Submerged by Urban Wall Art & Murals

This new artwork done in spray paint on canvas is scary beautiful. As serene as it appears, movement therein is undeniable. Beneath the crisp, flowing lines and delicate, misty shadows, a motion teases the surface, shifting and fluctuating with awareness unnoticeable in most modern art.

If this doesn’t take your breath away, you might want to check your pulse. With custom stencils and spray paint, Ray Ferrer has done it again.

Optimism - SOLD

Click the link for more great pieces. Maybe you’ll find something that moves you. Also, check out these places to browse or connect.

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Urban Wall Art & Murals Blog

Button Pushing 3.0 How to view a draft for dummies like me

Word! No seriously, Microsoft Word related…

So, I am doing some post-minute editing. This is something I do after I submit, when all the errors jolt me awake at night or grip me during chores, causing semi-convulsions. And I have discovered something. Something other than I need to start reading instructions again.

Isn’t it nice to know you are the cause of your own frustration? (No.)

When editing a document, scrolling is abysmal in Print mode. You go along smoothly for a while, then pop! You’re on another page, place lost. There is a little button at the bottom of my Word window that gives me the option of Draft mode. Ha! Page breaks marked, no jump while scrolling. Where was this ages ago? Undiscovered by this gal.

So, my lesson for the day is: Push those buttons. Every single one.

Some twice.

Just save often. (Or consult the manual or Help files. Even take a class.)

Geesh.

Here’s a great link for shortcuts. You may want to use find in page to locate your most useful actions.

Shortcuts for Word

Chicken Cordon Grue

Shown here Dexter style

Tonight, I’m going to switch gears to tell you what’s for dinner. I will even tell you how, but be ye warned, I measure nothing when I cook.

Made this for two while editing.

For Chicken Cordon Grue, you will need:

2 or more chicken breasts
2 – 3 slices of ham
Cheese of choice (shredded)

Sauce:
Horseradish or favorite spicy mustard
About half a cup plain yogurt
About half a cup french dressing

Oven 375°F. (for average breasts)

Slice your breasts in half, but not all the way through, to form a pocket. Stuff. This is prettiest if done from underside of breast.
(Reading that one aloud in a group gets strange glances)

Place in greased (or sprayed) pan. Mix sauce ingredients in bowl – to taste. When satisfied, cover chicken in sauce and sprinkle with favorite cheese.

Bake for 25 -35 minutes. Chicken will be opaque or use meat thermometer.

Tips:
I trim the fat.
Sauce may, upon baking, acquire a grue-like consistency. Refer to name of dish or consider adding white wine. Not much that a glass of white doesn’t solve.
Make sure your choices of cheeses and meats would make a good sandwich.
Great with streamed veggies like carrots and squash.
If you cut it Dexter style, I am not responsible for results.

Thanks! Bon Appetit.

Yeah, paintins.

Nevermore - Abril Andrade Griffith

This time I want to share some professional paintings that I found intriguing, if not altogether comforting. Since art aims to affect us deeply, it’s no wonder that horror has a place in fine arts also. “Nevermore,” above, beings back images from my own childhood nightmares. And yet, it is… cute. I think.

Poltergeist - Tom Carlton

Speaking of childhood, this was the second movie to give me nightmares. The first being Platoon (nother story). The artist chose precisely the scariest image in the film. I’d set my TV outside, but it’s busy right now.

Think it’s my favorite.

Solitude - Ken Meyer

Just another awesome tonal study. Watercolor has never evoked this kind of emotion in me before. Love it enough to hang it up? Available online.

Uneasy - Matt Truiano

Hauntingly beautiful. So simple in form and genius in perspective. Yet so complex in color and texture. Plus, if you stare long enough, the skull sorta seems to float… Or I’m tired. Either way, sleep will be uneasy tonight, that’s for sure.

Hope you enjoyed!

Fear Art: More Pretty Scary Stuff

Enjoy these images of scary art from across the net and one pic of my own.

Match this!

That’s right. Matchsticks. Lots of them. The real nightmare is the contractor’s bill.

Escher plus

Reflective surfaces offer the best scares. Check here for why. Or here, if you’d rather have fun.

Scary Lisa

Every time I see this one, I’m reminded of a coworker who’s always trying to convince me that some of us are descended from aliens. Yep. I think she’s had some work done since.

Sidewalks are not safe

Is it December already? Sidewalk art brings out the best in pedestrians, I bet.

The internet scares me, btw.

Metal sculpture

Not sure where this is, but I like it. What will they do when they are done mourning, I wonder?

Curtains for you

If you’ve never seen kirigami (paper cut art), you need to.

Museum exhibit

I’ve tried some of this myself. You won’t find it in museums just yet.

Taken in Frederik Meijer Gardens, 2011

Look closely at the midsection of this one. I believe the sculptor was inspired by their relationship with their mother.

Fill The Shelves - A Great New Initiative To Help Underfunded School Libraries

Reblogged from David Gaughran:

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Chronic under-funding of school libraries has led to the tragic spectacle of empty shelves, leaving children with nothing to read; but a new initiative called Fill The Shelves hopes to change all that.

This story starts in a Pennsylvania K-8 school called Pittsburgh Manchester, where the librarian - Sheila May-Stein - decided to do something about the empty shelves in her own school (pictured left - that was the…

Read more… 924 more words

Everyone should participate! :)

Continue reading

Craft of Coping

That's Semour, my stress skull. He says journals make him warm and squishy inside.

