THE REST
Otherwise known as Miscellaneous
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1,000 Followers Later
Imagine if that 1,000 followers referred to this lonely website! Well it doesn’t. It actually refers to my Instagram art account (link is in the right hand side panel). I reached this dizzying height on September 7th, much to my surprise. As I’ve discussed elsewhere (But Is It Art?), I never expected anyone to be remotely interested in what I produce and so I’m delighted and embarrassed in equal measure that people have spared the time in their busy lives to check out my stuff. Just in case you don’t have an Instagram account I thought I’d add a gallery here to show off my art posts from Instagram. Please remember these are examples of hobby art, self-taught and very subjective. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole image. I’d love to hear your views in…
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Memories….An Urban Myth
The prompt was – what was your earliest memory of being in danger? Well I can’t tell you that but I will tell you about the time I was nearly abducted by an urban myth instead. I lived for the first 3 years of my life in a local authority house on the northside of Dublin. The house was nothing special – what suburban terraced house is – but it was home and it was safe, or at least that’s what I thought. It appears though that it wasn’t as safe as I thought it was. As the story goes, shortly before we moved across the city to another end-of-terrace house in a very similar local authority estate, I was rescued by the quick thinking of our next door neighbour’s daughter. Apparently I was standing on the…
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The Artful Dodger
ENCOURAGEMENT Following a conversation late last year with Granddaughter #2 about her love of art and plans for the future, I was a little surprised at her reticence to show off her work online the way so many young people do, especially since she planned on a career involving art. She is reasonably confident in the art she produces and receives praise all the time from her family and teachers, so the reaction made little sense to me at the time. We talked about the need for her to build an art portfolio to secure her desired place in further education and eventually employment, but still she was shying away from showing off her work. So I said I would set up a social media account dedicated to showing the world my “art” if she would post…
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But Is It Art?
When I added an ‘Art’ category to this website I was being hugely optimistic and fully intended getting deeper into art. I’ve been making ‘art’ ever since I could hold a crayon in my pudgy hand, just like every other kid, but nobody ever thought of what I was making as art – not even my mother and face it mothers are the best promoters and general PR person a kid could possibly have. I can’t criticise them because I never considered what I did as art either, maybe something on the way to art or at least the beginnings of a journey that might see the production of art towards its end. On reflection we were all wrong. Okay I’m not claiming what I make is good art but, even based on the dictionary definition of…
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The God of Small Things
All my life I’ve had a problem finding value in the day-to-day actions of everyday life. It’s not that I craved constant drama or anything of that sort, in fact I tend to shy away from drama even when it’s a genuine crisis. I just never learned to worship at the altar of the God of small things. Maybe it’s repetition that causes me a problem, although I just spent hours over the past three days organising hundreds of music files by dragging them to new locations on a hard drive. Or possibly the lack of challenge involved in doing things that require little or no new learning. It could be the pointlessness of doing something, like cleaning or repairing, that will simply need to be done again and probably sooner rather than later. Honestly I don’t…
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MEANWHILE…#5
This is what I’m getting up to lately… Reading: Just finished “The Half Heroes” series by Ian W. Sainsbury. Loved it but couldn’t help feeling the third book was a little rushed at the end. Rereading Julian May’s “Saga of the Exiles” Series after 40 years. Finished book 1 The Many Coloured Land and most of the way through book 2 The Golden Torc. Every bit as good as I remembered it to be, despite some language and references that would cause a bit of a stink if it was published recently. The series is out of print and I had to buy the four novels from an online site selling second hand books. When the ban cheile saw the well thumbed books she was amazed I’d actually have books that battered. But the urge to read…
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My Signature: A Moviestar Moment
When I was promoted to what was to become my final role before retirement I had a momentary realisation that would make a small, but legally important, change in my life from that point on. I needed to change my signature. The role I was taking on, area manager for the local education and training board, would require me to sign multiple documents across a range of purposes on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. The signature I had relied upon for the whole of my adult life up to that point was extremely legible and used a print based layout – letter by letter. It required me to lift the pen a number of times and more importantly was rarely used. I needed a signature that would be more difficult to copy and quick and…
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MY REDBUBBLE REVOLUTION
Okay I realise everybody at some stage looks at other peoples art and says to themselves “I could do that”. Sometimes we’re so off track that as soon as we try we realise it’s a non-runner, but then sometimes that’s all we need to recognise our own ‘art’ is quite good, in its own way. It took me years, no decades, to be comfortable enough to think that what I do could be considered art and when I did I wanted to share my enjoyment of the whole process. Once I got over my artistic stagefright I thought I’d dip my toe in the world of using my designs as something to share with the world on Things and that led me to Redbubble. It was my own little Redbubble Revolution. Now I’m about to start adding…
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THE KILLUMNEY INN
A quick call to the Killumney Inn on a Saturday evening in July to make sure there would be a table available and we were off and seated by 8pm. We needn't have worried about getting a table because only one other table in the restaurant was occupied and on a summer Saturday evening that seemed a little off putting.
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MEANWHILE…#4
This is what I’m getting up to lately… Reading: Not reading anything like the volume of books I should be reading since I’m in holiday mode for the past couple of weeks. Just finished Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. It’s a really satisfying twist on the whodunnit. Just started The Rise and Fall of DODO by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. A SciFi (sort of…) novel about quantum physics and magic. Watching: Not finding TV very satisfying lately. Sticking to my staple diet of Luke Cage Season 2 with a smattering of Who Do You Think You Are? – both US and UK. Jessica Biel and Liv Tyler came across as very likeable indeed. Listening To: TED Talks mostly and some Robert Thurman podcasts on Buddhism. Making: Bookmarks from stone and beads and elastic and stuff. Doing: Enjoying “pottering” – nothing…
