Brilliant Sidewalk Chalk Art

Julian Beever, Pavement Picasso

Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his anamorphic art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Beever gives an amazing illusion to his drawings, so that the objects appear to be three dimensional rather than flat as they actually are.

Art for the people. My art is for anybody, it's for people who wouldn't go into an art gallery. It's art for the people. Art shouldn't be locked away in galleries and libraries and books. Art should be for everybody and not just art buffs, historians and so-called experts.

Julian works in chalk, so his art, which takes up to 3 days to complete, is there only as long as the elements allow. If it rains it means I've done a lot of hard work for nothing, but I usually manage to avoid that.

The important thing for me is to get a photo of it at the end. For me, I'm working towards building a photograph as my end result, and if I get that I'm happy.

The secret is to set up a camera on a tripod and keep it in one spot and check every mark you make. It's really just playing with perspective to make it appear different to what it really is.

The 3D aspect to his work came much later while he was working in Brussels. I decided to get into 3D after seeing the effect of tiles being removed from the street, and later trying to recreate the sense of depth in a drawing.


Make Poverty History The front view is above and the side view is below. This is 40 feet long!



Politicians get sucked into a pit. Who will save them? Once I realized you could make things go down, I realized you could make them appear to go up and I began experimenting.



Today I'm drawing Felix the Cat gate-crashing the Chinese New Year of the dog. He's popping out of the ground in a Chinese dragon costume.
Chinese Dragon with Felix the Cat



There is no hole in this pavement.



Land Use



Canal Street - New Orleans



Rafting - Watch Out!



Hosing down the street - Everything is fake, even the hose and water!



People avoid the hole.



Did you spot tiny Julian Beever on the Top of the Bottle?





Hard to believe that the little boy is standing flat on the pavement!









Julian Deever - Self Portrait

Interesting Photo Angles

If you don't see something interesting at first, look again!
These are from interesno.dn.ua.

Not Available in All States!

This one has bugged me for ages. I'll be listening to a radio commerical about whatever and then they get to the fine print section. Of course, this being radio, it's not fine print you're reading. Instead, you're listening to a fast low talker! And one of the things he or she will say is, "Not available in all states."

I feel like screaming! What do you mean not available in all states? Doesn't that mean it's not available anywhere? Shouldn't the phrase be not available in some states? Am I wrong??

U.S. scientists learn how to levitate tiny objects

Read it for yourself, it's interesting:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090107/sc_nm/us_nanotech_levitation_1

What is UP with that?

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this. It is yet another example of why people learning English have trouble with the language. Learning the nuances of English makes it a difficult language. (But then, that's probably true of many languages.)

There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is 'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it does not rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now ........my time is UP , so time to shut UP!

Oh...one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

U P

Don't mess UP. Add your own UP things below in the comments!

Now I'll shut UP.

Obama Metro Ticket

The Washington Metro is our subway and bus system. Here is the latest special edition metro ticket. The inauguration of Barack is going to be HUGE. I really want to go, but:

• They've announced that all Virginia bridges going into DC will be closed.
• They won't let people near the inauguration site until that morning, I think at 9 am.
• The metro system is going to be completely overwhelmed.
• Every road is going to be like rush hour times a hundred.
• The best I'll be able to do is to see Obama in the far distance, a lot farther than I saw him at the rallies we attended.
• It'll likely be very cold that day.

So maybe I'll just sit in my warm comfy living room and watch it on TV! We'll see, though. I may still change my mind.

Christmas Card from Far Away

Our friend Svetlana sent us this beautiful envelope from Russia. It contained the card you see below. Pretty, aren't they? I love getting Christmas cards in other languages, especially from people as nice as Svetlana!

My friend Ron from Australia also sent me a nice card, and that beats Russia for distance, but, you know, they speak English there...sort of. It's English, but with a funny accent. Or is it we that have the accent? I guess it depends on your point of view!

Christmas in the Caribbean!

