New York Times Article: How Art Creates Us

The link below is to a poignant New York Times opinion piece by David Brooks published in January 2024. It is every bit as current in 2025 as it was last year. In this piece, he advocates for educating oneself in culture (reading books, viewing art, making or listening to music, etc. -- especially of the greats in their fields). He remarks that it is in knowing the culture of our times and being informed by those of the past that we become enlarged human beings -- embracing a level of understanding we may not know otherwise.

"How Art Creates Us"

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Highjacked Blog Photo

My profile photo was highjacked ! For those of you who are blogging, be wary. There are some unscrupulous folks out there who may be using or about to use a photo(s) you've uploaded to an online photo-hosting site. At the time I created a blog, having a URL for a photo uploaded online was the only way to insert a photo in your profile or to create a custom header. There had been no problems for a long while. This morning, however, I did a Google image search for my name and found my photo linked to a totally different blog than my own! It is possible I didn't mark my file with the online photo-hosting site as private, but I didn't expect this to happen. I don't know whether marking it private would have actually averted the situation, but I'm not waiting to find out. I eliminated my membership to that online photo-hosting service today and caution anyone to be careful with uploading images to the internet . If you read the terms of agreement at many sites, you'...

Life Book 15 - Week 36 Project Completed (or nearly completed)

This project went in an entirely different direction than the Life Book 2015 lesson. That's ok because we're also working on accepting those times when we move in our own direction using the lesson purely as a launching point. This piece involved experimenting with collage on a substrate (muslin covered with joint compound), followed with paint, more collage, and then the felt, fabric and beaded plant. This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org .

Pottery Play Day

Today, I threw a couple of bowls, but my ability to center was not working. It could have been partly due to the new-to-me clay I tried using. In addition, I trimmed three others. One of those three ended up being very experimental...in that I tried a version of mishima on the interior of the bowl. Mishima is a technique of painting a leather-hard vessel with an underglaze(s), then waxing the layer, and finally...carving a design in the underglaze/wax surface before the vessel is fired into bisque. I tried it, and we'll see how it comes out. Below are the five vessels of Batch #8 that I brought home today. Of them, there are two new things I tried. The stripy one was done with one base layer plus a second layer of alternating painted stripes of the base color and mulberry. The other first is where I used a base layer and added two different lip colors of different widths. Lately, I've noticed other potters getting some great results...

Cay Denise

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