Greece in the Frying Pan (Guai a Caldo di Grecia)

I like Greece, sunny, usually friendly people for the most part, the birthplace of actual democracy and Olympic games. Nothing like a bit of retsina in the evening on a rooftop patio in my favorite section of The Plaka, but now there is a little bit of trouble. They spent more than they should have and the amount of their debt is supposed to be 20% bigger than all the goods and services they produce for a whole year. That would be like some people owing 1.2 million dollars.

Here is a photo I took on a boat off the Ia side of the Greek island of Thera which captured the intense reds of the sunset there. It reminds me of the money that the Greek government and bankers who allowed them to get in over their heads are hemorrhaging.

Oh, but back to the problem at hand... In a sense, Greece is dragging down the Eurozone with them too. That's kind of the issue which crops up when one doesn't keep international trade at arms length and comingles current accounts of nations.

Well fear not, I have an idea! We can just divy up and sell off the antiquities of Greece to the highest bidders. I'm almost certain that the UK would love to have the rest of the Parthenon in downtown London to go with the Elgin Marbles which already reside in their museum.

Me, I just want a couple of caryatides from Athens to build a pool bath / marble cabana with. What would you guys bid on?

The Rare, Beautiful, and Expensive at Ponte Vecchio

In the Florence, there is an ultra touristy spot on the river Arno called Ponte Vecchio, or 'old bridge'. In its current form, it was supposedly finished in 1345, but a bridge had been there since Roman times. Here is a picture I took of it from the Uffizi museum.

On and along this bridge might be one of the highest concentration of expensive jewelry stores in all of Italy or the world for that matter, but on that mild October day, I was only interested in one kind of shop.





No, not a coffee shop, that would be later. The shops that held my interest sold pietre dure, also known as Florentine mosaic. If you are unfamiliar, pietre dure is stone art where the pieces are 'jigsaw' cut by hand with a little diamond bow lubricated with wax and special mud for extreme precision in fitting the pieces together. Some of the works look as fine as any painting because of the level of intricacy and careful gradation of color.

In one of the shops, I spotted what I was after. A modern table top utilizing an extrordinarily rare green stone used for palaces and noble residences in Roman times, lapis Lacedaemonius often erroneously called 'green porphyry' or 'serpentine'. I want to reconstruct a small part of the Roman senate floor using authentic materials, and this is the stuff I'm missing.

I talked with the sales lady and showed her some of my work and mentioned I'd be interested in buying any raw materials they could spare at double their cost. The lady seemed enthusiastic and took me to meet the owner at a different shop on down from the bridge.

The lady owner / manager of the shop conversed with the sales lady for a few moments (I couldn't speak Mandarin and she looked kind of mean besides), and the sales lady returned and told me that the materials I was interested in were not available at any price. Then she shrugged and pointed out that I could purchase the table top and break it up for the material.
Destroying 11,000 Euro worth of perfectly good pietre dure art to get a few square inches of a pretty stone didn't seem like a good idea, so I thanked the nice sales lady and went on my way.

Note to the annoying shop owner in Florence: I obtained some of this material and have a contact in Rome to get more. Deal with it...

Artist Statement (Esposizione di Artista)

I was considering a recent question posed in a secret society website of mosaic artists of which I'm a member. The question was about the kind of typical marketing blurb you read when you go to a gallery and read about an artist whose work you are considering buying, and what if anything should be in it.



Many times, the artists throw in technical jargon that the average gallery patron won't understand. They also spend too much time comparing themselves to other artists that are maybe known a bit better. Or maybe they are a bit timid and don't sell / represent themselves well enough.


I thought I would put together a comprehensive artist statement to guide my own works; as much as to set goals and expectations as to advertise the quality of my works. I didn't want the statement to be flawed in any of the ways listed above.



So tell me what you think of my first draft here of an 'artist statement': (the mosaic group seemed to think it was spot on)

I strive to use all available methodologies and technologies of art to make unparalleled creations which will appeal to the very widest range of viewers imaginable. Even technologies that do not exist yet are effortlessly applied in the most creative manner possible with perfect efficiency of form and design. This will allow for the most lucarative and prestigious placements of my works, furthering my schemes of ubiquitous placement, licensing, and spinoffs / derivative works meticulously copied by slavish followers and carried forward for all of time.
In many cases, entire histories of civilizations will be rewritten to accomodate the grandness of my works. People will weep openly upon observing these unique creations, and other master artists will be obsessively plagued with burning questions such as 'Why couldn't I have made that?' The ultimate goal of the art is, of course, total world domination and complete mastery of everything and everyone throughout eternity.

Beef Island (Isola di Carni)

It was a mild evening on the yacht moored in Trellis Bay, Tortola, considering the 3 meter North Atlantic swells we all had to beat back through earlier in the day to get back from Virgin Gorda.

