On Summit

I started this blog ostensibly to keep people up-to-date about my art stuff. It's obviously kind of drifted a bit from that, so I thought I might make a post that gets us back on track. Plenty of people have seen art in galleries and museums, but they're not always privy to what goes on behind the scenes. To address that, I took a few snapshots of my workspace in the hope of giving readers a glimpse of how a painting comes together. I do some work on the easel thing, but most of the painting happens at this table. As you can see, these aren't laboratory conditions I'm working in, but it gets the job done. The painting you see on the table is one that's just about finished. Obviously my space is as much about storage as it is about painting. That's because I make more work than I sell. If you have any ideas about how I might rectify this situation, I'm all ears. This is a longer shot of the work table. There's not a lot of natural light in this room, so I...

Unbeknownst to even her closest friends, my wife has put together an admirable collection of vintage Santas (mostly small, and of the post-war "Made in Japan" variety). Having always been personally amused and intrigued by these sometimes scary looking knick-knacks, I've decided to share them with the larger world. So, while we're still technically in the Holiday Season, I present our Army of Santas! ( I hope too that Hal Mooney's arrangement of the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" will be ample compensation for my mostly pedestrian camerawork).

There's nothing quite like the familiar look and feel of the Ohio Art League's annual Thumb Box exhibition to make their new south campus gallery space feel a little bit more like home. For those of you haven't heard the news, the OAL recently moved out of their venerable Short North storefront to take up residence in what's being billed as the Arts Alley at South Campus Gateway. Thankfully, the big move didn't disrupt their schedule, and this December, as in year's past, the gallery is brimming with small works designed especially for the Holiday shopping season. A slight tweak in this year's guidelines has allowed artists to submit up to three works for exhibition (prior years limited submissions to one per artist). This procedural change has added to both the number of works on display, and in some small way, the consistency of the show. It's certainly a benefit to the viewer, whose eye can now rest occasionally on a repeating color, shape, or theme....

I'll say up front that I liked Freakonomics . It provided an eye-opening lesson in pop-economics delivered with nerdy earnestness and a sense of wonder. In that context it didn't seem unrealistic to expect something similar from Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's much anticipated follow-up. Within a few pages though, it was clear that something had gone very wrong. Apparently nerdy earnestness was dumped in favor of cynical contrarianism for this go-round. The opening section " An Explanatory Note" sets the tone; Oh those crazy middle-aged white guys, how they confounded their publisher with their wacky book and title! So outrageous! So off the hook! ...and the money they walked away from by not pumping out a quick follow-up in the "Dummies" or "Chicken Soup" style? Such credibility! Yes, we see! The picture we're supposed to get is of a pair of gonzo-style economists beholden to nothing more than the objective search f...

If you've been anywhere resembling close proximity to the intellectual pulse of Columbus, you'll know that last Tuesday (that's 10/20/2009 if you're using the Gregorian OS) the Wexner Center hosted TEDx Columbus . The original TED franchise , the story goes, is an annual conference founded by the legendary architect and designer Richard Saul Wurman. It's held in California, draws the best and brightest minds from around the globe, and to a certain degree can be thought of as a kind of forward-thinking cultural yin to Burning Man's low-brow tribal yang. The acronymous name isn't a coincidence either; it stands for something (technology, entertainment, and design to be specific). The x (lower-case please) denotes the Columbus happening as an independently organized event (i.e. not the biggie in California). TED has been referred to as "the ultimate brain spa" and local residents can thank Co-Chairs Nancy Kramer and Ruth Milligan for arranging some of...

Every year, around the beginning of October, my library hosts an event called "Touch-a-Truck" . As the name implies it's a children's program set-up to let the young ones explore trucks and other interesting vehicles up close. Being that motorscooters are something of a "kid friendly" mode of transportation, I usually offer to have my scooter available for the program. It's also common for me to enlist some of my scooter owning friends to put in an appearance too (the more the merrier!). While their first reaction is usually alarm (at the prospect of toddlers climbing on their bikes) they typically come around and agree to risk a little exposure to the 3-8 old set. This ye ar was no different, and I was lucky to have my friends Mike (proud owner of a Vespa ET150) and Mark (Vespa GranTurismo) take part in representing scooterists everywhere at the 2009 edition of "Touch-a-Truck". Joining us in the two-wheeled corral were a couple other bike owne...

There's been a lot of attention given to master art forger Han Van Meegeren recently. Since 2006, three new books have been published ("The Man Who Made Vermeer's" by Jonathan Lopez, "The Forger's Spell" by Edward Dolnick and "I was Vermeer" by Frank Wynne) and one classic has been reissued ("Master Art Forger" by John Godley) . Van Meegeren, for those unfamiliar the story, was a technically accomplished artist working in pre-World War Two Holland. The indifference (and occasional scorn) of his contemporary critics lead Van Meegeren to seek a kind of artistic revenge. He fabricated a plan that hinged on creating a fake Vermeer; a forgery to be passed off on the unsuspecting art world. He'd "discover" the painting, set the critics fawning over its brilliance, and then - in a moment of Hollywood style triumph - reve al it was not a genuine Vermeer after all but rather a masterpiece from the hand of the unjustly maligned V...