Found Art Friday 268

 Dear ones,
As that funnel swirls us together into the end (of something) tucked in a beginning, Art Ranger's theme for this last post of 2018 is simply "local color":  all of the following images were enjoyed within a three mile radius of the domicile.

backyard sunset

 We can't get enough of the palette load of color subtleties amongst the grasses and amaranth seeds under a soft sky.

The "pond", which is often dry, takes up a grand portion of our photo library.  Formerly a watering hole of the indigenous ones.

We are enjoying the saturated enchantment of the effect of moisture on color, even if it is growing out of what was once a bench.

color matchings in the yard

Wonderment by Kitty Carson

 In the midst of the gripping national cataclysm of external conditions, we take comfort in the DIY spirit of certain loving humans: for instance, here at Mario's gas station (our version of the corner store).  In the mornings, a group of elders have coffee/talk here after their walks.  This husband and wife operation, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., has provided coffee, snacks, flowers, gasoline and caring conversation for decades.
 
 As this calendrical threshold beckons, we recommend that you  bite into an apple or a carrot and try to chew then savor each bite like there's no tomorrow.  Afterall, your teeth are made of the same stuff as the whales from eons ago. 

what is the point? we're not sure, except to notice it passing by

One of the few salves that does not solve, but at least soothes the harrowing times: people are keeping track.  Have a stellar passage into the new! and when you see a very out of place or super silly thing, please let us know: homelandinspiration@gmail.com.

Found Art Friday 267

Dear ones,

The artist has been in fact "At Large" -  this time, along with one fine gentleman, having the good fortune to land ourselves on an island made of water held in place by leaves.  A small upcropping of earth magma oozed from the Pacific Plate, now cooled and eroded, furnished with sand. 

Glimpse from Kauai's Hindu Monastery where cow sculpture was blessed along with our very foreheads

Palm Tree Triptych captured by Gentleman Jeff

 

Very small cross-section of meditation banyon at the aforementioned monastery

On a long walk, we fell in love with Shelly and her (his?) elegant armor, as casual a creature as we've ever met with ravishing leg fingernails

Land tortoise doing native plant restoration, by eating, by being

 colors cooked and ground into a color

Aloha Mahalo Aloha Mahalo Aloha Malahalo all so mellifluous sounding, "Moana" has more of a sense of open ocean, and of vastness of the ocean ....

While there, we read from Rachel Carson's "The Sea Around us" .."each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water.  This is our inheritance from the day, untold millions of years ago, when a remote ancestor, having progressed from the one-celled to the many-celled stage, first developed a circulatory system in which the fluid was merely the water of the sea.  In the same way, our lime-hardened skeletons are a heritage from the calcium-rich ocean of Cambrian time."

 Now home, we must get happy about Yogi tea bags before walking outside.

And you?  Please send fodder to homelandinspiration@gmail.com :)

Found Art Friday 266

Dear ones,
Welcome back to the Department of Homeland Inspiration, which is a state of mind. Today, we feature images from two artists whom have not yet met, but that seem to intersect along similar nodes and lines, both of whom have recently graced Art Ranger's inbox. Each of these artists is a unique three dimensionalist who has taken (weaving) to unexpected places. Art Ranger is awed by what other artists are magnetized by and how this steering by the eyes may affect their hand built objects.
 Amanda Salm

shared  "dragon fruit-crazy looking inside and out!"

its not just the seeds and the color, but those other fiber rhythms akin to swimming in the light, or a drawing by the artist

Also collected by Salm at Point Lobos.  We are happy with erosion as birdfoot sculptor of the ages

Horsehair being the primary material with which she creates, this one called "Sinks": Best go to Amanda Salm's website.

And featured before is Anne Mudge: this artist/friend/colleague also walks similar dog while parallel processing: we seem to be co-observers in different California eco-systems.

From Anne Mudge:  elegantly built and broken. It's what she sees and how it's framed folks.

Art Ranger admires these two artists' focus as laborious tasks grow into alternate life forms. 