A crescent moon lit up Bellamy Key (as in the namesake pirate 'Sam Bellamy') and the Last Resort a few hundred feet away where the night before we'd all seen Tony Snell's comedy and music extravaganza. And there had been tequila, which by many accounts, made the comedy better.

It was the third evening of the live aboard sailing training (ASA-103 certification) and the turn to cook for everyone fell on my brother and me. So into the icebox we went, bringing out six large steaks provisioned days earlier, delivered at the Road Town harbor in Tortola.



















Up on deck, I had to figure out where the grill propane supply was to start up the gas. The aft grill was easy enough to find even though it was just a 12" diameter circle of grilling space. In Texas, a grill that is smaller than 24" is just a joke.

The wind started to gust just a bit, which made the tiny grill damned near impossible to light. But, we kept trying with various permutations of standing windward to the grill, holding up lifejackets and eventually with preserverence the Char-Master sprung to life. With the steaks on the grill with absolutely no room to spare, everyone top side watched a plane land over at the Beef Island airstrip and we all cracked open a bottle of beverage of choice.

We all continued with the evening limin' until it was time to flip the steaks. As I turned over a steak closest to me, with no apparent force (as witnessed and testified as true by my brother), the steak on the far side of the grill *jumped* off the grill and into the bay towards the airstrip. Wide eyed, we both wondered what the hell had just occurred. I'd heard stories of Ouiji boards and goofy things like that with unexplained motion, but this was a completely random freak occurrence of physics.

The captain climbed up from the galley and had a good laugh.
My brother said he thought it was trying to make its way back to 'Beef Island'. But with it only halfway cooked, I'll bet it didn't make it that far.

A Map You Can't Fold (Una Mappa Che Non Può Chiuso)

Not too long ago I was driving around in my black sedan with dark tinted windows and observed another car to my right while waiting at a light. A lady was getting frustrated trying to fold up a map, which I'd think would label her from out of town. I don't usually have trouble folding maps, unless it has already been misfolded. Under those circumstances, I guess I understand the impatience and stress compounded when someone doesn't know where they are, have no GPS or prototype sextant, and are having trouble with basic eye to hand coordination.

If the lady had been around in late antiquity, she most likely would not have been having trouble folding her map in her car while waiting at a light. Back in those days, they had fancy mosaic maps like in Madaba, Jordan in the images below. It's just another reason that I find ancient frescos and mosaics interesting because maps written on skins and papyrus have long since been destroyed. Imagine folding one of these marble beauties up...



















Concerning the Madaba map specifically, I've just read an interesting book from a fellow named Bowersock from Harvard who saw the map as a guide for religious pilgrims about 1450 years ago. Even in the relatively small space it had available to depict cities, it showed characteristic elements of the cities that are known to have existed (towers, walls, buildings within). It's rumored to have sourced some of the information from an earlier Roman map by a guy named Eusebius.

In the book, Bowersock goes on to point out personfication images of a few particular cities. It was kind of weird, but back in the day towns made images of how they would imagine (hmm, image and imagine are eerily similar words) that their city would look if it were a person. And, if that person was a female, seated, usually with a crown, holding a scepter, orb of victory, a television remote, or other item that more or less identified the place. These images are sometimes referred to as Tyche. The seated lady below is from the Tabula Peutingeriana drawn in the 12th century or so copied from ancient map sources that had not yet been destroyed.




















In the city of Madaba, a mosaic of personified Rome (left), Madaba (right), and a city of which there isn't a definite record of existence called 'Gregoria' (center) were personified. Is there another 'Pompeii' buried out there? Under a landslide / earthquake? Maybe sunken deeply in a marsh? Notice that the Constantinople from the Tabula Peutingeriana above looks nothing like the 'Gregoria' mosaic below.














Bowersock supposes through tenuous evidence it might be referring to Constantinople, but no one knows. The supposition is that since Gregoria was the wife of Constantine III around 630 AD and Constantinople was her 'hood'. But, the Madaba map creation was about 60 years before the wedding because of buildings known to be created in Jerulsalem in 570AD were not present in the Madaba map, so it doesn't make much sense that the personification would be named that way. So it's time for a treasure hunt?

Ok, enough boring history stuff. I was tagged by Heather at Welsh Happenings to do a meme. I'm too busy to tag people, so if you feel like it, you know the drill (by that, um, I don't mean power tools).

Let's see... 10 things that make me happy.

1) Working with natural stone in various colors

2) Lavazza Blu lattes

3) Spending time in the spa / pool

4) Running while listening to rocking music

5) Traveling to distant lands

6) Speaking Italian and having native people get the gist of what I'm saying.

