Kinetic Artist Arthur Ganson

The Long Now talk by Arthur Ganson was rather interesting and thought provoking for me. I am not usually that big of a fan of kinetic art, as most of it seems to be a who can top who lately, but his pieces seemed much more thought provoking for me. (I will keep my critiques and thoughts short, so they do not taint your own towards the work.) He had with him, the thinking chair. It was a neat piece with a chair that walks around a rock that is suspended above the gear structure.



It is so intricate and yet so heavy at the same time, with the rock above all the delicate metal pieces and gears that move the chair. It also seems to be walking on its "hands" to me, which places the piece totally off balance. There is a tenuousness to it all, where you expect the chair to fall, or a teacher to yell "Four on the floor please" at it, and yet it seems perfectly at peace with itself.

My other favorite was Machine with Chair:



I am a big fan of organic shapes and textures in artwork and architecture. The music combined with a machine dancing with a chair is so moving and beautiful to me. I am not sure if it is the dancer in me that was drawn to this particular installation, but I think the form of the machine is beautiful and the layering of the classical guitar music makes it all work together. It is form and machinery all in a perfect harmony. The most amazing thing to me is the small amount of tolerance for error that Mr. Ganson achieves with all of his art pieces.

Cory's Yellow Chair was also one that I found a great appreciation:



Mr. Ganson talked about the moment of now when explaining this piece, and I love that concept. When is now? I find that the moving meditation that is performed before my classes at Fat Chance Bellydance help to bring me into that moment of now. That movement focuses me in on what exactly I am doing at that moment with those people. This chair is also a focusing point to me. The momentary time when the chair is assembled is a definite moment of now, and then, that brief completeness is taken apart as the chair explodes.

Those are just my thoughts and reflections. If you go to Arthur Ganson's website he has many more videos of his works, including the Machine with Concrete and Margot's Cat, two other thought provoking pieces that you should really see for yourself and ponder without my thoughts cluttering yours.

Seeing Red

I seemed to get a lot done yesterday. I made salsa, red food. I worked on my cross stitch, red floss. I went to Long Now to hear about kinetic art, red theater seats, and today I tasted the salsa, too sweet. This got me seeing red. I spent a lot of time working on the salsa yesterday to only mess up one thing. I did not cut the sugar amount in half when I halved the recipe. I guess that is what happens when you should have really eaten lunch but waited until your canning was complete.

Overall, I got some really great pictures though. I loves how red these tomatoes are. They were super ripe, so it made for easy slipping of the skins.





They were super fragrant and wonderfully juicy. I did not have to squeeze them at all for extra cooking juice for the vegetable mix of peppers and onions.



The cooking went well and did not take up much time. Like I said, all was well except forgetting to cut the sugar in half. After all the work, I only ended up with two full pints and one filled three quarters of the way, so it had to go in the fridge.



This takes me to what I am going to do to fix the problem. After some quick consultation with Dan for some ideas, I have decided to get four more pounds of tomatoes from the market on Sunday and make another half batch with out the sugar. Then I will open up the jars and pour them in and bring the mix back up to boiling for a few minutes. Then it will go back into clean jars and into the canner for reprocessing. Hopefully this works out for a better salsa. I also found that there was no heat to the salsa despite adding three full jalapeno peppers, seeds and all to the salsa. Now, I am not a big spice person, so this was a real shocker to me. I am going to add three more peppers to this half batch, and hopefully we will get some heat back into this.

Today up in the Etsy Store I am listing some new red gerbera daisy hair flowers. I really like them. They are a beautiful crimson shade with dark brown to black middles. They also have the same sturdy silver bobby pins for maximal placement possibilities.





Today I am determined to sew up a new pair of black sari pants for the store. I have had them cut out for a long time, but I have been too busy with canning and housekeeping to get to them. Today is the day. I also have the last of the tent adjustments to make at 826 Valencia. Hopefully I can squeeze in some muffin baking as well. Tomorrow I will post my thoughts on the Long Now talk from last night. For now the thoughts are still marinading.