Michelangelo in the west

I've been in Fort Worth, TX this past week for the ELUNA (Ex Libris Users of North America) conference.  The conference is focused on the various library software products provided by Ex Libris, so I got to complain heartily about library systems with fellow techie librarians who can empathize and hear about the next generation system that Ex Libris says will make our working lives easier.  We'll see.

After the conference ended yesterday, I walked to the Kimbell Art Museum to see "The Torment of Saint Anthony" which is apparently the earliest know painting by Michaelangelo.  For lack of a better word, it was quite simply stunning.

I didn't find out just how long the distance between the hotel and museum was until I returned to hotel and looked it up on google maps. It was definitely worth the 6 mile round-trip jaunt.

Art and life and what statistical probabilities have to do with it all

These are the kinds of random things J. and I debate at 6:30 in the morning at Starbucks on Saturdays.

Here's how this one started...I mentioned off-hand to J. that the book I was reading, "Age of Wonder: how the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science," was surprisingly engrossing. He asked what exactly it was about, and when I mentioned that the Romantic Generation referred to the age in which Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron and Shelley lived, he wondered whether Coleridge should get the credit for that strange poem of his, "Kubla Khan," which was written while he was under the influence of opium.

So J. and I started debating whether artists should get credit for the work they've done if they were under the influence (drugs, alcohol, whatever). J. said no, because the artist had no say in the making of art, it was just the drugs. In other words, they did not have the inborn talent to produce their art; it was just the byproduct of flights of fancy they undertook while under the influence. I said yes, because even if the artist was under the influence, s/he still had the talent necessary to produce art (this is not true of all people that claim to be artists). I used a Chesterton quote to back me up: "Jane Austen was not inflamed or inspired or even moved to be a genius; she simply was a genius."

I didn't come close to convincing J. until I pointed out the statistical improbability of an artist continually churning out masterpieces while high, if there was no inherent "genius" or spark of true talent to make such consistently high quality works.

J. and I have a long-standing good-natured antagonism over art.

Eyes have it all

I am a very visual person--a visual learner, if you will, to use education terminology. My auditory senses and I have an uneasy truce (obviously), but I can rely wholeheartedly on my eyes for a visual feast.

When I was a child, I used to play one of those tormenting either/or games and ask myself: "Would I rather be blind or deaf?" After serious consideration, I would always decide that I would prefer deafness over blindness. I'm not sure if already being hard of hearing gives me an unfair advantage since I already know what it's like not to hear (though not what it's like to be profoundly, stone cold deaf), but the thought of not being able to see trees or people's eyes or the shape of letters on the page or the artwork of James McNeill Whistler or a trail snaking round the bend makes me cold to the bone.

Over the past year, I've come across a few blogs for which the visual element is an integral part of their makeup:

And the Pursuit of Happiness, by Maria Kalman
Posie Gets Cozy, by Alicia Paulson
3191 Miles Apart, by Stephanie and Mav

These bloggers have a way of focusing on visual details, whether mundane or profound, that makes the experience or story they describe more palpable, more real. I like them very much.

Art in the park

We walked around the Woodland Arts Fair yesterday, basking in the variety of arts and the even more diverse population of fair-goers.

Some artists that I liked:

--Kent Ambler (I particularly liked his woodcuts)

--Mary Lou Hess (Her art has a dreamlike quality)

--Angela Bond (I especially liked her "Sinuous Kitty," under the 'Cats' link)

--Mark Traughber (I love his technical expertise)