Category Archives: Art

Art Imitates Nature

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Art Imitates Nature

Suspended in this plastic world, my heart a gaping wound
if not for all the beauty in which it is cocooned.
How would we salvage anything from war and greed and lust
without art’s kind revision of all that is unjust
to make us reclaim hope in life simply because we must?
It’s the alchemy of nature to which we are beholden.
It takes our baser natures, transforming them to golden.

 

Prompts today are golden, salvage, wound, plastic, suspended, and revision.

“True” Art

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The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet
Banksy
Mandy Barker
Banksy
Mandy Barker

“True” Art

Ugliness invades the exquisite hall:
brazen rude truths hung up on the wall.
Training the rich to see the real world—
the truth of the starving so crudely unfurled.

Exquisite lives overlooking the grime
of ghettos and junkyards, pollution and crime.
Riches amassed while refusing to see
how greed contributes to poverty.

Idiosyncrasies. Truth told in chrome.
Sad themes and base metals invade the rich home.
Landscapes with hardships depicted in oil:
rusted-out car frames returning to soil.

Thus crude art invades the beautiful world
with the ugly truth blatantly unfurled.
And though robber barons might greedily yearn for it,
and they might hang it, they sadly don’t learn from it.

 

Prompt words today are chrome, hardship, landscape, brazen, trainer and idiosyncrasies.

Buddha Cat

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When my friends John and Cleo and their housemate  Jay all passed away within a year of each other, John’s son asked me to choose something from their house to remember them by. This little Egyptian blue Buddhacat was what I chose. He sits guarding my catfood in my kitty bodega.

For City Sonnet: Egyptian Blue

WDYS 154 – Tools and the Man, Oct 9, 2022

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I can’t see tools without thinking of my husband Bob who had every tool on earth. Here is a poem I wrote about him. It’s been on my blog before so hope this is acceptable. Click on this link to read the poem:  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/11/27/you-have-become-the-art-you-lived-for/

Here is a photo of him at his happiest, in the studio creating:

For What Do You See Prompt

Agastopia (For Bob)

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Agastopia*
(For Bob)

At my dear departed husband’s behest,
my ode extols the female breast.
In a dream world of his making,
breasts on beaches would be baking,
naked in the sun, to gold,
then, unashamed, to brown and bold.

No petty thoughts would cloud his mind,
his excitation, an artful kind,
and as he paints or sculpts or molds,
each scoop of plasticine he holds,
will take a shape of his devising,
as he works, his hands revising

all that God and nature wrought,
their perfect beauty therein caught.
While some malinger at their tasks,
a breast is all my true love asks—
to do what nature first has done
and duplicate them, one by one.

 

*Agastopia is the admiration of a particular body part.

 

Prompts today are dream world, petty, malinger, revise, excited and agastopia (the fetishestic admiration of a specific body part.)

Forgottenman reminded me of this post of more of Bob’s sculptures: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/07/12/mentor/

 

A Weighty Oddity

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For Sam’s “A New Kind of Challenge” Prompt he asks us to publish a photo of something odd in our house that weighs a lot. This life-sized lady sits in my front garden in front of my entrance door. I show her here with a couple of different lap “bouquets.”  I’ve shown a photo of her recently but she meets the criteria, so here she is again. Carved of solid cantera stone by a local artist, she is probably my heaviest unusual object other than my house itself. Will this do, Sam? If this doesn’t meet your criteria for oddness, I’ll try again.

Favorite Finds

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Black onyx and white enamel pin found in my grandmother’s drawer and given to me by her, along with assorted finds..collected to be assembled into a retablo
Found enjoying her meal near her parents’ booth at an art fair at the Lake Chapala Society
Beautiful face superimposed upon a beautiful face.
Sacrificial blood cup Found on the shores of Lake Chapala
Military watch given to me by my friend Joe to use in a retablo
1 1/2 ” round stone formed by the wave action in Lake Michigan. Found in a little stand by the side of the road
Small handformed clay dog found in a stall on the malecon in Ajijic
Bird carved from a cow horn found in an art market in Havana, Cuba.
Frog formed out of raw rubber from a rainforest tree. Found in a tiny shop in Fort Bragg, CA.
Large replica of a PreColumbian piece found in Chapala, Mexico
Basket found on Lombok Island. basket woven from a local woman, basket base and figures on top carved and painted by her husband.
More of the same.
Bird formed from palm branch found in La Ribera, Baja California. Formed by a friend out of fronds taken from her palapa roof as they created a new one
Clay and wooden frogs found in different places in Mexico
Huge Bobo ceremonial mask found in my front driveway when African friends set up a show there. One of the few things I brought with me to Mexico. 74 inches high.

Click on photos to enlarge.

For the Favorite Finds Prompt

Memories of Times Past: Art Challenge #7

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This piece composed of a painted metal retablo box, silver leaf, watch and clock parts, fragments of old documents, peacock feathers, a milagro, silver charms, a ceramic face and a print of a painting by an artist whose name I’ve forgotten—perhaps Rudolfo Morales—was one of my favorites. It sold long ago and I don’t remember its title, so I have named it what I would name it if I had just made it. Perhaps it was the original name.. We’ll never know.

Art Challenge #6: Sacred Spaces, The Kitchen

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I’ve been falling behind on my posting for my friend Linda Levy’s Art Challenge to post ten examples of my art. The piece is one of a series of six depicting sacred spaces of women.
THE KITCHEN