Luchador to Order

I thought this was pretty cool.  A very nice person bought one of my Luchador mask necklaces and asked if I could do a purple one.

I came across quite nice one, white with purple edging, belonging to Mil Mascara during the 1960s (he wore quite a variety of masks) and made the necklace as a a custom item.  

I think it turned out pretty well J

As Fine as a Troll's Hoard

I have my jewelry class tonight and I’m thinking of bringing some of my most favorite jewelry to ask the instructor how it was made.

My favorite jewelry store in THE WORLD is in Valle, Norway. It is the home of Hasla.

We found it totally by chance. We had decided to drive through Norway from our home in the West to Oslo. In the wintertime, you have to take the highway that runs around the southern coast, but in summer, you can go through the mountains right across the center.

This is always charming because a good portion is through isolated country without human inhabitants, but lots of sheep. Farmers let the sheep up in the mountain to graze all summer long and then bring sheepdogs to round them up in early Fall to bring them back in for the winter. There are no fences and the sheep roam at will and nap in the road. They know no fear and you frequently have to stop the car and honk the horn until they get out of the way.

Anyway, after a tough morning of sheep-honking, we decided to stop for lunch just on the other side of the pass. This happened to be a tiny village called Valle.

It has a gas station, a city hall, a restaurant, a church, and a church community center. But towering about them is a silversmith in an enormous building built rather like a stabur.

Walk inside and it’s immediately clear there are masters at work. The workshop is visible through glass and the wall lined with sale cases. Hasla makes extraordinary bunad jewelry. Delicate filigree silver work is a trademark. It is beautiful, but I most love their modern pieces.

I have in particular two modern pars of earrings made in bronze. One is an elongated stem ending in four curved petals, known as their tulip design. The other is a bold twist of wires in a design the elves of Middle Earth might have admired.

They also use their bunad skills to other effects creating marvelous confections shaped like butterflies or daisies. Really spectacular.

It’s a shame, in a way. Their traditional pieces are fairly widely available, but the pieces I’ve really fallen in love with only seem available in that funny little valley.

www.hasla.no

The Puppet Bike!

Knut and I were going to the Kriskintel Market in Daley plaza Christmas of 2006 and we were instantly smitten.

We met the Puppet Bike.

I am a huge Puppet Bike Fan.

The Puppet Bike is a tiny puppet theater mounted to the back of a bicycle that weeds its way around Chicago delighting many and mystifying a few. It’s a brightly painted box just large enough for one person to stand inside with a tiny stage at eye level. There two frolicking hand puppets dance their way through blue grass, swing, or old favorites. They don’t speak, just dance. Their trademark is when the two puppets join paws and twirl forwards and then backwards.

So far I have seen a sweet little bunny, two tigers, a cat, a bear, and a monkey. If you show your appreciation for the dancing animals by putting a dollar in the little tip box on the front, a puppet will pop out of a side slit and wave enthusiastically. I highly recommend tipping such a great (but tiny) institution.

The Puppet Bike usually hangs around the Loop in all kinds of weather. I’ve mostly seen it on Lake or Michigan Avenue and if you want to take a photo with the bike, the puppets will gladly pose with you.

See The Puppet Bike Perform!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcPgTxbPdGQ

Thumb, Can, Ahhh... Memories...

Today is my first wax casting class. I’m a little nervous because I’ve never done any metalwork or jewelry making. I am generally pretty good with tools and small objects (ie, Fimo stuff) but it’s a whole new medium.

The class is actually a birthday present from my lovely sister-in-law and brother. Mina thought the wax casting class would be ideal for me, and is charmingly hoping to recap her investment in my talents :)

I did take wood shop and plastics in junior high, along with a bevy of art classes. I loathed wood shop because we had to do a lot of hand filing and sanding. My kingdom for a power sander! I was the only kid willing to use the grinder because I just hated the boring repetitive sanding.

Our woods teacher came directly from the shop teacher mold. He was a tall sturdy guy who somewhat resembled Pete Postlethwaite. He used the word “can” a lot. As in “You stand on that and you’re gonna slip and fall on your can.” On the first day, he would lift one giant scarred paw and say “You see this? This is where I cut my thumb off the first time. It was on that very saw” and fifteen sets of eyes drifted towards the gleaming blade. “The second time,” he continued “was on a circular saw. YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL!!”

