstruction sessions where everyone winces and waits for a turn at having their work verbally mauled in a group setting. It seemed I could not get through one without somebody saying something about symbolism, and somebody else saying this or that was cliche’.
It goes without saying that most symbolism is cliche’. It has to be, in order to be a symbol. It’s not a symbol until most everyone recognizes it and associates some meaning with it, eh? In school, I hated symbolism, for just this reason. I avoided using symbols which were in any way recognizable. I knew it wasnt a clever notion, but I decided to make up my own symbols. The reason I knew it wasnt clever is that several others were trying to escape the crit ravens in exactly the same manner. Symbols were like shiny things glinting from your work in a crit, and the ravens loved shiny, glinty things… it brought out the raptor in them.

Raven 1 > “What is that exactly? I don’t get the relationships, here… what does that have to do with the rest? ”
Raven 2 >”To me, it just doesnt make sense. It’s just wierd.”
Raven 3 > “Well, if you HAVE to have some kind of mark that is ONLY significant to you, shouldnt you let the viewer know it IS significant?”
Raven 1> “You can SAY you are redefining the symbol on a personal level, but everyone else still sees a mark that means male. So, I don’t see what your point is.”
Me > Here, have some more cheese… (put something IN your mouth, please!)

I eventually came to realize the magic and mystery of symbolism lies in the layers of meaning. The longer a particular symbol is utilized, the more layers of meanings will come to be associated with it. Language, including symbols, evolve with time and cultures. The fact that something as simple as a dot can manifest so many different meanings is simply fascinating to me. <— That one is a period. If I make it larger, it might become an earth. Make it yellow, it is universally recognized as a sun. Add another dot, and the possibilities expand exponentially.

There is no such things “just” a flower, a generic tree, or a leaf out of season. Human beings assign meanings to things even when they are not aware of doing so. Most everyone will say they have a facorite color, but have you ever considered whether you prefer a certain shape to another one? How about alpha-numeric characters? If you had to choose, would you pick a triangle, a circle, or a square, to represent you? Why?

Rhythm

Designers and artists have a whole box full of tools. Rhythm is one of the least considered, most used. Elements are arranged in such a way as to establish a pattern. The pattern may be designed to control eye movement, or to trigger emotional response, or simply because the artist or designer had a specific tune stuck in their head. (Hey, it happens!) In fact, music and visual art share many basic design factors! The flow of piece lies in the rhythm.

Examples:

Movement: Both of the samples below share a similar rhythm, both use the rhythm to establish movement. Yet, obviously, the theme and content of these works is very different. (You may recall proximity and color relationship from previous entry?)

When you look at the piece below, make a note of where your eye wants to go… what is the first thing you see in the piece? Is there a point where your eye wants to “rest”?

It is human nature to seek out rhythm and patterns. Our brain quite naturally wants to play, “which of these things is not like the others?” at any age. The first step in that game is to associate things which are similar. Thus, the human eye bounces across similar things, in search of anything that doesn’t “belong”.

 Perspective provides the illusion of depth on a flat plane. We are provided with a very distinct idea of a large, outdoor area. The arrangement of panels recedes a good distance. We are made to feel as though we could walk through the piece. Utilizing repitition, the viewer is quite literally “told” what to expect next, and “snagged” when that pattern is disrupted. 

Yes, your perception is unique… just like everybody else’s. Yet, in nearly every moment of our daily lives, the mood and the scene is set by an artist or designer, with a specific objective in mind. Consider the arrangement of desks in an office, the color of the walls in the super market (can you recall EVER having seen the walls inside a super market?), or the “austere” or “stoic” appearance of government and judicial buildings. The purpose is to recognize the influences these things have. Why is the area around the customer service desk painted such a cool blue, yet 10 ft away is a display of childrens toys in primary colors? Perhaps so Mom is calm and the kid will be distracted? Subtle or blatant, the effects are everywhere. Those who are not prepared to recognize it, not “literate”, are not making informed choices.

What are the basic premises of visual language? The term has been virtually redefined in the computer age. Yet. basic premises still remain. To be literate is to know how to recognize not only the iconography of an alphabet, but also to have the ability to assign meaning to the strings of characters arranged on a page. The same is true of visual language. To be literate is to be able to recognize the iconography and “read” the arrangement of elements in a given piece. We know, from our first grade phonics lessons, when we see certain phonetic couplings of letters in text that a specific sound and meaning are inscribed. In this, we have learned to recognize a relationship between these letters and words. Perhaps, if you attended college and took more than a rudimentary art class, you learned to recognize spatial relationships between forms. Unless you took an advanced art class, you probably did not learn to “read” the iconography and metaphor in painting or sculpture.

So it is that few adults today realize that the visual artist or visual language composer has taken upon him/herself to quite literally control not only the movement of your eye, but to some extent even your cognitive response to the images presented. But, how, you might ask? (As well you should!)

1. Relationships: There are number of ways to manipulate your response to something by establishing relationships between forms and through the use of color. An artist can create tension, or impart placid harmony through the placement of objects or forms or through the use of color.

