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Way back in December I went to a Winter Solstice/Yule party at a friend’s house. Another party attendee had hauled these huge number of pots that had a green stalk in them. She said that she had been doing this odd job where she helped someone with decluttering her home and she saw that the woman had a bunch of lily plants planted in the front yard. The party attendee has dug up a lot of these plants and put them in a bunch of pots. Then she brought them to the party and begged other party attendees to take them. I initially picked one pot but this person begged me to take more. I only chose one other pot because I don’t have a big house so I really can’t have a huge amount of plants at home.
In any case, both of my plants recently started to bloom. Here is one of them, which has a pink and white bloom.
Here’s the other plant, which has a red bloom.
Last month I took a picture of a really pretty fall flower that was in full bloom.
Since then the flowers in my area are dying off. It’s not a surprise since it’s November and the morning frost is starting to arrive.
Portraits of famous figures (such as the Mona Lisa) as recreated by their descendants.
Photographer Miles Herbert tiptoes through the tulips to photograph mice.
Home 3D printed from locally sourced clay takes shape in Italy.
The latest in capsule toys from Japan: Drunk in public miniature figurines.
Hundreds of nuns trained in Kung Fu are biking the Himalayas to oppose human trafficking.
Paris museums put 100,000 images online for unrestricted public use.
Engineer makes a DIY cell phone with a rotary dial so she doesn’t have to use a smartphone.
Elderly people look at their younger reflections in this beautiful photo series by Tom Hussey.
Watch this pianist play through a delightful history of cartoon music.
Original Salvador Dali artwork found at Outer Banks thrift shop.
Dog finds and guards family’s bread whenever they leave the house.
I went back to the grounds of my church for the first time since March, when the Coronavirus pandemic struck and our church services ended up being held on Zoom instead of in person. I went back to the now-shuttered church because I was meeting someone briefly in the parking lot. I briefly walked around in the wooded glen before I met my friend. I saw that the Butterfly Bush was in full bloom with its pretty purple flowers.
A school rents out the church building during the week. Of course that school was closed along with the rest of the schools and switched to holding classes via Zoom. This school is currently experimenting with resuming in-person classes but they will all be held outdoors in the glen. I saw that the school had a canopy for those rainy days. I took a shot of the setup.
I think the outdoor classes could work for now until the cold winter weather arrives. I don’t think these outdoor classes will be a long-term thing since winter will be coming in the next few months.
Last week I finally mailed off my entry in The Brooklyn Art Library’s ongoing Sketchbook Project. The origins of that one can be traced to my involvement in last year’s Inktober 2019 (where the object is to create one new ink drawing then share it on social media evert day from October 1-31). One of my Facebook friends who is also my neighbor saw some of my work that I posted on that social media site and she messaged me with this tantalizing proposition. A few months ago she had decided to take part in The Sketchbook Project and she even sent away for the sketchbook, which also included a few ink pens (one was a black fine line pen and the others were brush-like ink pens in black, brown, green, and red). Then she was distracted by other things in her life and she hadn’t started her sketchbook by the time October came. She asked me if I would take over her sketchbook for free. I said yes and she gave me the sketchbook, the included ink pens, and her log-in information for the website.
Since I had already planned and started work on the bulk of the sketches for Inktober, I couldn’t begin work on this new sketchbook immediately. I decided to continue with my current sketchbook for the rest of Inktober then immediately switch to the new sketchbook after the month of October ended.
I finally took a look at The Sketchbook Project in early November and I saw that it had a February 1 deadline, which meant that I only had three months to fill it in then mail it to New York City. I hit upon an idea where I would do The Twelve Drawings of Christmas for the second year in a row while using this sketchbook for the drawings. (Which means that longtime readers of this blog will recognize at least half of the drawings in this post.) While I focused exclusively on winter/Christmas themes for the 2018 edition, for the 2019 edition I decided to include fewer Christmas-themed drawings since I was using a sketchbook that would ultimately be sent elsewhere and it would be looked at by other people (some of whom may not even celebrate Christmas at all) at other times of the year besides the winter holiday season.
