Kaleidoscopic Curiosities

Good ARTitude news!

Today I've heard from readers in Washington, Colorado and New York who got their bulkmailed copy of Issue #25 already -- just two weeks after I hauled them to the bulk mail post office! That is amazing, especially the New York one. I hope the rest of you get similarly speedy service! Of course, I still haven't gotten mine in the mail, and it only has to travel about four miles... :)

Oh, I wanted to mention that this issue's eye-popping cover art was contributed by Darcy Altaville, who will soon receive a delectable collage pack prize in the mail. Congratulations, Darcy! As you know, usually the cover art appears in a rectangular frame on the left, but Darcy's collage refused to be contained! And visually it was perfectly designed to have the cover blurbs superimposed on it. I could not have planned it better... You can see the piece without the business overlay inside this issue, along with our other ART Challenge Winners!

Next issue's theme is Women of Substance and we are still accepting artwork submissions. Any art featuring a woman or women will be eligible to win a collage pack in the ART Challenge, and possibly even be our next "cover girl" (or guy!). I can accept artwork submissions until, oh, well at least a week or so into October, so send in your stuff! (We're also accepting submissions for our final issue, the theme of which is Full Circle...)

rose parade: favorite photos

Aren't the stylized trees lovely? They remind me of smart little hats I've seen in 1950s Vogue magazines.

 

I do love me some artistic renditions of jellyfish... I think this lush undersea themed float was sponsored by Trader Joe's, the California-based specialty market that is the source of much goodness.

   

During the parade, the clam shells opened and closed to display treasures within.

The deep sea diver sort of plunged this whole big float down to aquarium size in my imagination, being the queen of kitsch that I am. I've always dreamed of having an aquarium filled with groovy deep sea divers and ancient temple ruins and treasure chests with lids that open and close...I don't think I'd actually want any fish, just the tchotschkes. And a whole lot of fluorescent fake coral.

I don't remember anything about this float except LOVING these blooming cacti with their tussy-mussy bouquets!

This happy dog might be my favorite shot. I loved everything about this float, from the beautiful old car with delicate dicentra (bleeding hearts) on its fenders to the dog's exuberance, ears laid well back and tongue flapping.  There was just so much life in this float! The car made me think of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was my favorite movie circa age five, and this float invited me to imagine myself in this car wearing a floaty confection of a dress just like Truly Scrumptious...

Another shot of the running doggy float, with a slightly better view of the delicate floral sprays that formed a canopy over the open-roofed car. I like the modeling of the car's different surfaces, and if you look closely at the "road" it's driving on, you may notice that it's paved with potatoes! That alone makes this float a holy temple as far as I am concerned.

Okay, so I'm a sucker for doggies and kitties. You already knew this about me. But, see, they're friends!! I like this shot not only because of the cute animals, but also because it provides hints of how vast the parade viewing grounds were. There were thousands of people and dozens of floats in every direction for as far as the eye could see, all nestled in the foothills of the (San Gabriel?) mountains.

The lighting wasn't good for this shot, but I still think it's worth sharing. What amazing creatures! Some floats were spectacles of genuine artistry. This was a big, tall float, too. Very impressive!

This float depicts an important building on the planet Naboo, in the Star Wars universe. To be honest, although I am a huge Star Wars nerd, the Star Wars-iness of this float was somewhat lost on me. But it was still very pretty architecture and the floral sprays were lush and vibrant.

 

 

Even the more modestly modeled floats were still gorgeous. During the parade I think these butterflies' wings moved, but they were at rest when we saw them. I don't blame them -- it had been a long day.

Slightly blurry but still cool shot of the squirrel's tree house. The strongly vertical composition made it feel taller than it really was, but it was still pretty tall! I think the leafy branches may have been actual branches from kumquat or tangerine trees. The white tree "bark" is probably some combination of ground-up rice, chrysanthemum petals and shaved coconut.

