Friday, April 03, 2015

Small Red Horse In The Rain

I was looking on YouTube on the slim chance that somebody might have uploaded a favorite song from my childhood, The Horse Is Green In Rainy Weather (Hesten Er Grøn I Regnvejr). No such luck, sadly. But instead I found this little artistic gem. ("Det regner" means "it rains".)
Wow. And somebody said there are no great artists anymore...

Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Gorgeous ceramics


This video shows the making of the most spectacular and beautiful ceramics vases I've ever seen. I just cannot believe the skill and the patience it must take to make these. Don't miss it. 
[The video will not play in Safari on my Mac or iPad. It does play in Chrome, though.]


As you can see in the next picture, the patterns are *not* painted in the glaze, they are made by *inlaying* different shades of clay! How the glaze enhances that, I have no clue. 

The artisan is scraping off the superflous colored clay to reveal the clay he has put into the grooves which makes the patterns. A delicate task, ending with a brush. 

I'm fascinated by this one, I wonder how it's made. 
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Funny enough, at the same time as my huge admiration for this, I get a tiny bit of empty feeling about the idea of owning one of them. I think because while it's amazing craft, it is not actually art. Every single pattern is simple in its basics and is passed on from master to apprentice. While it has great depth of care and quality, it does not have the depth of creation and beauty that art has.
(Don't get me wrong, craft is awesome, and I have vases, bowls, and old cameras on display which give me pleasure.)

Original muppets mana-mana song

I didn't even know there was an earlier one:



And here is the justifiably famous one (in my opinion, it's a few things like this which made the show so great):



And not to miss anything, they made one with the world's most beautiful comedienne, Sandra Bullock. (I don't know why they renamed it "Phenomena" though.)

Monday, March 30, 2015

Support drones stopping elephant poachers


Drones to stop elephant and rhino poachers, campaign.

40,000 elephants killed every year by poachers, this is insane.
This is one of the instances where drones are a great tool: cheap, quiet, can monitor large areas.