The Old Guinea is All New Guinea to Me!

I love primitive art from every culture and time period. There is a spiritual power and fierceness I find that permeates art created in pre-modern cultures. I am no scholar or authority on primitive art (the scholars and authorities are vigorously nodding their heads in agreement), but merely an admirer, so often when I am drawing for pure pleasure, I will crack open a book on African or Mexican or, in this case, Melanesia culture and flip through until something speaks to me. I always acknowledge the culture I am literally drawing from because I respect their art and hope that the information inspires someone else to learn more about an indigenousness people. Here is the link to the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery.

I have recently done two drawings of New Guinea, Astrolabe Bay Masks that were collected in the late 1800s.

I generally am first drawn to a mask by it's overall shape and this one has a strong, top-heavy look. The mouth-like eyes are weird enough for me and I like how you can see the cutouts for the wearers actual eyes just underneath. The mouth itself looks dangerous, something from a nightmare.

The second mask reminds me of some mutant beatnik with the tiny soul man beard hanging off his chin and crazy, beanie hat on his conehead dome. I also love the cinnamon bun eyes, once again with cutout eye holes just underneath.

I hope to travel to Papua New Guinea one day and draw some masks from the real thing and not just from a photo.

OK HW

Evil Rays - The Unofficial Music Video

  Evil Rays - The Unofficial Music Video from Weaverwerx on Vimeo.

My friend Sam McDonald is in a two-piece rock band called UGLYOGRAPHY that makes strange and humorous music. When he asked me if I was interested in creating a music video as background for live shows, I said "Hell Yeah!". Currently the band is sans drummer, so they embed a drum track to play along with. Sam gave me some vague ideas of what they were expecting, but mostly trusted me to to keep it weird and so I did. All the footage is public domain and was found on www.archive.org, the junkyard of culture where you can find everything from feature length movies to books and all your favorite childhood arcade games emulated right on the site, but I would save the games for last otherwise you won't get anything done. You will notice some reoccurring themes; monkeys, masks, retro go-go ladies, all elements that just felt right to me for this song. 

"A dream of life", A Music Video Collaboration

It has been too long since I worked on a film project, so when my pal, Neil Bruce of "Light B4 Sound" put a call out to film makers to create a music video based on a song from his latest album, "Senescence III", I jumped at the chance. I've been enjoying Neil's smooth, cinematic tone poem while on long walks and had some ideas that I thought would mesh well. The music reminded me of visiting the Sumida Aquarium in Tokyo, a magical facility, part of Skytree town. I recall wandering among the displays of jellyfish, penguins and the big tank; compulsively shooting pictures and video, that now would serve as the raw material for this project. Using Adobe After Effects, I created a gently hypnotic tapestry of textures and images that I hope flow harmoniously with the Neil's music.

Enjoy!  OK HW

A 12-Mile Journey - 2/6/16

It's been too long since I last posted anything. How many times has a blog post begun with that sentence? It probably numbers in the thousands, maybe even millions. Regardless, I am back. Since my last entry from November, much has happened. The holidays rolled in and dominated the calendar as they do every year, but the bigger event was we moved to a new place. It's not far from the old place geographically, but the difference in lifestyle is huge. We went from a little beach bungalow to a high-rise condo on the fifteenth floor. I'll save the details of all the differences between the two places and how I felt about moving for another time.

Today I want to share with you a twelve-mile hike I did from my new address on Saturday, February 6, 2016. I decided to document my journey by shooting a photo every mile as I did last August in a post called, "My Eight Mile". My new location is prefect for hiking as there's a variety of environments to explore from the beach out front to the forest in First Landing State Park. My training will also benefit from living on the fifteenth floor, as I will take the stairs down and up when I go out for a hike. You can check out this outings stats and see it plotted on a map here on Endomondo. I've been using Endomondo for a couple of years now and have found it to be easy to use and reliable. If you're on there too, feel free to connect with me. It's fun to encourage each other and see what hikes and runs other folks are doing.

On to yesterday's 12-mile journey. It was a cold and clear day, perfect for hiking, so I filled my CamelBak and headed out...

Mile Zero - Heading down the stairs from the fifteenth floor.

Mile One - The Cape Henry Bike Path looking east.

Mile Two - Still on the Cape Henry Bike Path heading east.

Mile Three - First Landing State Park on the Long Creek Trail. There's lots of Spanish Moss in the park.

Mile Four - There is no shortage of Pine Cones here.

Mile Five - Alone on the White Hill Lake Trail. I only saw two other people on this trail.

Mile Six - Where the White Hill Lake Trail meets the Cape Henry Bike Path.

Mile Seven - A always feel better walking in the woods.

Mile Eight - Found art - This dead, graffiti covered tree looks like modern art to me.

Mile Nine - More nature-based abstract art.

Mile Ten - This house along the Cape Henry Bike Path has some cool sculptures. I always love to see this skeleton and the flying man in the trees to the left.

Mile Eleven - I started the hike with long pants, but it warmed-up enough for me to convert to shorts.

Mile Twelve - Heading back up the stairs. This was from the fifth floor stairwell window.

The End - My front door.