Purple Cow

I’ve been taking drop-in art workshops that are being offered on Saturday afternoons at The Space in Greenbelt, Maryland. I decided to do something experimental where I did art using a mix of markers and construction paper. So here is my piece, which I call The Purple Cow.

I made the cow using purple and brown construction paper that I drew then cut out using scissors. I used a brown marker for the hooves, nostrils, eyes, and the hairy details on the cow’s tail. I used green construction paper for the ground. I was going to use construction paper using the sky but I couldn’t find any blue paper so I ended up coloring the sky with a blue marker. For the flowers and butterflies, I used pink and yellow construction paper with paper punchers then glued them on the ground. I liked the results and others who were in that workshop like it as well.

Doing this mostly paper collage is such a throwback to the kind of art that I used to do as a child, such as Indian Chief and Owl Collage. It felt like I was reliving my childhood art class in school, which was pretty cool. Taking art classes is one of the few positive memories I have of my school years so I don’t mind at all.

Donating My Chick Amigurumi to the Little Free Art Gallery

Five years ago I took a crocheting workshop at The Space where we all used this pattern called Cute Chick Amigurumi. Here is what I made.

Later that year I entered it in the Retro Town Fair that was held as part of the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival. My little chick had won a first place ribbon in the Needlework category.

Since then that cute chick had been sitting in my home. I was decluttering my home when I finally decided that it was time to give someone else a chance to enjoy my chick amigurumi. Since I made my decision shortly before Easter, I decided to put my chick in a Little Free Art Library Library box that’s located just down the street from where I live.

Here’s the Chick Amigurumi in its new home.

I also took photos of the other tiny artworks that were available for anyone to take.

And here is one final snapshot of my Chick Amigurumi.

Chicks and Ducklings

After I submitted my Peeps diorama to a contest that was held at Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland, I ate lunch at Crabtowne USA (which also happened to be Taco Tuesday so tacos were on sale) then played a few vintage video games. Then I decided to a little driving around Glen Burnie since that was the town where I grew up in (and I felt mostly miserable). I saw that there’s now one of those big box retailers called Tractor Supply Co. Since there’s not such a store near where I currently live, I decided to check it out. It was basically a retail store that’s mostly meant for people who have farms. (There are still a few farms still left once you leave the southernmost part of Glen Burnie and go into neighboring Severn.)

But then I saw a pen where they sold chicks and ducklings. They were so cute to watch. The store had a requirement for anyone who wanted to buy these birds—a customer is required to buy a minimum of four chicks or two ducklings. You couldn’t just buy one chick or duckling, you had to buy more than one of each type. I guess it’s because they needed companions in order to thrive. That requirement was enough to deter me to make any impulse buys. In addition, my homeowner’s association would probably frown at keeping farm animals as pets. (They are generally okay with domesticated pets like dogs and cats. I even took a risk when I had a pet hedgehog since they aren’t a common pet. In addition hedgehogs are nocturnal animals and I remember when Spike used to spend a long time exercising on his exercise wheel, which made clicking sounds. I minimized annoying my neighbor in my townhouse by putting the cage against a wall that wasn’t shared with the next door neighbor. I was successful and I never had any complaints about Spike.)

And that’s not to mention that the problem with ducklings and chicks is that they don’t stay small. They eventually grow larger then it becomes a challenge to finding space where they can rest or just chill.

But they were so incredibly cute that I ended up photographing them. Here are the chicks.

And here are the ducklings.

My Video About Getting Stalked By a Green Owl

For the past few years I’ve been brushing up on my foreign languages using the app Duolingo. It’s not bad and it’s not quite the same as taking a formal class but at least the lessons are free. Duolingo’s mascot is a green owl named Duo and he’s pretty cute. I remember about a year ago the Duolingo app encouraged me to download a special widget for my phone that is supposed to remind me to not forget to take another lesson. The graphics on that widget are bizarre looking at times and they are definitely designed to guilt trip you into taking at least one short foreign language class.

I spent a few weeks taking screenshots of the different graphics I’ve seen posted on that widget, which I compiled into a video. I uploaded it on to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube so you can see for yourself how weird Duo can get if you don’t immediately take a foreign language class so soon after waking up.

Throwback Thursday: O.J. Simpson and The Unicorn With An Attitude

Ten years ago I began a series of Throwback Thursday posts in this blog about an animation series I attempted back in the 1990s called The Unicorn With An Attitude. I did the posts after I uploaded each episode on to YouTube. I kept at it for a year until I reached the last episode I did for that series. I’m only mentioning it again because the first episode in that series was a parody of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and Simpson has died today from cancer at the age of 76.