Even as a fourteen year old I wondered about that. Anyone who works with power cutting tools could have an accident. You just need to be distracted for a second. However, after you’ve completely cut your thumb off once, don’t you think you would be really really careful? He cut off the same thumb on two separate occasions! I mean, “fool me once…”

This speech then had less of the effect of warning us to be careful of the machine and more of the concern about what we would do if he cut his thumb off again in class. I mean, I presume we’d grab the drafting teacher, but should we look for the thumb? What do we do with it after we find it? Put it in that weird sawdust janitors use to clean up vomit? The only ice would be two flights down the stairs, would that take too long?

Fortunately, it stayed firmly on throughout the trimester, but it was a niggling worry.

Wish me luck on my class! Hopefully it’ll be lots of fun!

Summer Cream Beer Bottle Pie Magnets!

The latest creation from Chez Anthrid: Summer Cream Pies!

Summer Cream Pies include:

Strawberry Glaze: Tiny polymer canes slices form miniature strawberry slices carefully laid in concentric circles leading towards a bright ripe whole strawberry centerpiece. Layers of red tinted glaze make this just as glossy and juicy looking as the original.

French Silk: Thick polymer clay whipped cream tops a rich glossy chocolate base. All of this mousse-y goodness is topped with curls of dark chocolate. A slice is cut out to show both decadent layers.

Key Lime: Real key lime pies have a pale yellow, ever so slightly green tint from the fresh tiny limes. This miniature pie follows in their footsteps. Since key lime is so tart, a swirl of whipped cream topped with a minute slice of lime (less that 1/4 of a inch long) is a welcome addition.

Grasshopper: Rich chocolate pudding flavored with crème de menthe was a classic 1950s concoction, inspired by the cocktail and this polymer clay pie matches up with a glossy chocolate filling topped with a dollop of whipped cream and bright green mini mint leaves.

Coconut Cream: This tropical treat consists of rich custard combined with pulverized coconut and coconut extract. This mini pie features a glossy luscious pale yellow filling topped with dollops of whipped cream sprinkled with toasted coconut.

Should you feel compelled, they're for sale at

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12503097

THANKSGIVING Beer Bottle Cap Pies

I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving.

I like the whole concept of a day where you bring your family around and cook all day and then you eat when it’s all ready.

When I was a kid, we spent every Thanksgiving in Minneapolis, where a big dinner was followed closely by the pre Christmas trip to Daytons! Minnesota didn’t have sales tax, so a good little bunny could hope for a few presents. In fact, I got my very first gingerbread house kit on one of these excursions.

Obviously, it was a good move to judge by my turn to built gingerbread staburs and igloos. Maybe next Christmas I should do a gingerbread pig sty to house the darling marzipan pigs… Hmmm…

In any case, the highlight of Thanksgiving was always the pies! Mom and I are good pie bakers and there was a Trinity of Autumn flavors: Pumpkin, Pecan, and Apple. I’ve faithfully recreated them in a medium more likely to last past the holidays.

Behold!

Pumpkin pie is the classic staple. I’ll admit we always used canned pumpkin, but the results were creamy and rich. This miniature pie is filled with glossy reddish brown polymer clay custard and topped with a decadent swirl of whipped cream.
Pecan pie was preferable made with pecans straight from my aunt’s family home in Alabama. This bottle cap pie does have a layer of polymer clay caramel topped with individually made and detailed pecan halves. The glossy sweet look comes courtesy of syrupy glaze.

Apple Pie was our branch’s specialty. We made the real ones with Jonathans or Macintoshes we picked each year in Wisconsin. These little beauties are polymer clay segments held in with tinted glaze. The effect is completely that of a warm oozy apple pie.

Like the other ones, these are made in beer bottle caps, so they’re very small and have a little magnet affixed to the back. They’re now up on Etsy

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12476951

Bottle Cap Pies cont'd

I have the bottle cap pies in my purse right now. During my lunch break, I usually go to a pretty little secluded area and relax. There are lovely goldfinches, cardinals, deer, butterflies, and the occasional raccoons there and you’d hardly believe it was in an industrial area. Generally, I have the place pretty much to myself.

