Creations from Avalon Members

[Raskolnikov]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
Thanks everyone. glad to see this is still going!! Mandelbrots are out there. Memes are great as well. Thanks for the link Michel

Heres another aspect of realism, a bit more brush and gesture evident. this is why I dont really care for computer art. Art is very much about the human hand interpreting thoughts and perception.
Not necessarily exactness

coffee maker / oil on board

Meant it when I said I love your coffee maker Doug. It's really rich and warm, and love some of those confident stokes with the brush, a little fine tuning, and beautiful. It's relaxing and yet really jumps out at you at the same time. And oil of board. I did some of that back in the days of my stories. I painted a full piece of plywood in thick black acrylic and then brushed over the points and curves in red acrylic, then outlined it with barbed wire to make a really devilish wall piece. Had a bit of a bout with depression, but it's ok, I finally beat him. Oh the ways we learn.

And thanks Dilettante for the detailed response. I don't know how you guys do that. It is truly a foreign language made by robots. I feel like I'm back in my Calculus class and failing miserably. But really like the results of your code of art -

Posted by Dilettante (here)
If it is poetic, functional, and works with an interesting idea -- all the more beautiful!

Great thread Doug. Love all the creations.

[Delight]

Posted by Raskolnikov (here)
Wow. Love the Storey Eyed Ones, what a great name. Sounds like you're writing more from memory and experience than from a purely creative standpoint. Felt like I was reading our true history rather than all the garbage we've been fed over the years. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing, really enjoyed that, a true Delight, sorry, couldn't resist.

Thanks so much and my feeling is that it is real (somewhere, somehow). Thanks for your sharings too. Thanks for Doug starting the thread.

[Victoria]

Doug, this is a wonderful thread and your artwork is beautiful It is so much fun to see everyone's amazing creations- experiencing the music and images that speak from everyone's heart

This is not exactly art- but it was maybe more artful placement of fanciful creatures; when I was little, I had a wonderful penpal during the years while she was in college and clerking for Thurgood Marshall, named Becky Brown. She would pen letters to me just as writing to my family and would create brilliant drawings and tiny doodles, often of miniscule characters playing tennis or hiding in between the text with words to take notice of. I was always so excited to find mail from her with her perfect illustrations and to practice reading what she wrote.





I loved her imaginations so very much and all these years later, try to carry something similar forward whenever corresponding with people - whether online via photos or through decorating with itty collages and doodling sketches planted between paragraphs... just hoping to transmit the same smiles and happiness in cards and notes as Becky sent. All joy in the little things!

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Victoria (here)
This is not exactly art- but it was maybe more artful placement of fanciful creatures; when I was little, I had a wonderful penpal during the years while she was in college and clerking for Thurgood Marshall, named Becky Brown. She would pen letters to me just as writing to my family and would create brilliant drawings and tiny doodles, often of miniscule characters playing tennis or hiding in between the text with words to take notice of. I was always so excited to find mail from her with her perfect illustrations and to practice reading what she wrote.

I think what you've perfectly expressed and encapsulated here is how much has been lost with the advent of almost all written communications of any kind being done with a keyboard.

Writing with a pen, in contrast to typing with one's fingers on a keyboard, embodies and activates entirely different neural pathways, ones which I suspect are far more ancient and hard-wired in the very long history of the whole human condition.

I find myself doubting if the greatest poets, playwrights and authors that we know of, in any language in any pre-20th-century era, would have produced the same masterful work on an iPad — or even a typewriter.

(A serious comment, something which I've thought about a lot over the years. I'd love to know if this has ever been discussed elsewhere.)

[Raskolnikov]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by Victoria (here)
This is not exactly art- but it was maybe more artful placement of fanciful creatures; when I was little, I had a wonderful penpal during the years while she was in college and clerking for Thurgood Marshall, named Becky Brown. She would pen letters to me just as writing to my family and would create brilliant drawings and tiny doodles, often of miniscule characters playing tennis or hiding in between the text with words to take notice of. I was always so excited to find mail from her with her perfect illustrations and to practice reading what she wrote.

I think what you've perfectly expressed and encapsulated here is how much has been lost with the advent of almost all written communications of any kind being done with a keyboard.

Writing with a pen, in contrast to typing with one's fingers on a keyboard, embodies and activates entirely different neural pathways, ones which I suspect are far more ancient and hard-wired in the very long history of the whole human condition.

I find myself doubting if the greatest poets, playwrights and authors that we know of, in any language in any pre-20th-century era, would have produced the same masterful work on an iPad — or even a typewriter.

(A serious comment, something which I've thought about a lot over the years. I'd love to know if this has ever been discussed elsewhere.)

I remember coming across such suggestions in college, and especially after, when the real education begins. There's definitely an intimacy lost when tapping the cold keys of the keyboard. I agree, it makes you wonder how much is lost with each subtle transition or change society makes. And then there's the Cursive argument, of casting spells with language when writing in cursive.