7) Buying tromp l'oeil paintings

8) Talking with artists I admire like like Andjelka

9) Composing music

10) Making sculptures

Edgy Guitar Playing and Ice (Sono Incapace Suonare la Chitarra)

Did I mention that last week in Dallas was cold by almost anyone's standards? So cold in fact, it exposed a flaw in a city required safety device for the pool. Apparently, having two drain holes on the bottom of a pool to prevent kids and adult morons from getting stuck is not enough. There also needs to be a pressure sensor that prevents water from flowing if someone manages to cover both drain holes simultaneously at the bottom of the pool. Since these drain holes are really far apart, I'd say they were trying to end it all if this device is the one that will start up to save them.

Anyway, the device (with water in it) froze up and so did all of my pool equipment. They are fixing the last of it for free today (or I was going to file a complaint or two and have some fun in small claims court). Here is a photo of something you won't see often in Texas.















Last week also, Jenny Mac asked about a comment I made on her post. I realized most people don't know the secret to 'The Edge' guitar playing is to just turn on the 420 millisecond delay, so I thought I would record a video of 420 millisecond delay in action... Don't laugh on some of my messed up notes because I don't have time to play much or practice. Here is the patch in my guitar effects processor, aptly named?

And here is my awful guitar playing... Sorry MiniMac, no sunglasses today like 'The Edge'.

Ok, I hope ears are not bleeding now, you can stop laughing, this isn't American Idol or X Factor.

Conflagration (Conflagrazione)

A recent post concerning fire from Molly Potter made me remember a fun filled fire story of my own.

When I was fourteen years old living in Dallas, my father commuted to a town out west of Fort Worth to help my granddad with the family oil exploration business. When not in school, my seven year old brother and I would stay home with mom and be bored, typically finding some sort of trouble to get into.

That particular autumn weekend of the 'conflagration', I remember very clearly it was two weeks before we were to pack up the house and move to a desolate town closer to where the current land leases on which the drilling was located. Mom had gone on an errand, and we were home alone and thinking of playing around with model rockets on account of it was too cold to swim.

By this point in my adolescence, I was no stranger to model rocketry. I had built and successfully fired multistage rockets using both solid and liquid fuel, some of which had gone a mile or so high (the altitude being inversely proportional to the likelihood of finding the rocket as demonstrated in the chart below).












So in effect, I was overly familiar with rocket engines and had unfortunately lost some of the respect for safety that most normal people might have for devices that create literally tens of pounds of thrust spewing out a firey wake of destruction.

On this day and true to form for being a particularly lazy teenager, I didn't want to go to all the hassle of firing an actual rocket, or even using a remotely controlled electrical igniter as was the fashion in those days. No, of course I did the expedient thing and reasoned out that a well placed lit match in the clay cone nozzle of the engine would do the trick. But I worked out that the thrust had to be controlled (no jokes OWO) so it would be an even burn, much like a NASA test firing of an engine.

So, I logically found the nearest knothole in the wooden fence separating our yard from the neighbor's yard. Behind this knothole was a fencepost that would absorb most of the thrust and prevent the engine from shooting through to the other side. Matches were at the ready and my little brother stood there watching wide eyed...

I have to mention that next to us lived a family with a mean and mischievous little girl. She was always the sort that threw rocks at cars parked outside and was caught by her parents playing with matches on the side of her house a few weeks earlier. I had never heard her parents yelling at her as loud as when that happened.

Anyway, after striking the match and deftly placing it right in the nozzle while simultaneously jerking back my hand in one fluid catlike motion, the engine was lit. And for those of you 'in the know' about model rocket engines, it happened to be an Estes model D-12-3, which is a long burning and high newton thrust engine with a three second pause before an ejection charge designed to clear out a parachute from the model rocket. My brother and I gleefully watched the engine shooting
out a trail of fire over our pool deck, and then it happened.

Something went horribly wrong six seconds into the burn. I had not anticipated lateral motion against the fence post, so the engine (with rocket-like speed) shot through the hole to the other side of the fence. Of course, the first thing I do is look through the knothole and see the sickening sight of the engine spinning around in a circle shooting fire everywhere over dry leaves that had accumulated in the neighbors' yard. My brother asked 'What's wrong?', to which I responded 'We have a problem.'

I had the presence of mind to immediately grab a bucket. I quickly dunked it in the pool, then scrambled around the gates to the neighbors' yard quickly throwing water down and stamping and stamping it out, even while the engine was shooting out it's last ejection charge. I ran back and dumped four more buckets of water on it all just to be sure everything was out. Then I was left with the minor problem of an eight foot diameter circle of charred earth that someone was going to find out about before too long. So I did the dishonorable thing and pushed adjacent leaves over the blackened area.

For the following week my brother and I said nothing. The next weekend as we were packing up the moving van to leave, I could hear the little girl's mother yelling at her and managed to witness some of the ensuing punishment.

---

Quando giovane, ho iniziato un motore di razzo con un fiammifero. Non è stato controllato!