'For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.'
--Vincent Van Gogh



Click on image for large size.

Study for 'Youth of St. Sergiy Radonezhsky'. 1890-91. Oil on panel. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.



Olga's Gallery

Times
2 Nov 09



The scene from Spellbound, made of paper tape on clear plastic - (Mark Khaisman/BNPS)

The monochrome world of Hitchcock’s Spellbound has been revisited in a new artistic medium — layers of brown parcel tape stuck on to a 4ft-high sheet of clear plastic through which light is shone.

The scene, taken from the director’s 1945 drama starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, was created by Mark Khaisman, who sells his works for up to $10,000 (£6,000).

Mr Khaisman, 51, from Philadelphia, previously worked with stained glass before switching to parcel tape.

“The work is made from layer upon layer of translucent packing tape, applied to clear Plexiglas and placed in front of a light box to give shadow and depth,” said Mr Khaisman. “My art is a conversation with light.”

BBC
2 November 2009

**This is a really cool automatic slideshow of images of these amazing women. WWII is one of my interests, particularly aerial bombing missions. I love history. Click the link at the top of the photo to go to the BBC article where you can start the slideshow. Details for listening to the BBC Radio 4 programme are below.

Night Witches



Russia's three all-female air regiments flew more than 30,000 missions along the Eastern Front in WWII. At home they were known as 'Stalin's Falcons', but terrified German troops called them the 'Night Witches'.

Here - with the help of archive images - Radio 4's Lucy Ash tells their story, and discovers that their extraordinary exploits have inspired others decades later.

Images courtesy RIA Novosti, Getty Images, Anna Yegorova, Garth Ennis and Russ Braun.

Night Witches will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2002 on Monday 2 November 2009. It will then be available for seven days on >>the BBC iPlayer.

Slideshow production by Paul Kerley

That is the username of an excellent artist on lj.rossia.org. I found Alex's art on a robot link which friended me, and I was quite impressed. I have permission to show you a clickable thumbnail, and I will make it go to his journal, but I am happy to report that now he also has a deviantART account where he is in the process of displaying his talent. It is located here:

urbanaztec.deviantart.com

I think you will be quite amazed at the intricacy of his art when you see the large version of 'Lamp'.

Click the picture to visit Alex's journal. Then once you are there, you can click this tag to see all his art on LJR.

View of the bridge in better times

**Read about the bridge at Wikipedia

'High winds caused a steel crossbeam and two steel tie rods to snap off the Bay Bridge's eastern span and fall to the upper deck, Caltrans officials said today as commuters unable to drive over the closed bridge jammed alternative routes and crowded onto BART in record numbers.

The three pieces were part of an emergency repair that workers made on the bridge over the Labor Day weekend after discovering a crack in a structural beam on the cantilever section. The repair held for just seven weeks, until the parts came crashing to the upper deck at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, damaging three vehicles and injuring one motorist.

Crews worked all night on fresh repairs after authorities closed the bridge, but Caltrans was giving no estimate for when the span might reopen. Local transit officials said they were being told to plan as though the bridge will be closed through the end of the week.

The National Weather Service said gusts in the San Francisco area hit 30 mph Tuesday. Caltans said that was enough to cause a 20-foot tie rod, which goes through load-bearing steel saddles on the cantilever section, to move back and forth, and eventually snap.'

Highway to Heaven or Hell?



Westbound Highway 92 (left) slows as commuters, at mid-morning, cross over the high rise section of the San Mateo Bridge into Foster City on Wednesday. Photo: Michael Macor

--Story from San Francisco Chronicle

"I think the popular concept of the artist is a person who has this great passion and enthusiasm and super emotion. He just throws himself into this great masterpiece and collapses from exhaustion when its finished. It’s really not that way at all. Usually it's a pretty calculated, sustained, and slow process by which you develop something. The effect can be one of spontaneity, but that’s part of the artistry. An actor can do a play on Broadway for three years. Every night he’s expressing the same emotion in exactly the same way. He has developed a technique to convey those feelings so that he can get the ideas across. Or a musician may not want to play that damn music at all, but he has a booking and has to do it. I think the real test is to plan something and be able to carry it out to the very end. Not that you’re always enthusiastic; it's just that you have to get this thing out. It's not done with one's emotions; it’s done with the head."

Richard Estes

I saved these two pieces by Robin Livingstone, and I am glad I did as their original source links are now defunct (if anyone has any viable links, please let me know). I also had them on a blog which packed up and left me without warning as well, so this is why I archive whole articles. Robin is an editor at Andersonstown News in Belfast. He has a biting wit and sarcastic view of life which I find hilarious. He frequently writes under the guise of 'Squinter'.

I've posted this once before, but something Jadiem wrote reminded me of it.

NIGHT AND DAY IN YOUR PJs

12 July 2003
Squinter

The time has come the walrus said, to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings...

And much as Squinter has tried to put it off, much as he has wrestled with his conscience over the advisability of bringing this particular topic on to a public stage, the day was always going to come when the truth would have to be told, and it is this: women in Ballymurphy/Turf Lodge don’t get dressed any more.

Now that doesn’t mean that they run about naked, or in their underwear. No, it means that they spend all day in their pyjamas. Nothing wrong with that, the cry goes up, everyone dosses about the house in their PJs occasionally, which is undeniably so. But we’re not talking about a lazy day off here, or an extended lie-in. Squinter was in Turf Lodge one afternoon last week – around 2.45pm, it was. And in one stretch of road he saw seven women going about their daily business in their pyjamas. Not standing at the door talking to the neighbour, not nipping out to pick up the milk – actually doing the everyday things that normally require a person to get dressed.

Two women were walking through Norglen Gardens, proceeding to who knows where with that peculiar shuffle that fluffy mules necessitate. Both sets of pyjamas were pink, silk(y) and baggy, both twentysomethings had blonde hair and big golden hoops in their ears, both had their arms folded with a ten-deck of Regal tucked in their armpits. ( >>Continued )