I began doing the first of the drawings in this new sketchbook using the included pens only to discover that the paper was a bit on the thin side so the ink would bleed through to the other side. I initially thought about switching to just pencils so I could use both sides of each page but I only had three months to fill in this sketchbook before it was time for me to mail it back in and I had other things going on in my life so I really couldn’t devote 40-60 hours a week on this project.
So I came up with the idea of pasting my own photographs on the other side of each bled-through page once I finished with each ink drawing. Using photographs definitely cut the amount of work on that sketchbook since printing and gluing the photo on a page is way quicker than drawing. This sketchbook would highlight my talents as an artist and photographer just like this blog.
For the photographs I decided on a theme. This year is the 10th anniversary of this blog so I decided to use only those photos that I had previously highlighted in this blog. Despite putting that limitation on myself, I still had a challenge of sifting through hundreds of photographs from the last 10 years in order to decide which ones I would actually use. For every photo I decided to use, there were probably hundreds of others that I could have also used. I also made an effort to have a variety of photographs so I wouldn’t get pegged by others as being only a photojournalist or only a portrait photographer or only a nature photographer, etc.
Once I finished my sketchbook the first thing I did before I sent it back to New York City was to make a YouTube video. If you like to listen to music while viewing my work, here is the video.
If you prefer to viewing still photos, I’ll list them here in the order that they were placed in the sketchbook. Every drawing and photograph have previously been mentioned in this blog so I’ll provide a link to the post in case you want to read about the story behind each visual. (The link will open in a new window.)
OUTSIDE FRONT COVER
INSIDE FRONT COVER
PAGE 1: THE JOKER AND ARTHUR FLECK
PAGE 2: MADONNA GIRL DALE
PAGE 3: A COSTUMED PERFORMER AT THE 2010 PIGTOWN FESTIVAL IN BALTIMORE
PAGE 4: HOWARD THE DUCK FAN ART
PAGE 5: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
PAGE 6: CLIMATE STRIKE PROTESTER WITH TRUMP BABY BALLOON, SEPTEMBER 20, 2019
PAGE 7: BRUNI FROM FROZEN 2
PAGE 8: BLUE HERON IN PALMETTO, FLORIDA
PAGE 9: VOLKS DOLLFIE DREAM DOLL PEEKING FROM BEHIND CHERRY BLOSSOM TREE
PAGE 10: UNDER THE ZENTANGLE SEA
PAGE 11: BABY YODA IN MEAN CUTIES
PAGE 12: VOLKS DOLLFIE DREAM DOLL IN CHERRY BLOSSOM TREE
PAGE 13: FALL FOLIAGE AT CLARK’S ELIOAK FARM IN ELLICOTT CITY, MARYLAND
PAGE 14: HATSUNE MIKU AND THE CLAUSES
PAGE 15: A PENGUIN NATIVITY SCENE WITH LINUX
PAGE 16: 2014 COWBOY AND INDIAN ALLIANCE PROTEST AGAINST THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE
PAGE 17: COPS IN RIOT GEAR AT THE INNER HARBOR IN BALTIMORE DURING THE BALTIMORE UPRISING PROTESTING THE MURDER OF FREDDIE GRAY BY THE BALTIMORE CITY POLICE IN 2015
PAGE 18: UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST FLAMING CHALICE
PAGE 19: ROSCOE THE ROOSTER MEMORIAL IN TAKOMA PARK, MARYLAND
PAGE 20: STATUE OUTSIDE OF ANN’S DARI-CREME IN GLEN BURNIE, MARYLAND
PAGE 21: BABY RAFAEL
PAGE 22: KRAMPUS TAKING DONALD TRUMP AWAY
PAGE 23: JOLENE SUGARBAKER
PAGE 24: COUNTER-PROTESTERS AT THE 2018 UNITE THE RIGHT 2 RALLY IN WASHINGTON, DC
PAGE 25: THE MAY DAY 2015 PROTEST AGAINST THE KILLING OF FREDDIE GRAY BY THE BALTIMORE CITY POLICE AT THE INNER HARBOR IN BALTIMORE
PAGE 26: EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE RAVEN
PAGE 27: UNDER THE ORANGE SKY
PAGE 28: OCCUPY DC (PART OF THE LARGER OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT), MCPHERSON SQUARE, WASHINGTON, DC, NOVEMBER 5, 2011
PAGE 29: BUTTERFLY ON A FLOWER AT BROOKSIDE GARDENS IN WHEATON, MARYLAND
PAGE 30: DONALD TRUMP AND HARLEY QUINN
PAGE 31: COBB ISLAND, MARYLAND
PAGE 32: RAINBOW OVER NORTH BEACH, MARYLAND, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
INSIDE BACK COVER
OUTSIDE BACK COVER
I felt a really great achievement in finishing this. There was a part of me that felt sorry that I had to mail it to New York City but that’s the way it goes. In a way working on this project is like having a child. You nuture it and make your own imprint on it but ultimately you have to let it go out into the wider world on its own as a completely independent entity. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my sketchbook again in person (let alone actually hold it in my hands one more time) but it was time for me to let go of it. At least I shot enough pictures and video footage so I can at least look at it again if I ever begin to feel sad over no longer having that sketchbook in my possession.
