PZ Myers is coming to Toronto - Poster

PZ Myers of Pharyngula is coming to Toronto to give a lecture about science and religion in education, and I've made a poster for the Centre for Inquiry Ontario.

See if you can figure out the symbols I used.

You can read more about the event and how to get a ticket, here. Or better yet if you live in the Toronto area, help support science and rational thought by becoming a friend of the Centre. Many of the events are free and they've got a staggering new library.

I'm looking forward to it. Like many people, after reading Richard Dawkins site for a while, I began to take notice of this PZ Myers fellow that kept cropping up.

I'm also looking forward to seeing this poster around U of T campus. I'll see if I can get any photos of it up, and I'll post them with the rough sketch and painting on the next Artwork Monday. As well, I'll explain the symbols - and let you know the explanations other people had for them!


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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Artwork Mondays: Art is Easy

Art is easy.

Last week I lamented it is hard. And although finding the time for art is difficult, I am never at a loss for ideas. That said, collaboration often takes me places I never thought I'd go.

So on this Artwork Monday, I'd like to try a challenge:

For the first person to comment with a really unusual idea, I will try to come up with at least a sketch and post it by editing this post by midnight tonight. I'll check back on the comment section in about 12 hours (6pm eastern standard).

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Edit: Okay, so maybe the previous Artwork Monday post was correct. Finding time for art is hard. I'm a few hours late, and the sketch is a little too simple and uninspired.

Rudi and Traumador's ideas deserve a little more time devoted to them, don't you think? I had some technical difficulties with another project I was working on last night, and well, it gobbled up my evening. Perhaps later in the week I'll post a couple of other pieces I've been working on behind the scenes for a while now.

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

The Big Debate

The Canadian English debate is in its second hour as I write this.

Elizabeth May is focused, intelligent and impressive. Her statements so far are backed up by facts, not appeals to emotion and cheap shot after cheap shot. I think May and Harper are the only two composed party leaders at the table. She has actually come with references instead of repeating the same soundbites over and over.

Get out and vote on October 14th. All the Canadian leaders are on Facebook; check their pages, read the platforms on their sites (here's the Green platform!). It's never been easier to be informed.

I'm voting Green. I've voted Green before, but never have I been more proud to. This woman is a leader.

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Artwork Mondays: Art is Hard

Art is hard.

Last year I posted this:


The idea was a steampunkish device to aid the painter. I called it the Hyperferrule. Hooked up to the visual centre of the brain, it would enable me --uhhh, I mean the artist, heh-- to rapidly paint the image in their mind's eye. Swap out those mechanical finger-tip brushes, and the little arms could draw something using graphite and an eraser. Maybe a tortillon smudger would be in there too, to get some nice shadows going.

Lately, I keep thinking about this image. I'd love to do a self-portrait about it. Me, standing next to a canvas, one hand furiously painting, the other drawing. There'd need to be some stark shadows and studio light, an out-of-focus model nearby, perhaps human, perhaps fossil.

I keep thinking about it. And at the moment, that's all I can do.

This isn't intended to be a whiny, whinging complaint. I'm really striving for a lofty lament about the torturous and demanding muse so many artistic types suffer from. It's hard to tell the difference. If I was whining, I'd stamp my foot.

Creative blocks have never hit me. The more I sketch, or think about sketching, the more ideas start flowing. On my way home today, I stopped on the Queen West sidewalk near Claremont, pulled out my Moleskine and had to sketch a full-blown image of a landscape while blocking foot traffic. I struggle a bit with landscapes, and this one excited me. Stay tuned for the surprise.

Art is hard. There's a steady flow of ideas and I strive to get some of them down at least a bit in pencil. Aim for something interesting and maybe if I'm on my game, someone finds it astounding.

I wish I had Degas' money. Idle rich, nothing to do all day but paint vampiric-looking ballerinas and go to the track. Like many of the artists (and probably everyone) I don't have enough time. I have a full-time job, work with some great people and freelance on the side. The freelance is going well, I've got four projects currently on the go. They're a blast to do, people who really get me, I think.

But this Artwork Monday is all about the things unfinished, the ideas I haven't forgotten but I've left alone to wander and prowl about in my studio.

Remember this Dimetrodon-Sphinx?


I've played with it a bit digitally, to practice my digital work. I plan on getting a computer tablet later this year and I'd love to play with a couple of backgrounds. A mountain terrain, a street at night.

Over the summer I played with a piece I really enjoy, and in my head is filled with a soft riot of colour, Trilobitlepidoptology: It needs some shadows, and colour.

Last year, I embarrassed myself a little bit trying to do a portrait of Richard Dawkins. I even emailed his website folks.
Then, I tried a different technique, and killed the drawing. It only exists as a digital file now. I can resurrect it, print it on canvas paper and paint over it. I meant it to be a diptych with Carl Sagan. I'd really love to get back to it, Richard Dawkins' writing has inspired so much of my work. A humble tribute, sidetracked for now.

There's more. A dress based on a fossil, sketches for a kids' book of aliens evolving, a trilobite graveyard...

