Fiber Art Happenings

1. Exhibition in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opening February 5, 2010: Modern Materials: The Art of the Quilt

An invitational art exhibition including 30 fiber art pieces by 24 artists, curated by Jill Rumoshosky Werner and featuring a special emphasis on 3-D works, opens February 5 at Living Arts,307 E. Brady, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Opening reception is February 5 from 5-9 pm; the show runs through February 25.

2. Gee’s Bend quilts in Flint, Michigan, opening January 23, 2010: “Mary Lee Bendolph: Gee’s Bend Quilts and Beyond.:

The exhibit, featuring the work of Mary Lee Bendolph and three of her relatives from Gee’s Bend, AL, was organized by Tinwood, an Atlanta, GA organization committed to “increasing public awareness and appreciation of the vernacular visual arts of the African American South.” In addition to the quilts are works by two contemporary Alabama-based artists, Thorton Dial and Lonnie Holley, who use found objects to create assemblage sculptures.

The show runs through April 18 at the Flint Institute of Arts, 1120 E. Kearsley St, Flint, Mi.

Other Cool Things

3. What would the earth look like if it had rings like Saturn? (YouTube video)

Wow. Talk about a different point of view! I’ve seen simulations that show the Earth with two moons or even two suns, but this is the first time I’ve ever thought of how the sky would look if it had rings. Now I almost wish it did.

I don’t normally like or recommend video, but this one is mind-stretching. Go take a look.

4. Shiba Inu puppycam returns!

Whoa. Two videos in one week!

Remember the Shiba Inu puppies from a couple of years ago? A couple in San Francisco set up a webcam through Ustream TV so they could monitor the progress of the puppies during the day. It wasn’t intended as a public performance, but the video link went viral because the little balls of fluff were just so adorable.

There’s a new litter of adorable fluffballs, and the video link is live again. If you go visit and the webcam is not currently on, there are several stored videos of the babies you can watch until they wake up.

All together now… awwwwwwwww.

5. Read ebooks from Amazon without a Kindle

There have been times I’ve been tempted by the idea of immediately downloading a book from Amazon, especially when it’s something I need right away and the price (usually $9.99) is considerably less than the cost of a paper book. Every time I’m tempted, though, I consider the $300 price tag for the Kindle and lose all enthusiasm.

But now Amazon has released a free Kindle app for the PC (Windows 7, Vista, XP — Mac version coming soon) that allows you to download and read books without owning a Kindle. Now you’re talkin’!

What else has come across your screen this week?

This week:

- Visual Thesaurus
- Rice Freeman-Zachery on Getting Rid of Stuff — and why we are afraid to do it.
- Picassos With Pixels: 12 Groundbreaking Pieces of Digital Art
- Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2010
- Facebook Privacy Update: Don’t Use the Default Settings

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1. Visual Thesaurus: A completely brilliant boon to both writers and visual artists. You enter a word and instead of getting back a list of related words, you get a sort of tree with related words branching off from the one you entered. Click on one of the associated words and it moves to the center with new branches growing from it.

The service is free for a limited number of lookups. Unlimited usage is $2.95 a month or $19.95 a year.
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2. And Now Let’s Talk about Organizing Your Space, Part I: Getting Rid of Stuff

You know it’s true: you hang onto stuff you don’t want and don’t use and might not even like very much just in case that day comes when you need it and can’t afford to buy it and are so needy that you’ll be ever-so-grateful for having that Thing in the back of the closet. …You keep the extra set of dishes your ex-mother-in-law gave you, never mind that you hate them and that they remind you of the bastard who spent your joint 401K on some bimbo from Idaho—you keep those dishes so that, when you become homeless and unemployed and too sick to work, you’ll at least have something nice from which to eat your beans and Government Cheese.

There are times in my life when I’d love to be outrageous and flamboyant and not give a flying rat’s patootie what anybody thought of my clothes or my hair. I would love to have ATTITUDE, baby! Rice (rhymes with Lisa) Freeman-Zachery has it all the way from her tattooed ankles to her spiked orange hair, and she’s a terrific writer as well as a fiber artist.

I want to be Rice when I grow up. How can you not love someone who writes sentences that sizzle like this:

In short, what you’re doing by hanging onto all this crap is feeding your fear that someday your life will suck so badly that you’ll be happy to have that beige polyester leisure suit or that mustard-yellow wool jacket that’s too tight across the shoulders or that pilled-up pink blanket that makes you itch.

Or you fear the day you won’t be able to afford good acrylics, and so you have all these dried-out tubes of paint stored in drawers in your studio as a hedge against that day, because you figure you can cut open the tubes and mix the dried-up paint with water and at least have a little bit to paint with, living there in your cardboard box on the sidewalk, making your brushes out of your own hair tied to a twig with used dental floss you salvaged out of the dumpster.

Go. Read. Bookmark. Then start getting rid of fear.

And stuff.

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3. Picassos With Pixels: 12 Groundbreaking Pieces of Digital Art

Photographs from an exhibition of digital art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, these images are static slices of art that moves — videos, interactive art that reacts when you move in front of it, a playful installation that allows the viewer to “blow” the fluff from a dandelion by pointing a “hairdryer” at the video screen.

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4. Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2010. I won’t tell you what it is, but the remarks on Twitter today have been scathing. My favorite? “Oh rly? Color of the year “inspired” by tacky tourist Southwest jewelry?”

It will be interesting to see how this color is used in design and fabric this coming year.

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5. Facebook Privacy Update: Don’t Use the Default Settings

[T]here’s an odd little twist to Facebook’s changes today that is almost, but not quite, in your best interests. The default settings that Facebook recommends goes something like: “transmit all your status updates and uploads to everyone on the Net, not just your friends.” Since Facebook estimates that only 15% to 20% of users take the time to adjust the privacy settings to suit their needs, this is most definitely going to lead to people sharing too much information, or accidentally leaking out stuff they thought was semi-private (which is great for reporters, but maybe not so good for everyone else). Given that “inappropriate” content your Facebook profile can get you fired by an overly-prudish boss nowadays, this is bound to cause an uproar.

I swear I’m going to delete my account altogether.

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And a bonus: 20 Ways to Tell If You Use Social Media Too Much

(Hm… how many of these apply to you? I’m not telling…)

1. You are going to spend the Christmas holiday with @grandma and @grandpa.
2. You log in to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (or another form of social media) before you eat breakfast or get dressed each morning.
3. When a friend says something clever, you respond by saying “I’ll retweet that.”

Happy weekend!