ANOTHER MIXED BAG

February 26, 2014

 

Arrabal, the tango dancer
for DIGITALMANIA's* Florian Nicolle inspired challenge

Meet ARRABAL (check out this YouTube* link!) We met her in her coming-of-age story, as she entered the underground world of Buenos Aires's tango clubs and discovered the violent history that took her father and disrupted her nation.  In an explosive story told entirely through dance and music, we learned about the political violence that threatened to destroy Argentina in the 1970's... as well as a bit about the tango, born in the working class neighborhoods of Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century. Although the music was very loud, it was beautiful, sensual... and the dancing was exciting and unique! If you're in Toronto, it's playing at the PANASONIC Theater.

 

A second piece, inspired by Florian Nicolle* (a 25 year old French graphic designer and illustrator,)  for Flicker's DIGITALMANIA* is this piece I created in Nicolle's style...I call it BLIND...

INSPIRATION AVENUE* declared its challenge to be CHANGE... my thoughts immediately flashed to 9/11 and how much the world has changed since then. Remember when air travel was fun?

THE THREE MUSES* wanted to see some art about ARCHITECTURE. I've always loved the romance of castles...

TAKE A WORD*simply requested something with BLUE...

 That's it for this week's challenges. Enjoy the rest of your week...especially the weekend!! See you for my next posting?

 

Thanks for stopping in!

Big Hugs,

abbyj

* please click on the titles in this color for further information



VIRTUAL ARGENTINA, DIGITALMANIA 

and 

A TURKEY VOYEUR

November 29, 2012

Stop looking at me...GO AWAY!

I know...it's the week after Thanksgiving but this turkey is STILL hanging around our house with his pals. I don't mind when they're around the house, but I DO mind when they stop and look into my office window at me. Here we are...eye to eye... neither of us, particularly friendly!! Don't know what I was doing that was so interesting...

Blog travel leader from Art and Sole's POSTCARD CHALLENGE, Darcy, invited us to explore Argentina this week. What a forward-looking, interesting country. It's the birthplace of the TANGO, home to the counterpart of our American cowboy...the GAUCHO, home of the 2nd EVER world radio broadcast, the world's 3rd largest beef and 5th largest wine producer, and the homeland of one Eva Duarte de Peron...EVITA!! Further, it boasts a literacy rate of 97.6% ...and soccer is the preferred sport.

The art of British born artist, Nickie Newfield is DIGITALMANIA's artist of the week. I tried to create images in a similar style to hers...she's a painter, collage artist and her latest work combines lots of rich texture, a variety of layered papers, renaissance and religious images...and often, metallic paint. Since I can't paint, I did what I could digitally...

I wish you all a pleasant weekend...with no turkeys watching you from your windows!!!

'Til the next, I send you hugs,

abbyj

MIXED BAG... 
February 9, 2012  

 "Happy there's no snow..."  NOT ME!

What an extraordinary winter! Here we are in the snow belt of Central New York, annual victim of  lake-effect snow (from Lake Ontario,) and we're still waiting!! We live in the nation's snowiest metropolitan region, averaging 114.6 inches every winter (...and we love to talk about it!!) I can remember years when we had snow on MOTHER'S DAY...October to May is always fair game!!! Our snowiest winter on record  blanketed our fair city with 192.1 inches...that was in 1992-1993. 

THIS winter, we've only had a mere 31.8 inches...unacceptable! Most people who read this blog KNOW that I love the snow!! I miss it, but I'm certain that between now and Mother's Day 2012, we'll see more of the beautiful, fluffy white stuff...we have to put to use the biggest snow plow IN THE WORLD, (or so they claim,) that sits at our airport. It's a 32-foot, 3-inch blade attached to a payloader. The 48-inch tall piece of steel can clear 8,500 cubic yards of snow in an hour!! That's equivalent to about 4 feet of snow covering an entire football field...it would take 850 standard sized dump trucks to haul all that snow away!! Can you imagine? 

Enough snow talk... moving on to this week's artistic challenges!  SUNDAY POSTCARD ART tasked artists to create a piece based on the movie classics...here are two!

CRAZY AMIGOS asked us to concentrate on Charles Dickens... I remembered "Hard Times"  that took place during England's Industrial Revolution. Unlike many of his other books, it had no scenes set in London, but takes place, rather, in "Coketown," a fictitious,  Victorian industrial  mill-town in Northern England. 

Shorter than most of his other novels, it's a good one to sit down and read with a cup of COFFEE...

TAKE A WORD's challenge for the week...coffee!

COLLAGE OBSESSION challenged us to play with a theme of TANGERINE TANGO...

F

Finally, in one of my online Yahoo art GROUPS, PAPER TRADERS, I've joined a page swap involving creating 7 coasters with a Wild West theme. They're not due until March, but here are some of my creations..

This was a good week for art...if not for snow! We'll see what next week brings. Thanks again for stopping by.

XOX,

abbyj