Saturday, December 29, 2007

Wire side Sculptures Artist: Laure Marie Capsuto


- Dog made from car parts

- Cow head

- Gear horse


- Celtic inspired rendering of Bullwinkle's death.

"My sculptures and painting are a reflection of what I believe to be true and the spirit they reflect is that of unconditional love and hope that we can all be safe and able to live the way God intended us to live, with unconditional love and acceptance. I graduated from the Art Center of Tucson with a degree in Advertising art and have worked as a freelance professional fine artist since I was 16. My goal is to pursue a Bachelors degree in Art Therapy and to work with emotionally disabled children. I have 3 children of my own who are thriving in one of the best school districts in Tucson and I also have 3 horses, 2 of which I use for animal therapy. I currently still work as a freelance artist and have my work on display and for sale throughout the southwest. Please feel free to contact me if you know someone who would benefit from some animal therapy work or who would like a sculpture or painting."
Peace and unconditional love,
LaureLaureMC@comcast.net

Friday, December 21, 2007

Get new course on blogging for fun and profit - for free!

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

  • The best blogging techniques.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.
  • How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

OSHO: Absolutely Free to Be Funny
Osho...a.k.a. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, born December 11, 1931


"They have starved thinking for centuries...I'm not going to console anybody, because the more you console them the more retarded they remain...I am not your savior, I am not going to help you in any way to enter into the kingdom of God. But I can explain to you how we can live here in the kingdom of beauty, love, joy. To me God is a dead word."

Saturday, December 08, 2007

"A chimpanzee could do better than that!"
- Actually this is by "Congo (1954-1964), a chimpanzee who painted pictures at the age of two to four years under the aegis of Desmond Morris." So it's pretty damned good, considering.


Source: Wikimedia Commons
John Lennon: Genius, Revolutionary, Surrealist...Hypocrite

Today is the anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, on December 8, 1980. I remember I was quite shocked and affected by it when I came home from school (I was in 6th grade or so) and heard the news from my mom, then from the constant television coverage. I had just finished a big school report on Lennon, so I was quite the little expert on the irreverent Liverpoolian. Or maybe I wrote the report after his death. Whatever, I was steeped in his mythos at an early age.

I always had a natural love for the Beatles, and regarded John's brilliant, acerbic, surrealist take on things a necessary counterpoint to Paul's dapper, whimsical outlook. Together their unique chemistry made the greatest songwriting team in rock and roll history. In their solo careers, after the break-up inspired by entropy, the insufferable Yoko, and many other factors, Paul was often overly sentimental, sappy, and irrelevant. John on his own was too often strident, self-righteous, and smug.

"Power to the people"? A little too overtly agit-prop from the man who a few years earlier had astutely sung: "If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao/You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow." And how about "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can." Something tells me John was not about to sign over the deed to his unit at the Dakota Apartments anytime soon.

And it's a damn shame, although par for the course, that one of the greatest artists of the 20th century was such a shitty father, at least to his son Julian ("Hey Jude..."). Watch the movie Pop and Me (1999), where the director, when traveling the world with his dad and interviewing fathers and sons about their relationship, encounters Julian at a poolside. Julian nails his famous father for abandoning him as a child, and for the hypocrisy of espousing his great message of peace and love in his music, while verbally abusing his own son in his early years.

For John at his best, see the You Tube videos below...spiritually prophetic, tender and affectioniate (towards his son Sean at least), beyond the wheels of Samsara just before a madman took his life in a senseless murder...


"Instant Karma"


"Watching the Wheels"


"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)"



Thursday, December 06, 2007

Contemporary poetry: "Thumbs down!"
by T.S. Minton

"I no longer feel compelled, or even impelled, to write poetry these days, and possibly will not for years to come. Number one, that muse has closed down. When I do get the urge to go on a creative jag, in the midst of the skull-splitting caffeinated stress and frantic pursuit of business endeavors which presently dominates my daily life, I plan on going back ot my original love: visual art, especially cartooning. Number two, although I have no interest in actively following it, what I have heard of contemporary poetry bores me silly. I find most of it insular, cryptic, pseudo-intellectual, full of annoying cadences and overly wedded to the dogmatic concept that art should be a platform for anarcho-leftist political screeds (to wit: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's wrong-headed little manifesto "Poetry as Insurgent Art"). I'll pass. Anyway, the greatest poet of our time, in an opinion I share with my former B.U. professor Christopher Ricks, is a rock and roller, not a self-conscious academic: Bob Dylan. Dylan, almost always, has dealt in riddles, rhymes, and metaphorical symbol-systems - NOT polemics. His concerns are the universal truths of the human heart - NOT promoting the passing ideologies of the day."
- From Squidoo.com/tsminton

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Do you , uh, Squidoo? I do...

"Steve Minton is..."
See http://www.squidoo.com/tsminton

Create your own Squidoo Lens now! - Why not? It's free, and they'll break you off 50% of all ad revenue. ..plus submit your Lens to Google.