I thought I could snap a few nice photos for Etsy while I was there and as soon as my bunny themed bento box was emptied, wouldn’t you know it? 4 cars pulled in and essentially turned it into a parking lot.

CURSES!!

I am a shy retiring thoughtful rabbit! I do not want sweaty men in polo shirts asking “Whatcha doing?” while I pose miniature pies on a fence post!

I did it anyway. They turned out pretty nice, I think, but I won’t know for certain until I take them home and upload them to the computer.

I really am please with the pies themselves. I really did a lot of fine detail work on them. The blueberry and raspberry pies are filled with tiny glass balls and then layered with glaze. The rhubarb is filled with tiny red plastic logs that are held with red tinted glaze. It really looked like a juicy pie that spills over when you cut a slice. The lemon meringue is nicely browned on top with brown glaze and the lemon filling is glossy with just a tiny bit of juice leaking onto the pan. The galette is tiny peach slices, each with whirls of subtle colors, coated in yellow glaze that looks like apricot jam.
And they look very cute on the refrigerator.

I tried out my professional grade Sculpey on these and I am really pleased with the quality. I think they could take a tumble and not chip

UPDATE!!

It's up:   http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11633787

Beer Bottle Cap Pie

Jeez, that sounds like one of those horrid novelty red neck items, doesn't it?  I'll have to pick a different name when I put these up on Etsy.   

I love pies.  Baking them, eating them, and now fabricating them!

These little pies look good enough to eat, but you'd probably break a tooth.  The pie pans are literally bottle caps (MGD and Goose Island.  

Knut's choice as he's the beer drinker).  The pies themselves are polymer clay, glass beads, and tinted glazes.   They're affixed to little magnets to make sweet little fridge decorations.  Don't worry, they're good magnets.  I tested them on a heavy postcard from Istanbul.  

Our flavors are raspberry, blueberry, lemon meringue, rhubarb, and a dainty little peach galette.   Yum!

Up on Etsy as soon as I can take photos in daylight.  

I'll take pie over cake any day, so these were definitely a labor of love.

It's Idnight and the Oon is Full...

I’m having a (not unusually) crummy day at work today and the weather’s dreary so I’m a little glum.

But I hate to blog about that kind of stuff because it’s usually intensely boring to read.

So, why not talk about something I really like? Like “M!”

M is a great Norwegian comic strip by Mads Eriksen This strip features himself and his girlfriend (know only as Madamen. “The Madam” is a vaguely old fashioned way to refer to your wife) and various friends, toys, rubber chickens, random Goths, Vorlon ambassadors, etc. Nearly everything is pop culture based. Star Wars is particularly heavily referenced

Unfortunately, most of the language is Norwegian, but I’ve found a few current strips that are wordless. It’s a bit of a shame because his text is every bit as funny as his drawings. What makes it extra annoying is that Norway is practically bilingual, but alas they will insist on using their native language. I’ve ended up translating M, Nemi, and Pondus strips for English speaking friends.

One great thing about M is how accomplished an artist he really is. The covers of his collect newspaper strips usually have movie poster parody themes destined to make you giggle. For instance, look at this one imitating the classic “Tales of the Crypt” comic books.

Knut and I have noticed some striking similarities between M and Madamen and Knut and me. Interestingly, once we went to one of Eriksen’s book signing in Stavanger. When we got to the store, we were told that it had been rearranged and took place the day before. So I’ve still never seen Mads and Knut in the same room together. Hmmm…

But please do enjoy these! He’s such a great cartoonist that it seems such a shame that he’s really only available to such a small percentage of readers. Also please do go to the website to look at his work. I've reproduced his strips here so it would be more accessible to non-Norwegian speakers.

Art En Masse, Mass Art

I have mixed feelings about public art. No, I should be more specific. I enthusiastically endorse some public art and think others are lame.

These photos are ones Knut, Colin, and I took in the Skokie Sculpture Park. This park runs in between a busy street and a canal. I had driven past it hundreds of times, but never walked through it. Knut is partial to the gigantic head, purely because it reminds him of the film The Wicker Man. Note the similarly of poses between Knut and a famous still of Christopher Lee. I have no idea what it is Colin is posing on. It looks like a combination mining drill and underwater mine to me. I’m actually hiding behind it holding up Colin’s rear end. Most of the sculptures are fairly unremarkable, with a few real stand outs. Curiously, the majority are in shades of brown or olive. You’d think since these are seen mostly from the road, they’d prefer bright colors.

