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12-24-2010
It is holiday time. I'll be back in 2011, but right now it's time to spend time with my family. Be well, everyone.
12-18-2010
I've been making books. I made three. I bound them myself. I am pleased with this. You will be pleased with this, when you see my books. I will show them to you at some point. Be patient.
Today I will show you the print I made for this year's The Littlest Print Exchange. The image is based on something my first printmaking instructor, Kurt Kemp used to say about imagery that was too obvious or blunt in expressing a concept. The tile of this piece is "Over The Head With A Baseball Bat (The New Cliché)".
When I was in college we used to talk about the most cliché printmaking subject matter. This was not a scientific survey by any means, but the short list ended up being, Skulls, Rabbits and Birds. According to this year's Littlest Print Exchange, Skulls and Rabbits may be out, but Birds are still in. Here are a couple of my favorite prints from the exchange:
By Sarah Harvey
By Kate Snow
12-11-2010
"Boneshaker," by Cherie Priest was pretty darn steampunk. There were punks. Steam was used to power things. There were also zombies, poison gas, airships, mad inventors, etc. It covers all the bases.
It also does something slightly unusual for books of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. It centers the story very tightly around the two main protagonists. I mean very tightly. There are points in the book where factions in the zombie-stricken portions of Seattle are having amazing battles to decide the fate of the city and using all kinds of interesting sounding steampunk technologies. Ordinarily these portions of a novel would describe in some detail all of the hurly-burly to show off the toys and to tell us how the big events are going down. In "Boneshaker" we are given only hints of a lot of the action as the main characters play out their family drama around the edges of the events.
It leaves a lot up to the imagination as to how what is ordinarily the main action of the climax plays out. As a literary strategy this is either smart or lazy, but I generally appreciate it. The story about mother and son trying to find each other in such a bizarre and dangerous environment does make for satisfying reading in the end.
I will say the ending left much more than I expected unresolved. The main conflicts were solved but the book ends with at least five characters in the novel asking themselves either "Am I going to survive this wound?" or "So what should I do now?" Priest gives only the vaguest hints as to how those questions are resolved. In fact, the epilogue, where I had hoped for some closure on a number of issues did more to highlight the fact that we don't know what happened than anything else.
Even if Priest had gone on to write a direct sequel to continue the story (and it looks like her follow-up book, "Dreadnought," is not a direct sequel) I still find it frustrating to be left floating on the fates of so many characters.
In the end, I found the book enjoyable. It tells an engaging primary story, but it does leave me slightly unsatisfied all around the edges.
Speaking of dissatisfaction, I thought I had uploaded images earlier this week with which to graphically update this site today since I knew I would be away from my scanner much of this weekend. It seems I failed upload the correct files. Most distressing.
I'll get you all something nice for next time. Promise.
12-4-2010
Sometimes I think success in life is purely a matter of durability. The people who keep trying are the ones who succeed. It's like a marathon, or maybe a war of attrition. If you stop trying, you lose. People may seem more successful thanks to talent or circumstances but neither talent nor circumstance will do anything for someone who has stopped trying.
The ones who succeed are the ones who don't give up. The ones who don't succeed are the ones that do give up, or the ones circumstance forces to give up.
Sometimes something happens and you're no longer able to continue. Things have been happening to people important to me. Most of my circle who have been forced to stop their intended efforts will recover and keep going. Some of them won't. Those things that happen to other people? Sometimes they happen to people you know.
My copy of the "Opposition" print exchange arrived this week. This means I can display the full image of my print for the folio. Check it out here. There are forces that stand in our way, and even against us. Keep going.