Anyone who writes submits themselves to criticism. But that process too can be beautiful. Still, rejections roll in seemingly faster than the submissions can roll out. So, I found something to do with them other than brood and weep. I’m calling it scrapjournaling. But, let’s start at the beginning.

This inexpensive album of dreams (pictured here open) hangs above my desk, full of replies from editors. It was fun to decorate and assemble with some cardstock, two metal embellishments, and a little suede lace. I printed out replies from editors in what I thought were appealing typefaces and colors. I then glued the printed replies in with my favorite desktop utility: a gluestick.

Gluesticks are much more fun now that I’m an adult.

Semour sees you One Buck...

Then came the day that Semour and I needed to expand. So I set off to make my first scrapjournal. Scrapjournals and I are alike by nature: unruly, askew and homemade. They’re prettier than covered-over comp book journals. And they’re IN. Kay? I saw it in a craft store so it must be so.

Scrapjournals are easy to make. The first step is gathering papers that coordinate and follow the theme. Then, the papers are put in an order that best suits the book and folded at vicarious angles to get that messy look that just screams artistic. After the pages are secured my stitching, glue, or basically whatever happens to work, it is time to add memories, recipes, pictures, etc. Mine will house my responses from editors and anything else closely related.

Colored ink makes us smile.

Taking one plastic file folder and cutting the front off it with my safety scissors gave me a bright durable cover for journal one. After collecting coordinating papers to stuff inside, I decided to sew the first journal together at the fold with embroidery floss.
NOTE: Do yourself a favor if you try this method and prepunch your holes with something sharp.

Postcard from Frederik Meijer Gardens. That sculpture looks rather suspect from this angle.

I selected a postcard for the center of each of my journals. Inside are envelopes and plenty of pages to affix more and more rejections, I mean replies, to. The pages include various colored journal papers, notebook papers, photocopies, and even pages from wordfinds.

Postcard: Gerald R. Ford Museum. Photo: my livingroom.

I chose to hold my second journal together with some suede lace through a centered hole (hole punch = 98¢, no callus = priceless}. I like this, because it allows for revision!

Inside the second, there is a photocopy of a likeness of the Declaration of Independence. And some old printshop bookmarks. Also, I utilized some leftover cardstock for the cover, as you might notice.

Grue's Personal Submission Survival Kit. That cover really beings out Semour's eyes.

So that is the tale of my ever-growing garden of rejections, I mean replies, and their newfound beauty. Hope you enjoyed.

Merideth Grue

BTW: Semour is a Halloween-themed stress skull I purchased last season. He is the most invaluable tool that I own. When you squeeze him, blood-marinated maggots form massive bubbles in his eye sockets. He’s my best friend, and a dang good paperweight.

From the Depths Comes Gratitude

Just in time for Halloween, free horror mag released on issuu! From the Depths is a literary magazine that I find ‘pretty’ scary. Inside, you’ll find short fiction, shorter (flash) fiction, poetry and more, all spun from terror and quite possibly wit. And, it illustrates how the macabre can be beautiful.

Many thanks to Penny Dreadful, the editor with the fully swypable name, that allowed my two cents contribution. For simultaneous chills and thrills, please check out the attractive little horror collaboration in the Fall 2012 From the Depths magazine.

Leave the light on…

Merideth Grue

Three Things to Make You Woozy

Hug a tree lately?

Number one: Can’t believe this ad from Masterlock. It looks wicked cool, but the implications are disturbing. I think the one on the right was the one who forgot the key.

Must admit, prolly not this dedicated to saving the trees.

Dexter's dream date?

It’s only catsup. It’s only catsup. It’s only catsup.

Love, love, love this ad for stain remover. Kinda looks like what I saw in the glint of my date’s eye last time we were at dinner. Funny, he doesn’t eat catsup.

Wee! I’m dizzy, but in such a pretty way. Like in that hair-flip near head-stand way. Go ahead, go flip your hair, you know you want to.

Pretty sure something about that made you woozy.

Power of Perspective(s)

Yours truly picked up a book on POV recently. While perusing it the last few days, I noticed how much it was needed. Funny how those subtle differences in narration can mean so much, or confuse so.

For those of you who are lost, point-of-view refers to the angle from which a story is told – whose head we are in. Narratives can contain multiple POVs, but to be done well, having some conventions to follow helps. I’ve begun to think of it like a framework or map.

BTW, in general: 1st (person) is I, 2nd is you, 3rd is they, omniscient is all-knowing. That’s the basics, but it gets more complex.

I have always struggled with head-hopping. This goes like:

‘Jane wished she could spend the whole day just smelling the flowers, as they reminded her of her grandfather’s garden. She intently showed one to George, who thought, What a silly creature. He was more of a horse man, like his father. She knew he’d run off to the stables as soon as he could.’

Thing is, when I lie asleep and dreaming, my inner narrator head-hops like a madwoman. My dreaming mind truly believes itself telepathic or psychic (or something).

Is this how a supreme being would think? That would be one schizoid thought environment. All those otherwise silent remarks disrupting everything. How exhausting!

While writing I must take special measures to ensure the “mere mortals” will understand. Yes. (Hint of sarcasm.) Some coherent motion to the intrusive nature of the ol’ mind recorder would do.

So, aside from all this, I am left with one curiosity. Has anyone else ever dreamt like I do? Do you dream like a camera-eye or omniscient creature?

Does anyone else dream in color but sometimes in pop art or sepia tones at times? I am assuming some adults out there still remember their dreams.

Am I alone?

Hopping along now…