General Interest

Carl Safina’s Beyond Words Is on My Reading List

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I've recently placed an interlibrary loan request for Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Dr. Carl Safina based on both the Jezebel interview and the New York Times review; I've always felt that while there may well be alien life in outer space, there's certainly alien life here.

Golden OPEN Acrylics

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I am not a fan of using normal acrylic paint in a fine art context.  Obviously other artists use them well, but I find they dry way too fast and permanently for my liking and additives like retardant and unlocking sprays don't do enough to mitigate that.  I've always loved watercolor paints, and also am quite fond of oils, so I used to think I just wouldn't work with acrylics and that'd be that.  

Then I started doing short-term artist residencies.

While some of my residencies had subject matter perfectly suited to watercolor, others had subjects that seemed to call for a more heavy-bodied paint... but the timeline of the residencies meant that oil paints wouldn't dry prior to transportation.  I happened to have been gifted a full boxed Modern Colors set of Golden OPEN Acrylics at the 2010 College Art Association (CAA) Conference from a very nice representative, and so while on residency in 2014 when faced with one of these subjects that wanted a more substantial paint, I tried the OPEN Acrylics out.  It was a revelation.  These acrylics feel like what I always wanted the medium to be: they dry much more slowly than normal acrylics but much faster than oils, and yet still have the ease of normal acrylics, too - they can be thinned and cleaned up with water.

My previous dislike of acrylics was so strong that it took a while for this new world order to sink in, but there's really no denying it now - OPEN Acrylics are one of my favorite mediums.   

This is not a sponsored post.

Octopodes

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I learned about the existence of the word "octopodes" yesterday and had to go on a research spree.  Here is what I've gathered: octopuses, octopi, and octopodes are all acceptable pluralizations of octopus.

  • Octopuses is the English pluralization.
  • Octopi stems from a popular misconception that octopus was originally a Latin word - it's actually Greek - and used to be considered grammatically incorrect but has since been used enough to become a viable option.
  • Octopodes comes from the original ancient Greek pluralization.

I have also just learned that despite the accuracy of the above statements, my spell check firmly denies the existence of both octopi and octopodes (and, in fact, pluralizations).  Nevertheless, I'm going to be testing out octopodes as my preferred pluralization for a while.  It has a nice sound. 

Halloween Makeup: Double Features

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A video demonstrating how to do a "double vision" makeup went viral a few weeks ago, and I agreed that it'd be a good look for Halloween!  Here's my version:

This took about an hour and a half to do, but I could've used another fifteen minutes to touch it up - I had to go to work* though, so this was the finished product!  The only items I had to buy for this project were the false lashes and lash glue; for the rest of the makeup I just made do with what I already had even if it wasn't absolutely ideal.

*I'm publishing this post on Halloween proper, but I actually dressed up yesterday (Friday, October 30th) to celebrate Halloween with my fellow professors and students at USM.

Employment Options in the Arts

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I have a number of students ask me what careers they can pursue in the arts.  This list is by no means exhaustive and includes some careers best served by dual majors, but here are some of the possible employers/roles in no particular order:

  • technical/medical illustration with the military, medical publishing, engineering firms
  • commercial illustration
  • graphic design/web design/user interface design
  • game development
  • animation
  • 3D animation
  • running CAD systems
  • film
  • concept artist
  • product design
  • advertising/marketing
  • printmaking studios
  • photography studios
  • ceramics studios
  • jewelry studios
  • metalsmithing
  • furniture restoration/design
  • textile studios
  • personal studio practice
  • portrait artist
  • caricature artist
  • art festival circuit
  • Etsy/Amazon Handmade/online vendor
  • tattoo parlors
  • sign companies
  • galleries/museums
  • art theory/writing
  • scene design
  • interior design
  • faux-finishing/mural work in collaboration with interior designers
  • staging store window displays
  • cake decorator
  • special effects/makeup artist
  • art teaching positions at K-12 private schools (public typically requires additional certification beyond a BA in art)
  • community arts center/camp/craft instructors
  • teaching adults at those "Painting and Pinot" type night/weekend classes
  • private art lessons

With graduate school, additional options open up like art therapy, higher education, and more.

Discouraging News on the Conservation Front

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The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Zoological Society of London (ZSL) just released a new report detailing a 49% decline "in the size of marine populations between 1970 and 2012."

This follows their 2014 report which states in part that over the past 40 years:

Populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52%.  Freshwater species populations have suffered a 76% decline, an average loss almost double that of land and marine species."

