Mardi Owl

Formula: Mardi Gras Mask + Plastic Owl = Found Object Combination ala Duchamp (see further views below.) This pretty much encapsulates my approach to creativity these days. Enjoy!

New Beta Blog!

I've just started a new Crow's Voice Blog, same content as here, slightly different format, for when there are "technical difficulties" posting to this site. Just click on the first link under "links" in the column on the right.

Halloween Windows 2011 Bloomsburg

It's time for Halloween windows on Bloomsburg's Main Street again. They just went up yesterday, but there's rain in the forecast, so I thought I'd better get out there and pick my favorites before flood or fire or some other disaster did them in. This FrankenGreen Man on the window of Phillips Emporium/The Cloak & Dragon Bookstore seems like a good start...

This robust wolf howls on the window of the newly resurrected Towne Camera, next door to the site where fire claimed three historic storefronts in 2009, shortly after the Halloween windows went up.

Below, some wolves occupy the Window of Bloom's only chi-chi boutique, Krickett Square. They'd make a good Vera Bradley pattern, doncha think? Anyway, take a closer look at the bottom wolf (detail on right), which has a wonderful wolf-like energy and grace.

Some young artists were influenced by Anime and other cartoon images. This large riotous scene on the Costume Shop Window is particularly animesque. Note the Japanese paper lantern on the prow of the boat. The original paper sketch was still taped to the window when I took the picture, so let me see what tranferred from idea to execution.

Halloween is also for the cute, like this Witch at Russel's & Kristy's Pub, and the Elf (below) at Berrigan's Subs who seems to be pushing the season into Christmas a bit, but that's ok. It's all about candy, right?

Back to scary. The skeleton below on the left goes well with the venetian blinds behind it, lots of neat lines going on. That's an awfully cheerful skull, though, so it's not nearly as scary as the demon-rabbit, below.

A couple of years ago there was a demon chipmunk, looking very devious, all the more sinister for being what we normally think of as a cute littel critter. This rabbit is even creepier since it's in the mirror on the window of Hess's tavern, the oldest bar in town. Can't help but wonder if the artist is tapping into some ghostly presence with a terrible hangover...

The two window paintings on Van Dyke's Goldsmith are among my favortites: an imaginative pair of aliens with an undulating background pattern (I like the colors, too) and a spider and web that works well with the web-like pattern of trees across the street reflected in the glass.

Finally, this intense vampire mouth is just wonderfully surreal. All teeth and bright red lips. It's on a restaurant window, of course, Balzano's (how brave of them!) on the corner of East and Main.

January Snow Sculptures

In the bleak slush and freeze, slush and freeze, of January, I take my miracles where I can find them. Today I found them in Bloomsburg, in the form of snow sculpture, like this snow stupa (?) (or castle? or 2-story igloo?) at 432 Main Street. Almost big enough to be dangerous! Note the snow barricades...

And at the library, I found this dragon curled around the base of a tree.















The librarian at the front desk tells me it's the work work of a Bloomsburg Public Library patron named Badger, but I think that's probably a pseudonym. (Who, I wonder, is the masked mammal who can make creatures out of snow? )








It's a friendly dragon, sans teeth, but with claws and a wonderful sinuous tail (see details below. )

Latest Passion: Stieg Larsson's Millenium series

It's been months since I've written anything but one-liners on Facebook, but I'm breaking the pattern to recommend my latest passion, murder mysteries by the late Swedish writer, Stieg Larsson.

I discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a few weeks ago and immediately got hooked on the characters, particularly protagonista Salander, a punk hacker with a photographic memory and a troubled past. She hooks up with investigative journalist Mikeal Blomqvist when he hires her to do research on a missing person case from 1966, and they uncover a series of unsolved brutal sex crimes in the process. But it's not that simple. The book is meaty, with complex subplots involving high finance, fraud, and revenge, too, both public and personal.

