First Flakes

Just a few, but enough to let you know what Mother Nature has in mind. Cold nasty day. M and C were off first thing, to pick up Ron Issacs' work for the next show upstairs. Amazing Trompe l' oeil pieces that completely fool the eye, they're constructed of cut-out pieces and strips of Baltic Birch plywood and painted so realistically that they look like three-dimensional articles of clothing, or whatever, from two feet away. Look him up on the net, his work is incredible. A slow day, and I mostly read about the Renaissance, piecing together the talk I'm going to give on the 14th of November which I suspect might be well attended. I suspect that, because everyone I've run into, that got the mailing for the Renaissance show, has said they wanted to hear what I had to say. I'm just going to talk about paper and printing, pretty boring actually, but I start making notes. It's too much information. There is no way I could be held accountable, my narrow focus is simply tadpoles becoming frogs. I'm not interested in the great sweep of things, generally, but I'm enjoying this dip into the Renaissance, and the Reformation, and Luther. 1400-1500 the Catholic church was a joke, three popes, and you could buy whatever you wanted. Indulgences, the actual forms, were the first thing Gutenberg printed. Put your mouth where the money is. I have to go, it's snowing and there's a ruckus at the compost heap, nothing I can't settle with my sling-shot. Johnny on the spot. The earliest inks were probably soot and some solvent. Boiled oak galls. But it was a substance that laid on the surface, subject to releasing, and not acceptable in the long run.