Yesterday I received an email from The Sketchbook Project informing me that my sketchbook has been assigned a new call number:
383.10-4
So if anyone ever goes to the Brooklyn Art Library and wants to see my sketchbook in person, you now know how to look for it.
From time to time I’ll probably log into the official website to see if anyone has checked it out or if the Brooklyn Art Library has sent it out on a road trip of some sort. It would interesting to see in the future whatever happened to that sketchbook. But right now I’m going to move on from that project and focus on other things in my life that needs attending to.
This year I managed to visit two locations of the By the People art show. A couple days earlier I went to its satellite location at Union Market even though I was suffering from a major chest cold.
Two days later I still had that chest cold but I made myself go to downtown DC despite that mainly because it was the second to the last day of the entire By the People art show and I wanted to see its main location before it ended. It was also the Summer Solstice and I thought it would be cool to do something fun for that occasion.
So I took the Metro to the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station then walked past the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where I took a couple of quick photographs outside of that building.
I also walked past the gardens that are outside of the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building where all of the flowers are in full bloom.
I eventually made it to the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building where the main part of the By the People art show was held.
The center of this exhibit was this giant eye-themed art installation.
There were some more displays in one of the side hallways.
The highpoint for me was in one of the other hallways, which was devoted to this large installation called “Walking on Clouds”, which was subtitled “The Future is Ours.”
This installation was by Jonathan Rosen, whose official description said this:
For most people dreams are fleeting. This is never more true than for the underrepresented and marginalized. Those faced with surviving today often have to sacrifice their dreams of tomorrow. We hide them. We say to ourselves we’ll get to them later. We give up on them. And sometimes we painfully kill them off. But dreaming is innate to who we are as humans, our very country is built on them. Dreams give us hope, shine light on the darkness and move us forward as people. If we give up on our dreams, we’re essentially giving up on ourselves.
WALKING ON CLOUDS hopes to remind all of us of the dreams we have forgotten. Located in a heavenly 6400 square foot space at the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building, participants walk through a dense low-lying fog as they make their way to three of Rosen’s interactive mirrors. Through the surface on the mirrors, thousands of phrases flash in a rapid chaotic succession. The mirrors inevitably coax us to take a selfie. There within our phone’s photo album, and much like the discovery of a Magic 8-Ball, our reflections are paired with aspirational text to remind us of who we are or could be. These selfies are dream catchers and the mirror simply the messenger.
Rosen believes that dreams that remain untold, remain unfulfilled. It’s only when they are put into existence will they have the power to come true. WALKING ON CLOUDS suspends worries and disbelief, so people can be in a space to momentarily dream again.
I really liked that description so much that I wanted to see it for myself. First, everyone walked through the fog.
The center of this exhibit were these three large mirrors with two sentences in the middle. The top sentence was static. The bottom sentence would quickly scroll through a bunch of statements. Visitors were encourages to take selfies in front of these structures to see what statement you would get. In the next photo the static top sentence read “I COULD BE.” The bottom sentence in the next photo read “A BETTER SON.”
The next photo shows the same top sentence (“I COULD BE”) but I captured the bottom word “ETHEREAL” this time around.
The next photo shows the same top sentence (“I COULD BE”) but this time I captured the bottom words “A LEAN MACHINE.”
I moved on to a different mirror. This time I decided to stand in front of it and take a selfie. The static top word read “FIND” and I managed to capture the bottom word “PERFECTION.”