Next in the series is The Girl Who Played with Fire. It was checked out at my local library so I actually went out and bought the hardbound. Waiting for it to be returned, or even Amazon to ship, would be too long. (Yes. They are that good.) The book was a bit slower getting started, despite the 1st chapter "hook" that's become an industry standard. But when a double murder of two investigative journalists working with Blomqvist implicated Salander, I was hooked again. And Larsson kept surprising me. Mysteries are plot driven by nature, but it was the characters again that grabbed me. We learn more about Salander's past and her intriguing present, with the introduction of two new minor characters, Salander's lesbian lover and her former boxing partner.

A word of warning: these books are not for the squeamish. there's graphic violence, often of a sexual nature, and sexual subtexts that are... disturbing, to say the least. But Larsson handles these matters with sensitivity and dexterity. The perp is never more interesting than the victim. Larsson's women are fearless, adventurous and strong. And Blomqvist is brave enough to acccept them as they are.

So the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest won't be out in the US until May 25. Thank God I'll be in London on May 18th. (And maybe I know someone who'll be coming in from Europe before then???)

Especially for Halloween

The is absolutely the scariest movie scene ever. (The Haunting, 1963) Part of a team investigating pyschic phenomenon, Nel and Theo are sharing a room in a notriously haunted house. I don't usually link to video clips, but I just learned to do this so I'm delighted with myself. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYoP6dKxAjU

Halloween Windows Bloomsburg 2009

Every year Bloomsburg area students paint the windows of businesses along Main Street for Halloween. This weekend a fire destroyed three historic storefront buildings on Main Street, a terrible tragedy for those who operated businesses there or who lost everything in the apartments above. By comparison, the three painted Halloween windows that no longer exist are minor. They were designed to be emphemeral, and would have been washed off in a few weeks anyway. But they were some of my favorites, so it feels nice to know they live on here.

The demon baby, at top, made a strange and apt pairing with demon chipmunk. above, on the same storefront at Main and Jefferson. If the chipmunk didn't look so demented, it would probably be my selection for Cutest Window: as it is, it's in a category by iteself.

Halloween ala Sendak, below, was on the former Town Camera storefront.

Some of the images worked especially well in their settings. This coy little French Maid of a Witchlette (below left) hovered behind the bench in front of VanDyke Goldsmith and incorporated the store's logo and architectural elements behind the glass. It could've all been too much, but it works. And the embracing mummy and skeleton in the window of the Cloak and Dragon bookstore worked with the exisiting colors of the window frame in a challenging tall narrow space... a reminder to us all that no one loves you like your mummy.

For sheer mayhem, I like the splashy colors and Day-of-the-Dead energy of this graveyard scene, above.

And this geeky scene on the window of The Vision Center (I'm not making this up) has wild color and a 3-d effect on that dangling eyeball that just doesn't come across in the photo.

The pair below just seem made for each other: on the left, a skeletal figure stands beneath a tree with leaves like detached hands, and at right, a scruffy soothsayer with a crystal ball swirling with ghosts.

Ghouls in formal attire was a recurring theme this year. Here's one of my favorites on a Tim Burton theme. The imagie nicely incorporates the merchandise in The Costume Shop window behind it, too. (Note the butterfly shape paired with the bat-tie, and the red plastic pitchfork on the left...a perfect accessory for the corpse-groom out for a night on the town...)

Finally, I think this one (along with the demon baby that begins this page) is tied for my favorite. The seketal figure puttin' on the Ritz below is on the papered window of a vacant storefront on Main Street. Too many of those these days, but this makes the most of a bad situation...(It would be just about perfect if those were the Society pages behind him.)

FREE RICE AGAIN!

Those of you who frequent the Crow's Voice more than the Crow does may remember that about this time last year I was promoting Free Rice, a website vocabulary game that donated rice to the UN World Food Program. If you haven't been there in a while, now's a good time to visit again. The vocabulary game is still there, but there's now a grammar component, a geography option, and games for chemistry, math, French, German, Italian and Spanish AND (my personal favorite) Art History.

You only donate 10 grains of rice per correct answer now, due to global economic pressures, so it's important to play even more and promote the game to your freinds and family. Just click on the picture above to link to Free Rice.

While you're on the site take a look at the totals Free Rice has generated so far and see how your country ranks in its commitment to end world hunger. (The US is pretty pathetic so far. You can click on a link to print off a letter urging Obama to make it a goal.)