Category: Art Page 2 of 4

Kelly sent me this text this morning. It was pretty cool and reminded me of the stuff we talked about when she and Christian were at Wake Technical Community College, so I thought I would put it up. The photo below is the image she discusses for which she made the connection. I thought that as pretty dark, but she does have a great story and a  fascinating connection.

Christian ordered an odd lens (Helios 44-2 58mm f/2) on ebay from a guy in the Ukraine the last time he came here to visit. It was over the holidays and it took quite a long time to get here. It is a cheap lens for which he had to get an adapter so it would fit his camera.  The reason he bought the thing is that it has an odd “defect” that makes it very interesting. Somehow, the lens “pixelates” stuff in the background. Because of this defect and the very cool effect manifested by image taken with it, it has become somewhat of a collectors item. Christian took the picture below to show us the effect. We thought it was pretty cool.

Yesterday, I saw Lorena giggling as she looked at her phone as I walked to the car where she waited to take me home from work. When I asked her what that was all about. She showed me a joke sent to her by Tío Jorge. It was of the same “high quality” of humor we have come to expect from Grandpa Milo, Grandpa Lauro and Uncle Merle. Here it is:

Un hombre fue al doctor muy preocupado y le dijo al doctor, “no puedo dormir porque cada vez que cierro mis ojos un sueño me viene de ‘uno mas dos, uno mas dos, uno mas dos.’ No me deja dormir bien. Semanas me han pasado sin poder dormir hasta me tiene preocupado durante el día también. Me pasa tanto ese sueño ‘uno mas dos, uno mas dos, uno mas dos’ que estoy perdiendo mi salud hasta el punto que tiemblo todo el tiempo. Que puede ser?”

El doctor le respondió, “Es tres.”

Lorena’s oldest brother Lauro is a passionate painter. He spends every spare minute painting. We were in Mexico one year when he got sent to Paris by his company for leadership training for a week. While everyone else went out and partied after the daily meetings, Lauro went wherever he could find impressionist paintings. He eventually made is way down to an area frequented by impressionists. They set up their easels there on the sidewalks and paint. He spent hours watching and talking to them. Eventually, he bought a couple of small paintings that he brought back with him to Mexico.

I love Lauro’s passion for his art. I have been meaning to tell him about some novels I am reading where his kind of art and passion for art play a big role in the plots of virtually every book in a fairly large series. To do that, I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures is to ready spy and mystery novels. Several months ago I ran into a recommendation for one of the novels by Marvin Olasky in an old article in World Magazine:

Here’s my unconventional reading recommendation for high-school seniors: Daniel Silva’s The Heist (HarperCollins, 2014). It’s real: starts with the murder of a fallen British spy involved in the theft of great paintings. It’s a page-turner: continues with the efforts of Silva’s great hero, Israeli spy (and art restorer) Gabriel Allon, and a brave young woman who survived a Syrian massacre. It’s a proven reader-pleaser: This is the 14th novel in a series that repeatedly hits No. 1 on bestseller lists. And The Heist is 2/3 satisfactory regarding the “bad stuff”: no bad language or sex. Some violence—remember, it has spies and Syrian bad guys—but nothing grossly graphic.

And did you twice read the word “Syrian” in my last paragraph—a tipoff that The Heist will also teach students some current events and recent history? They’ll learn about 44 years of mass murder and mega-theft by the upwardly mobile Assad family that has ascended from peasantry to a $25 billion fortune, according to some estimates. Students will learn about bank secrecy in Austria. They’ll gain sympathy for Israel, a nation still largely aloof from God (sigh) but one deserving support because its citizens built and maintain a tidy small house—although one with broken windows—on a rough street of big mansions with loaded howitzers and unchained pit bulls.

Olasky’s must have similar tastes to my own as I have never been lead astray by his recommendations. There is a lot to like about these novel. I think Lauro would love them, not only because they are thrilling, page-turner, spy novels, but because the author is holds the same kind of passion for art as Lauro. One of the novels is even centered on Lauro’s favorite artist, Vincent Van Gogh. The author’s name is Daniel Silva and I was very surprised to see that his American. You will understand that statement when you have finished the first novel. The first book in the Gabriel Allon series is titled The Kill Artist.

Update: Lorena sent me the following picture from last night while I was reading Daniel Silva’s latest novel on my $33 Kindle with the help of Kiwi the remaining twin cat sister.