Praying Mantis Egg Sac discovered by Mudge

Also appreciate seeing a dried used model as housing bulb

Digressions:  glimpse of hanging sculpture by Anne Mudge:

Indeed, digressions may actually be our stuff of life: (Yesterday while trying to whisk away books from the home to make room for new ones) this one grabbed us by the eye: 

"Yah - we know what you mean man!!!"

 Parting Words:  a series in which we make a copy of one page of each book we give a way now:
Despite all the baggage, Page 29 speaks to us:
"What is more natural than that we should persist in looking for happiness along the path on which we first encountered it? ..... We may go on from here to consider the interesting case in which happiness in life is predominantly sought in the enjoyment of beauty, wherever beauty presents itself to our senses and our judgement -the beauty of (human) forms and gestures, of natural objects and landscapes and of artistic and even scientific creations. This aesthetic attitude to the goal of life offers little protection against the threat of suffering, but it can compensate for a great deal" Okay dawg, we are committed to this work, tis our service, our wheelhouse, our generator.  Hence highlighting the two artists featured above. And seeking to attend to the art (beauty? - not exactly) in everyday life "The enjoyment of beauty has a particular intoxicating quality of feeling.  Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it.  Yet civilization could not do without it...."
Please share your revelations and beauties with us: subject FAF (for Found Art Friday): homelandinspiration@gmail.com, and we will try not to let where did it go? happen.
If the Homeland Inspiration experience complements your life, please become an email subscriber so that it is easy to reach you because:
Facebook and the world of now.
Peace and Love

Found Art Friday 265

Dear ones,

Next month, we embark upon our ninth year at The Department of Homeland Inspiration and we wish to welcome your participation in this appreciation of art/Art /"art" in everyday life.  Found Art Friday is a forum for observing while living with an eye-asking frame of mind as one moves about the world and its inhabited pathways.  Art Ranger watches out for art:  hence a sampling/review of our way too many images:

Apple store employee raised his technological eyebrows about our computer's 12,000+ photos

You too are more likely to not have an established art enterprise or publication in your midst today, yet (art) is potentially all around you in moments of perception, noted, somewhat recorded.

Found Paintings find you u, the essence of The Department of Homeland Inspiration

During these past eight years of nearly weekly blogging, our (smartphone) use/over topping has blossomed into a full-blown brain extension/ human algae bloom that we are trying to understand as we speak. Meet Powerama: live documentation of a recent performance by the artist on this topic. She raps, she rants ....

We originally started this blog on the suggestion of a dear friend, poet Stacy Doris who now has departed this dimension.  An experimental way to keep things rolling during the thick of the child rearing years when a ten minute segment of time might need to suffice for our art practice that day.

Offspring #2 was 12, when he was furious with the dog for this infraction

 Roadtrip Bonding Experience with Offspring #1

At times, we needed to be able to distill art out of wall, a parking lot, out of a dog walk, a reflection, or more recently out of being assaulted by the spray of the absurd tragicomedy of our nation state.

How does this shiny rectangle of obsessive documentation interface with and inform "photography?"
We feel like Claude Monet of intricate changes in light on the same (now dry) pond. 

Yet, this blog endeavor is still about art. How we frame things. The lens through which we interpret our experience. And what Art of other humans has lodged in our brain to color it?

chin sculptures made by bored stable horses :)

Please send us images or thought contributions from your own Department of Homeland Inspiration, because "Life is the most interesting thing on earth" as our mid-west then Florida grandmother accidentally said.  Send to: homelandinspiration@gmail.com

Found Art Friday 264

Dear ones,
How is your whipsaw going? Whew! Phew!!! And have you noticed how many more exclamation marks there are in the world?!!  It's hard to wade in when Art Ranger can't even keep up with the punctuation! *#$#%

INSERT MEDITATION herbal tea units

It's surreal how much you can like a picture taken by accident while fumbling

Bizarre and amazing the way color is no longer free (either), a part of the spectrum lit up a certain way.  You see now how meaning is a mesh you must make up yourselves. 

