-10 new things- SUMMER 2011

Feel free to share any new things you've learned recently. Here are 10 new things I learned this summer:

10 new things

1. Be weary of scam artists. If people are over eager and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. See “Charles Phey”: http://pittsburghgalleries.blogspot.com/2011/07/fraud-alert-emails-from-charles-phey.html

2. How to pick out good salmon and fry it, grandma style. To see if the salmon is fresh, give it a good poke with your finger. If the flesh bounces back immediately, it’s fresh. If the flesh only lingers and remains indented, it’s old. The tail end of the fish is the best part. Avoid the scrap fish head bucket at all cost! Take a butcher knife and slice the fish tail into 5 cm thick chunks. Add salt and cornstarch. Fry it one side at a time; don’t put the lid on until both sides are fried. It’s done when the flesh is firm enough for you to poke a hole through it with a chopstick.

3. Helpful tips for coloring. A couple of weeks ago I started a painting and used up a good tub of various colors of paint trying to decide on the right colors. The canvas went from white, to hunter green, to yellow-green, to muted blue, to grape purple, to plum purple, and finally, to fuchsia purple. Keep in mind that every time I changed the color of one section of the painting, I am compelled to change the colors of all the other sections of the painting. After realizing how much paint I used, I tried to reflect and propose a formula that might make coloring a little easier. Keep in mind, there’s really no correct way to color, in fact there’s probably a billion and one ways to color that I still haven’t quite figured out yet, but for the time being, here’s what I came up with. (Although wasting paint is not an issue for an astronaut, I generally use the same coloring method as an Astronaut Colorist):

1. Color the things in your picture to which you are 100% sure of what color you want them to be first.
2. Color in the largest areas of the picture that are remaining.
3. Color in the smaller areas of the picture that are remaining, keeping in mind that all the colors look good together.
4. Always leave room for change.

4. More is affected from my day-to-day actions and decisions than I will ever realize.

5. “You can’t do good work until you grow old” –Tsuguharu Foujita. Lots of artists emphasize the importance of good health and living well. Tsuguharu Foujita, upon being invited to do an artist talk at an art school in Tokyo, went so far as to speak nothing of art, but only talked about the importance of eating well, and staying physically fit.


6. “He who teaches children learns more than they do.” German Proverb

7. In 17th century Holland, people use to carry on them these highly intricate, tiny sculpted skulls and skeletons on themselves as jewelry. It was a reminder that they could be dead by the night’s end. You can now see them for free at the AGO on Wednesdays, 6-8:30 pm.

8. Too many people are afraid of unjustifiable laws.

9. My art teacher use to say, “Art rooms are for making art, art rooms are safe.” This is something he’d say to us every September at the beginning of the school term, right around the time when he was explaining how not to run around with scissors. I use to wonder why this little bit of information was so important, why it needed to be repeated year after year, why safety was so important to an art room. Then I thought, only when you feel safe, can you truly be free. Art is one of the very few places where I can be free.

10. Overcoming shyness has been, is, and will be my greatest obstacle.