Skip to main content

Eggs Benedict


A flood of rumors are spreading as to the real reason for Pope Benedict XVI’s abrupt decision to resign at the end of the month. Interestingly, the majority of the Italian media almost ignored the sex abuse scandals pointing to a growing Vatican crisis, made unbearable by rumors of allegedly illicit dealings of the Vatican IOR bank, bitter rivalries between groups of cardinals and an unprecedented campaign of leaked documents.

Where does this leave the Catholic Church I wonder? If resignation is an option for the pope, will followers pass on ceremonies and tasks previously seen as "must do's".

Today is also "Pancake Day". For many Catholics this is a precursor to "Ash Wednesday". For me, I just love the British tradition of making, flipping, racing and sometimes even eating pancakes. Due to my typically busy "personal chauffeur" role to my three kids, I was unable to make pancakes myself. I did manage to get the family ensconced into a booth at IHOP.

I found it interesting that we were the only diners on "Pancake Day"; is this the first sign of a crack in the foundation of the Vatican? As I am not of that faith, I decided to pass on the pondering and dig into my rather yummy pancakes.


A Question of Faith.
 
 
I suppose I could go on to discuss the composition, symbolism of the suggested upturned cross and nostalgia elements in the choices of colour and finishing techniques, but then my pancakes might get cold.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Encaustic Monoprint Technique

Today I visited a printmaking friend's studio. Amy is experimenting with encaustic monoprints. I have never heard of this before so I was excited to have a demo. Here is the basic process: 1. Heat up the homemade heat box. 2. Rub the beeswax pigment sticks on the metal surface of the heat plate to melt them. Create a design on the plate with one or more colors. Step 3. Lay a piece of rice or rag paper face down on the painted design and cover with newsprint. Burnish. Step 4. Carefully pull the paper away from the heat plate. Steps 5-6. Clean the heat plate with paper towels. Add more color to the heat plate and repeat the process to add patterns or more color to the print. The smell of the wax is yummy and the pigments are really thick and rich to work with. I had a little play to get a feel for what the print is like (image below). Now I want to build a heat box and play!!

Peacock Paintings/prints

I'm working on the peacock paintings at the moment and some relief prints. I am slowly filling in the shapes and colors of the paintings, starting from the top and working down with each color. I'm grouping them with my 8 color reduction cut relief print. Also a feather linocut and painting, both in their early stages. The linocuts below are variation experiments based on the imagery above. It still feels like I am a long way to completion, but hopefully they will pull together fast at the detail stage.

DeMeng Workshop

We made crazy vehicles in Michael DeMeng's workshop. Here are a selection of some of the works in progress: Here we had a critique with Michael discussing everyone's progress. I loved this steampunked up critter! This is the cool studio by the harbor that we worked in for four days, pretty cool view! Later in the day we had a project with Tracy and Teesha Moore with a bunch of artists from different workshops.