Seedy Winter Doings

I cannot believe that we are at the end of November already!
Things have been busy and I have been doing more mental blogging than either the actual or virtual kind. In Addition to my JOB and my STUDIO PRACTICE I have been engaged in a few side projects, some of which are coming to fruition now.
So here is some of what has been happening:

Amazing things are happening with the Hudson Valley Seed Library's artist designed seed packets!
I did The one below, for their Kaleidoscope Carrots, a selection of multi-colored beauties that are as sweet to eat as they are lovely to look at. Who could say no to purple and red and yellow carrots?
They were listed as a holiday gift "pick" for the gardener in one's life by Bon Appetit Magazine: see here . The original art and printed packets were on display at the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art in upstate New York ( a nice review of that is available here),
and come in December ,From the 9-23rd, to The New York Horticultural Society's exhibition space.(see here)
This event kicks off with a:
Preview Party & Exhibition Walk through!

Here is what they say in the press blurb: "Join us for an intimate reception with food and refreshments provided by Great Performances & Katchkie Farm. A talk and guided tour of the exhibition will be led by Ken Greene, co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library. Thursday, December 9th
5:00 to 6:30pm Hort and Seed Library members $10; Non-members $20 online, $25 at door Purchase tickets online or call 212-757-0915 x121"

The Seed Library is also at the weekly Brooklyn Flea as well as other farmer's market venues.
Their full catalog of seed packets plus list of venues is on their lovely website: here.

This is such a fun and exciting project- I am really pleased to be a part of it!
In other news, I have been gearing up for the holidays:
My 2011 travel calendar is up to view and purchase on Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com/elaboratory* I think it's a really good one, but am so sorry about all of the pictures that did NOT make it.
For those that do not know: I travel a LOT and started to make Calenders as gifts for family and friends (quite a few years ago now) of the best photos from that year's trips. These do not feature pictures of me or my friends- they are strictly sights and details of the places I have been.

I couldn't afford to give them to EVERYONE, and it turned out there was actual interest in it by folks, so I put it up on Zazzle , where anyone can buy one.
I think I am getting better at it, and have a good understanding of what things won't print well digitally and what will. This has made a huge difference!

Dark colors with lots of dim detail for instance, do not come out well. Whites and neutrals are also hard. This means that some lovely subtle images don't make the cut, which is too bad, but they end up murky and muddy when printed. Honestly I think Photoworks has the best quality products I have found, but Zazzle makes selling possible in a very straightforward way.

(Amend that: not that straightforward- I ended up deleting several years worth of calendars in an effort to "clean up" my shop, also last year I had so much trouble logging on to the Elaboratorium, that I ended up creating a whole new site -so yes, I do now have TWO zazzle emporia!)

My calendar was picked as "Today's Best" yesterday, which meant a lot of really nice comments on my shop wall and item page- unexpected and so sweet!

Here are some of the almost rans:

Time has been flying but I do have last year's version up to help keep me on track. Am I the last person on earth to need an actual, paper version I can write on? Somehow I always forget to look at my online and "desktop" versions, but when it is on the kitchen wall I cannot ignore it.
I prefer to do this with a little sweetening-i.e. images of the past year, reminders of where I've been and where I am going...

This year's model features images from France, Spain, Corsica and Utah.

Happy 2010!

Another year at it's close and a new one ready to go... And to start things off right, Olympus has posted the winners and runners up in it's BioScapes micro photography competition, which features and amazing array of microscopic imaging from all over the world. This site is a visual feast of the variety, color and richness of form that still exist on our planet. Both moving and humbling, the work also amply shows off the astonishing technological improvements in micro-imaging over the last decade. Such detail, such sharpness- one wonders and admires both the subject and the medium, and again, the world seems fresh. In the shadow of the recent climate summit in Copenhagen, these images offer an inspiring beginning to 2010, with an implied warning of the fragile and adaptive nature of all things biological, a shimmering light show of how everything is in flux, for better and for worse.See the complete set of images at:
http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/gallery/2009/

Arles

Arles is shabbier, less opulently bourgeois than Aix. This poverty may have saved it from becoming a Disneyland version of itself, a tourist postcard. A guidebook I read suggested that one might experience deja vu during one's first visit here, as it is very much like walking into a Van Gogh painting. This intriguing pronouncement became was eerily true as I wandered it shuttered faded streets. The colors, sense of isolation, and it's weird off-kilter geometry reveal just how un-stylized Van Gogh's work actually is. It really does look like that! Arles runs along the river, which was once the most important port in France, once Cesar had successfully trounced Marseilles.

