Book Review: Anatomy Of Dogs

Dave Kellett is one of my favorite comic strip artists (see Sheldon) and when he has projects at Kickstarter, I often try to chip in. A recent fundraiser that became a book was Anatomy Of Dogs, a hilarious exploration of breeds of dogs that had me laughing as I read it. He pokes fun, in a fun way, at the attributes of dogs in the form of scientific illustrations. It’s clear that Kellett loves dogs.

Peace (with kibbles),
Kevin

Two Poems

For My Love

For International Women’s Day, the prompt for DS106 Daily Create was to be Acrostically Yours — create an acrostic poem for an important woman in you life. No one is more important to me than my wife.

And then “fiddlehead” was the word for the morning haiku.

Fiddlehead

Peace (in the hour now lost),
Kevin

Book Review: The Guerilla Art Guide

I stumbled on this book — Guerilla Art Guide: Everything You Need to Put Your Message Out In The World — in the library by chance and decided, it’s worth a look. Keri Smith lays out a bunch of reasons why taking the art to the streets — in a responsible way — is one way to imagine that the world is really a canvas. The book lays out the philosophical rationale for why a person might want to leave art for the public to stumble upon, and whether political or not, how art might have an influence on the society at large.

There are a bunch of different project ideas — from Wish Trees to the Unexpected Object to Coupon Poster to Postcards — that push back against the idea of corporate advertising in our public worlds. Smith straddles the lines of legality, and urges readers to use material that neither deface any public facades and is kind for the environment.

I liked that the end of the book had a bunch of templates that one could use or remix, for making environmentally-friendly stickers (there is a glue recipe inside the book) and public postcards and more. All in all, Guerilla Art Guide was a quick read but also rather inspirational. I’m now looking at my public places a little differently, noticing the Guerilla art that already exists and thinking of the world as a canvas.

This book had a real CLMOOC feel to it, and I appreciated that.

Peace (it’s there),
Kevin

Internet Phone Book Explorations: Brian Moore

(This is one of a series of periodic explorations of the Indie Web via the Internet Phone Book project. I am on a personal exploration but also hope to lift the profile of sites I have found.)

Well, Brian Moore’s website (Hope you like Brians — it was his blurb in the Internet Phone Book that caught my attention) and his digital and art experiments are on another level from many of the other sites I have explored so far with the Internet Phone Book project.

There are many things to dip into here, and all of it is done with creativity and care, but I was intrigued by the first project — you call a phone number, describe changes you want to make to a website, and watch the changes happen. It works. I dialed in and asked for an Art Deco-themed saxophone site and within minutes of hanging up, the site was changed. For now. Until someone else calls and changes the site again.

Art Deco Saxophone

I was also curious about his Dookie Demastered, in which he revisits Green Day’s classic album, on behalf (I think) of Green Day, but he filters the album through various sound systems that are not designed to for listening to Green Day. As Brian explains: “It’s Dookie, the way it was never meant to be heard.” What a hoot.

And there are many others at his site — some you can play with and some you can just experience. Check out Lightyear.fm for an interesting connection between space, time and music.

Peace (in the corners of the Web),
Kevin

Poetry: Geese Song

The haiku prompt this morning was ‘geese’ and while I thought of trying to make a play on the rock band, Geese, I suddenly remembered all the skyward honking before winter.

Peace (in a V),
Kevin

Poetry: Catkin Cluster

I had to look up this morning’s one word prompt for haiku. I had heard the word — Catkin — before, maybe in picture books, but I didn’t know what it meant. It was pretty interesting. Some mornings are like that with the haiku writing

Peace (on the wind),
Kevin