I am the oldest of three grandsons on my mother’s side. Of the four of us, I was the one who was most interested in, and knowledgeable about art and art history at a fairly young age. By seven or eight, I was familiar with dozens of artists. Among my favorites were (and still are) Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet, Escher, Saul Steinberg, Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer, Renoir, and Henri Rousseau. I bring this up to provide context for the photo below and for the story about it.

I don’t know if I was eight or nine when this picture taken, but it was taken by my friend Chuck Gould, a contemporary of my father, and somebody I have known for the bulk of my life.

On this particular day, for reasons unknown, I decided that I was going to dress up as Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec. His art utterly fascinated me, as did the fact that his path as an artist started at about the same age that I was then. I started with grabbing an oversized jacket worn by one of the adults, something that would dwarf me, or at the very least come down to my knees. Next, I grabbed a fat black El Marko pen and proceeded to draw a beard, moustache and glasses. I was ready to present myself. The resultant conversation went something along the lines of this:

Ivory (my father’s girlfriend:)  “Oh my god, what did you do to yourself?”

Me: “I’m Toulouse-Lautrec! Whaddaya think?”

Ivory: “what did you use to draw on your face?”

Me (proudly): “I used this El Marko pen!”

“…But…isn’t that indelible?”

“‘Indelible’? What’s that?”

“It means that it won’t wash off your face!”

That was the day I learned what the word “indelible” meant.  I have never forgotten it, and indeed the mighty El Marko was just that. We spent a while trying to scrub what we could off, but for all intents and purposes, I got to be Toulouse-Lautrec for the better part of a week.

* * *

This image is included in a fantastic collection of photographs by Chuck from the Digger Archives. These photos are of particular excitement to me because they chronicle a world that my father was part of in the late sixties and into the early seventies….and by extension me.  I know or knew most of the people in these photos, so it’s really great seeing these photos all pulled together like this. From an historical perspective, this collection is perhaps one of the better visual records of activist hippy life in and around the scene that surrounded the Height back then….and of many of the Diggers.

Slowly finding its way around the web is some of the most stunning and incredible time-lapse photography you’ve ever seen, taken by one remarkable Dustin Farrell. Every frame of this video is a raw still taken with a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed to create the breath-taking landscapes you see here. The quality of these videos is jaw-dropping. Full-screen them on your computer and you’ll see what I mean. WOW:

Lotte Reiniger was one of the twentieth century’s major animation artists, pioneering a unique and distinctive style of black and white silhouette animation initially inspired by the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry. Her films were interpretations of classic myths and fairy tales. After escaping Nazi Germany in the early 30′s, Reiniger settled in London and together with her husband Carl Koch, created a series of fairy-tale films for Primrose Productions based on the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Hauff, Hans Christian Andersen and the stories from One Thousand and One Nights. This is the Magic Horse.

Read more about her history HERE

Today is a day of emotional tumult. Waves of emotion keep crashing, each time a little different from the last, waves without any sort of consistent rhythm or pattern. So it is with the passing of somebody we love.

Jane Duke died this morning at 12:43 A.M. She had been battling her third bout of breast cancer, but this time it had spread to her bones and to her liver. We have all hoped that she might manage to beat it this time while still preparing for the possibility that this day might come.

Jane and I have not been together for fifteen plus years, but we’ve always has Dashiell— her and my only child— in-common. He has been the binding force that kept us in contact, and while we have not always in agreement about the “right” ways of how our son should be raised, have never wavered from the love we both shared for him and our common desire to have him go out into the world, take charge of his life and find those things that will provide him with a sense of purpose as well as personal and professional gratification. This was one of the biggest things weighing on her mind when she called last week at 11:00 at night on a Saturday. We spoke for over an hour: It had felt like 10 minutes.

Jane talked about gaining strength and her eventual desire to be independent again so that she would no longer have to “burden” her loving sisters and family who have been there for her these last many months as she fought against the ravage that was insidiously taking her body away. I think she knew that her days were coming to an end. She made sure that we covered the entire  checklist of things on her mind. She wanted to make sure I knew that she loved us, and wanted to make sure that Dash would be ok after she was gone.

I reassured her that Dashiell would be ok, that we would be there for him, and that I would do my best to encourage him towards a  path that would give him happiness, success and solid ground.

That was the last time that Jane and I ever spoke. It was all surreal and sad, but was also much needed. There was a sense of finality in that talk, a sense of closure.

This morning when the phone rang, before I even said “hello,” I knew that this was going to be the call that indeed it was. It was Dashiell. He asked if I had read my email yet.  A kick in the gut and that burn in my brain. He told me what I knew was going to be his next words: “Mom died last night.”

Each time one of us would start crying, one would trigger the other. We talked until we couldn’t. We exchanged “love you”’s, signed off and agreed to talk again later in the day.

