AdVENture

Let's get some AdVENture going on this here thingy bloggy.

Robert C. Lee — The Adventures of Marco Polo — 1938

Scheherazade

Let's get some COLOR on this here blog thing.

Georges Lepape — Nijinsky in 'Scheherazade' — 1910

Tic Tic Tic Tic

What am I thinking? I can't stay away from blogging. It's my opiate. My oasis. It's my mindful escape.

Even with my deadlines tic tic ticking down, I can surely find a moment here and there to post up images that help define my life.

It looks like only two of you have missed me for all of two days, but I've missed all of you. Deadlines are killing me, but not blogging is killing me more.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones — Climax of My Life

Blogus Interuptus

With your kind permission,

I must call an intermission.

There's some work to be done,

Before I can have my fun.

If I don't make some gain,

my life is down the drain.

illustration by David Povilaitis

From The Fourth Dimension ©1984 Rudy Rucker

I'll be back as soon as I can with some stuff you're sure to like and without the soapbox for a while.

The Puzzle

Life is a complex puzzle that we have to put together . . .

And once we make some headway in figuring it out . . .

It just gets more complex.

Collaboration

Society, of any sort, cannot exist without collaboration. Every organization from a family unit to an international corporation, from city government to military services depend on collaboration. Any economy would disintegrate without collaboration. Collaboration is a given in our world—taken for granted usually, but is constantly forming and reforming.

Collaborations start with individuals, those willing to see the large picture and participate in it, knowing that they, too, will benefit from their efforts. Units then work together so that collectively they can achieve more than one individual can.

If you think of each entity as a circle, then we could show circles by the millions, overlapping other circles that overlap larger circles that continue to overlap to a world-wide scale.

One form of collaboration that presents itself in an obvious way is the end-credit scroll for modern movies. It is asTONishing to see how many individuals come together to make, oh, say, an Avengers movie, or Lord of the Rings. It is a small army in itself that has come together with a single mission to accomplish: to bring a movie to the screen, so that WE can collaborate and pay them for their time and effort, so they can go do it again and again.

Usually, such collaborations as movies are led by one individual, akin to a general, with a staff of other leaders, directing divisions, battalions, companies, platoons and squads—right down to the feller that sets out the napkins for the lunch trollies.

Movie auteurs, the ones with stars on their shoulders, pretty much started with Charlie Chaplin and expanded exponentially over the decades. Walt Disney was one that led his army of artists, storytellers, technicians and financial soldiers to battle again and again, gaining many milestones along the way.

Music has always been a part of the movies, but Disney's Fantasia made a star out of music by collaborating with the musical world in innovative and entertaining ways.

The Disney Studios also collaborated with the US military during WWII. The military more-or-less blitzkrieged the partnership by moving onto the studio lots the day after Pear Harbor. But Disney's people greatly aided the war effort with educational and propaganda films, as well as hundreds of insignia designed for troop morale. One of the films, starring Donald Duck, even went so far as to persuade citizens to pay their taxes in a timely manner, so that the war chest could maintain its flow.

Anonymous rendering of Walt Disney as he frequently looked

when his staff wasn't quite on the mark with what he wanted.

Disney Studios in 1930s, with Walt and Mickey flanked by his battalion. Of course the numbers would ultimately be an army.

Original program cover for Fantasia, one of the industry's

great collaborations, initial 'flop' that it was.

Uncle Walt in storyboard conference with Leopold Stokowsky

and Deems Taylor, collaborating between the arts.

General Disney in conference for a war-time movie with

Commander "Hutch" Hutchinson, USN and Ub Iwerks.

Insignia for Aviation Cadet Detachment, WWII.

Insignia for Commander Carrier Division 24, WWII

Isolated graphic from Victory Through Air Power,

demonstrating the value of strategic bombing, 1943.

In the midst of the Disney organization expanding its world, creative individuals evolved into an organization of Imagineers, an elite force that conceptualized and engineered most of the magic in the magical kingdoms of Disney. One definition of the Imagineers was 'when science collided with art'. Through their efforts, and the work force that followed their leads, major accomplishments in entertainment were made and are enjoyed by millions.

Imagine if we, those who look to the future, had imagineers of sorts to help design educational ways and means in imaginative ways—helping our kids to think and act in innovative ways . . . what might be accomplished?

The Full Meaning

This has to be the age of collaboration . . .

©Haller-Buchanan — The Full Meaning

Art and Storytelling

How many of you enjoyed the over 200 books of Tomie de Paola when you were a kid, or read them with your kids now? Tomie has a real gift for reaching the hearts of loving children everywhere with his art and storytelling.

