palmas

this young girl is selling hand crafted palm leaves for easter.

las fallas

this past week some friends & i checked out las fallas in valencia. las fallas is valenciano for "the fires". beautiful wood crafted sculptures are set ablaze.



the entire city celebrates for 5 days. there are parades, beauty contests, paella contests and bull fights.



the center of the city is closed off to traffic. people wonder around celebrating with firecrackers and just about anything that'll make a loud boom.




these beautiful sculptures are burned on the last day of the fiesta, called la crema. they're filled with fireworks and at the stroke of midnight lit.




the fiesta celebrates the patron saint of carpenters, st. joseph.




ladies in traditional spanish clothing.




partying all day, all night.

"swarm intelligence"

thank you to everyone who participated in my title query for this piece! i love the ideas that i recieved and am looking forward to working on pieces inspired by your ideas- keep your eyes posted for the pieces.

the title for "swarm intelligence" came from baltimore based architect, david pindell. david sent me the wikipedia definition of the term.

(from wikipedia) swarm intelligence is:
artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems.

SI systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of complex global behavior. Natural examples of SI include ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, and fish schooling.

The application of swarm principles to robots is called swarm robotics, while 'swarm intelligence' refers to the more general set of algorithms.

title query

this new piece is in need of a title. i'm interested in hearing from all of you out there on your take of this piece. leave me a comment or email me. i'll post the title as soon as i hear one that sounds clever.

-acrylic on canvas
-27cm x 19cm

dengue fever

check out this video by dengue fever. you can find out more about them on myspace.

billie cook

billie cook is a local javea artist that i had the pleasure of meeting recently. the warm colors in her paintings reflect a sense of understanding & love for spain. billie has worked in many mediums and her website can be found here.

"el canario azul"

"el canario azul" was a piece i started in november. i wasn't happy with the direction that it was heading in so i painted over some of the content and turned it upside down. click on the word original to see the post. the title came to me yesterday as alex and i were out on a walk for some fresh air. we saw a carrier pigeon and it reminded him of how his grandfather raised canaries in baltimore. "el canario azul" translates to "the blue canary".

in season

while out house hunting i took this shot of some oranges growing. they're in full bloom and beautifully speckled here and there. on the side of the roads, in parking lots, along the highway, in yards, just about anywhere you can grow them.

house hunt blues

my main focus lately has been finding a new place since our lease is about to expire. alex and i would love to stay in our current home but the kennel of barking dogs behind our home drives us crazy and the dollar is weak so we have to mind our spending. i haven't been able to find the time to paint or craft. the house hunt has been draining. take this photo for example: the villa looks gorgeous from the outside but what i find is that most don't come with heat or a telephone line. i've been searching since december and haven't found anything yet. in the meantime enjoy the following photos.

angled villa

this is a cool shot that alex got from our house hunt adventures. i love the pattern of the tiled roof, the repetition, the warm colors.

se vende cliff

this photo is of a cliff side for sale. i couldn't believe this sign when i drove past, there was nothing there but a super steep cliff. apparently you can build homes along the cliffs and hope that there won't be a landslide.

sweet pepita find

sweet pepita is a wonderful find from baltimore that sells organic handmade clothing for your toddler and a few things for grown-ups.

check out their site on etsy

read their blog

in progress

current piece that is close to being finished. i started this one around november? december? 2007. it's taken me a while to get that feeling of going in the right direction and just being happy with where i was going with it. no more paint-overs.

banksy

check out this rogue artist from the uk.
http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html

mandelbrot image

the process- "manifestation one"

"manifestation one" is an acrylic painting with simple color combinations that eludes to a visually complex compulsive arrangement of dots. this piece is an interpretation of the mandelbrot set.

from wikipedia: The Mandelbrot set is a set of points in the complex plane, the boundary of which forms a fractal. Mathematically, the Mandelbrot set can be defined as the set of complex c-values for which the orbit of 0 under iteration of the complex quadratic polynomial x2 + c remains bounded.[1]

kimono detail

this is a cropped image of my kimono that i love love love to wear. thinking about doing some paintings in this style. the purples and pinks are a beautiful combination for a background.

in progress

i've put down the knitting needles and have finally started a new painting. this one started with some basic black and white outlined drawings. i'm thinking about revising the image.

roisin murphy

i love this video. roisin is an amazing artist.

great book find

from juxtapoz.com:

Roger Gastman, Caleb Neelon, and Anthony Smyrski have put together this rich collection showcasing over 1,000 images and authoritative text, highlighting street art and life in cultural hotspots around the globe. Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents Around the Globe follows skateboarders in Japan, hunts down graffiti artists in San Paolo, Brazil, and exposes the newest Pakistani truck artwork in the world. At almost 400 pages, this book, with its rare images and in-depth commentary, is sure to become a staple in libraries of any true street art fan.