Month: October 2007

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My Kid Could Paint That

Olmstead Whoa: 4-year-old painting prodigy Marla Olmstead creates abstracts on canvas that are so expressive, and so visually penetrating, and so comfortable with themselves… her mind is exactly where so many artists want to be – connected directly to her inner life, but completely unburdened by expectations of the art world that’s falling all over itself to buy her work.

Watching her paint, she’s got this rhythm, this ease. All four-year-olds are un-self-conscious in the adult sense, of course, and all are in touch with their “inner child” (whatever that means), but Marla is working on canvases larger than herself, and creating works that stand on their own against paintings done by people who have been painting for decades, trying to achieve something like what she does in pure play. Her paintings have been compared to “legends like Pollock, Miró, Klee and Kandinsky and had sold for first hundreds and then thousands of dollars.”

OK, except Marla is now seven (still painting) and a new documentary film about her gift has just been released. I haven’t seen it. But it gets tricky: Salon’s My Kid Could Paint That looks at the controversies unearthed in the making of the film, which have some people wondering just how “pure” Marla’s paintings really are, how much coaching she might have received, etc.

I have two thoughts:

1) No amount of “coaching” or “direction” given to a 4-year-old is going to affect the kind of artwork they make in any substantial way. In small ways, sure, but the fact that her father apparently sometimes gave her certain kinds of encouragement while painting does nothing to change the fact that her gift is genuine.

2) Whatever the truth behind Marla turns out to be, her amazing creative gifts are being permanently affected – possibly marred – by mass media attention and the self-consciousness that will bring.

I do want to see the film though – sounds like it raises some interesting discussion:

As New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman discusses in the film, Marla’s story appealed to two contradictory popular prejudices. First of these is the idea of prodigal artistic talent as a lottery prize handed out to random toddlers by God. Second is the notion that modern art (at least in its abstract or nonfigurative guises) is a pseudo-intellectual con game that has no standards and conveys no meaning, so the apparent success of a 4-year-old debunks the whole enterprise.

Interesting that every single painting in her online gallery is marked “sold.” But I try to put myself in her parents’ shoes. If I had a kid who could paint like that, what would I do? Shield him/her from the world? Keep the talent a secret? Is what I think I would do what I would really do?

Music: Shaggs :: Paper Roses
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Wishes

Walking out of the Lawrence Hall of Science with Miles today, after enjoying the brand new Wild Music exhibit, all about sound and the environment (M liked the hydrophone tank the best), we stopped at the fountain to throw in our pennies and make some wishes. Miles volunteered that he wished that he would “grow up to be a great thinker.” This took me totally by surprise, since I had no idea this noble goal was even on his list (his previous career ambitions have included garbage man, artist, and daddy).

Five minutes later, driving home in the car, he suddenly says, in a kind of sad little voice: “But wishes never come true, right Daddy?” Great, my kid’s a closet nihilist. Of course we had a conversation about working hard for what you want, etc. But in the course of our little talk, it became apparent he was talking about something else entirely. By “wishes never come true,” he was referring to the physical act of throwing coins in a fountain, not wishes in the abstract. He just meant that our coins had nothing to do with whether our wishes would come true. Turns out he was just mythbusting in a five-year-old way, not being a sadsack after all.

Faith restored, and a good chuckle.

Music: Ivan Boogaloo Joe Jones :: Sweetback
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WP -> Facebook

After several years of trying in vain to ignore the Facebook phenomenon, I’ve finally given in and created a profile. Way to go early adopter! After having done the LiveJournal thing for years, and experimenting with Friendster and Orkut and every other new social network that emerged, finally came to the same conclusion pretty much everyone else did – after the thrill of each new SN wore off, it started to feel like there was no there there, and the whole pursuit started to seem pointless. Not to mention the time suck. But I’ve got to admit that Facebook is a different kind of beast. The UI is incredibly clean, the API is wide open and there’s a thriving ecosystem of interesting plugins and custom widgets going on. And it seems to have a staying power the others didn’t have. No guarantees I’ll remain active there, but enjoying playing with it for now, and have already hooked up with an old high school friend I hadn’t talked to for years (classic story, eh?)