I had firsthand experience of seeing just how much kids love his stories. You can read about that over at Snippets and Bibbets, by clicking here.

Haller-Buchanan — portrait of Tomie de Paola and his work, ca 1998

Precious Ability

Are we the only species that can see with the mind's eye, or think in abstract ways? If we are, then what a precious ability.

© Haller-Buchanan — Primate Visualization?

Literally a Vision

As the Leonardo persona, I structured my sessions with older students to encourage visual thinking, as well as visual creation. I utilized some of the exercises that can be found in Seeing With The Mind's Eye: The History, Techniques and Uses of Visualization, by Mike Samuels, M.D. and Nancy Samuels.

This is an important book with important content. Quoting from the preface of that book by its editor Don Gerrard:

. . . Visualization is the other side of human nature, the primitive darkness, the energizing non-rational flow, the connection to the Source, the artist's inspiration, the path in the right hemisphere of the brain, the Dionysus to civilization's Appolonian rigidity, the door to the fountainhead. Visualization is not just an idea; it is one half of consciousness. It is one way we think, perhaps the more basic way.

More about that book later.

Visualization is a core concept of my philosophy of education. I have renewed my investigation into the mysteries of this innate human ability. I am blown away by the implications of what I've experienced in my recent efforts.

©1999 Haller-Buchanan — Literally a Vision

Above is one of the so-called inspirational posters I made for the classroom. Yes, I stole the human pose from Al Williamson, and the idea of floating cities from Robert McCall. When you steal ideas, steal from the best!

Foolish and Fabulous

I made the stylized pastel drawing below for a creative sourcebook back in the very first days of CDs. I wrote a caption detailing the many disciplines that Leonardo excelled in and then pointed out that every painting he ever created, every drawing, every codex written by him, every scrap of anything that he ever created in his life could all be contained on one compact disc. Well, yuh. Who knew that DVDs were only days away that could hold details of every mistake I ever made in my life.

Leonardo's CD — © Haller-Buchanan

I've always had an affinity for Leonardo da Vinci. As ego-bundled as it may sound, we have a lot in common. He was born exactly 500 years almost to the day before I was. I'm a drawer, he was a drawer. I like science, he . . . well . . . he invented science. I have a beard. He had a beard. I invented the internet, he invented stuff too. I don't speak Italian, he didn't speak English. All kinds of amazing stuff like that.

So, it was only natural that when I was invited to create a persona for a children's outreach program, I could put whatever acting skills I still retained to use, performing as Leonardo in the modern day and age. The conceit being that Leonardo never really died, but is immortal. He faked his death in the arms of the King of France, so that he could slip away and live in obscurity, traveling the world. The reason he never died is that he never lost his curiosity for even a second of his life, and that kept his cells regenerating so that he even grew younger the more excited he got about things.

Many people are known for the vast breadth of their interests, but Leonardo's interests were so broad and varied that the range can scarcely be described. Of course he lived at a fortunate time when the rest of the world was pretty ignorant, so even when Leonardo was wrong about something, he was still more brilliantly wrong than anyone else.

One of his primary skills was the power of keen observation, a trait shared with Sherlock Holmes — only Leonardo wasn't fictional. Well, that is until I put on his persona to interact with elementary school kids, talking up art and science. He was a global thinker and not a fragmented specialist, so his interests jumped from subject to subject and back again, not out of boredom but out of unrestrained curiosity. Ooh, ooh, I've got that in common with him too. As well, many times he didn't finish projects, because he was always leaping on to the next. Hey, me too!

Everyone knows that he designed airplanes and helicopters and short-wave radio and belt loops. But look what else:

"Education in Leonardo's time, as now, focused largely on words and numbers in various forms—reading, writing, counting and memorizing texts. But Leonardo's interests were not verbal. He was trained and worked as an artist. In so many ways his was the opposite of the usual verbal education orientation. Avoiding the Schoolmen philosophers of his time, he had a clear propensity to learn from direct experience and observation rather than from books and lectures." (I'll source this quote sometime, it's a note I made a long time ago)

So any number of times I played this guy in a man-child sort of way, a little goofy, a little distracted. I wasn't sure what accent to give him. I didn't want to stereotype the Italian-American accent, but ultimately did the Hollywood stereotype thing of giving British accents to Romans.

It was fun, the kids had fun and we all learned some cool things.

My favorite activity was to place a really large drawing of an intricate cityscape in the classroom and then invite the kids to explore all the little nooks and crannies in the art and imagine what kind of people or animals or mythological beasts might be down those stairs, in that garden, or through that tunnel—and what kind of stuff might be going on. I would tell a couple of stories to get them going and then have them invent bits and pieces of action that we could turn into a class story. The stories were foolish and fabulous and my love of performance art was rekindled, improvisational that it was.

