Hey Shemp, I know from past interactions that you appreciate some of the artworks of a fellow I know. I saw a *very* rare piece of his tonight that I thought you would dig hearing about.
The artist in question is known for the precision of his line drawing. He's reknowned for his comics, but his drawing has been compared to some of the olde masters, and with reason. So anyway, what I came across tonight was a leftover from the early days of him teaching himself how to draw. Early on, he became fascinated with Japanese ink painting, and the Zen of it. It's a very Now artform, because the paper that the artist paints on is so fragile that the entire painting has to be done in one long brushstroke. If you pause or lift the brush from the paper, you tear it and the whole piece goes in the trashbin. Anyway, the piece I found that I know you would just love is from a period in which this artist was trying to draw like this, in one long stroke, never lifting his pen from the paper until the work was finished. He still has a few of the drawings from that period, but this piece of art is not even pen on paper. It's done on an Etch-a-sketch. And it's magnificent. I really loved it, not only because the drawing is lovely, but because it's so incredibly fragile. It could never be transported anywhere, because if you tried to move it very far, whatever the mechanism is inside an Etch-a-sketch machine that erases the current painting and creates a blank "canvas" for the next painting would get activated during the move. The whole thing reminded me of Tibetan sand mandalas. They're a very ephemeral artform as well. Six or seven monks work for six or seven months to create this perfect mandala, painted in colored sand. And then at the end of the process, because the work of art really can't be preserved and was never intended to be preserved in the first place, the monks just sweep all the sand into a sack, offer it to the gods, and start on the next mandala. This Etch-a-sketch painting is a lot like that. It has managed to survive all this time, but sooner or later, it's going to just go away. One of the cats is going to knock it over, or a maid dusting that shelf is going to knock it over, and it'll be history. At that point, the drawing will exist only in the mind of the artist who created it and the people who were fortunate enough to see it before it went away. I feel fortunate to be one of the latter. I'm just passing this story along because I have the weird intuition that you'd appreciate it. Unc ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
