Recent posts

www.flickr.com

Recent Comments:

Categories

Archives

Meta

Subscribe to RSS feed

Revelations.

March 24th, 2008 by Crumpet

Balanced.

When I was a kid, I always wondered why Easter changed dates. I knew it was something to do with some sort of old Biblical calendar, because I saw my parents referencing it for calculations, but I never thought to discover why. Now that I’m studying the relationship between myth, religion, creation, astronomy, cosmology and science for my artwork, of course I wanted to figure out the answer.

Yesterday morning, Easter Sunday, I woke up early and set out to do some sewing. This involved cleaning up my studio, and as I was taking the rubbish to the bin outside, I saw the moon still hanging in the sky, its pale reflection of the suns light looking beautiful against the clear blue, and it hit me. Easter is a lunar festival.

My parents came to visit for dinner, and I mentioned the morning moon to my dad, and he confirmed that there is a full moon each Easter. I’ve done a little research and found that the religious calendar of predicted full moons that Easter dates are calculated from was timed to the Jewish Passover, which in turn was based on a lunar calendar. Makes sense, considering that the stories tell of Jesus celebrating Passover before he is executed.

It all makes me wonder what kind of astronomical cycles happened in Jesus’ time, especially as he was executed. The stories of Good Friday talk of a darkness coming over the land as Jesus died. An eclipse, perhaps? Or maybe just a large storm? The appearance of the full moon in the sky three days later, especially if storm clouds had been obscuring the sky, could be seen as Jesus rising to the heavens (as the moon appears to rise from the horizon at night to us). The Eucharistic bread that Christians receive as “Jesus’ body” certainly resembles the full moon, and with a long history of the body symbolised by the circle, a glowing circle of light in the darkness could of course be seen as godly and mystical.

And what does all that have to do with rabbits?

The myth of the Rabbit and the Moon. There’s a shadow on the moon that many cultures see as a rabbit or hare making food. Myth tells us that through his kindness, the rabbit sacrificed himself as a meal to an old man. The old man turned out to be the moon god, and he repaid the rabbit by placing him in the full moon forever. (I’d post the animation I’ve made of this story here, except I’m not ready to share it online yet — I want to enter it into some festivals and stuff first…)

Again, the symbol of the moon as a resurrection device. And that is why the Easter Bunny brings us eggs… a symbol of new life and sustenance that, in retrospect, look kind of like the moon.

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, Universe, Animation, photography, Art, Random | | 0 Comments

Shadows

November 15th, 2007 by Crumpet

I’ve been going through Facebook tonight replying to messages sent weeks ago and adding people as friends. Apparently at least half of my immediate family are on Facebook, and I had no idea. Not only that, Mr Crumpet is on Facebook and I had no idea! There he was, attempting to take apart a PlayStation3, yet he claimed that he didn’t know how to work a glorified internet address book…

Anyway, I was scanning though a friend’s “Wall” when I noticed this video. I saw it several months ago, but I can’t remember where. It’s so damn cool.

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, Random | | 0 Comments

There are times when I’m convinced we share a brain.

October 9th, 2007 by Crumpet

How did he know?!?

I received a package in the post from Alex this morning, which contained, amongst other exciting things, the packet of fig biscuits up there. I’ve never talked about my love of fig rolls here before. Not even Mr Crumpet knew. They’re a tradition we have at school. Fig Rolls from the Aldi across the street. So soft and chewy and delicious… and you can pretend they’re healthy because figs are fruit!

Alex, I don’t know what made you think of putting Fig Rolls (of all things) in the package, but thank you. You made my day. :)

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, photography | | 4 Comments

Henry’s choice.

September 29th, 2007 by Crumpet

Knot

I was about to give up on my photo of the day for today, when Henry jumped on my lap, slammed his paw down on the keyboard, rotated this one, gave it five stars and launched the Dashboard all in one fell swoop. How could I refuse to post it?

