Foggy Monday Artsy Walk

Monday, the last day of the year, wanted to see if I could see the Moon before it passed by Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury over the next few days.  But the sky was dark and starless.   Thinking that if it was foggy, at least I might be able to get some good fog photographs, I sauntered outside and to the local park.

On foggy days, when I'm driving The Child to school, often I wish that I could stop driving a take some photos.  I'll be zooming along one curve in the road, and the sun will blaze over the hilltops, and dye rising silver wisps of fog crimson and gold.  The copse running through the park become spears of sable shadow.  And then the idiot in the car in front of me (who certainly is a worse driver than I am) will do something stupid requiring my attention. 

But today I wasn't going to be in a car, and I'd have my camera ready. 

The frigid air made me glad that I had layered up with fingerless gloves, a polar fleece jacket, and my grey-green wool cloak.  I kept the camera under my cloak so it wouldn't freeze solid, all the time wondering how much it made me look like I had a concealed gun. 

I got to the park.  The pre-dawn darkness turned to pre-dawn grey.  The thickness of the fog made itself evident as the sun failed to materialize; and the trees, grass, and joggers remained studies in black and white.  I walked along the path and snapped photos of the lampposts, which were still on. 

I hadn't realized before how crooked and beat-up-looking many of them are.

As the morning continued to slowly fade in, various dog walkers and joggers passed by.  Mark accuses me of looking like a homeless person when I wear this particular cloak, and the state of my hair (vaguely untamed) wasn't helping.   I felt the evaluation of the regular path-goers change as soon as they saw the camera (oh, crazy photographer; probably harmless). 

I walked along the path, taking artsy photographs of where Amazon Slough had flooded its banks, and waited for the sun to pop up and do its crimson-dyeing magic -- but we had a secret dawn clothed in grey.  All the lamps turned off and I knew it was going to be one of those dark and twilight days where the lights of the sky are sourceless.   Also, I'd left The Child asleep at home and I wondered what he was up to.

So I came home.  Smokey greeted me.

More photos here:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/nh8E1udnzrZov9sJ8

Lamp and Memories

Back in the sixties, my folks did a lot of travelling.  One of the results was that there were various near- and middle-eastern objets d'art in the house I first lived in.

This brass lamp used to hang in a back hallway between the bathroom and my parent's bedroom.  The lamp has a pointy end, and used to be the source of four-year-old anxiety:  "What if it falls on my head just as I'm walking underneath it?"

My dad had wired it up with a forty watt light-bulb, and when it was on, it threw a basket-weave pattern onto the hallway floor.  I remember being confused by the pattern, partially because it was subtle and easily obscured by the living-room table lamps.  It's strange that I can only recall the light and shadow on the floor, but I couldn't tell you if the floor was bare wood or carpeted.  I want to say bare wood, but maybe it had some kind of vinyl or tile cover.

And now I'm recalling the huge--at the time--metal grate in the floor of the hall where the furnace would push out hot air.  When we were done with our baths, my sister and I would come out in towels or bathrobes or pajamas, stand on the grate, and let the hot air balloon out whatever was wrapped around us.  I remember the grate wasn't the most comfortable thing against bare feet, and standing on it until the hot air stopped blowing would leave a grid of narrow rectangles along one's soles.

The grate was so good at drying us, that one day I thought it would be good at drying off some wet ping-pong balls.  I forget why they were wet, either they were bathtub toys or I'd floated them in a lime green (with a swirly spiral pattern in the middle) ceramic bowl of water for some reason.  In any case, the vent dried the ping-pong balls too well.  I left them on the grate--the rectangular grid kept them from rolling off too much--and when I came back a little while later, they had melted:  most of them had triangular divots along their tops.

But to get back to the lamp, the LEDs Mark got me fit into it, and we've got a hook in the corner of our house that seems made for sharp pointy brass objects to cast basket-weave bands of light.  Illuminating it gives me a strange sense of homeyness, and now of course I wonder how many of my tea fantasies can trace their roots back to this lamp.

Squares and Triangles

These could make interesting screens for paper lamps.

I made them about a year ago.  I like how they came out, but I think the interior squares and triangles could use some beefing up, or else the framing ones need to be reduced so there less of a contrast between the two type of polygon.

When the proportions are closer, the shapes look less like squares and triangles and more like interlocking cylinders.  When the cylinders are more apparent, then it's easier to see radiating stars in the composition.

I can't remember if I drew these in Inkscape and imported them to Blender, or if I built them entirely in Blender.  What's great about Blender is the ability to easily change the lighting.  The top rendering reminds me of August wheat, while the bottom render feels more like a  December snowfall.

Lamps and Renders

Mark got me some remote controlled LEDs for valentine's day.  They have six LEDs on them, so they have multiple light points.  I think six points would show a single point cut out of a housing fairly well, but when I tried it with a star mesh similar to the rendered housing pictured to the left, the resulting shadows were kind of blurred together.

I tried putting one of the LED arrays into a mason jar and filling it with red tissue paper.  The result is nice, and Very Country Cute.

We had a paper lamp made for Chinese New Year, and it was a perfect example of form and function when I hung it over the LED array.

I think I'll try something Frank Lloyd Wright--a square lamp housing with a peaked roof and a simple line shape over an opaque white paper shade.  

Or maybe I can fire up the electric griddle and melt crayons into a pattern on wax paper and wrap the paper into a cylinder.

More as I try stuff....