I don't remember which float featured these floral starbursts, but they are spectacular, no? They might be something cosmic from the solar system float I featured last time, or they might be an impressionistic depiction of fireworks.

Either way, they are wonderful and I want some in my backyard right away, please. And some arching over my bathtub, too, and some small ones to adorn my upswept hair.

Native American headdress featured on one of several floats that honored Oklahoma's centennial.

 

Another view of the gorgeous hummingbird float! I think the "wisteria" blossoms are really sprays of dendrobium orchids.

This might be my favorite shot of all (too bad about the power lines). Love the colors and the elegant shapes.

And finally -- you've seen the tops and backs of their heads in many of the preceding photos so I thought I'd show you the fronts of their heads too, which I happen to think are much nicer. :)

This is my darling friend Beth and her kids, Zachary and Michaela, who came all the way from New Hampshire to visit their dear old Auntie Suz for New Year's.

We had a great time -- one highlight was touring the Kodak Theater where the Academy Awards ceremony is held. There was no event in the theater that night, so the tour guide was able to take us backstage and out onto the stage itself! What a thrill -- Standing on that stage, looking out at the vast balconies of plush red seats... Some of the seats held posterboards bearing giant photos of recent nominees. I just stood there on the stage, squinting into the fierce lights and grinning stupidly at "George," "Jack" and "Meryl." It was a real mind trip! Of course I couldn't remember a word of the acceptance speech I've been preparing since I was eleven. You know -- just in case.

I didn't end up with any photos from that day, but I'm glad my Rose Parade photo shoot yielded so many treasures. Thanks for taking a look.

more scenes from the rose parade

Welcome to another batch of photos from the 2007 Tournament of Roses Parade, photos which have been trapped inside my camera for eight months! :)  Sorry for the chaotic layout of this blog post; it's kind of impossible to make the comments line up with the appropriate photos without making you have to scroll and scroll and scrollllllllll...

Rose Parade floats are available for close-up viewing on the afternoon of January 1 and all day on January 2. We parked in the Pasadena City College parking garage and paid $7 to ride a shuttle bus to the viewing grounds. It took several hours to walk around and see all the floats. They are arranged in a big "T" shape and in an adjacent parking lot, and I'd guess the long trudge around the whole shebang added up to over two miles. There were food vendors grouped in one area, and plenty of porta-potties, and a small theater that, over and over, showed a short film about how the floats are made. It was a fun afternoon, I recommend it! And the frozen lemonade was a real life saver, let me tell you, because even though it was New Years Day it was HOT.

The towering representation of Mother Nature shown above was the first thing we saw as we began our circuit of the floats on display. She looked a bit cross. I think it was because it was so, so hot that afternoon. Her gown was still beautiful, though.

This float depicted the solar system. It was one of my favorites because of its dramatic shapes and colors. It had a real sense of vastness and movement, hard to capture in a happy-snap but I think you get the idea.

The swirly pattern at left is a closeup of the materials used to portray a satellite view of the earth's surface. Hey, I can see my house from here!

The purple is statice petals, the brown is cinnamon, the white is ground-up rice. The yellow swoopy thing is covered with marigolds, I think. The hot pink flowers at the bottom are gerbera daisies -- each with a three or four inch diameter -- which gives you a sense of the scale of this thing!

I thought this float was a lot of fun: giant lizards! They almost, almost look real, don't they?

In the photo with the little white house you can see the hatch that allows the driver and spotter to get inside the float to drive it (look behind the second section of white chain "fence" where the hatch door is up and you can see the darkness within). You'd never notice this door if the hatch were closed, since it's covered with roses like the surrounding area. On this float I love the juxtapostion of the giant purple petal-covered "rose" atop the bed of regular sized roses, and the impressionistic lollipop tree.

And here's a photo of the little window at the front of the float. The driver is usually somewhere in the middle of the float so there's a spotter who rides up front and peers out to navigate their way along the parade route. But the little windows are really well concealed -- this is the only one I noticed, and I looked closely at thirty or forty floats.