Nowadays the river is sleepy, with some few barges and cruise ships ambling through, a shadow of it's former self. Like many southern French towns Arles has Roman ruins right in the town center- in this case an impressive amphitheater currently being meticulously restored in an ambitious long-term project. I spent a very happy afternoon lingering along the water, loping through the shady parts of the street, and in the evening lounging in the central place full of children, old ladies, skate- boarders, foreign tourists, poised on a bench, knitting in the rose-gold evening light.

greetings from the Palais Ideal!

Like a giant sandcastle, the Palais Ideal seems fragile, ephemeral, a waking dream.
It was made by Joseph-Ferdinand Cheval, the facteur (postman) of the small town of Hautrives in the drome in France.
It was started in 1879 and finished in 1912, and was fully and lovingly restored over a ten-year period starting in 1983.
Cheval was a self taught artist, who gained inspiration from the engravings of wonders of the world in the journals and magazines he would deliver on his route. The Palais features elements from Hindu temples, Buddhist wats, grottos, Mayan structures, pagodas, Egyptian tombs, medevial European castles, and above all, the rocks he found along his route.
















The palais is studded with these rocks, shells he collected, and there are faint traces of poly-chroming and paintwork throughout.
However, as one can see from my pictures, it is chiefly a sandy beige color, a hue lent by the cement he used.






I have always wanted to see the Palais, having seen a few photos of it in a book as a child.
It did not disapoint.
This is, interestingly, only one of two works Cheval ever made in his lifetime.
There were, once, preparatory drawings he made for the Palais, now only one survives, but it is wonderful:
delicate, ornate and yet clear, concise and rhythmic.

I tried drawing the Palais over an afternoon, and did not get nearly such good results.I did enjoy myself, however.
The Palais sits in a garden next to the facteur's house.
It costs 5 euros to get in, and it is the only place in the still-sleepy town that might qualify as a tourist attraction. It is amazingly uncluttered, un-kitched up, with few souveniers.

The Palais has been lucky from the get-go. Although a true anomaly, and featuring some very ambitous but naive elements, the Palais has been beloved by the people of Hautrives since it's inception. The book I bought on it shows local sports teams posed for their group photos in front of it, and people came from all over France to see it.
He received fan letters, poems and tributes during his lifetime.
Curiously, this was made not just as a personal project, but specifically to be a structure open to the public and for one-and-all. The majority of the work was done after his retirement, and appears to have been done largely by himself.














It was later a favorite site of the surrealists, Picasso sketched it, and in 1969 Andre Malraux classed it as a historic monument.














The afternoon I spent there drawing (and when I took these photos), was remarkably un-crowded. There were others there, but not many. One can get up close, touch, walk it's ramparts, mosey through it's cool interior vaults freely. The staff are SO relaxed, in fact that I almost got locked in, as they left for the evening!




Even as I made my way out, no one seemed ruffled or concerned....


































































































The facteur's second work of art, also in Hautrives, was less fortuitous, but no less grand.
When his beloved daughter died as a child, he was understandably distraught.
After finishing the Palais he began work on an ornate family tomb in the local cemetary, which he called "The Tomb of Silence and Endless Peace".

My pictures of the tomb show it in context, so you can get a bit of a sense of how exotic, how DIFFERENT it looks from it's surroundings. No big fuss is made about it- one sign from the main road indicates the "tombe de facteur" and it is mentioned in the literature handed out at the Palais. The facteur died in 1924 at the age of 88.

This was so moving, so fun, so grand in scope!
It's hard to put into words what it meant to spend time there, to be near the Palais in total tranquility....