I made a mistake of not smiling in that photograph. For the next photo I decided to smile that time. For the same top word “FIND” I captured the bottom words “YOUR GENIUS.” I liked this selfie better because I was smiling and I liked the phrase “FIND YOUR GENIUS.”
I moved on to the third mirror. This one had the static words “I OWN” and I managed to capture the words “THE WOMAN IN ME.” I really loved this selfie the best because I was smiling and I felt like the phrase “I OWN THE WOMAN IN ME” to be so inspirational that I loved being associated with it.
I moved on to the first mirror again that had the static words “I COULD BE.” I managed to capture the word “COMPLETE.” To me this selfie comes in at a close second because I was smiling and I loved the fact that I captured the phrase “I COULD BE COMPLETE.”
After playing around with taking selfies at an art installation for a while I decided to sit down for a bit so I could rest since I was still dealing with that chest cold. I managed to check out this colorful floral-themed art installation that literally cascaded down one of the stairwells.
I checked out the last side hallway that had this installation that was blocky yet colorful.
In the middle of the building lobby were these funky chairs where people could sit down, eat or drink whatever they purchased from the snack table or surf the Internet using the building’s free wifi. It was also the area where the participating By the Way artists gave their talk about their work.
Because I arrived on the day of the Summer Solstice, the Arts and Industries Building was scheduled to remain open until midnight. A few local bands and deejays were going to perform during the evening hours after 7 p.m. and there was going to be dancing as well. One of the bars for the evening party was being set up when I was there and I saw this sign advertising the prices of the various snacks and drinks.
I felt too sick to stay and party into the night. Even if I was 100% healthy I would not have been able to afford buying anything because the prices were pretty expensive. If I hadn’t been so sick I would’ve gone on to one of the other Smithsonian buildings or maybe walk around the Mall. By the time I finished with seeing all of the exhibitions in that building I felt tired again so I decided to walk back to the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station and take the next subway to the Maryland suburbs.
At least I managed to see the By the People events at two different locations this year. The only things I missed were this floating barge that traveled at various spots along the Anacostia River and this tent that sold art by local artists because I just felt pretty crummy. I’m hoping that next year I’ll have enough money AND be healthy enough to check out By the People at all of its locations.
This Twitter bot tricks angry trolls into arguing with it for hours.
High anxiety: The surreal and disturbingly dreamlike paintings of George Tooker.
How to turn a broken terra-cotta pot shard into a lovely flower pendant.
Colin Kaepernick’s exile is a labor rights violation. Unions should come to his defense.
The shockingly simple, surprisingly cost-effective way to end homelessness.
A jeweler called her $130 engagement ring “pathetic.” The woman’s response goes viral.
The women reporters who sparked the #MeToo movement are already being written out of the story.
Your Christmas decorations can’t compete with the light-up Millennium Falcon on this family’s roof.
Studies show that husbands stress women twice as much as children.
It’s not very often when you have three different holidays (Easter, Passover, and April Fool’s Day) arriving on the same day like this. I can only imagine the Easter or Passover pranks that will happen in conjunction with April Fool’s Day. (LOL!)
Easter is partly derived from the old pagan holiday Ostara and partly derived from the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which generally signals new beginnings. Passover commemorates Moses leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt and into what is now Israel, which is another type of new beginning. Plus all of these holidays generally take place in the spring where the trees start to sport new leaves, the flowers start to bloom, and the robins return from their winter home in warmer climates. (Okay, I’ll admit that it’s a stretch to somehow tie in April Fool’s Day with new beginnings. LOL!)
I feel like I’m going through a new beginning of my very own. This past Monday I started a new day job that seems promising. I’m working part-time on a trial basis. If things go well for me, then I may get more hours. Since my new job recently started it’s too early to tell whether it’ll work out for me or not.
In the meantime I took a few spring/Easter themed photos that I’d like to share here today.
Not too long ago the local nursery school was having a fundraising bake sale outside one of the supermarkets. I gave into temptation and purchased a cupcake for $2. This cupcake was topped with three Robin’s Eggs (these are not real robin eggs, they are the chocolate candy with a colorful crunchy shell on the outside that Hershey’s makes each Easter) while the frosting was decorated and swirled in such a way that resembled a bird’s nest. The cupcake was delicious by the way.
