Andy Foulds Design
Abstract Expressionism. Maze. Magic. Talent. Craft. Genius.

I'm a guy in a basement in Vancouver, pecking away at the same coffee-stained keyboard I wrote PATTERN RECOGNITION on, and am here, in fact, as part of some vague personal process of deliberate dePynchonization.

If there's a mystery here, it's that some aspect of the rather ordinary person I know myself to be (and whom you would certainly know me to be as well, were we both to stay here long enough) is somehow able to write novels. I am not the Man Behind The Curtain. The mystery is that I do, apparently, somehow contain one.

Gibson 03.09.03

As a money saving device, the seal on the flag is frequently represented solely in red outline.

Citizen Band Potawatomie, from a thorough listing of native American Tribal Flags

early English playing cards with a good links list

playing card somewhat incomplete and didactic FAQ

US Playing Card Company well done Brief History of

Langley Inspiration

The fragments of antiquity which now exist in our museums are by and large Roman copies of the lost Greek originals. In 1500 even they were still buried waiting to be excavated. The existing Roman frescoes survived because the disastrous eruption of the volcano in Pompeii sealed them under a ton of lava.
So Venus had not been honored with a portrait for a thousand years. Botticelli painted several works dedicated of the goddess. Most important after La Primavera is the Birth or Rebirth of Venus. The nude female body - forbidden territory for a painter - is shown by Botticelli with his trademark elongation. Venus is reborn in Italy bringing new hopes to mankind. The stunning results send shockwaves throughout aristocratic Europe.
Mythology soon became a justification for Renaissance and Post-Renaissance artists to paint with a new freedom and boldness denied them by Christianity. The explicit moral commandments of Christianity, above all, humility meant that important human emotions and attitudes could hardly be glorified in properly Christian terms. Since Europe had by no means renounced the values of pagan nobility - honor, pride, vengeance, self-assertion, magnanimity - these values found a haven in the representation of classical antiquity.
But before Botticelli could develop these themes, the fanatical Christian monk Savanarola rose to power in Florence with his fire and brimstone sermons. In his legendary bonfires of the vanities he urged the citizens to burn all pagan works. His deadly campaign to stamp out luxury and vice almost destroyed the greatest city of art the Europe has known. Luckily for art, the monk proved too fanatical even for his own followers, and much too much for the Pope, who ordered him excommunicated and then burnt in the town square.
Poor Botticelli never recovered his nerve. He spent his last years painting rather unpleasant allegories like The Calumny of Apples, or Christian apocalyptic pictures, i.e. the Mystical Nativity and the Mystical Crucifixion.

James Phelan, Forbidden Visions: Mythology in Art, in the industrious, the so-deeply-embedded-as-to-be-synonymous-with-art-online, the standard by which all others are to be judged, artcyclopedia May, 2000

bergerfoundation has an impressive wealth of images and organization but the images themselves are poorly reproduced. abc gallery has a wealth of images, yet also...
National Gallery, London, has good reproduction values but the image is small
this Italian site, mezzo mondo, is like that too, and the pioneering Web Gallery of Art still has 90's lo-fi, but they have this Maynard Keenanish portrait of Mr. Bonfire
here's a photo of a statue of Savonarola in his hoodie. and the same statue. and to cleanse the palate after all that blackened book, a different statue.

{where am I at with all that? none of your business.}

tug of war

bomb shells bombshells bomb shells

The brightest is obviously the Sun. The second brightest is the Moon. The Moon is so bright that it casts clear shadows at night, you can read by it, and even through a modest telescope it can make your eyes water. So why do so many people think you can't see it during the day?

Perhaps they think it is washed out by the Sun. It isn't; if it's up and more than about first quarter it can be seen without any problem if you know where to look. Perhaps they think that it literally is only up during the night, and not during the day. This cannot be true; it orbits the Earth, making a complete circle once a month or so (the word 'month' actually comes from 'Moon'). It orbits in roughly the same path that the Sun follows on the sky, so sometimes it must be between the Earth and Sun, putting it up in the sky at the same time as the Sun, that is, during the day.

I think the answer is more subtle and more telling of how many people live their lives: they simply don't notice what goes on around them. The Moon is easy to see during the day, if people would simply look up! How many times have I seen beautiful rainbows and breathtaking halos around the Sun with multicolor sundogs and found that no one else has noticed? Most non-astronomers I talk to are shocked to find that they can see planets and man-made satellites with their unaided eyes on almost any clear night. But all they need to do is look up and see.