I've saved my favorite Rose Parade float photos for my next blog post. Come on back tomorrow!

everything's coming up...you know

Probably the most photogenic of my adventures, since last we met, took place on New Year's Day when my friends Beth, Michaela and Zachary accompanied me to view the Rose Parade floats. After the big parade, the floats are parked along a few Pasadena streets where tens of thousands of spectators view them close-up, or as close as the sawhorse barriers will let us get. It was a very, very hot day but the flowers still held up better than we did. I'm not a great photographer and the huge crowds and bright sunshine meant it was impossible to get a "good" angle in many cases, but I was delighted by a few of these shots! Click on any photo to view it larger.

In case you aren't aware, the Rose Parade is affiliated with the Rose Bowl college football game that takes place on New Year's Day. The neat thing about Rose Parade floats is that every bit of each float must be covered with vegetable matter of some kind--flowers, petals, leaves, seeds, pods, grasses, husks, ground spices, etc etc etc. Underneath the plant material, the floats have elaborate frameworks of metal rods, chicken wire etc and they're powered by big engines that propel these floral behemoths down the parade route at a stately five miles per hour. Some of the taller or longer floats are designed with moving or collapsible parts because the floats have to fit under a freeway overpass and go around some corners, and some floats have moving parts just because it's fun, so there's a lot of amazing engineering lurking beneath the colorful exteriors. But for me, the main appeal has got to be the flowers!

I thought that maybe all those roses in one place would provide an intoxicating scent. I was wrong. By the time we saw the floats, whatever fragrance these hothouse roses might have had had long since dissipated, and the heat of the day and the press of the throng meant that the primary aromas were of human bodies and the churro vendors (churros are long wand-shaped Mexican donuts coated with cinnamon-sugar -- yum!). Actually the floral matter I smelled most often was the pungent aroma of eucalyptus leaves that were used to cover some structures. But if our noses were at all disappointed, our eyes more than made up for it!

The roses, carnations, orchids and other flowers are kept perky-looking because each stem is inserted into a little water vial, like a florist uses in a corsage. The vials are stuck into a layer of foam mat that covers the underlying chicken wire structure. In other places, like the "skin" of this horse, you're looking at seeds or crushed spices that are glued onto a foam-sprayed armature. The modeling of the horse's musculature is pretty amazing, isn't it?

Of the fifty or sixty floats in this year's parade, a handful were designed, constructed and decorated by volunteers and sponsored by local communities, just like in the old days (this was the hundred-and-somethingth annual Rose Parade), but more and more floats are built by big companies that make their living designing Rose Parade floats. Cool job, eh? Of course, most of the year is spent sketching ideas, pitching them to sponsor companies, and then building the frameworks. All the pretty stuff goes on in the last few weeks or days before the parade. 

This float was a crowd favorite, the dinosaur punk rock band. In true punk rock tradition, the lead guitarist has totally lost his head -- actually it's flipped backwards and just isn't visible from this angle. It had to flip down in order to fit under the bridge.   

 

Here's a shot of "Independence Hall" (which looked a lot like the real thing!) which also had to fold itself down to fit under the bridge. You can see the mechanical stuff inside that lifts and lowers the structure.

There are definitely some go-to organic substances to keep in mind when designing a Rose Parade float.  If you want dark purple or blue, statice is the answer. Black is usually seaweed, in sheet form like on these fish, or poppy seeds, which coat this whale. Smooth browns and skin tones might be a combination of ground cinnamon, nutmeg or sunflower seeds. Hairy surfaces like the squirrels in this tree are probably covered with coconut husk or some form of shreddable bark.

   

Gosh, wasn't it a pretty day? Here is southern California it often rains in December and January but it hardly ever rains on the Rose Parade. We were sort of swept along in a massive tide of humanity, up and down the viewing grounds, but when the light was in our favor, the colors just sang! And these suckers are BIG! It's hard to tell because of how these pix are cropped, but the floats positively tower over mere mortals. They are truly massive and yet the best ones manage to seem weightless, and the riot of colors and textures just made my heart buoyant.  