When a piece is perfect for a place, the people who live around it embrace it as a friend, and usually give it a nickname. It frequently takes only a short time for this to happen.

You can’t go past the Picasso in Daley Plaza in Chicago without seeing office workers eating their lunch on it or children sliding down the slanted base. Now there are plenty of benches around and kids can play on just about anything in my experience, but they are just drawn to the huge sculpture. Apparently, it was controversial when it was first put up which proves how many critics really don’t have much of a grip on public consciousness.

Similarly, The Bean was instantly embraced. It was only unveiled in 2004, but people love it. They make special trips to walk up to it, touch it, and generally experience it. Once when we were up admiring it, the men who clean it were working on a patch. They cheerfully advised us the best place to stand to see all of its reflective kaleidoscopic charms. There’s a pretty good contrast between The Bean and these huge glass block structure down the block that house animated screens of people’s faces. The faces have become part of the background, except in the hottest part of the summer when they spit water and the path between them is flooded. Then children and childish bloggers rip off their shoes and go for a refreshing skip through the puddles. You can tell The Bean is truly beloved because it has a nickname. It’s actually called “Cloud Gate.” When the artist initially complained about the nickname, I heard an artistic acquaintance say that everyone should have to call it the real name because it belongs to the artist. Possibly I’m of a more Andy Warhol frame of mind, but I feel that when a piece of art is public (indeed, we citizens of Chicago bought the thing and pay to maintain it), its identity becomes intertwined with the city. And if the city feels it should be called The Bean, the identity of the art becomes The Bean. Such a show of public affection is a high compliment.

Fortunately, the artist has learned to stop worrying and love The Bean.

This Must Be Underwater Color

I always loved art class in school. I loved clay, acrylics, pastels, colored pencils, figure drawing, etc, etc, and I was pretty good at most of them. But the most deceptively simple and difficult of all, I believe, is the watercolor.

You’d start out with the lightest possible pencil sketch and eventually end up with a muddy grayish page. “This doesn’t look like The Badlands!” you’d regally remark and toss your crumpled page in the bin.

In Norway, I began watching Cranshaw’s Watercolor Tours, which featured a gnomish English gentleman who toured Europe and the Middle East making enthusiastic comments about hookah smokers and occasionally stopping for a quick watercolor. I learned two things:

1. You need actual watercolor paper. It absorbs the color and holds it in place. I think my art teachers substituted drawing paper which quickly becomes a soggy wrinkled sheet. On the other hand, it’s probably much much cheaper for Middle School students who probably weren’t going to produce amazing works of art anyhow.
2. The pencil sketch underneath is vital. It’s how you produce shading. You can do some with the paint itself, but that pencil shading will give you darker, better shadows and forms. I was always instructed to use the paint for all the shading and the sketch was simply a guideline.
   

Now, like most rules, I feel certain gifted painters can totally disregard them, but one must crawl before one rockets a small dog into space.

I also learned some good tips on combining color and adding washes from Cranshaw. We started watching him because Knut would get so relaxed he’d fall asleep in seconds. He’s as good as a bedtime story, and I mean that as a compliment.

I haven’t done much painting since we moved back to the US (I am so tempted to make this Altoid box watercolor box so I can do guerrilla painting. Genius!), but I did enjoy it in Norway. This painting is of Colin on the shore of the North Sea. I gave it to my dad as a Christmas present. Here's the full version.

Illustration Friday "Primitive"

I am totally willing to admit this quick sketch is probably the silliest thing I've ever drawn.  And that's up against some pretty stiff competition.

This is another entry for Illustration Friday.  This week's theme is "Primitive."  First I started thinking about women who look like Venus figures, then I moved on to cavemen, and wound up with "Primitivism."

I find those art terms to generally be very funny because they're so undescriptive.   Paul Gauguin a was a leading figure in that area and I started to think about where it could (not so) logically go.  The painting is Two Tahitian Women.

Voila!  Hope you enjoy it!  It makes me giggle anyway.  Please view full for maximum silliness.

Snuggly Warm Beauty

My mother and I went to the Quilt Show last weekend. No wait! Don’t click away! It’s actually pretty cool.