* * *

I met Jane when I was 25 and she was 30. We were both attending Seattle Central Community College and were student liaisons for an annual student arts publication, she for the photography department and me for the offset lithography/printing program.

She had a sparkle and creative bent that caught my attention. She was focused and driven, serious and silly. Above all she had a caring heart and had an enduring love for the creative spirit and for those people who embraced a creative spirit in their lives. These were the people who invariably made up the core of her friends and her tribe, the same people who would come to visit her during the last few months of her life.

Jane and I  started seeing each other a year later, and seven months into our dating, she informed me that she was pregnant. Three months later we moved in together. Three months after that we were fighting like an old married couple. Three months after that Dashiell was born at home. We had two midwives and five others who were there in celebration and to support her through a grueling 30 hour labor. When one of the midwives said that she thought that we’d have to move to the hospital because Jane no longer had the energy to keep pushing, Jane found what little reserve she had left to insure that Dashiell would be born at home (stubborn Taurus women). She was not about to get that far and have somebody else tell her what she would or would not do. She was determined and she could be tough.

Although she never moved professionally away from nursing, she was interested in the possibility of pursuing something more creative in her own life. She continued to photograph for years, and eventually shifted towards painting, a medium that gave her a better way to express her creative voice.

We lasted another 6 years together, and although it was clear that we were ill-suited to be in a relationship, we tried hard to make things work for the sake of our son. Eventually we both realized that we would both be happier apart, and that we could be better parents living in close proximity.

Several years later I got together with Patty, and when Dashiell was 14, Patty and I announced that we would be moving from Seattle to Los Angeles. Jane decided to move to Salem, OR where her sisters and nieces lived. She bought a cute little house. She kept on painting. She continued to raise Dashiell, and he would visit me here as often as was possible. She continued to work as a nurse and help others in the last stages  of their lives.

* * *
Jane’s determination and strength of spirit carried her through her final fight. It’s hard to say goodbye, but I’m happy her suffering has finally come to an end.

I updated my Facebook status to read:

Sunday, January 30th 12:43am. Rest in peace Jane. I’m glad you no longer have to endure the pain. I am sad to say goodbye and will miss you.

My friend Leah posted the following in response:

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

– Dalai Lama

I will miss you Jane. Dash will be ok, I promise. In the meantime, I’m gonna be riding the waves.

Yonder from Emilia on Vimeo.

My friend Al introduced me to a friend on his on Facebook (Scott) and so I did the obligatory digging around which led me to his blog, Destroy Your Computer. There I found an exquisite and inspiring piece on animation from a woman in Germany named Emelia Forstreuter. She uses Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Cinema 4D and Flash to create some of the most inspired work I’ve seen in a very long time. I am stunned, hope you are too. Fullscreen it!

This was an amazing piece that I discovered while still working @ Creative Asylum overseeing the development and launch of the Peer Squared Project. While this is not a new find, it’s a piece of work that warrants a rediscovery as it’s still one of the more amazing projects I’ve seen in recent years.

Brambilla’s work, entitled “Civilization,” is a continuous HD video collage, “taking hundreds of stock footage, movie footage and original clips and combining them to create a moving landscape depicting the ascension from hell to heaven” (500 clips in all) as an installation inside of an elevator in New York’s Standard Hotel.

The Video moves up and down depending on the direction of the elevator car, and passes through hell, lower purgatory, middle purgatory, upper purgatory, heaven and upper heaven/lower hell (which is where the video collage ultimately loops to create the continuum).

The total size of the piece is in itself daunting: 1920 x 7500 pixels played back on a 42″ plasma screen.

To view the entire piece, read the details of the project along with an interview with Brambilla, please CLICK HERE: it’s well worth the time. You’re welcome!

“Hello World” is what you are supposed to have your first program print out in pretty much every introductory (computer) programming class. Not particularly exciting, but I suppose you’ve got to start somewhere, and “Hello World” is apparently it…so this being my first post to this – my new website/blog –will (unimaginatively) be my first announcement to the world as well.

Prior to this incarnation, I had a previous websites living at this domain for quite a number of years, but it was static and unchanging, and frankly very “1995.” Considering that my work has – now for many years – been in web and interactive, it only seemed appropriate to update my personal website to one that was (at least marginally) reflective of the “new” web (as in 2.0), one that is dynamic and interactive. This is what invariably happens: you do a lot of great work for other people, that you can never seem to find the time to get up-to-speed on a build of your own. It’s like going to a website of a graphic designer and finding a site that is very poorly designed – not a good representation of that persons work and ability, and certainly not somebody you’d want to hire.

So, welcome to my new face lift. I work full-time, and already I’m finding that I will have to push myself to find the time to write new posts, but it’s important that I do, both in terms of maintaining a creative discipline in my life, but also in terms of the work that I do working with Web, marketing, social media and creative uses of new media on the Web and elsewhere.

This is a good transition, one of many over the last year, but I’ll save that for another post.