Leonardo's Dream — copyright © 2008 Haller-Buchanan — All Rights Reserved

Hang in There

The next few posts may or may not seem off topic to the last few posts, but they're all part of the thread, if you hang in there.

William Donahey —Teenie Weenies & the Bird Nest — ca 1945

'Hang in there' . . . ' thread' . . . heh . . .

Wild Winds of Fortune

The autobiographical element of this blog waddles on.

As a youngster, I had a stutter. A bad stutter that left me speechless, so to speak, as I could NOT recite in class without causing great giggles and mirth from my classmates. It IS a funny affliction and one that I made fun of myself all the time. What an idiot I felt like. I had great answers prepared in my mind for when teachers would call on me. But lo, when the time came I stumbled into chaos.

This went on through most of junior high (what's called middle school these days). Until one day, in English class, a teacher came in to ask who might want to try out for the school play. It was a melodrama of some kind. A couple of hands tentatively went up, and then my hand went up. The class broke up into gales of laughter. Yet my hand stayed up.

The following week in tryouts, I stood on a brightly lit stage in a dark auditorium and reading from the script, my diction and projection were perfect, and I walked away with the part of the villain, surprising no one more than myself.

By the time the play was performed and succeeded, my stutter subsided to next to nothing. And the theater bug had bit.

My first year of high school was terrible as I was stricken with an ulcer that made me miss a lot of classes, falling way behind, until I considered dropping out. It was only when I went on to participate in all the plays throughout the rest of high school that I was able to give it my all, proudest for having won 1st place as Director for one-act plays, mine being Saroyan's Hello Out There. After graduation I went on to be hired as a repertoire player at a downtown theater, run by two thespians retired from Broadway, learning so much from them. Some other time I'll tell you of the disastrous tryout I had for a musical in another theatre.

During high school I went to a number of 'Speech Meets' where regional thespians and debaters competed for trophies, much like athletic meets, rising from local to state venues. I had two pieces memorized and prepared to perform with only moments notice. One monologue was as King Henry II from Becket, the movie, based on TS Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral. My memory now only recalls a few lines from that memorized piece.

The other piece that I memorized and was my favorite was a cobbled together monologue from Man of La Mancha where Miguel de Cervantes introduces and then transforms into Don Quixote and then segues into his death scene. My performance was well-received, taking me to 2nd place at State. This piece I have memorized to this day, running it through my head every couple of months and even out loud when I'm on long car trips (by myself of course).

I thought theatre was going to be my career, even though I also had years of experience as a local boy cartoonist and illustrator. Despicably, the Draft Board, interrupted my quest for Broadway and sent me to basic training where my dreams were beaten out of me as my personality was stripped to it's basic core (I'm still a little dramatic, don't you think?) and then reinvented me into an army illustrator and photographer.

The point of all this is that 'art', in its broadest sense, at an early time in my education, rescued my life, giving me a sense of connection to so many threads of the vast tapestry of our world.

Famous, I'm not. I've not really tried. Satisfied, I am. That, I've worked hard for. The journey set into motion by art led me to my wife and daughter, the joys of my life.

Below are a few images from the Don Quixote legend, of course giving rise to the concept of Quixotic quests, something I guess that resonates with me and that I'm guilty of. The captions below each image are strictly from my memory, so I apologize if I've misrepresented the original text from the Broadway musical.

artist: Gustave Doré

Then with your kind permission, I shall impersonate a man.

Come, enter into my imagination and see him . . .

His name is Alonso Quijano . . . a country squire, no longer young.

Bony, hollow faced, eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision.

Being retired, he has much time for books.

He studies them from morn til night

and often through the night as well.

And all he reads . . . oppresses him!

Fills him with indignation

at man's murderous ways toward man.

He broods . . . and . . . broods . . . and broods.

And finally from so . . . much . . . brooding . . .

his brain dries up!

He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity

to conceive the strangest project ever imagined —

to become a knight errant,

and sally forth into the world to right all wrongs.

No longer shall he be plain Alonso Quijano,

but a dauntless knight,

known as Don Quixote—

Man of La Mancha!!!

artist: Oswald Achenbach

There! There in the distance! A castle!

Rockbound amidst the crags.

And the banners! Oh the brave banners,

flaunting in the wind . . .

Artist: Donn P. Crane

'tis a monstrous giant of infamous repute . . .

'tis that dark and dreaded ogre, by the name of Matagogah,

You can tell him by the four great arms awhirling from his back!

