"In sum: It’s awesome that Palmer’s Kickstarter has done so well — but look at what it’s entailed. It’s entailed time, effort, planning and work both backward and forward in time. That currently $439,000 isn’t a windfall for her; it’s a marker of what all that commitment to the work has earned.
"If you’re one of the people looking at her Kickstarter money with stars in your eyes and awesome plans of your own in your head, ask yourself first: Have you put in the time? Earned the credibility? Scoped out the financial balance sheet? Made the commitment to fulfill every single thing you have promised? Palmer has. If you haven’t — on any of this — be aware that your results, shall we say, may vary."

(The earlier part, about the very long process of reputation- and network- building which got Palmer to this point, is quite astute, but too long to excerpt.)

Indeed.

Thinking about it, I have spent >= $100/yr on particular artists in three cases: getting all of Catherynne Valente's books after reading _In the Night Garden_; buying fancy career-retrospective editions of Jack Vance; and a fancy edition of _Sandman_. This is not a viable career path.

"Next month in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, artist Richard Pell opens the Center for PostNatural History — a museum of bioengineered organisms. He talks about the joys and pitfalls involved in collecting genetically modified maize, mosquitoes and zebrafish."

"A hand-written and illustrated translation by an American artist". To make this multiply bizarre, the visual style resembles nothing so much as a medieval Book of Hours, only with scenes of contemporary American life. It seems really strange, though the pictures attached to the article aren't much on which to evaluate it.

Friday Jan. 20th...

Bruce Sterling likes it (http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/10/grover-debatty-evans-garcia-and-their-strange-accelerated-booklike-entity/), and looks nice (especially if they really threw it together in a week).

Giving a talk here on Wednesday; should be entertaining.

WANT

"ormer chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, assesses the current state of the arts in America and finds cause for alarm. Even as he celebrates our ever-emerging culture and the way it enriches our lives here at home while spreading the dream of democracy around the world, he points to a looming crisis. The expanding footprint of copyright, an unconstrained arts industry marketplace, and a government unwilling to engage culture as a serious arena for public policy have come together to undermine art, artistry, and cultural heritage--the expressive life of America."

Machine-learning for artists class by Satinder Singh and Osman Khan at UMich.  Interesting concept.

Insidiously training us to act in a benevolent manner towards strangers.

So that's what that place is.

""U.N. Department of the Exterior Planetary Park" posters in the style of the iconic 1930s WPA posters for America's National Parks. "

This seems like a nice custom.

Metzler is also making a table for us (though not on the same schedule!)

Last year's was great fun.

We have some of their stuff and are getting more; it's very good.

A touching tribute to the power of art; also obscurely creepy.

"draws on neuroscience and psychology to understand the way we both perceive and conceive of art, including its resistance to verbal exposition. Through examples of work by Indian, Chinese, European, African, and Australian artists, Art Without Borders probes the distinction between accepting a tradition and defying it through innovation, which leads to a consideration of the notion of artistic genius. Continuing in this comparative vein, Scharfstein examines the mutual influence of European and non-European artists. Then, through a comprehensive evaluation of the world’s major art cultures, he shows how all of these individual traditions are gradually, but haltingly, conjoining into a single current of universal art"

The eminent Hellenist Frank Holt reviewing the book of the traveling exhibition from the Kabul museum. "We may earnestly hope that, indeed, Afghanistan now has a brighter future that will give it a firmer grip on the endangered relics of its past. But as upbeat as this book and exhibition are intended to be, we must remember that rejoicing for the survivors of any tragedy must be tempered by remembrances for the lost." --- by which he means the lost _artifacts_, not lives...

Still, I think, the best (English) book available on Durer, and so of interest for a huge number of reasons (not least being the first great artist to get what the printing press could do).

1936 illustrations of Lovecraft's _At the Mountains of Madness_ and "Shadows out of Time".

I want a house that looks like that someday.

19th century Japanese prints of monsters enacting _The 47 Loyal Ronin_. In a better branch of the wave-function than ours, Kurosawa and Miyazaki turned this into a movie.

Gladwell does his usual (very good) summarize-with-illustrative-anecdotes job on research on creativity over the life-cycle.

Sino-Islamic calligraphy that must be seen to be believed.

I'm not sure how to say this, but I, well, bought this work of art last night. I am thinking of putting it up in my office, on the wall opposite the chair for students.

"Celebrating Pittsburgh's robotics heritage"!

Extend-exposure photos of urban crowds, creating a monstrous impression of shadowy beings exuding the occasional multiple limbs...

Great moments in Afghan Buddhism, encore

"Larry Kaplan's work creates a vision of swimming ducks from an arm chair view. His art is popular in dentist's offices, restaurants and anywhere a ceiling pond can be enjoyed."

"Insect Lab is an artist studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and mechanical components."

"Après une brève introduction de la mécanique statistique et de la théorie des probabilités dans les systèmes complexes (Boltzmann, Wiener, Poitcaré, Kolmogorov), puis la discussion s’attachera aux recherches de Crutchfield et Shalizi sur les eps

Reliability unknown to me...

I saw this show at the Smithsonian in the 1990s. The pictures online don't come close to doing it justice.

"examines the cultural meaning of artistic

Jenny Davidson reviews two new art-and-the-brain books; her take is somewhat more favorable than the title of the piece suggests.

Book on humor in Roman art, & figuring out what the Romans found funny

When your serving dish needs that vivid green florescent glow...

"mad scientist sculptural glassware... gracious living for alchemists"

"Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions."

Wow --- this actually looks neat...

Programming for artists (!?!) - looks very cool, but also hard to justify in my book budget. ---Apparently superseded by the Processing programming language/environment.