Let us consider our response to a small sphere cradled in a ribbon-like form. To most people, this confers a sense of nurturing, perhaps parenting, certainly safety and comfort. This is because we have mentally assigned a relationship to the two forms, whether or not we are conscious of it.  Please consider the four examples below, which all employ the same two elements. What is the relationship between the two forms in each example? This is an example of utilizing proximity to establish relationship.

It is a given that people have a cultural library of meanings which they will assign to specific colors. Red, for example… what is your immediate response to the color red? MOst of us in the west will assign three possible meanings to the color. Stop/danger, anger, and passion. A very large red painting is irritating, over time. Red excited our eyes and causes the photo receptors to fire in quick succession. It is almost impossible to ignore, even with concerted effort. The same is true of yellow, and yet yellow is generally associated with happiness… thus, we dont mind so much being in the presence of a large “sunny” canvas. We are not irritated by the presence of a big happy thing. We are likely to find our mood uplifted after 20 minutes or so.

With this in mind, look at the many ways that information is visually presented. Charts and graphs,  illustrations, headlines and photos, even forms you are asked to fill out every day of your life are carefully arranged to influence your perception.

The Brothers Mcleod: Glamming the spam

There is a feeling in the air that the events which are unfolding today bear a significance which, perhaps, exceeds the immediate relativity. Certainly we are told in the media that everything is doomed unless we change everything, immediately. When I consider it, I have to chuckle, because my sick sense of humor recalls my mother’s voice of astonishment, saying “what WILL they think of next?”.

Add to that an awareness of the profit margin in the doomsday machine… huge, HUGE… off the charts!  One could argue for days whether the profit margin is cause or effect, yet the fact remains… these are indeed epic times.

Our America is a young country, yet our President is called the leader of the free world. Our democratic system, premised upon the ancient Greek envy of the world, has become a model which all nations seek to improve upon. Our ‘American dream’ is now the dream of all nations and people, which seek to emulate (at least) the opportunities afforded to every citizen of this country; even as this overburdened system is seeming to crumble under the burden of such luxury. 

Is this the America our fore fathers envisioned? The governance of Greece, the military might of Rome, the best sciences and industries of all nations, seems to be the very definition. We have inherited the best minds from around the globe over two centuries. They came here, tired, poor, and beleagured. They came with little more than hope. How about that? Two centuries later, poised on the edge of the great abyss, our coffers plundered by the great robber barons of the world, we are forced to wonder if we will go the way of those affore mentioned great societies, Greece and Rome.

I wonder at the physics of building a nation to the status of world power in a mere 200 years. I wonder at the physics of the fall of the free world. I am amazed and astonished that some think to profit by plundering the great hope of a free world, wherein every soul is afforded equal opportunity. I am equally amazed and astonished with the immediate gratification syndrome which seems rampant among our youth. It seems the majority of young adults insist that every desire must be satisfied with no more effort or discipline than swallowing a pill or pressing a button. Thus, the newest generation of citizen in the free world is greatly concerned with the availability of pills and buttons, and voting for immediate gratification availability. This is unprecidented in our history, and in the history of civilization. In history, such luxuries were afforded only by wealth and slavery, to a very privileged few. All others were forced to labor long and hard for a meager existence.

Don’t Forget This 

• Thank you  in over 400 languages  

  

  Thank you America!

   

   

   

www.michaelyon-online.com/thanks-and-praise.htm  “The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.”

Finding Thanks Poetry     wow, worth digging through the fish barrel, here.

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24 

Thanks to those who have lent an ear

and those who have lent a hand

to those who have lent themselves wholly

and to those who gave things not so grand

… and thanks to the Creator of givers

for also creating a need

that the circle of life, always showing,

reminds there’s no profit in greed.

Many people associate the word art with paintings and sculptures, or perhaps performance. Art is also largely considered to be a passive luxury in our mass production society. Hand made items are more expensive to produce and own than manufactured items. The artists, themselves, are largely responsible for the shift in public perception about the passivity of art. Somewhere around the turn of the last century, artists began to become preoccupied with vain intellectualism and, truth be known, began to think of themselves in general as elitists. By the 1960’s, artists were publicly denouncing the status quo with comments like, “It’s art because I am an artist and I say it is” along with exhibitions which only inspired moral outcry (and nearly ended public funding of the arts all together in this country)

However, the word art handed down to us through the ages is a verb. By it’s very nature art is intended to actively engage, beyond the influence of communication. It is an activity which initiates change, and is intimately associated with the word ‘create’. Art, the verb, is filled with magic, metaphysics, and alchemical transformations ranging from subtle to overwhelming! Anyone having once visited with the arts of yore will attest to the very real experience of breathless wonder. Michael D’Angelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gough, Claude Monet, and Frank Loyd Wright changed people’s lives… not just thier minds. These great artists had the audacity to pull the stars down from the heavens, internalize them, and turn that luminous energy into art, the verb.

The mechanics of these activities are mysterious, indeed. Not beyond the reach of anyone who aspires to it, but the artist is a rare creature who selflessly dedicates a lifetime to this pursuit. It is not an easy path, but for some, the rewards outweigh the hardships. This is the price of self Mastery, the pre-requisite to mastery of any and all mediums. It is an honorable undertaking which requires hard work, humility, meager sustenance, and above all… love. This is why artists were admired and revered.