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I stumbled across Michael Jekot’s web site this morning and saw some paintings that I like quite a bit. The Porsche 917/Auto Union portrait above is especially resonant – I saw 917s race at Watkins Glen way back when. Although I prefer the Martini paint job (even then – the lure of psychedelia >grin<) the Gulf colors are likely the canonical version. The Auto Union silver arrows are also faves of mine – a perfect blend of function and just enough form to cover.
For those of you who don’t read BoingBoing, but do like pictures of the high places of Asia – the photography of Mr. Gutierrez:
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I like maps – old, new, fanciful, technical, you name it. I was very happy to stumble across the strange maps blog this morning (thanks, Bruce); this one’s going to get added to my netvibes portal and to the blogroll.
I don’t know art, but I know what I like: Lascaux, Guernica, Todd Schorr, Scythian animal style, Persian miniaturists, and Andy Goldsworthy…
…not a complete list, of course. h/t warren ellis
Bradford Washburn died last Wednesday. He was 96. To describe him as a legend (at least in New England) doesn’t do him justice. He was a cartographer, a mountaineer, the Director of Boston’s Museum of Science and, of course, a photographer. Of the three who I think of as the holy trinity of New England tech photography (Doc Edgerton, Ed Land and Brad Washburn), he was the one who combined technological achievement with an amazing eye for beauty. A friend of mine ran into Mr. Washburn on the summit of Mount Washington a few years back – Washburn was in his late eighties and still storming around the high places. With respect and admiration – goodbye…
Okay, so I click over to the Kircher Society site to grab a link for my post below and what to my wondering eyes should appear? A post on one of my heroes, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. Click through and read the post, then click on the links from there to the beautiful watercolors of Walton Ford. Hmm – Brooklyn isn’t too far away, but there’s not much time left before the exhibition comes down…
Very nice armor for cats and mice:
The suit above would be perfect for the Caracal X Abyssinian I’m going to breed someday (unless I move to a state where I can own a pure Caracal or – even less likely – I get my hands on what I really would like to course: a cheetah).
My suggestion to Mr. Boer? Work up a few Thracian-style helmet and greaves ensembles suitable for frogs and let the Batrachomyomachia commence!
By this speech he persuaded them to arm themselves They covered their shins with leaves of mallows, and had breastplates made of fine green beet-leaves, and cabbage-leaves, skillfully fashioned, for shields. Each one was equipped with a long, pointed rush for a spear, and smooth snail-shells to cover their heads. Then they stood in close-locked ranks upon the high bank, waving their spears, and were filled, each of them, with courage.
Via Make.
What, no software glitches?!? No machines getting wedged?!? All you need is a pen or pencil? Go figure… via MeFi
Some interesting stuff from the late Syd Barrett’s estate is being auctioned off. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how this works, but it looks like you can place absentee bids via an eBay account. The auction itself is tomorrow at 7AM EST. I’m tempted by a couple of items… (via MeFi)
Updated below.
Another good intersection in my web surfing and book reading travels… I mentioned in an earlier post that I was reading a history of the silk road. In it was a picture of three sculptures Aurel Stein excavated near Turfan:
I also noticed in prepping this post that there are digital versions of Stein’s (and other’s) books here! More serendipity! But, to matters at hand – the monsters rang a bell, but I couldn’t figure out why. Cut to yesterday, when I was doing some Pazyryk surfing. I ran across a detail from a felt wall hanging that I’d seen before – in Sergei Rudenko’s Frozen Tombs of Siberia – now I can’t find the color version, but here’s a line drawing of a sphinx-thing battling a griffin-thing:
Maybe it’s just me, but the critter in the middle of Stein’s trio could be the Pazaryk beastie’s second cousin. In any event – good visuals from parts of the world I’d like to see.
Update – I found a color version of the Pazyryk wall hanging here:
along with a map (reproduced, I think, from Rudenko’s book). With the map as a reference, I did a little messing around with Google Earth and produced placemarks for Turfan (now Turpan) and my guess at where Rudenko excavated the kurgans. If you have Google Earth installed, you should be able to click the links, open with Google Earth and fly to the placemarks. The Turpan placemark already exists within Google Earth – it just took me some hunting to find it, so I thought I’d tee it up. Pan back and take a look at the Turpan Depression – impressive.
