In Honor of Daylily Season

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Originally uploaded by jhhymas

Which is almost over, alas. We've been adding some plants every summer for the past several years, and they are doing well. Some people say deer eat them, but these are along the front of the house and haven't been eaten yet.
I love the colors in this photo. Today I discovered another time-sink on the Internet, the Color Palette tool available at bighugelabs.com. (Be sure to type the s on labs, or you might get a nasty surprise.) One selects a photo, particularly one with striking, limited colors like this one, and one gets about 15 squares of isolated colors from that photo with color numbers and wonderful color names. Results from different photos are strikingly different.
I have been dragging my feet on the Postcard Exchange. . . I keep thinking that the ones I make aren't good enough. Or I am at a loss as to how to finish something without wrecking it, and making it look overworked. I have gotten four of the seven cards from the others but have only sent out two, which leaves me in deficit mode. But there's always, or at least often, tomorrow.

Blue float

Blue float
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

This is what Davy Rothbart has to say about copyright issues on the FOUND items he has published in his books and magazines.
"We have been very vigilant to change the names and other identifying info on every note and letter in the books to protect people's identities. The last thing we'd want is to put someone in an awkward or embarrasing position! And Simon & Schuster lawyers asked us to include only excerpts of longer letters to protect against intellectual property issues. Sometimes I found this difficult and frustrating, since I really am not sure that someone's chain of Post-Its needs intellectual property protection, but we were always able to figure out something that worked. I was lucky to work with two lawyers for the FOUND books -- Steve Chung and Peter Karanjia -- who really had a deep understanding for the project and could help me conjure up creative solutions for minimizing the risk to S&S without sacrificing the quality of the finds."
Isn't it delightful to think that your grocery list is copyrighted as soon as you write it down?? And it you remember to renew your copyright, you protection can now last nearly forever. . .
So this lovely blue glass float is mine, mine, mine. . .
I am trying to write a poem about colors, here is one, blue, but I have not gotten very far with the poem yet. Good night.

Across Round Lake

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Originally uploaded by jhhymas

Here's a picture for talking about color! It does have abstract qualities, but mostly it is a recognizable lake landscape. And depends for its impact upon autumn color.

Below is some of what Rebecca Purdom says about abstraction. It makes the most sense to me about the meaning of abstraction of anything I have ever read. Mostly people want pictures to be recognizable and if you try to explain to them about an arrangement of squares that you find very moving, they giggle. So this pleased me very much.

"We’re so good at judging, it comes so naturally, that it’s easy to see why looking at abstraction, which offers absolutely no clues whatsoever as to what to do next, can be such a challenge. But that challenge is, in fact, abstract paintings greatest gift. The kind of seeing it promotes is something we can all do; we just don’t get the opportunity to do it very often.
I’ll bet that every one of you has had the experience sometime in your life of looking at something so marvelous that, for just an instant, you’d forgotten yourself enough to not act. Fot just that instant you were not in charge; the experience itself somehow was. The pursuit of that kind of experience is what I think turns painters into abstract painters, and the awareness of it turns all of us into better audiences for abstraction in particular and for art in general."

Rebecca Purdum in the newest New England Review:Vol 28, no 4, 2007. p175-6