This particular show is an international event showcasing the giants of the field. Instead of cozy bedcovers, many of them make extraordinary collages made of fabric. They show a truly amazing grasp of color and form. Examine this rooster. He was the Grand Prize Winner. Everything you see here is sewn. The wood texture is created by using tiny scraps and the suggestion of feathers is the stitching. It is also, coincidently, made by a man.

I always look forward to the Japanese entries. The one with the violins is a beautiful interpretation of a photo quilt. Up at the top little photo printed fabric squares form a ribbon. The flower petals on the violins and the border are all meticulously cut and appliquéd. Photo quilts are often only appealing to those who are featured in them, but this is genuinely fantastic work.

This quilt also inspired my first homicidal reaction of the show. While I was examining it, a grisly little woman comes up, looks at the miniscule appliqué and loudly remarks “Someone has too much time on their hands!”

I hate that!

Every man, woman, and child has exactly 24 hours in their day. Some choose to spend that time playing video games or giving themselves French manicures with white out. Others chose to devote their time to making art. I always resent that comment.

There are plenty of less spectacular entries, of course. We looked at many small single square works. These usually aren’t so great, although they frequently involve some shocking imagery. My mother, a gifted seamstress, commented that examining these was a lot like looking at the 4-H displays at the county fair. Assuming 4-H kids made 8 inch square fabric panels about genocide or abortion.

The best part, of course, is the vendors. I personally spent $70 on Japanese fabric printed with adorable little bunnies. I’m pretending now that I will use it for something. Chances are I’ll just keep it and look at it, like Smaug and his hoard.

Blog Carnival: Bulls!

I am a Taurus and from Chicago and I have been known to talk crap; but I’m going to focus on those noble beasts of Spain.

In August 2005, we spent a week in Spain; which was one of the best vacations I’ve ever taken. Spain wasn’t a spot I had ever particularly planned to visit, but our friend’s parents had a bungalow there where we could stay just minutes from the beach.

We went to bullfights. It’s such an odd experience. There we were: Knut, Simen, Tor Bjorn, and I sitting in the Marbella arena. I was looking fab in a green paisley dress and awesome lavender Panama hat (Buy one!! They are amazing! And if they lose shape, you can iron them!), and a bull was led into the ring. I had this awful realization that that bull was not going to walk out like it walked in. I whispered to Knut “I don’t think I can watch this!”

Then the atmosphere sort of changed.

When the matador is good, he puts the sword directly through the animal’s heart. It dies on its feet. It dies before it hits the ground. It dies fighting. Maybe that’s a better way to go than shoved up a conveyer belt and into a bolt gun. And we saw several bull fighters get gored. It’s really not a one sided fight.

Not a popular view certainly, since most of us prefer to remember Ferdinand the Bull and his love of sitting in the shade. I also won't say it's not barbaric, but there is sort of a primal reaction to it.

In any case, the bull has become a cult figure in Spain, strongly reminiscent of the ancient Mediterranean cultures. You can appreciate what a powerful character the Minotaur would have been, when you see their foaming rampages and the huge gorges slashed in the wood of their pens.

The bull ring in the southern town of Ronda was especially beautiful. This charming stone head graces the entry way to the ring and the steps to the upper level are decorated entirely with bull themes, like the excellent fellow above. Clearly whoever made these items knew all there is to know about bulls! I love the Moorish tile traditions in Spain and was even more delighted to see these Delft like tiles.

The ring also has a nice collection of antique matador costumes, equipment, and beautiful posters. There were even a few taxidermy heads of particularly fine bulls, some of whom were so grand they were given reprieve and spent out their lives grazing and siring more bulls.

They are beautiful and romantic and fearsome. And when they go for the matadors, they go straight for the cojones.

So Miss Sewing

A little while ago, I tugged Knut’s heart strings when I called him from work and told him I wanted to go home and sew.

I really miss sewing and it’s not something I’ve been able to do much lately. In fact, right now I’m wearing pants that I’ve been meaning to remove the pockets from since I bought them!