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, photography, Random | | 0 Comments

K is for Knitting and Kinnearing

August 28th, 2007 by Crumpet

(For some reason I like to pronounce all the Ks in that title, even the silent ones. Try it. It’s fun!)

I promise, Knitting and Kinnearing are related, even if it’s just on the surface.

I have a new favourite verb. I’ve already introduced it into my own house, and I just couldn’t resist dedicating a new Flickr group to the art that is Kinnearing. Thanks Stephanie. :) Y’all join me now — having a group of one is slightly embarrassing.

Look! I Kinneared the Palais on Saturday! See that blue sky? That means it’s Spring!

I Kinneared The Palais

Of course, the subject of Yarn Harloting leads to knitting. And as mentioned, I haven’t been doing too much of that lately. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been on my mind. It just means I’ve had too much reading to do on the tram. So, here’s my latest non-knitted knitting piece.

Loop.

This is a little idea artwork, Loop, a random pattern generator, that I quickly whipped up the day before my tute in class a few weeks ago. I’m looking at Chaos and Pattern for this particular class — how we search to find pattern even when there may be no predetermined relationship between objects, or something along those lines. I’m still figuring out the specifics. I made the cube on a whim, and like it a lot. Taking something that has a specified answer and pattern, and turning it into something else that has a specified pattern but no specific solution intrigues and amuses me. I stole the chart that I cut up from Mariah — hope you don’t mind, Jodi. :)

I haven’t worked too much more on this yet, but I’ve used it to create some food for thought on my studio wall.

Current studio wall

And on the topic of printmaking, I looked at the two ink covered rollers I was using for these lithographs the other day…

Senefelder's Grey and French Blue.

…and it struck me that I was feeling a little guilty about the much neglected vest…

Senefelder's Grey and French Blue?

Posted in Alphabet, Freaky Coincidences, photography, Art, Knitting | | 2 Comments

zomg! i’m famous on Teh Internets!

April 21st, 2007 by Crumpet

We went to Vetti and Joffa’s place last night for some backyard cinema. I’d only ever seen Blade Runner at the Moonlight Cinema in the Botanical Gardens (apparently this is a film I can only watch when I’m outdoors) and had forgotten pretty much every single thing about it.

We started talking about the origami when the film was over, and Vetti mentioned that she’d been talking about origami with one of her customers… who recommended my animation to her! How freaking trippy is that! Someone had sent him a link to it somewhere along the line. Now I want one of my customers to recommend it to me… I’ll have to start talking origami with everyone who comes into the store.

For those who haven’t seen Sadako’s Cranes, you can watch it here on my site as a Quicktime file or on YouTube — I recommend the Quicktime file, as it’s much better quality, but you can go to YouTube and rate me anyway, just for kicks.

Today I’ll be madly carving lino blocks to print up for the next animation I’m doing — I have a crit in class on Friday, so I really need to get my arse into gear.

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, Animation, Art | | 1 Comments

But what do my coincidences mean?

April 12th, 2007 by Crumpet

For the last few years, my life seems to have been a series of coincidences. The latest coincidence involved seeing someone I know from the Northern Territory with his girlfriend at my work in Melbourne. He didn’t know I worked there, and had arrived on my floor by accident while looking for something completely different. It was the last day of the show (conveniently at a place just around the corner from my work) so I sent them to have a look.

This morning I was sitting on the tram, looked up, and saw Alberto’s girlfriend again — I was sitting behind the ticket machine and she was buying a ticket. I wasn’t even supposed to go to work today — I was called in to start at 8:30, which is also unusual because the store doesn’t open until 9:30.

It reminds me of I Heart Huckabees, which I watched on DVD yesterday. I didn’t know anything at all about this film, yet coincidentally it’s theories of the universe and existentialism are what I’m exploring in my artwork at the minute. Weird stuff.

I really enjoyed the film. Pity David O. Russell seems like such a tool. (NSFW)

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, Film, Art, Random | | 6 Comments

I Took The Handmade Pledge! BuyHandmade.org