*sigh*

Next week on Artwork Mondays: Art is Easy

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Flying Trilobite recommends: The Day After

A good friend of mine in the offline world has launched a blog to showcase his new artwork.

Please check out The Day After: art for those left at the end by Chris Zenga.

Chris is a killer painter, musician and muralist, and The Day After is starting off as his showcasing venue for his new series of drawings and paintings about zombie teddy bears.

The Day After will also be featuring scary movie reviews, and slices from Chris's other art projects. He describes himself as, "a Husband, Friend and Father, a Brother and a Son, a Nephew, Cousin and Grandchild all rolled into one, An Artist and an Atheist a servant to none,". While over at Chris's place a couple of weeks ago, I got a sneak peek at a few of the upcoming bears, and they are progressively more and more entertaining.

And knowing this young man as I do, Chris will likely post some pieces sure to cause an uproar. Freedom of speech is often likely to offend.


So please visit The Day After, introduce yourself, and watch a new atheist/artist-based blog unfold.

Just don't make any "grisly" jokes about the zombie bears. I've tapped that well already.

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Artwork Mondays: referencing, gazing and Mitochondrial Eve

This week, I've been thinking a lot about social-consciousness in art. Y'know, being political and having a message for the public sphere.

There's some reasons for my preoccupation.

Tyler Handley at The Edger wondered how to classify atheist art. Jessica Palmer at Bioephemera shows the tension between illustration/photojournalism and fine art, and how poorly played it can both enhance and upset a career. Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock has an interesting round-up of articles about art about science; I'm struck by how many are about global warming, but not surprised.

Social activism and controversies are always a part of the fine artists' agenda. It's not surprising. And it's a good thing the global warming crisis is a part of the agenda! I remember in university about 10 years ago, some wag put up a list of "10 images to be an art hack" too high up on a support pillar to take down. On it were things like, "Coca-Cola logo" (to signify evil corporations), "Kate Moss" (to signify male-controlled body image), "fetus" (to signify the abortion debate).

My friends and I used the term, "shake and bake" for this type of art; by putting an image on canvas of say, Kate Moss you were automatically addressing bulimia, women's body image, the perpetuation of the male-gaze in art, heroin chic (Trainspotting was a big movie when I was in Uni) and being "ironic" and "conflicted" by both showing her and "referencing" her. Ooo, edgy, a half-naked painting of a photo of Kate Moss.

Referencing was a big buzz word in Fine Art back then. It meant copying something, or including it in there. It was supposed to be a dialogue, while perhaps being vague on what you were saying.

It meant you didn't have to come up or reveal a new conflict to the viewer, you simply added to the dialogue. Shale and bake. Truly new conflicts were hard to smash through with. In my own small way, I tried. After reading River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins over and over, I tried numerous pieces about the Mitochondrial Eve concept. It enthralled me that we could figure out things like this bottleneck in our prehistory. But it wasn't new of the day, so it was hard to spread the wonderment. Frustrating.

Here is that painting, Mitochondrial Eve:

Not perhaps my strongest work back then, and I've almost painted over it a few times. This one was painted on an antique wood panel to prevent warping, using traditional materials (rabbit-skin glue....eewwww) so it will likely look at me with it's not-up-to-my-standards look for quite some time.

I had roommates also in the Fine Arts, one majoring in dance, one in theatre. We'd joke a bit that in both their disciplines, collaboration is essential; whereas in visual art, you're expected to stand smoking in the corner saying, "They're all hacks, no one understands my genius. puff".

But back to social messages. Are they all shake and bake? All instantly microwaveable into some sort of painting/sculpture/installation that everyone brings their own political/social/media-savvy background to?

No. There can be something strong enough to break through and galvanise people. But I think the world of visual Fine Art is tough. We are surrounded by astounding images every day, so standing still and letting a painting perform long enough to affect one's mindset as it unravels and wraps up a viewer is a difficult thing. I try it from time to time.

And once, I was so overcome, I simply sat down in the middle of the gallery, on the floor. I stretched my legs out, and just enjoyed the still oil painting on the wall and let it affect me. Security didn't mind this gothy-punk just sitting there; I was causing no harm and others could walk around me. And the painting was marvelous. I consider it now my very favourite. Science and myth thrown together on a canvas. John Atkins Grimshaw's Iris. (The science comes from the part you cannot see in a photo: thin glazes of oil forming a rainbow following the tragic arch of Iris's body).

Try it. Find an image about a current issue like global warming. Perhaps it's a block of ice in a gallery kept at temperatures cool enough to drip only slowly, or tiny plastic polar bears on the floor of the gallery. Perhaps something on the computer screen, something from antiquity, something in your local museum or art gallery or a book.

Ponder it slowly.

Be unafraid to find it shallow.

Be unafraid to say, "that's it?"

Be willing to enjoy the art of the small message for its small message.

And keep moving on, and slowing down to look until one commands your gaze. Let it mesmerise you with its memes and forms. My hope is that it will provide a rallying point for rationality in its beauty.

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.