For one thing, it’s hard to judge colors correctly under artificial light. Purples can look brown, navy can look black. And when you’re tired you make mistakes. It’s also a more expensive hobby that playing with polymer clay or shrinky dinks! People don’t understand that once you’ve bought all the materials necessary to sew something by hand, it’s often more expensive than buying a Chinese made mass produced item. If you’re a non sewing person, that's why a person might wrinkle their nose when you say “$40! You could make that!”

What I love doing is making these luxurious patchwork lap quilts. I used leftover bits of all the gorgeous materials my mother has used over the years. They contain silks, velvets, satins, high quality polyesters (which can be as fine as silk and more expensive!), wools, brocades, and anything else we have lying around. Some of the fabric is more than 50 years old.

Normally, I sewed the patchwork, added the borders (I like to use nice velveteen for this. It’s sturdy, turns great corners, and feels good), layered the backing and batting, tie it, and then bind the edges.

The particular quilt in the photo is one I made for my mom for Christmas one year. This turned a little different. I chose a beautiful rust panne velvet for the borders and turned the patchwork into a diamond pattern to make it a little more special.

Yikes!

This was a challenge. The velvet was super slippery and the pattern meant I really couldn’t machine sew it easily. Welcome to Baste City. I had to do it all by hand. And when you’re trying to do something like that by laying it out on the floor, naturally a fluffy little dog find it the nicest place to have a little nap. He seems to prefer good quality fabrics.

Ahhh.. memories. One day soon I'll whip out that little machine :)

Illustration Friday "Fail" Paper Collage

This week's Illustration Friday's theme is "Fail."

I immediately thought about stuff like getting bad marks at school, losing races (done that plenty!), letting other people down, etc.

Then my mind started to drift towards worse failure and the cruelty that is Natural Selection. African elephants have hard lives. Many don't survive the yearly trek to the wetter regions. I thought about the strange elephant burial grounds. They are areas where many African elephants who have become too weak or injured limp off to die; frequently where other elephants have died before. The ground is littered with the gigantic bones of these amazing creatures.

Mammoths are, of course, extinct. I suppose extinction is the ultimate failure.

This is a collage of paper bones on dirt. The bones are cut entirely free hand (no tracing or outlines drawn before they're cut) and there's a little trilobite in the corner for interest. Please view full for maximum detail.

Thanks for checking it out and don't forget to look at the other nifty entries!

Presenting Anne Grimdalens

When we lived in Norway, Knut and I lived on Anne Grimdalens gata. “Gata” just means “street.” Streets are frequently named after people using both their first and last names. “Edvard Munch gata” isn’t too hard to remember but try being a tipsy foreigner and asking a cabbie to go to “Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsons gata.” Some are even longer than that! Makes you appreciate “Lake St.” and “5^th Avenue.”

Anyway, I asked Knut who Anne Grimdalens was since she was worthy of a small street of apartments buildings. He told me she was a sculptor, but he didn’t know more than that. I immediately assumed she did that kind of big meaty socialist sculpture of rough hewn bicep-ridden fishermen that seems to be all over the place in Norway and didn’t pursue it further.

Then Knut and I on a beautiful summer whim decided to drive across the country to Lillehammer to visit Hunderfossen, the Ivo Caprino theme park (in a blog soon to come!).This caused us to drive through the very heart of Norway, through the mountains of Sirdal where the snow never completely melts and the sheep walk casually in from of semis and through the deep forests and treacherous switchbacks of middle Norway. At the tops of one of these forested mountain areas we saw a sign saying “Grimdalen.” We joked a little but further on we saw as “Anne Grimdalens Museum” sign. Woah! Clearly, we had to stop.

I was still expecting the bicep-y fishermen and couldn’t quite believe it when we rounded the path and saw these darling animal sculptures. She had, in fact, lived in the very area we were in and sculpture the animals that she came in contact with. This included wildcats, foxes, wolves, hares, and deer; but her specialty was bears. As you can see from the photos, she sculpted them with great affection in the sort of unknowingly charming positions animals put themselves in.

I still don’t know much about her. Unfortunately we arrived after the museum buildings closed, but I would love to go back. I also haven’t been able to find so much as a postcard of her work, so I’m glad to have these photos. Now I’m quite proud to have lived on her street.

Henry Dalton's MicroMosiacs

Every once in a while I am just overcome with longing for a certain object. I’m not a fancy car or mega-mansion kind of person at all—that type of status doesn’t really interest me. Unfortunately, most of the things I really adore are not available for sale!