GOOD and"Scrappy", even functional, a Nicki Sucec siting

While the pendulum just clocked us in the head again as its shit hits the speed of the fanfare, aflame with (its) pants on fire.  Meanwhile, it was extremely heartening to participate in a pre-election moment of art activism in the form of a "PopUp" art show. 

car and this photo by GOOD AND MAD participant and colleague, Nicki Sucec

Women, for instance, rocked it!!!  But, we were meant not to be able savor a thing before the shit was thrown.  It's a game show and we're in it.  Check your balance, practice walking over rocks and icecubes and poker sticks.  Consider reading "This Bridge Called my Back".  Here at the NSA National Sanity Administration, we are here to care about your  Pre-exhausted Conditions.

It's no wonder that RBG fell down and cracked her ribs the day after, look what she has been carrying?  Prayer material to patch her upright.  Breathing, laughing, coughing, and talking will hurt.  Her neck says it all.  (THE Bench sculpture grows here).

RBG hang on!!! A life of intellectual tension weighing in

Dear Ruth, we are worried about your neck.  Please last, at last please  oh pretty please .....
we will send beeswax for your ribrepair  and threads of understanding.  Michael Moore even offered you his own on TV, offered to cut them out of himself and trim them to fit. Did we dream this?

Art Ranger savors then the sturdiness of this communication relic

And we wish for the porous thinking brought on by this image, Yes, "we are listening" thoughts float through threshold.  Now, glass bubbles crash against our sliding thumbs, yet we love the tiny thought extension a text message can be.  Please send (yah text) us your discovery of an appreciated image mement that did not already slide by on Insta:  homelandinspiration@artistatlarge.net.

Found Art Friday 263

 Dear ones,
We're back, are you? Flabbergasting to watch, the how low can we go go..... oh.  While trying to mediate our intake, Art Ranger rambles around doing odd forms of maintenance: including the recording and re-coding of visual quarks.  So wonderous is it to discover various gems of perception provided by others, such as this:

Inside Out: provided by Dave Lindenthal-Cox and his Aplomado:   @greenfieldsfalconry

More than ever, it seems important to look away, to look up,  look out!!:

Wobbling on the ceiling, as noted by Bonnie Hotz who makes pots

or, to see what is deflected through our same old bathroom "security glass"

Gentleman Jeff collected

Recent Space-X launch:  good heavens, the hubris, the hope ......

Happy Hour sky paintings   .........    let's dance!!

What next? More (art) to stumble your eyes upon and please share here: homelandinspiration@gmail.com

Found Art Friday 262

Dear ones,
As you may have noticed, Art Ranger has been out of the interwebs, instead doing her service by putting up Art indoors.  Here are some links to the goings on: DesEscondidio, Press about it
Critical Ground: MAD2

Where do we go from here?

Since Department of Homeland Inspiration hiatus, we thou/thee/our nation-under-pain has arrived at yet a new low lowering of our level of dangerous disgust and distrust with scabs of the daily

ripped off, each of us festering/ processing this in her or his or their own way.  

Warrior Pose

Though it is hard to concentrate on the mundane, we carry on with our eyeballs rolling over earth, hopefully wired to hope, searching for glimmers of humor or irony or shy beauty in the sad rubble.

Yesterday, a curb drawing asserted its narrative tendencies:

hanger ing on. Break in to your own heart you not self driving car. Dance the night away

It doesn't look like much, but Art Ranger wishes to share her moment of enthrall over this:

Scuff plate. Swept by Breezes and leaves. Leaves and breezes upon the hard heartshaped earthhearth.

"wonders never cease" as mother would say

In general, the art of Artist at Large is about taking note and being very humbled by what already exists here in the world:

Garden Squash texture that will feed 18 people

Speaking of Gardens, last but not least, in fact of utmost importance, are these images delivered fresh from the Sandwich Fair in rural New Hampshire, by a most admirable and reliable smile bringing college friend: with structural vegetables, mucho gusto, imagination, toothpicks .......

humble pie?

Yep - the winner: "Death Car 3000"

Inventive contraptions R US!  It's possible for you too to send your Found Art Friday to: (homelandinspiration@gmail.com) and we are so very glad when this happens.