Trusting Porcupine
November 26, 2018
Stylized little California porcupine greets a butterfly, drawing by Meredith Eliassen, 2018.
I used to come across porcupine quills along country paths as a child. Like the otter, the porcupine is a gentle and playful, its quills are only used when trust has been broken. Porcupine quills appear to be vectors going into all directions, neither poisonous nor ejected in battle, they are buoyant, helping the little critter to keep afloat in troubled waters.
Black Friday Rant… why am I reacting?
November 23, 2018
If you are reading this, then you are not currently shopping online, offline or reading about what you should be buying in some marketplace… welcome to this place. Stylized ox design by Meredith Eliassen, 2018.
Yesterday I had many pleasant exchanges with family and friends via electronic media that lifted my spirits as my email inbox filled with message of what I should value and part with monetary resources on to feel fulfilled. Several of these entities were non-profit organizations that I have given my time to over the years and I reacted to these messages because in my book, time is a most precious resource for once it has been given, it cannot be taken back… it is passed… past.
I have been thinking much in my recent solitude about information VECTORS. We know vectors as those graphically defined symbols represented by directed line segments that in science and mathematics are used to describe the direction and magnitude of something, but they are something more. They have origins and carry us individually and collectively in different and communal directions. The word “vector” comes from the Latin, vector, meaning carrier.
Aesop, thought to have been a slave, tells the story of the Frogs and the Ox that reminds us not to attempt the impossible by being something that we are not. Before Aesop, the Ancients were image-makers who created a Hall of Bulls in the south of France that contained visual information vectors showing relationships among different species where images of different animals were positioned with direction and magnitudes in an organized that illuminated the cultural values of a society that we only know through petroglyphs. For the Greeks, Zeus took on the form of a bull that symbolized power, strength, virility, and transformation. In the Old Testament, the bull was a most powerful sacrifice. In today’s financial markets, the bull signifies a market where prices are rising. Today, after such a meaningful Thanksgiving, I am contemplating what direction my resource vectors are traveling and how they reflect my modest place in society.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
November 22, 2018
While closed in due to bad air quality, I drew a critter thanksgiving prayer in a heart: “let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and show ourselves glad of him.” Design by Meredith Eliassen, 2018.
After being cooped up during the recent wildfires due to bad air quality in San Francisco, this morning I ventured out to my favorite lake to listen. I had ventured out yesterday as the rains subsided, and to my horror there was an eerie silence… seeing rodents in the gutters, I shuttered, and passed still areas where my beloved tweetie birds reside to sense stillness.
This morning after many pleasant exchanges, I set out to the lake after dropping off a card for an old friend in the neighborhood. The skies were clear and as I approached the lake, I felt the familiar stirrings of life re-awakening. Tiny moths came towards me, first a few, then more… then thousands. Out of the brush, like manna only not from above, but from the side, from my side, the ocean side in the breeze, many touched me on their way inland… dozens of gentle wing kisses… reassuring, like a warm/cool breeze in childhood. I passed the moths, and from beneath the shrubs the little tweetie birds came… just a few steps forward to greet me then back into the brush, then the bigger birds crows, ravens, mallards, gulls, jays… the cormorants hung back. The humans were there too, most spoke languages other than my own, but that was okay… everyone was in accord… thankful for clear skies and life.
With thanks,
Meredith
The Illuminators
November 14, 2018
The Illuminators show up in an initial of “I” — design by Meredith Eliassen, 2018.
This is new exploration into the carriers of information that reflect basic humanity… the scribes and painters of illuminations were mobile artisans that transported ideas and styles throughout medieval Europe. Look for more creative folks to show up in the coming months…
Medieval art was collaborative in nature with different artisans working on different stages of projects. Students using hard-point styluses made of metal or bone, or graphite copied the work of masters. Sometimes books were created over multiple generations with flourished pinwork of later artists updated the look of a project. Artisans often mixed a quantity of color and applied it sequentially to different miniatures. Pigments were natural, organic, mineral, or manufactured. Washes were overlaid with tones of varied saturation to provide shadows or highlights. The best blue was manufactured from lapis lazuli; it was very expensive because it was imported from as far away as Afghanistan, so it was use only for luxury images.
Election night muse… for the elders
November 7, 2018
Preamble to the Constitution of the United States scribed on November 6, 2018 by Meredith Eliassen.
Inspired by a poster by an unknown artist produced during the 1968-1969 student-led strike for educational equity at San Francisco State College that featured the Preamble in blue with the word “justice” echoed in deep red, this version employs the dynamic of empty space with diverse information vectors produced by words found in Chinese design.
Zen design dos not seek to recreate reality, but creates with artificial space relations that point beyond visible reality to the essence of reality with chi. Chi is life, force, or essence, which in design is reliant upon obtaining connection between the observer and the observed… between design and recipient through empathy or aesthetic harmony. Zen design utilizes the vital movement (information vectors) produced through the circulation of chi… to say without saying. Lao Tzu (533 BC) asserted in Tao Te Ching XI that Zen design is conceived within an emptiness where “being and not being engender each other…” taking equal advantage of was is, “just as we recognize the usefulness of what is not.”
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