These exceptionally beautiful pictures are collages made from the scales of butterfly wings.

They were made by Henry Dalton and reside at The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.

The museum itself is an astonishing place! The theme of the museum is about as opaque as the name. There are exhibits of sculptures mounted on the heads of pins, illustrations of common superstitions, a collection of dice, and other peculiar objects.

Please go if you’re in Los Angeles! It’s free and a wonderfully unsettling experience. More like being a Victorian curiosity cupboard than a museum.

After you’ve absorbed a strange film and examined some models of erosion and fetuses, you find yourself in a dim room containing a large table mounted with many microscopes. There’s relatively little explanation, but as your curiosity grows you peek into one of them. Gorgeous iridescent chickens greet your eye.

They are mosaics. Dalton used many species of butterflies and stripped the scales off the wings with a needle. He then positioned the scales under a microscope, positioning each one with a puff of air through a tiny tube. When it was settled to his satisfaction, he would crush a small segment of the scale, using the natural oils to adhere it to the slide.

The slides themselves are tiny, about the size of a nickel. There’s a small case, perhaps as big as a deck of cards, where they all can be stored.

I love the idea of tremendously beautiful objects that can only be appreciated under a microscope, like if you’ve ever examined a spider with a magnifying glass and seen a cute and fuzzy multi-eyed face.

The Day I Fell in Love With a German

I’m referring to Prince Esterhazy, of course!

Actually, I’m referring to Michael Sowa.

Once, while visiting my brother at college in Princeton, I happened into one of those lovely used bookstores that seem to pervert the bounds of physics in an M.C. Escher style maze of shelves and piles. I found a gigantic complete works of Jane Austen for $5 and took it up to the register. By the counter, the owner had a rack of tattered postcards, mostly of amusing cat photos, but one caught my eye. It was a painting of a man reading a newspaper while a penguin flew past the window. I bought it and turned it over. “Michael Sowa” it said.

Years later, my future husband and I were goofing around in Edinburgh. We had done the Royal Mile, the ghost tour, the haggis, etc. and were hanging around a side street when we saw a twisty old book shop with a rack of postcards by the door. I found one of a little bunny trying on leopard print boxer shorts in front of a mirror. We bought some of them and stepped into an impossibly dark and dank pub. Knut examined one of a girl with her arm around a trotting bear. He turned it over. “Michael Sowa.”

After that, my brother, the same one who had been at Princeton, sent me a birthday card of a few children running in terror from a giant rampaging Easter bunny. I smiled and turned it over. “Michael Sowa.”

Obviously, this was fate. I don’t believe in Fate, but this was fate with a small “f.” Clearly this thing had to be researched.

I searched Amazon and found he has a few books, most of which were in German or I had to buy used. A very small sacrifice, because the man has a sense of humor and a whimsical style that can’t be matched. The children’s books are funny and sweet and The Bestiary is crammed with ticklish creatures.

A few years ago I caught an advert for an exhibition of his work in Germany. I seriously considered hopping on a plane. Alas, the spirit was willing, but the wallet was weak. However, if any gallery in the Mid West would like to give me a birthday present…

In 2001, I was delighted to see a new film by my favorite French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It was Amelie, destined to be a film I’ve watched countless times. So when we get a glimpse of the walls of her apartment and the winsome dog portraits and bejeweled chickens, I smiled to myself. “Ah, Michael Sowa.”

Illustration Friday "Homage" Top Hat Bunny

This is a piece that my husband, Knut Sjurseth, and I both worked on. I think I drew the original outline, he polished it, I objected that she looked too tarty, I redrew the face, he fixed something else, and then I colored it in Photoshop. The objective? To make amusing t-shirts!

We were imagining a world where the bunny gets to be more than just a prop. An assistant! In a sparkly costume!

This sexy bunny girl is definitely a homage to the pin up girls of the 40s and 50s. My husband and are crazy about those illustrations (for a jaw achingly good time visit James Lilek's Art Frahm site. He specialized in ladies, with celery and small dogs, who have undie malfunctions). There's something about the cheer and fun in the girls' faces that really separates them from the calendar girls of today.

Anyone who happens on this blog by chance, please do visit the Illustration Friday site. Too much good stuff to miss!