Here’s a half-baked idea. Let’s start a non-committal book club that we possibly never revisit again, okay? I keep seeing this Jerry Saltz book around and it looks interesting. I bought it over the Christmas holidays, but I haven’t started it yet. First, I was too busy reading trashy novels and then I was too busy writing for my own (not trashy) books (more on that another time).
Anyway, I hear it’s a great read for creatives of all sorts and is one of those generally “inspirational” dealies. So, as a person who struggles to commit to things, I don’t want to start a book club, as such, but I would like to loosely suggest that we read this book (if we feel like it) and then we can discuss it on Twitter or Instagram (if we want to). My handle is @ferrengipson on both.
A (super) quick survey about courses
You may have seen that I’m teaching a short virtual course on Chinese revolutionary art with the wonderful Black Blossoms school. That started this week – thanks to those of you who signed up!
I’m planning to develop some more courses further down the road. Some of them will tie into my book projects and others will just be topics that I like.
To help me prepare, I’ve made a very quick three-question survey. Please take it!
But, did you watch Bridgerton, though?
How many days did it take you to watch it? Don’t lie.
Anyway, I have a little art content to supplement your Bridgerton obsession if you’d like it. A while ago I wrote a short piece about portraiture of black European royalty, which includes a discussion about Queen Charlotte. I can’t recall if the show ever explicitly says the queen is Charlotte, but… it is.
I also did a really cool podcast episode on black portraiture in European art history that’s definitely worth a listen.
Where’s the podcast?
Oh yes, that. It’s on a break. Sorry about that.
I’ll bet that most people haven’t heard every episode of the podcast, though. So, if I may, I’d like to recommend some of my favourite episodes (but I love all of my children equally, etc etc):
Art and Advertisting, Presidential Portraits (Episodes 1 and 2), The Art of Disney Animation, The Art History of Witches, Music Theory, Maths and Elevating Visual Art, The Art of Stamp Design, Decoding Astrology in Art, The History of Paint by Number…
You know what? This list is getting long. I have more favourites than I thought. I’m going to leave it there for now, but I’m leaving off a lot. If you haven’t dug into the back catalogue, please be sure to do that!
Something to do…
My husband reminded me of a fun synesthesia exercise we did once. Synesthesia is when a person has senses that are connected, such as associating sounds with colours. The exercise we did was listening to a classical song and drawing whatever came to mind. We used a drawing app on our phones. You can use whatever colours you like and the picture doesn’t need to “look like” anything. You can just draw the shapes, lines, and colours that the song brings to mind. Don’t look at what your partner draws until the end! It was really interesting because our pictures looked really similar. I wish I still had them, but this was years ago. Your picture may not look like another person’s, but it’s an interesting way to think about sound and colour.
We’re all stuck in the house. It’s something to do.
Kitchen Tour on Remodelista
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen that I’ve been renovating my house for the past few months. There’s still more to do, so my Insta Stories will return.
A mystery someone (maybe one of you?) kindly told Remodelista about the project and they asked to feature our kitchen. If you’d like to see the kitchen tour and pictures of our dog Bobby, you can see them on this-here link. As a prize for reading to the bottom of this post, I’ll also show you the before picture.
Y’all take care x