Ho, feckless giant! Avast! Avaunt! En guarde! Beware!

Artist: W. Heath Robinson

And the wild winds of fortune shall carry me onward,

wither so ever they blow . . .

What's to be Done?

The basic question that I have been aiming for the last few posts was, 'what's to be done, to make the world a better place—for EVERYone?' Just a minor little question, ey? We all see imperfections of the world machine, maybe on a daily basis, especially if you pay attention to the news.

As some folks point out, people are basically good. The daily news just shines a spotlight on the few bad ones. Yes. But. There are MANY of the basically good that are suffering at the hands of the 'few' bad ones. We have justice systems constantly at work, trying to round up the bad ones and put them where they can do no harm. And the justice systems are overwhelmed by the numbers of people trying to infringe on the rights of others.

There are comparatively few 'bad' people in the world (though by numbers, still very many), but there are MAJOR numbers of people making bad decisions, many times oblivious to the harm being perpetrated. For instance, child abuse comes in many forms, subtle or not, that can affect a victim for a lifetime. Or likewise for someone to drink and drive and cause horrendous harm. Bad decisions.

What's to be done?

I have no delusion that my words will make any difference. So many people, so much more qualified than I, have written with so much more wisdom & authority than I, and been listened to more intently than I — and STILL made little difference in the scheme of things. But they made the effort, and so must I. Even so, nothing I say is unique or new, but I have daydreams that by getting enough people to put their thought to it, it could be revolutionary. I admit, that's a daydream.

What's to be done?

I have been living a philosophy for a while now, that advises me to live for the 'now'. Do not be regretful of the past, do not be concerned for the future. With day to day situations that philosophy works fairly well, keeping my mind in a peaceful state.

But in reading some current literature about the many ways the world can go wrong, perhaps putting ourselves on the verge of extinction in a very short amount of time—well, I have to put some thought into the 'future', thinking perhaps of our '7th generation of descendants.'

The Future of the World

A portrait of our daughter at the age of 8

Above, Copyright ©2000 Haller-Buchanan — All Rights Reserved

That begins with ourselves and our children. We and they make the future. We need fewer bad people and fewer bad decisions.

What's to be done?

This.

We need to create a world that is better for our children. That involves love and compassion, lack of superstition, an abundance of good decisions, a sense of humor and perhaps new ways of thinking and solving problems.

The world DOES have an abundance of love and compassion, there's no doubt about it, even Hitler had his moments. The world is FULL of superstition in ways we sometimes don't even recognize, beliefs that cripple our full potential for love and compassion. Good decisions, well, I know I haven't made nearly as many as I should have. How about you? A sense of humor—yes, most of us have that in good quantity—but some of us can't laugh at ourselves and then get so riled up that harm can be done.

New ways of thinking and problem solving— aye, there's the rub. That, I believe, is what's to be done. Education: radical thoughts on teaching our kids AND ourselves. That is my thread of thought for a few more posts.

Matt Groening — Newsweek — 1990s

Don't forget that sense of humor!

Checking the Stars

Okay, I'm gathering my thoughts, checking the stars, doing some cross-referencing. I've got a lot to talk about in the next few posts (with some cool images for those who want to ignore my layman's sermon). So please, stay tuned, and please leave some feedback comments along the way.

Rick Griffin — Blowing the Lid Off — 1973

The illustration, above, has nothing to do with the partial poem by WB Yeats, below. But the stars called out for recognition.

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend, 

And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, 

Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming 

And humming Sands, where windy surges wend: 

And he called loudly to the stars to bend 

From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they 

Among themselves laugh on and sing alway

State of Mind

I'd like to explain the source of my state of mind in the last post. This is an image blog, but as it states in the header, it's also autobiographical in nature. I'm finding that an image isn't always equivalent to the proverbial thousand words. I believe that images and words work best together.

Unknown photographer and year

This image has been haunting my image morgue for years.

I've been spending a fair amount of time this summer with our daughter. I missed her deeply when she was at university last year, even though she was only an hour away by car. We each learned to keep our distance to allow growth and maturity (and she probably got something good out of it too).

It's wonderful, full of wonder, having her home—to talk with, to have fun with, to give me more than a hint of the adult she'll be when I'm long gone. We've watched a lot of DVDs together, crossing all genres of film-making. Even when a film goes awry in quality, we try to glean some of the positive values that by rights should be inherent if the army of talent involved in the making has utilized time, skill and money to bring it to our living room. Amazingly, I actually enjoyed Frank Miller's 'Sin City', something I never would have predicted.