I didn’t do much more Easter related photography until a couple of nights ago. I decided to attend the weekly support group meeting for people who are separated or divorced for the first time in a few months. (I don’t go as often as I used to mainly because I have gone through many of those topics several times and I feel like I’m further along in the whole divorce process than someone who’s recently separated.) So I drove down to Crofton once I got off from work where I decided to eat dinner in the Market Cafe that’s located inside of Wegmans. While I was walking around inside of the store, I saw this new limited edition Unicorn cereal from Kellogg’s. Yes, there is now such a thing as Unicorn cereal. Even though I felt tempted to buy it, I decided against it mainly because finances are still pretty tight for me plus I read the Nutritional Label where it listed this cereal as having a whopping 11 grams of sugar per serving. I have to admit that the box is pretty colorful.
I saw that Utz had a special Easter snack known as Cotton Tails. Basically they are cheese balls that are made with white cheddar instead of the usual yellow cheddar.
I have a friend who’s totally crazy about dinosaurs. I took this picture of a dinosaur candy dispenser the uploaded it to Facebook where I tagged her name.
The next three pictures are of a few inflatables that I saw on display at Wegmans.
Then there are the Easter lilies, which are the usual Easter flowers that people buy as gifts for their loved ones.
The same shopping center in Crofton that has a Wegmans also has a Five Below store. I briefly stopped in there where I saw that this particular store had a shipment of some toys known as Talk Back Pets. The idea is that these cute animals repeat everything you say. I’ve seen toys like this before in the past. These Talk Back Pets came in bunny, chick, and lamb (which means that they were definitely Easter toys that one could buy for a child for only $5 each). I tried a couple where I heard them repeat everything I said. Then I got pretty mischievous where I got these cute critters to say stuff like “Hail Satan!” and “piss off.”
I’ll admit that I was inspired by a video that went viral three years ago where a guy managed to line up a bunch of snowmen (which were similar to the Five Below Talk Back Pets except these snowmen not only repeated what you said but they also bobbed up and down while repeating what you said) on a store shelf, switch them on, said “Hail, Satan!” and saw these snowmen bob up and down as they said “Hail, Satan!” I managed to get a chick to swear while I got both the chick and bunny to say positive things about Satan. I shot this short video where you can check it all out. Enjoy!
For most of the past year I was attending the various free programs related to the job hunting process that was sponsored by the American Jobs Center (formerly known as the Maryland Workforce Exchange). All of the programs were held in the American Jobs Center’s Laurel office, which is in the same building where I once worked as a telephone interviewer for the Arbitron Ratings Company, which once inhabited the entire building. After I left that company, Arbitron moved to a different building before it was eventually merged with Nielsen and it’s now known as Nielsen Audio.
Despite attending the various programs at the Laurel office, I didn’t have much luck with finding a new day job apart from this two-day stint where I was an extra on a television special featuring finance guru Ric Edelman.
So I decided to try my luck with a different American Jobs Center office. This one is located in Largo and, like the Laurel office, the Largo office is also housed in a building where I once worked for a different employer that had its office in that same building.
A couple of years after my stint at the Arbitron Ratings Company I worked in the corporate office of a now-defunct computer reseller where I basically did data entry. I spent the first few years working in this building, which is located at 1801 McCormick Drive in Largo, Maryland.
The company would later move to a bigger building that was located just a mile away. I continued to work in that new building for a couple of years until the company founder sold his company to one of its competitors and I was among the first employees to get downsized as the merger went on. (Eventually the new owners closed my company down completely but that’s another story.)
So I thought it was pretty weird that two of the American Jobs Center offices were located in buildings where my former employers used to be located. As I arrived to the building at 1801 McCormick Drive in Largo I noticed that whoever owned that building had added something to the front since I last worked there. It’s a sculpture that’s sort of shaped like a flower.
Here’s the sculpture from another angle. It was windy the take I took these photos and I noticed that the top of the sculpture tended to rotate with the wind.
Some of the petals had photographs of various nature items, such as a bird and a group of lily pads floating in water.
This post proves that, once again, one can always find art in the most unexpected places.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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