Our dear friends Tara and Katie sent us this postcard from St. John in the Caribbean this Christmas. While it may not appear very Christmas-like to those of us in the far Northern Hemisphere, considering the utter lack of cold and snow, if you squeeze your eyes tight and look at the white sand, it can look like snow. If you do the same and look at the green parts, you can imagine them as Christmas trees. On the other hand, who cares? If you're in the Caribbean far away from the cold and ice, just enjoy yourself and forget your troubles! The only downside - coming back to the cold and ice afterwards!

Thanks, Tara and Katie. I look at this postcard whenever I want to dream of going back to the balmy Caribbean.

From the Comics Section

Loved this:

Person 1: Your newspaper gives too many viewpoints. I-Bot lets me custom design my info to fit my narrow world view. I can go through life without ever encountering ideas that challenge my perceptions.

Person 2: Won't that just dumb people down?

Person 1: Not according to anything I've read!

Isn't this the problem with most people? We want to see everything through our own narrow world view and not want to consider the other person's view!

Today was the Day of Epiphany...The Legend of La Befana

Thanks to my sister for this entry...

An Italian legend...

Epiphany is the traditional commemoration of the arrival of the Magi with gifts for the twelve-day-old Jesus in Bethlehem.

On the eve of Jan. 6, La Befana, an ugly old witch, flies down chimneys or through keyholes throughout Italy to have her say over who's been naughty or nice.

La Befana comes to fill stockings hung with care -- candy and small toys for those who deserve it and a lump of coal for those who don't.

She appeared to be nothing more than a lonely old woman who lived alone. But the lines on her old face told the story of losing her husband and infant child to a sweeping disease, leaving her a widow and a childless mother.

She kept small treasures locked up in a chest -- a small doll her that once belonged to her beloved child and a scrap of wool from her wedding dress, worn long ago when she married the man she loved. At night she would sit alone on her porch and look at the stars. As she thought these things her mind centered on a rumor of a special star, a star she often looked for. The star signaled the birth of a new king -- a king of kings, a king of hearts.

The most common telling of the Befana story has the three wise men stopping to ask an old woman for directions on their way to Bethlehem. They invite her to join the party, but she refuses because she has too much sweeping to do. After realizing her mistake, she tries and fails to catch up with the wise men with a bag of treats. On the eve of their arrival she throws herself beneath a tree in despair. One of the branches turns into a magic broom, which she is to ride for eternity in her never-ending search for the baby Jesus.

To this day she wanders, carrying her gifts and treasures, peering into the faces of babies as she goes. Still she seeks the Christ child. Though she has not found him, she gives what she can to the sweet children she visits each Christmas night. Her heart still longs for her baby and the gifts she brings are her way of feeling that child's love.

Nobody knows the real name of the Befana -- according to many, Befana is merely a corruption of the name of the Epiphany feast on which she is most active.

New Year's Eve at Rita's and Frank's

What a wonderful time we had at the Sartoris home last night to ring in the New Year! We were a big group of Italians and Americans, eating yummy traditional meals like cotechino with lentils and drinking good wine and champagne.

Thank you, Rita and Frank, for inviting us all to your home!

You can see more photos by clicking here.

A Wonderful Play

Yesterday our friends Meryl and Norman (seen here with me and my wife) treated us to the new production of West Side Story at the National Theater in Washington.

The play was fantastic, a musical of course, very well acted and directed, with a live orchestra.

The director is by Arthur Laurents, who also wrote West Side Story in 1957. H wasn't crazy about the movie version and wanted to bring the new musical back to his original vision. There were a few differences. Most interestingly, much of the dialog and the song lyrics between the Puerto Rican characters were in Spanish, which made it more authentic. For example, I Feel Pretty was sung Me Siento Hermosa. Maria was wonderfully played and sung by an Argentian actress named Josefina Scaglione. Mario was also well-played by Matt Cavenaugh though I found it hard to hear him sometimes when he sang.

The play, when it was first staged in 1957, started at National Theater before it went to Broadway. Once again during this revival, it has started at National Theater and soon will go to Broadway.

Winter in Casina

My sister outside her house in Casina, Italy, making a very bottom-heavy snowman!

Alcohol does not make you FAT

A message for the New Year.

Alcohol does not make you FAT - it makes you LEAN .... against tables, chairs, floors, walls and ugly people.