Anyway, watching so many films, I have vicariously witnessed many acts of heroism, many despicable deeds of violence. I have flown among the clouds and the stars. I have seen transformations of many sorts — love into hate and vice versa, humans into animals, ignorance into understanding, sacrifice into survival, failure into success. Much of the experience has been inspirational and motivating.

And then I read the news.

Horrible events of crashes and collapses, fires and floods, snuffing out innocent lives. Spouses that murder each other, parents and children that murder each other. Young innocents that suddenly become Hitlers, intent on murdering other young innocents. Natural and man-failure disasters that kill hundreds or thousands with no mercy. Planes that fall from the sky. Drug cartels that wantonly slice and slaughter and deposit the results in town squares.

There are people plotting to destroy, people plotting to steal and scam, people with intent to enter our very homes and violate our persons and property.

Where is our movie heroism then? Where are The Avengers, The A-Team, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne? Where is the fortuitous coincidence that saves the day? Where are the clever writers that solve our problems in strange and subtle ways? Where is the soundtrack that throbs and soars mighty choruses of heaven as we heroically find the strength to get back up, even as we've been beaten into the ground? Where is the empathetic audience to witness our private tragedies and applaud our triumphs, great and small?

I sometimes ponder these sorts of self-defeating questions in the wee hours of the morning when the universe seems dark and uncaring. I rise in the morning full of hope and cheer, thinking maybe THIS is the day 'they' cure cancer. Maybe THIS day radio signals from space will be detected, proving that we are not alone. Perhaps THIS day people will accept that gay marriage is not only acceptable, but celebrated as an expression of love. That THIS day love will triumph over hate.

No, the headline is about Town Council debating what to do about homeless people sleeping in the parks. It's about the latest scandal of privileged rich people trying to be above the law. It's about coaches and priests violating the trust of children and parents.

The rest of the paper is about 'buy this, buy that' 'spend your money on useless crap and squander away time and energy looking at crap you can't afford.'

Okay, I'm really wallowing now, but you get the thread of my thought. And really, most of you have these same thoughts and feelings on various levels at various times.

What's to be done about it?

More next post.

Make a Difference

This cover image is straight science, but somehow has a flavor of science fiction. I'm in a strange mood, but to me, the cover is frightening and hopeful all at once, as the universe itself seems — frightening and hopeful. Lonely, but not alone.

We must work together to make our time on this planet mean something. We must stop hurting each other. We must make a difference to the universe. We must lift the veil of ignorance. We must believe in ourselves.

Ervine Metzl — Fortune — July, 1932

Call to Arms

Call to arms, all you Patriots!

Roy Best

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The founding of the United States is a fascinating era of history, and two of the more fascinating players are Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. These kind of special issues of Time magazine are always keepers for information that is still, well, timely.

Happy Independence Day! And to our British friends, we hope you understand that it was just something that we had to do.

Michael Deas —Time — July 5, 2004

And, above, one of Deas' reference images for Thomas Jefferson.

Michael Deas — Time — July 7, 2003

Portrait of Ben Franklin from the National Portrait Gallery.

I've been turned down so many times this way . . .

Saul Steinberg — The New Yorker

Saul Steinberg was awesome!

To Roam Her Mighty Form

Remember this golden oldie, demonstrating that Frazetta could match the skill of any penmaster of the past?

Frank Frazetta — The Giantess

High Adventure

W.T. Benda was fascinated by masks and created a number of his own, so it is totally fitting that he illustrate the cover of this book.

Book jackets of the '30s evoked high adventure!

WT Benda — The Mask of Fu Manchu — 1932

Angelica

Y'know, this has happened to me several times over the years, when angels would finish my overnight deadlines . . . and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but the results usually weren't very good . . .

Georges Chicotot — Fra Angelica — 1898

Cool and Confident

Tamara de Lempicka was an iconic painter of the jazz age, and this is an iconic self-portrait of her as the cool and confident woman of the times.

Tamara de Lempicka — Die Dame — July 1, 1929

Straight Out of Slumberland

Four years into the creation of Little Nemo in Slumberland, the extravagant fantasy comic strip, Winsor McCay brought 'comic strip art nouveau' to the souvenir book of an extravagant theater complex, newly acquired by the Shubert Organization.

McCay's scene chewing dragon seems straight out of Slumberland.

Winsor McCay — 1909

50 Years Ago

And an odd little story with authentic details that takes place just when Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin in 1929.

I really like Swarte's work.

©1979 Joost Swarte

Adventures of Hergé / 50 Years Ago

Odd Little Number

An odd little graphic number to fire up the month of July:

Vernon Hill — July, 1910