Here are two of the collages that I made in Paris last fall. Chuck framed them for me and they'll be in a show in Korea this summer. They're 12cm x 12cm (4.75"x4.75") framed 23cm x 23cm (9"x9") so are small pieces.

Kurt Vonnegut

One of my favorite authors died. I will now begin to reread all of his books, again. So long Kurt. Thanks. So it goes....

I found this piece about Vonnegut and like it so I'm sharing it.

I may add more links as I find ones I like.

Town Hall meeting

Tonight, my friend Phyllis and I attended a virtual Town Hall meeting sponsored by MoveOn.org
Candidates across party lines were invited to answers questions by citizens, though only Democrats responded to the invitation. We got to hear all but Senator Clinton due to tech problems. We were glad we attended, although I'm not sure I learned anything new. It was good to hear how the candidates fielded questions that weren't scripted. Check out the MoveOn website later to see/hear the candidates respond.
Thanks to Rain for hosting and to Andrea, from Informva.org for keeping us informed.

Artist Trading Cards

A colleague of mine asked me to come talk with his class about Artist Trading Cards. I did that this morning and it was such fun to share my collection of cards with the students. One of them had been a student of mine last year. She's very much involved in making and trading cards herself, so the two of us were double the ATC love. Here is an image of some cards that were in a show I curated and a group of some of my cards. I started with ATCs about 3 or or 4 years ago after learning about them on the old PostcardX. Since that time, I've been lucky enough to get a card in a book and more amazingly, to meet the initiator of ATCs, M. Vanci Stirnemann. You can see my picture with him in my Nov. archive. Type Artist Trading Card into your browser and see what you get. Check out the sites, make some cards, trade them, get others to do it, trade some more. Make tiny art!

random art & more

I found another little painting in my neighborhood. It's near a day care place. A woman passing by as I was taking the photo said that she thought it was sweet and we should have more of these around. Great! I have no idea how long this one will last, of course. This curious little shelf, attached to a light pole, had nothing on it for a couple weeks. I put a stone on it. I've noticed that the stone moved around over a period of a few days and now the stone is gone. The shelf remains. Who put it there? Why did they put it there? Hmmm. I saw these tulips on my walk in to teach at VCU on Monday and snapped the picture on my way home. All of the tree wells around this corner house are filled with tulips. They are so beautiful and as I pass each time, I silently thank the home owners for giving me such beauty.

More French Film Festival

Drs Peter and Francoise Kirkpatrick are the founders of the festival. These film clips show the range of films, L'avion, about a child and a magical airplane, Bamako, about Mali, the World Bank & the IMF, and a documentary about Jacques Chirac using clips from public resource materials. The directors, Karl Zero and Michel Royer, are working on a film about George W. with a 2008 release. The Chirac film and the last film, "Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas," were our favorite films of the festival. We love seeing and sometimes speaking with the actors and directors that come for the festival. This year, it seemed that there were more of them than ever. It was long, difficult to sit on the "historic" seats for so many hours, but we can't wait for the next one.

French Film Festival

This past weekend we spent most of our time at the VCU French Film Festival
The festival is held at a historic, movie palace in walking distance from our house. While walking there, we say, "we are SO lucky to live in our neighborhood." Tri-colour banners are hung on the street, the local businesses promote French food, music, culture.
We saw 13 short films, a doc. and 8 feature films. Whew!