Autumnal Porch Guest Lorraine the Spotted Orbweaver

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Meet Lorraine! 

Lorraine is an adult female Neoscona crucifera spider who has made a number of webs on my front porch this fall.  I had noticed her presence a few times in the evenings as she hunted around the outside of my living room window, but we really made each other's acquaintance when she tested out a new web location a few days ago strung up between a potted plant and my front storm door; after I damaged it going out of my door in the morning and then again a second time coming back in later that evening, she took stock of her options and has since restrung her web off my porch railing and my hanging sweet potato vine.  I'm interested to see if I'll be able to spot Lorraine's egg sac if/when she lays it since I'm looking forward to trying to witness her offspring hatch next spring.

Eastern Comma Butterfly

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I've been walking around more than usual lately due to the beautiful fall weather, and I happened across this gorgeous Polygonia comma basking on some dead grass on the edge of my neighbor's lawn.  Leavenworth is in the western part of their habitat, which covers most of central to eastern United States.  Its coloration seems very seasonally appropriate.

Polygonia comma Eastern Comma Butterfly

Fungi Interconnectedness

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This is a fascinating article about the "internet of fungi."  I first learned about this concept through the BBC's documentary How Plants Communicate and Think.  It's a bit startling to consider that the "fiction" part of the science fiction blockbuster Avatar didn't extend to the networked plants.  

Armadillos Birth Genetically Identical Quadruplets

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From a Wikipedia research spiral:

Armadillos possess the unique reproductive trait of monozygotic polyembryony, meaning their offspring are genetically identical due to the division of a single fertilized egg into four matching embryos. This development of identical quadruplets has been utilized as a tool for genetic research. It is possible that the monozygotic polyembryony was an adaptation to accommodate for the female’s inability to carry more than one egg during this pre-implantation stage. Delaying the implantation further has no effect on the number of offspring produced.

Armadillos are also carriers of leprosy, as I learned in my Infectious Diseases course in undergrad.  And they have the now unfortunate fear response of jumping, which means they often kill themselves on car bumpers when the vehicle would have otherwise safely passed over the animal.  They are a fascinating creature.

Studies Confirm Nature Is Soothing

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Research coming out of Stanford University's Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources is unsurprisingly showing that:

A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health, according to an interesting new study of the physical effects on the brain of visiting nature.

Oranges Are Hybridized Fruits

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Many people think of oranges as a primary, pure, primitive fruit.  In fact, they're a hybrid of pomelos and mandarins!  From "The draft genome of sweet orange (Citrus sinensis)":

"The remarkably high degree of heterozygosity in the genome of cultivar Valencia sweet orange (C. sinensis cv. Valencia), as evidenced in our genomic and cytological analyses, hinted that sweet orange is an interspecific hybrid between pummelo and mandarin. On the basis of the collective evidence, we reconstructed the scenario regarding the ancient primary events of the origin of sweet orange: female pummelo crossed with male mandarin to create the initial interspecific hybrid that was further crossed again with male mandarin to produce sweet orange. This event might have happened at least 2,300 years ago, or much earlier, as sweet orange was recorded in Chinese literature as long ago as 314 BC (3, 38). Although additional genetic changes might have occurred afterward, it is still remarkable that this ancient hybrid genotype seems to be preserved in today's sweet orange, probably because of its strict nature of asexual reproduction (apomixis through nucellar embryo) and manmade selection and propagation by grafting. This scenario explains why most of today's sweet orange cultivars are genetically one biotype and highly heterozygous, with diversification occurring mostly through somatic mutations (7, 39, 40)."

Swiss Cheese Holes Caused By Hay Dust

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Have you noticed fewer holes in your Swiss cheese over the years?  Apparently this cheese (also known as Emmental cheese overseas - something I accidentally discovered for myself on residency in Iceland) had a lot of holes because small particles of hay dust used to regularly drift their way into the milk in the normal course of farming.  Our increasingly industrialized processes sterilized the cheesemaking environment so much that the holes have been mysteriously disappearing.  Now that the cause has been discovered, though, cheesemakers can judiciously add hay dust back into the milk.

Aphids Are Born Pregnant (Unless They're Not Born At All...)

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Did you know that most aphids are born pregnant?  I was thinking about this odd fact since my sempervivum collection (colloquially known as Hen and Chicks) had an aphid infestation due in part to the unusually wet late spring here in Kansas.  Luckily, neem oil has so far discouraged the little ladies from successfully hatching their next two generations.  Below is a close-up of one the several sempervivum species I'm keeping in a rail planter on my porch.