Way back in the 1990s I had this idea of trying to make it as a computer animator. The World Wide Web was in its infancy, there were a bunch of BBS boards that were run by hobbyists plus there were three major subscription services–CompuServe, America On Line (which was later shortened to AOL), and Prodigy. Social media as we know it today just didn’t exist. It was a time when people experimented with being creative online and trying to create all kinds of interesting content. Granted not everything worked out or was even very good but it still counted for something that people were being experimental and that was what made that period so exciting.

I decided to try an animated series of my own. It was called The Unicorn With An Attitude and it was a satiric series. The animation was crude by today’s standards and it was made on a shoestring budget using whatever hardware and software I could afford. The first episode of my series was a parody of the intense media scrutiny surrounding the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. To honor the occasion of Simpson’s death today, here is that animation where I parodied his trial all those years ago.

By the way you can read about the entries about the making of each episode in the series by searching on The Unicorn With An Attitude tag. You can also view my entire series at the YouTube playlist below. And, as for O.J. Simpson, R.I.P. (Rot Into Pieces)

Jury Duty

Back in December I got a jury duty summons for February, 2024. I was taken aback because I could’ve sworn that it hadn’t been that long ago since I last served on a jury. Where I live if you serve at least one day of jury duty, you are excused from further jury duty for three years. But then I remembered that I had written about the last time I served on jury duty in this blog and that entry showed that I wrote it in 2016. So it’s been eight years since the last time so I had to go. I was annoyed because, as that 2016 entry shows, I’ve gone on jury duty five previous times since 1998 and, with my latest summons, it’s the sixth time of jury duty for me.

So I showed up at 7:30 a.m. (which is when we had to show up) and, just like the other times, I sat in the jury lounge for a few hours while we waited to see what kind of cases were going to go on the docket. After a while one of the jury coordinators received word that one case may be heard in court on that day. I was among the names that were called and I was given a white card with a number on it. I would be known as “Juror 44.” The only thing I knew that it would be a criminal trial but I never learned what kind of crime it was. Then we waited some more.

Meanwhile the jury coordinators received word that another court case was on the docket but, since I was already assigned to a courtroom, I just sat back and watched other prospective jurors get their numbers, which were printed on green cards. There were other prospective jurors who waited for potential assignments to a courtroom but they never received an assignment because only two trials ended up being scheduled.

The jury coordinators told us that there are times when, after jury selection, a trial would be abruptly cancelled. It was usually because the defendant changed his/her plea from guilty to not guilty at the very last minute. I honestly thought that I would have to go inside of a courtroom, disclose to a judge that I was once a crime victim (my townhouse was broken into a number of years ago while my then-husband and I weren’t home and a laptop and VCR were stolen), get dismissed by either the judge or one of the attorneys, then return to the jury lounge. That has happened every other time I’ve served on jury duty.

But then something amazing happened. At the very last minute the defendant had changed his/her plea to guilty and that trial was cancelled. Since there was only one other trial scheduled that day and the jurors had already been chosen, we were free to leave. We were even told to keep our white numbered cards as souvenirs. I took a picture of the white card number 44 then recycled it because I had no other use for it and it’s not like it was something artistic or anything like that. (LOL!)

I had forgotten that the courthouse is a total maze and I ended up walking out the wrong door, which put me in front of the courthouse. Since it was a nice day outside and since I didn’t feel like going through a metal detector yet again in order to reenter, I decided to walk around the courthouse from the outside so I could catch the shuttle bus back to the parking lot where we jurors had to park our cars. I came across this interesting horse sculpture.

The saddle had a painting of an African American woman wearing equestrian headgear with the word “pioneer.” There was no mention of her name, which wasn’t good, especially since I was looking at that statue during Black History Month.

I looked at the other side of the statue and saw the same “pioneer” word along with a stylized painting of a woman embracing a horse on the saddle.

It wasn’t until I uploaded pictures of that statue on Facebook that one of my Facebook friends had identified her. The woman’s name was Cheryl White. A few days after I learned the woman’s identity there was this post that came into my Facebook newsfeed from the town of Upper Marlboro government and it had complete information about the statue and the artist. The horse statue is titled Jetolara and it was named after the horse that Cheryl White rode. Basically on June 15, 1971 Cheryl White ‭became the first black female jockey in the United States‬ ‭at‬ ‭the age of 17. On September 2, 1971 Cheryl White rode the horse Jetolara to victory at a race in Waterford Park in Chester, West Virginia. Keiona Clark, the artist behind that statue, made this statement about her work:

“I wanted to honor her and create a spark, so that people understand Cheryl White’s contribution to American history as well as her legacy. Strong women‬‬ ‭and bright colors are ‭my ‭aesthetic, ‬‬‬‬as I ‭consider myself ‭a strong woman and I feel that bright ‭color‬‬s ‭represent happiness and a celebration ‬‬‬‬‬of life. I ‬believe ‭that public art should not only be ‬‬‬visually ‭appealing‬ ‭but ‭should also inspire and ‬‬‬educate; what better way to do that than to pay homage to a true ‭PIO‭NEER. Cheryl White (1953-2019)”

You can learn more about Keiona Clark’s art right here. As for Cheryl White, she has a Wikipedia page and apparently she had quite a career as an equestrian while being a trailblazer at the same time. I just only wished that someone had put up a sign that contains information about Cheryl White’s identity and why she was considered to be a pioneer so more people would be informed about her and her legacy.

