Leadership Strings Attached

Posted on December 10, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Back in May of 2011 a colleague hosted a party in Clarinda, Iowa, which as I look back, was without a doubt the highlight of my Leadership Iowa experience, Class of 2010-11, Best Class Ever. I won’t name any names; folks’ll know who’s who, if there’s any knowing needed. Suffice it to say that the host invited a couple of exceptional guitar players, and another classmate and I brought along our guitars. It was a real treat to play along with them; the rest is history as long as we’re talking about unrecorded history, those tunes went up into the nighttime sky like incense smoke never to be collected or confined.

On a related and completely ironic note, what prompted me to drag out this fond memory, and I’ll include the photo below that helped refresh my memory, was an accidental discovery that had happened earlier this afternoon on my Roland GR-20/G&L S-500 guitar set up. I was using a midi connection, something I usually don’t do, and stumbled into a setting that enabled a visual display of the musical notation set in motion by the synthesized, guitar-driven signals. I videotaped a snippet of that before it went up like incense smoke.

The photo:

…but the hallway is hell

Posted on December 10, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

You’ve heard the expression, no door is ever closed without another one opening or the theocentric version, God doesn’t close a door without opening another one. Several months ago I met a religious professional who told me a story about a critical time in his life, a transition, and how a colleague of his made use of the theocentric version of this expression adding a very interesting and compelling twist. The colleague told him, you know that God doesn’t close one door without opening another one…but the hallway is hell. I had never heard that extension; and I used to be a religious professional! I found this newer and more complete version much more consoling and compelling. This is how I envisioned it:

Savasana

Posted on December 9, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

I go places during Savasana. Just today I took a spin around the block.

I joke about yoga, but in the year and a half since I started practicing it, it has come to mean more to me than words can express. Learning how to listen to the stories that my own respiration is telling me is, I’m sorry, I can’t resist, breathtaking. There’s so much more to yoga that I don’t like talking about it at all.

When Ann turned me on to Fifty Three Paper, my first drawings were yoga related. Here are a couple of examples:

I modified the following photo of one of my blocks and made a blank notecard of it. It was inspired by my first instructor, Paula at Shakti Yoga in Des Moines, where I’m a beginner-practitioner. Namaste to my other instructors Marialyce and Joseph.

The Virtual Two-Way Looking Glass: Marketing 101

Posted on December 6, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Got a long way to go in so many ways, especially technique wise! Fortunately, it’s all practice…and, as others have pointed out, there are marketing opportunities all along the way, a new concept for me. I’d been so focused on getting, renting, somehow finding a work space, a studio if you will, in which to sculpt, carve, or otherwise get muddy, that I was never getting around to doing or making anything! That’s a conundrum and a half! A wise acquaintance came along and suggested that I simply start drawing, illustrating in the meantime. Then, Ann turned me on to Fifty Three Paper, and I haven’t been the same since, literally. As I slowly move forward toward a studio and back to plastic or three-dimensional art, I’m learning new and related things thanks to this iPad drawing app.

There has been a fascinating, transformative, and genuinely ontological learning progression along this trajectory through the zone of proximal development (any Vygotsky fans out there?). As my focus morphed from finding the external space to locating and activating the internal space in which to express myself, I’ve noticed the beginnings of a parallel but counter shift from an internal to an external orientation that is opening me up to questions along the lines of ‘what might be of interest or usefulness to others?’ I’m calling this Marketing 101 for the time being. I’m starting to raise my periscope enough to consider who might be interested in what.

It’s a parallel and reflexive path, and it challenges my ethnographic vocation in more ways than one. You have a role to play. Check back for further details.

Hey Stella

Posted on December 4, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

In a recent conversation I was reminded of the Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest, a special event of the annual Tennessee Williams Festival held in Jackson Square in New Orleans, LA.

This drawing is roughly based on my memory, my imagination, and the YouTube video that follows.

I posted this short video while living in New Orleans in 2009. I invite you to take a look; you just may get a kick out of it.

Termites

Posted on December 2, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Why, after all these years, am I thinking of termites? Doesn’t matter, at least now I can laugh about’em! The idea came to me this morning at Office Depot in Chicago, and when we got to our room in Milwaukee, I cranked it out in fewer than 5 minutes, maybe 10 with the coloring and advertising. I’m trying to run with ideas like this, even when I leave my back pack with my iPad in it at our cousin’s house!?! Thanks Ann, for letting me use your iPad.

Table for One

Posted on December 2, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Last night we had 2 large and 1 small pizzas from Pequod’s Pizza. The large pizzas came with “pizza spacers” (see below). Maybe it was because there were little kids; who knows, but the spacers reminded me of little tables.

One thing’s clear, it’s easier for me to make pizza from scratch than it is for me to draw pizza. I had no photos to refer to this time; although, I found this photo after doing the drawing:

Pizza is hard to draw, I say.

Take back our commode

Posted on November 30, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

It may be time to take back our commode.

[The toilet is my signature symbol, according to my wife. I’d like to thank my little cousins for inspiring me to add the little stick figures.]

Black Friday and Green Tea at the Coffee Shop

Posted on November 30, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

While Ann was getting a massage, I parked myself at a nearby coffee shop and started outlining some of the features in my temporary view shed. After a couple of days of heavy holiday meals, it felt good to sip on something simple and only slightly sweetened. Ah, green tea at the coffee shop on Black Friday with almost an hour to spare.

Time flew. Suddenly, Ann appeared in front of me. We were both energized.

What follows is the same drawing de-colorized by My Sketch, an iPad photo editing app.

So that’s an outline of the outline?

Tilting at Insectoturbines

Posted on November 28, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

We’re staying with relatives in Chicago, and last night, when I woke up in a strange bed in the wee hours but without a stylus handy, I whipped out my finger and rendered this one. I’m a huge Don Quijote fan. I’ve read it in Spanish with professorial guidance at three different universities. One professor admitted that he viewed his own life in two simple stages, before reading Don Quijote and after. I agree; and I’d add that it’s true each time I reread it.

At any rate, one of Cervantes many universal themes hinges on the relationship between the ways in which things seem to be and the way they actually are…and everything in between.