Just installed the WordBook plugin for WordPress, which installs a WordPress importer into your Facebook profile. Didn’t seem to pick up any existing posts; let’s see whether it picks up new ones. [Later: Ah yep, creating a new post caused the FB profile to pick up the last 10 or so from Birdhouse – nifty.]

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Brain Drain

Interesting piece at Newsosaur describing the glacial pace of change toward digital media in the newsrooms of mainstream media organizations. The “institution” knows in which general direction it needs to travel, but is either intimidated by new media or doesn’t know how to accomplish it. So MSM hires younger, more web-savvy journalists who could help pull publications in new directions, but who promptly become frustrated by the organization’s resistance to change.

… the young net natives, for the most part, rank too low in the organizations that employ them to be invited to the pivotal discussions determining the stratgeic initiatives that could help their employers sustain their franchises.

Some of the comments on the story, many posted by younger employees within MSM who choose to remain anonymous, are crushing.

There’s a story circulating about how the AME of online didn’t know you could type a URL directly into a web browser… and there was that discussion on whether to include a blurb above a story describing, “what the blue underlined words were for”.

Enough to make a grown geek cry.

Thanks grabs

Music: Tortoise :: Magnet Pulls Through
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Mysteries of the Deep

Deep4 Think you’ve seen all the fascinating pictures of trippy creatures living at the bottom of the ocean there are to see? The current issue of Smithsonian Magazine has an amazing photo spread full of truly mind-blowing photos of the gelatinous dwellers of the deep. The article is actually a review of a coffee-table book titled The Deep, comprised of more than 160 photos taken by bathyscaphe researchers from around the world. Most are proof of just how “head-shakingly bizarre life can be. The scientists who discovered the creatures were apparently as amused as we are, giving them names such as gulper eel, droopy sea pen, squarenose helmetfish, ping-pong tree sponge, Gorgon’s head and googly-eyed glass squid.”

I love this shot of Grimpoteuthis, a type of Dumbo octopus that grows up to 5 feet in length and looks for all the world like a Robert Crumb drawing of an alien jelly wearing a pair of hiking boots suitable for trekking the Marianis Trench.

The deep sea is the largest ecosystem on earth, plunging to more than 37,000 feet below sea level at the Marianas Trench in the Pacific. It accounts for 85 percent of the space where life can exist and holds an estimated ten million or more species. “But we’re still trying to figure out what’s out there,” says marine scientist Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Unfortunately, the web version of the piece has different – and less amazing – examples than the print version, and it’s tricky to find the slideshow (click the small round dots after clicking the main image). Pick up the dead tree version next time you’re waiting at the dentist’s office.

Music: Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake :: From the River to the Ocean
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101films.net

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes 101films.net, an informational site for an upcoming documentary film being made by a pair of J-School students.

This is the story of coming home from the war told through they eyes of veterans and their families – conveying the memories, flashbacks, and paranoia that continue to plague them long after the battle is over.

Music: The Hold Steady :: Citrus
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How to Handle Women

Thumb We Can Do It Coverage of Rosie the Riveter in Ken Burns’ documentary The War was excellent, but made no mention of the ways in which male employers had to adjust (or thought they did, anyway) to a sudden culture shift in the workplace. The same sexist culture that had previously kept women out of anything but secretarial jobs resulted in some jaw-droppingly sexist attitudes toward women newly involved in manufacturing. cf: 11 Tips on How to Handle Women Employees, originally printed in the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine.

3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

Whoa. Or this:

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

Music: Mexican Institute of Sound :: La Kebradita
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Wooden House

Wooden-House-M Over the past couple of months, Miles and I have been toiling in the garage in the evenings after dinner, working on simple construction projects. He’s getting his first opportunities to work the vice, pull the trigger on the electric drill (which I hold), run an orbital sander, help with the hole saw, screw screws, hammer nails, etc. His favorite tool, unsurprisingly, is the vice. At one point I was tweaking on the teensy hinge screws and looked over to find him cranking down on a tube of Gorilla Glue – had the thing torqued to the breaking point. Another half turn and it would have blown sky high. Which at first sounds like a total mess, but on further thought would have been an absolute disaster – glue in his hair, possibly his eyes, him rubbing his hands all over the place to get it off, making everything worse. He put so much work into this little house. Honestly, it doesn’t get used that much, but the process was wonderful for both of us.

Music: Fela Kuti :: 2000 Blacks Got To Be Free