As I continued with walking around the building I came upon this relief that was dedicated to Archbishop John Carroll, who was born on the site where the Prince George’s County Courthouse is now located.

The bottom base reads “Archbishop John Carroll. 1735-1815. Ardent patriot and champion of religious freedom. Born in Upper Marlborough (which is an older spelling of the town’s name) on this site. First Catholic bishop of the United States. Founder of Georgetown University.” If you want more information about his life and times, the Wikipedia is a good place to start.

I eventually made my way to the back of the building where the shuttle bus stop was located. I managed to take a couple of photos of the three horses statue before my shuttle bus arrived.

When I arrived back home the first thing I did was to recylce that white card with the number 44. The second thing I did was to file away my jury summons that has a stamp on it proving that I actually served on jury duty, which means that I won’t have to serve again for at least three years. I’m definitely holding on to that summons that is now a receipt because I remember when I last served in 2016 I received another summons just two months later. I had to photocopy my summons with the stamp from that jury duty session, put it in the mail, and I was excused.

With the number of times I’ve had to serve on jury duty in my life, I really can’t wait until I turn 70 because I can request that I get excused from jury duty based on my age. I have to say that it’s one of the rare times when I am actually looking forward to my 70th birthday. (LOL!) However I have many years to go before I reach that milestone. (LOL!)

Making a Trinket Box

Last month I attended a free art workshop that was held at The Space, a non-profit art studio and makerspace located at Beltway Plaza mall in Greenbelt, Maryland. The theme was to make our own trinket boxes using collage and recycled boxes. Here is my trinket box.

I found a photo of a pack of wolves in an old National Geographic magazine. I found the “SAY YES TO NEW ADVENTURES” on a piece of scrapbooking paper. I glued them to the box top.

The next few photos are the sides of the box with the lid on. I decorated the sides of the box using scrapbooking paper.

And here are the sides of the box without the lid.

I had even decorated the inside bottom of the box. I used scrapbooking paper as the decoration.

And, lastly, here is the outside bottom of the box. I attempted to use markers to color the bottom black but, despite my efforts, the original design still shows through. (They didn’t have acrylic paint availabe so I used the Crayola markers.)

I’m not going to obsess over the bottom of the box too much because it won’t be viewable most of the time (unless someone picks it up and looks at the bottom).

Playing Around With Stable Diffusion AI Again

While I was writing a recent post in my Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda Substack about “The Orange Elephant in the Room: Donald Trump,” I thought about adding some illustration. I didn’t feel like creating my own illustration (especially since it dealt with Trump) so I went with Stable Diffusion AI, typed in a few keywords that said “Donald Trump riding an orange elephant,” and this is what it generated.

I was okay with the results. The reason why I wanted an orange elephant is because Donald Trump tends to use that hideous fake spray tan that literally turns his skin orange. He thinks he’s hot with that orange skin and that straw-colored hair but I can think of lots of other men who are way hotter than Trump at the moment. (LOL!)

Throwback Thursday: Animals With Words

Today is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States and I’m going to begin my own personal observation of that day by devoting another Throwback Thursday post to some art I did as a child.

Here are two drawings that I did as a child that my late mother kept for many years. I did these drawings in my school art class when I was in the sixth grade. I was apparently instructed to do some drawings that incorporated words. So I created two drawings incorporating the words “alligator” and “giraffe.”

I did the outline of the drawings with a pencil then colored them in with crayons. Those two drawings show that I was capable of coming up with creative solutions at an early age.

And, on that note, I’d like to mention that for the past few months I’ve been putting up weekly Throwback Thursday blog posts showing artwork I did before I graduated from high school that I found among a file folder that my late mother had kept. I’m starting to come to the end of this batch of early art. There are a few other old art pieces that I want to share but they are holiday-themed so I’m going to wait until the actual holiday arrives before I post them online. For now my Throwback Thursday series of early artwork by me is done. If I find anymore early art that my mother had kept, I’ll definitely digitize it and share here. But for now, it’s the end of this series of Throwback Thursdays.

Throwback Thursday: Puffin, Seagulls, and a Sandpiper at the Beach

This is a drawing I did in high school that my late mother had saved. It was an assignment I did in art class where I did something known as scratchboard or scraperboard.

I drew this beach scene that featured a puffin and a sandpiper standing on the beach. Two seagulls are flying overhead. The ocean, sun, and a sailboat can be seen in the background.

I haven’t done this type of art in years and I’m grateful that my mother had saved it. Maybe I should try this again in the future.