I began writing with the pen, then moved on to the typewriter. God, what a noisy awful instrument! Was living in weekly hotels in San Francisco during the dot com explosion like some kind of Bukowski, but unlike him, I always felt awful for the noise it made and did most of my writing during the day. I was grateful when the quiet computer keyboard arrived because I preferred writing at night.

I also had a friend who used to draw great little pictures when she wrote letters. There was something very intimate about it, like a secret between friends. I always smiled when I read her letters thinking it especially sweet and thoughtful of her to take the extra time to personalize it.

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
I find myself doubting if the greatest poets, playwrights and authors that we know of, in any language in any pre-20th-century era, would have produced the same masterful work on an iPad — or even a typewriter.

It would probably be different wouldn't it? Makes me think of all the old scrolls written in masterful and ornate handwriting that have been lost over time or intentionally burned in great libraries like Alexandria. Our records only go back so far. Did even earlier poets have access to tech beyond what we have now? Wasn't Atlantis destroyed by such tech? But I'm getting off topic.

I'd be interested to know if the topic has been discussed elsewhere too. Sometimes I think those old poets, playwrights, and authors, especially the ancient masters like Homer, Plato, or even Virgil, lived on the tail end of an enlightened civilization, or at least heard the tales passed down from such an enlightened civilization, before a great dumbing down took place, like what appears to be taking place today throughout half the world's population.

It's nice to be able to capture a moment in time on a page, and each writer imbues their own experience and style into that moment. I, for one, stumbled greatly with a pen and find my fingers keep up with my mind much better on the keyboard. Two hands are better than one I guess. But there's a shade of intimacy lost with the disappearance of the ol' phallic pen.

[Harmony]

What I think is most wonderful is the power of the heart behind what ever instrument is used to somehow illustrate or leave a trace behind of that inner energy shared as a conscious creation.


A word or a song, a painting or a message using light sent forth from a screen are representations trying to communicate transformation of consciousness that comes through our heart. Sometimes telepathically, in a quantum way, instantly this happens forever leaving a trace we never forget.

[Raskolnikov]

You have an uncanny way of getting straight to the heart of the matter Harmony. Beautifully stated and have to agree...

[Michel Leclerc]

Thank you Bill. You are entirely right.

The key element is the possibility of beauty. The great poets of the 19th century had all learnt calligraphy.
This is the “Homburg Folio“ , the notebook in which Friedrich Hölderlin, to me the greatest, wrote his Odes in the beginning of the 1800s.

Each letter of our alphabets is a dimension of beauty. Not less than the great achievements of Arabic-Persian, Chinese-Japanese calligraphy. And they could write in different alphabets: Hölderlin in the Latin alphabet (German was different), in Greek and in Hebrew.

We have “intentionally stupidly” wanted to forget beauty. Utility, the only dimension. Hence the typewriter – but worse, mind you.

I remember how around the end of the 80s I started to notice how Board Members or Executives only wrote (only could write) in capital letters. Young kids nowadays can only write keying the letters, and only with their thumbs.

Instead of Hölderlin‘s orchestra of sculpted instruments, a pair of fists hammering on a face.

[Raskolnikov]

I don’t know the etiquette here. Not trying to take over the thread by any means, just enjoying the focus on creation, the one thing that makes us human, to live in the moment, to connect with the source from which we all stem. Lately I’ve been playing music and I feel that source pouring through me, as if I’m turning off and It’s turning on, a feeling of letting go, of letting go of all fear and allowing that greater power to flow through without judgment or worry, of simply watching the muscle memory take over from a distance, as if I’m the instrument and the one being played. That connection, that surrender, that absolutely beautiful and transcendent feeling beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond even comprehension, when time stands still and the self disappears, that's the moment, the moment of CREATION, when you transcend yourself and feel truly alive.

So with respect for the thread you’ve created Doug, I’d like to give it a little jumpstart with a fun paragraph from the way back machine…

Mark closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. riding the escalator down, he scanned the room for Sarah but didn’t see her anywhere. thinking she must be outside, he exited the store but didn’t find her there either. in an effort to avoid the strong undertow of the sidewalk traffic, he stepped out to the curb next to the newspaper stands to have a cigarette and wait it out. he watched the busy people passing by and felt happy he didn’t have to work. looking out over union square where the sun succeeded in finding a safe haven amongst the towering buildings, racing cars, and scrambling shoppers, he thought he would never cease to be amazed by the sheer number of beautiful women he continually encountered in san francisco. they weren’t the fake, superficial, plastic kind he’d grown accustomed to seeing in l.a. with their surgically enlarged breasts, tightly tucked faces, and bleached blonde hair who coldly, yet triumphantly, strutted around with their husband’s gold cards bulging out of armani purses. no, these were not even remotely related to that reptilian race. these were the natural beauties, women of polished complexions and stream-lined figures like souped-up dragsters and thoroughbred racing horses which, upon viewing, Mark couldn’t help but think how marvelous it would be to take each one out for a test run. ‘oh women!’ he marveled, ‘where’s Sarah, I need a drink!’