I just had to take a selfie here at this beautiful shrine in the Pine Forest of Shremm, quite near the start point. You can almost see the incredible Trans-Dimensional Portal behind me in the snapshot.
I always like to take my selfie so that you can see at least part of the background, otherwise why go anywhere? Continue reading
Gosh, it’s all so exciting, having trans-dimensional privileges and a travel pass all at once like this. So I got on board the transdimensional airliner Flight L315a, bound for Solaria, and we got to a gigantic island out in the middle, and it was too dark to take anything but a selfie, so okay, here it is anyway. Continue reading
When we exhibited the museum installation “Ancient Faces” at the JAL — Jewels of Ancient Lands — show in Rancho Cordova, it took over the better part of half an acre of commercial space, and drew a crowd in the thousands, but where did they all end up? You’re right, the gift shop, and in the gift shop, this is what they’d see and buy.
Famous Faces Fascinate Folks Ferociously. Not just local fame, like Elvis and the Beatles, but everlasting fame, as in Goddess faces. The Goddess Solaria is the Mother Goddess of Mother Goddesses.
She can be any God, Goddess, Buddha or Ascended Master you care to name her. The face above has, literally, billions upon billions of variations, most of them slight, most variations would not readily be discernible by the unpracticed eye. Continue reading
Read it and weep — we’re going to wade through a bit of negative news first, but I assure you that there’s GOOD NEWS at the end of the trail — here is a list of the top 14 eBay searchwords for ART, listed in the order of their relative importance, most-popular searchword in the first place, least popular searchword in last place, thus:
This Dinosaur Skull is my “take” on T-Rex, but it could just as easily be read as a super closeup of a brontosaurus feeding on the top of a tree — it’s all in the label, in this case, but you could get very good at reducing the elements of a meat-eater predator as opposed to a leaf or branch browser.
Of course, ANY animal will work here, alive or dead, currently in stock or extinct.
You’ll want to sharpen your skills at shapes. Note that the teeth are long and sharp, and very exaggerated, as are the double-circled eyes, bulging out from the top of the skull.
I like to sign these opposite the majority of the “weight”, so in this case, I signed it on the eastern side of the rim, meaning the right side of the image. Continue reading
In the course of making several dozen Cornflower Mandalas yesterday, I happened upon a disk made of the embossing metal I’ve been using for decades, now, and duly made a Cornfield Mandala upon it and packed it into a dollar-sized cardboard “flip” coin holder, so-called because to look at the other side of a coin, you flip the flip over with an easy practiced move.
Boy, the key word there is surely “practiced”, and “practiced moves” is what metal embossing and coin-carving is all about, and that goes double for gem-setting and ring-making and painting and sculpting and video gaming and hopscotch and just about anything else you endeavor to do well.
The “right moves” is a Big Number in Buddhism, meaning that it’s important.
“Right Action” means making the right moves at the right time in the right place with the right intention, nice and smooth, making no sudden moves, no ripples in the Firmament or Force.
In short, “Right Action” is grace and movement in relating to the universe and other Beings, and is and was a big subject with Picasso, Matisse, Dali and Stravinski. Continue reading
I’ve given my sources for my metal embossing projects, so that you can bring your prices down, down, down, to the level where there’s some profit in it and it’s worth your while to devote time, energy and talent to the thing.
But what if you DON’T intend to quit the day job and sell your embossed metal artwork to thousands of satisfied customers??? What if you don’t intend to order and await shipments of industrial foil, huge cartons of coin-flips and enormous quantities of sales tags? For you, there is a VERY good answer.
I make kits that are attuned to specific projects. You get all the materials and supplies you need to make 21 finished disks mounted in “flip” coin-frames for sale — that’s one to wear in a bezel or carry as a pocket-pal or purse-pal in an acrylic capsule, if you decide to use those items.
ALL MY DESIGNS COME IN ONLY ONE SIZE, made especially for the dollar-sized disk & bezel. You can re-size them as you wish. You will do better by just sort of roughly and generally copying the lines rather than trying to trace them, but some folks won’t have it any other way, so for them, you’ll have to shrink the thing down on photoshop and print it out on a TRANSFER paper, I suppose.
If you work this system rightly, you’ll develop your own “iconographics” and get them into the metal form. The whole point here is to utilize “reductionism” in order to simplify the form, as Cangialosi would have said it. You can also understand the concept in the following Matisse-ian way:
“EXPRESS THE SUBJECT WITH THE FEWEST POSSIBLE LINES.” Continue reading
“Hi, I need some cash fast, and I’m on the street selling these things for which I usually ask fifty bucks, but like I said, I need some cash, so I’m selling them for only $3 bucks apiece, metal ebmossings mounted in a coin flip, like you see here. Can you help me out? How many would you like?”
Metal Embossing? It’s cheap, and it’s a total cinch to make ’em, and a total cinch to sell ’em, when you know a few tricks of the trade. Metal embossing is a terrific way for a new artist of ANY age and persuasion to get out there with their artwork, and it’s a great way to get your art into multimedia without a lot of fuss and horrible expenses.
For an established artist, it’s a no-brainer. It puts your art into an affordable category for an original work of art. Usually it’ll be a signed and numbered multiple, which this isn’t. It’s a total original, and an established artist can ask the moon for these things.
Doubt it? Imagine what the price would be for a coin-sized embossed metal piece if you could PROVE that it was made and signed by Picasso? How about Rosenquist, or Lichtenstein, or Warhol, or Basquiat?
I think you get the picture. Continue reading
Try to imagine what it’s like to be in the Void. There is no passage of time, no way to mark the passage of time. There is no space. No objects, no particles of matter, no energy, no nothing. It’s not necessary to imagine the state of the Void; you can enter it any time you wish to delve into the Void.
The Void has no properties. No height, no width, no depth, no color, no form, no shape, and in fact anything you can think of, just put a “no” in front of it, and that’s a good description of the indescribable Void.
In the Relative World, there is Life, and Life is Pain.
Sure, life hurts, and it hurts bad. It has its ups and downs, its good times, and its bad times, and life is pain, so it’s no wonder that anyone would want to crawl out of there, get off the wheel, and have a pain-free eternal existence in the Land of Pure Bliss.
So you spend thousands of lifetimes fighting, clawing your way out of Samsaric Illusion, and finally, you find yourself “Off the Wheel”, free at last, free at last!
You have achieved the Eternal Bliss of the Void. Wow. What a relief, like taking a huge dump after hours and hours of sweat, anxiety, and discomfort. Here it is, The Void.
Why my coins are not hobo nickels:
Simply put, I have a fine-art approach to the coin carving, not a numismatic one. I don’t care much for hard-edge art and care even less for literalism and so-called “realism”, which isn’t anywhere close to realness. I use a free-form line, more drawing and sketching than the tightly repressed world of gravure you generally see, although there are more artists discovering coin engraving every day, and more artistic renderings are available.
Look on eBay to see many examples of recent hobo nickel art and other coin carvings.
The story of the hobo nickel arising out of the hobo jungles of the 1929-1939 Great Depression is simply that when you got hold of a spare nickel, you could carve it into a dollar’s worth of food and lodging. I like to use the same spirit in carving my coins as the hobos enjoyed in their day, meaning that I scratch at it — I don’t slice and cut the way a modern engraver would and should do. My approach is more “Paleo”, more basic, more street-wise and less technological, less dependent on civilization to maintain it.
Most hoboes used an ordinary 6-penny nail or a broken file to scratch their carvings into the nickel, and it’s those moves I’m trying to duplicate. Continue reading