cold & clear sunday morning at the japanese garden

cherry blossoms and

a varied thrush
cold & clear sunday morning at the japanese garden

cherry blossoms and

a varied thrush

ongoing experiment in drawing with plants
Did the initial pruning and twining (to each other, not with actual twine) on the 8th of February and then, with a bit of sun,
photographed the array on the 20th. Again, for details of the leaf buds starting, on the 22nd.
It’s raining again now.
More photos at the link above as things progress.

one year collection of street sweeper bristles
(the first six month set is bundled on the left)
20nov2008 to 20nov2009
picked up on walks & runs in portland & hillsboro
and a few from further afield, as noted
the next six month set is under way
from “how to cut out a nori bunny”
6.) enjoy

more photos, instructions, and a guide on how to open the kit, can be found at:
how to cut out a nori bunny
09Feb2010 – One of those rare winter days on the oregon coast, cloudless and warm.



A trio of sketches from a while ago.
These are done with the Sketchbook app for the iPhone (no, I don’t have a phone yet, but this, along with that Star Walk app are sorely tempting me).
Each drawing has about eight layers.

And this is a sketch of the iPhone owner.
OK, so this is a tad late. I actually took the photo below on art’s birthday, 17 January 2010 (art is 1,000,047).
Just now got it all processed, being somewhat busy with work and that play thing.
This is a photo from the Murray Road overpass at Hwy 26, just west of Portland.
From the perspective that I first saw them, the pigeons had arrayed themselves along the top three of five wires that ran across the south section of the ramp.
They appeared to me to be presenting a tune for art’s birthday.

Trying to decode the tune, I first assigned a value to the various head positions – tucked, straight up or leaning (surprisingly, if leaning, their heads all tilted in the same direction).
One was in flight.

I then made a couple alterations using a graphic editor to get the photo to more closely represent a staff.
This was fairly easy to do since the pigeons had already chosen a five-wire/line location.

I next tried to assign note values to the birds’ positions. I at first thought whole notes for the tucked/hunched birds, an eighth note for the leaning (like the flag on an eighth), etc. but that made it all seem a bit drawn out and dirge-like. I instead bumped it up such that the bird in flight became a half note, the tucked/hunched birds were quarter notes, the leaners were eighths and the straight-ups were assigned a value of a sixteenth.
I’m not that great at figuring rests, ties and all so I got it as close as I could on a basic treble staff (being birds I figured they’d go for the higher line work rather than the lower).

Once I had the tune I then processed the sound file, removing rests and spaces, to get it to more closely match the original photo.
I did the same to the staff. It now looks more like a Satie score. It sounds a bit like one as well.

The tune.
Happy birthday, art. Thank you, pigeons.
[Other birthday year celebrations can be found here]
I am fascinated by interactive objects, especially if there is an element of chance involved (drawing machines & frost catchers).
So I thought this was pretty elegantly cool when I saw it (posted on the elegantly cool website today and tomorrow.)
Ink bleeds into the cover when you open the CD package (you could probably manipulate it as well, much like the old Polaroid prints).

A comment on that page points to this, the ultimate in interactive covers.
Being a painter, the first one is the most intriguing to me. But then, who wouldn’t find that circuit board piece cool?
A few photos of the sets I’ve been working on for my brother’s play, Dirty Bomb
(it opens Friday at Conduit here in Portland – 918 SW Yamhill St., 4th fl.).

These are all the main pieces (above), the tallest is about 11 feet high.

The middle section with a few lights in place.

The left side. There are some painted plastic sheets that hang in front of, and reference, some of the larger pieces.
A bit of weather that allowed for some frost catching of late (right up until it snowed last night).


I set up a single ‘cell’ (L) with pieces from the portable 003 frost catcher (R) and got mild results over a couple nights.
Then with these conditions in the evening (28Dec2009)

and these the next morning (29Dec2009)

I found that I had some decent results:


I had also been looking again at the cars out front that were accumulating frost and I tried a couple ‘impromptu’ catchers, attempting to create an airspace and heat-sink that might mimic some of what was going on with the autos (I tried something like this last winter as well, with mixed results).
These were the three pieces:
the small tin was empty, leaving just a small airspace,
the plastic box contained two stones and a hunk of metal,
and a small piece of basalt paver sat in the larger metal box.

Compared to the ‘portable 003′ cell across the yard, these looked to have done a better job.

The small tin seemed to have no frost whatsoever while the larger metal box had some nice patterns on the lid.

The star was the plastic box. This was not airtight but it seemed that the temperature difference between the inside and the outside, the warmer air trapped against the lid, made for some nice frost crystals.



It’s now 36 degrees, a bit of rain here and there, the snow is melting and we’re mostly out of decent frost-producing weather.
I’m setting aside a few plastic items for future materials testing.
17 47 UTC (09 47 in Portland / UTC -8)
09:47 am PST (or HNP [Heure Normale du Pacifique])

ice along the creek near here looked topographic in a number of places
this photo is from the day before yesterday
it’s now back to more typical NW weather – 48 degrees and a steady rain

found object sculpture & the sea of japan . uchinada (kanazawa), japan . 07nov2009
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