Phil Plait's bad astronomy does good work, clearing up misconceptions, and making good sense:

Now, bear with me: if summer started at the moment the Sun hit its peak, then every day of summer would mean the Sun gets a little lower in the sky. This to me doesn't make sense. You want the Sun to hit its peak at summer's midpoint, meaning summer would start 1.5 months earlier. That way the Sun would be climbing steadily higher until the peak of summer, then start to fall. This would in turn mean that the Sun hits its nadir (lowest point) in the middle of winter, and not at winter's beginning! See?

rocket mailmen at Lost Highways' The Future We Were Promised

semiotically empty placeholding words detail of Drizzling Rain

placeholding words, semiotically emptyIto Shinsui at Sholten Japanese Art
semiotically empty placeholding words see also Ito Shinsui Hand Mirror at the same site

either Elizabeth Shippen Green saw the work of Hiroshi Yoshida and was influenced strongly by it, or vice versa, or they both saw someone else's work and were influenced by it simultaneously, or life is just too wonderfully complex for words.

Welsh castle index, abbey index, index of indices. lots of stirring photographs

via plep

the kantele

Finnish national instrument

{you would think it's at least possible someone that old might have accomplished something toward a proficiency at some aspect of playing that kantele there. it's either that or the clownish abrasion of insistence in the incompetent has-been, the too far gone, but we're trained to discount him going in, from the get, he's old, and therefore already, without one note's register, he doesn't matter.
see it for what it is. a trivialization of the old and a sanctification of the young, coupled with a thorough and systematic sundering of the great chains of knowing, the natural lines of being that came with us from the dawn of human time.}

kantele site via ExploreNorth

There are several versions of the specific origins of the dance that became known as the Twist and of the song that either triggered or grew out of it. According to one, a group called the Nightingales was first offered a song which went: "Come on baby, let's do the twist" by one of its members, Joe Wallace, who was prompted by a dance that his younger sister and her friends were doing. The gospel group was not allowed to record secular material, and the song was passed on to Ballard who re-created it, using a melodic line he took from a song of the previous year, Is Your Love for Real?, which had been a flop for the group.

Hank Ballard
November 18, 1936?-March 2, 2003

He was born Donald Eugene Lytle in Greenfield, Ohio, about 70 miles northeast of Cincinnati. The son of a barge worker, he was performing in talent contests by the age of nine. At 15 he left Greenfield to make his living on the road, performing in bars and clubs as the "Ohio Kid". He joined the Navy, a move which ill-suited his contempt for authority. During an argument, he beat a senior officer so severely that he was sentenced to 18 years' detention.

Released after just two years, he made his way to Nashville, where he played with Porter Wagoner, George Jones, Faron Young and Ray Price. Buddy Killen helped him to cut his first discs for Decca and Mercury under the name Donny Young, but these failed to sell. In 1962 he joined George Jones's band, The Jones Boys, as bassist and harmony vocalist, miraculously staying there for four years despite frequent fights and fallings-out as both frontmen nursed addictions to liquor and stimulants.

In 1965 he changed his name to Paycheck, after John Austin Paycheck, a Chicago prizefighter who was knocked out by Joe Louis in 1940. The name reflected his music, which thereafter paid tribute to the battling underdog who fights the system and for love and respect without any real chance of success.

Johnny Paycheck
May 31, 1938- February 18, 2003
{Take This Job And Shove It}

Rodney McMillan
Orange

at the no-holds-barred pull-no-punches Susanne Vielmetter Gallery

http://www.signmuseum.com/index.html

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/feb98/bones.html

http://www.aaroads.com/california/index.html

http://factoryschool.org/content/sounds/poetry/frontenac.html

http://users.aol.com/Donh523/navapage/index.html

http://www.bu.edu/library/training/iarchives.htm

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
photographic self-portrait

Chet Baker, 1961 at the same site

kind of a petulant letter from Tahiti to America from Henry Adams the author, (education of), in the Times online's Daily Life feature.
his wife killed herself, he took refuge in his work, a history of the Jefferson and Madison presidencies. but then what? the South Seas. in 1890 Tahiti was not what it is now. he went there with John La Farge, a semi-neglected painter of some skill, and wit.