Viewing the floats close-up was sometimes a bit startling because it's like, roses, roses, roses, WAIT A MINUTE that's not roses -- oh yeah, it's oranges. Oranges count! Some big branches, fruits and vegetables were used as-is while others were composed of petals and spices glued onto metal frameworks. In this photo, the oranges and grapes are "real" but the "labels" on the fruit crates are composed of flower petals. So pretty!

Okay, more pictures and Rose Parade lore tomorrow. Thanks for visiting! 

Hi honey, I'm home...

Long time, no see. Sorry 'bout that!

I have a million reasons as to why this blog languished for so long, but I won't bore you with them. Let's just say that life got weird for a while, and I'm just now getting back into a place of emotional wholeness. I am glad to be back! And I have a ton of interesting stuff to share with you, because I've had many adventures since last we met.

Grrr, where is the gizmo that gets the pictures out of the camera... ?

First things first: ARTitude Zine is definitely alive and well, although its website is woefully behind the times, stuck on Issue #23.

The shopping cart isn't updated to reflect the availability of Issue #24 or Issue #25 but they are definitely available and if you would like to order them, please contact me. I'd be happy to check your subscription status, also.

The Spring 2007 issue (#24, Opposites Attract) was published and mailed to subscribers in May. Among this issue's highlights:

• Deborah Boschert's fabric postcard how-to, in which she also addresses the idea of energizing your artwork by playing with positive and negative space...
• Coach Jill Jones writes about harnessing the power of opposites, a subject that often perplexes those of us who are operating as right-brained creative types in a stridently left-brained world...
• Brenda Marks takes basic blue sunprints to a colorful new digital level...
• Laura Gould shows you how to craft beautiful original milagros using surprising materials...
• Cheryl Barton-Petrie creates soldered glass-fronted reliquaries to house and honor special objects...
• Randi Feuerhelm-Watts writes about the importance of making a personal connection with the images you use in your visual journal...
• and much, much more! (I know, that always sounds corny but it's true.)

Issue #25, Summer 2007 (Come To Your Senses) just came out a couple weeks ago. I apologize for the delay! The good news is that I converted another 16 pages to full color, so this issue is even more colorful and invigorating than ever before.

Why the delay? I switched to a new print guy who uses a totally different printing process than I've grown used to, so between learning his new specs and rethinking project pages into full color, we encountered numerous technical difficulties. The final result looks terrific, though, so I like to think it was worth the wait.

If your subscription is current, you should get your copy of this issue via bulk mail in the next three or four weeks.

In Issue #25:

• Jamie Chan teaches us how to spin wool into yarn -- it's easier than you think!
• Jennifer Maestre shares the trial and error process that led to her amazing artwork: undulating sculptures made of colored pencils -- you've got to see these, because they are actually fiber art!
• Thomas Dodd writes about his digitally manipulated photographic portraits, "shifted images" that reveal stories about the subjects' inner (or fantasy) lives...
• Coach Jill Jones shares creativity prompts that engage all five of your senses...
• Caroline Hatchell teaches you a method of using cold connections to create personally symbolic found object jewelry...
• And (oh yeah) much more!

To reiterate, this issue is not yet included in our online shopping cart but you can still order it via PayPal; just email me and I'll hook you up!

I should mention that as of this issue (#25, Summer 2007), the retail price of ARTitude Zine will be $14 for US customers ($15 for Canadian addresses, $18 for other foreign addresses). This is the first time we have raised the cover price since we began publishing over six years ago. The price increase will help to offset our greatly increased operating expenses, such as the conversion to more full-color content and the numerous postal increases (the most recent one was a real killer for large mailpieces like zines!). I hope you understand.

Watch for tons of colorful blog posts I've lined up for the next month or so. First up: my close-up photos of the 2007 Rose Parade floats. So pretty -- wait'll you see!