Unauthorized Portrait of MontiLee

I perused a photo of Ms MontiLee Stormer a week ago on her blog at Little Black Duck, noticed it was a particularly attractive photo and moved my eyes and brain forward. Yesterday I was "tanking" (meditating in a sensory deprivation tank) and the photo kept pestering me. Why? It could be that she is peeking around expertly disheveled loose hair and her lip color is slightly caught in her scarf — reminiscent of Lisa Bonet in Angelheart (...We don't go round murderin people allright Mister Angel?..) maybe it's a combination of the back and top lighting with her hand held just so, or that the fleur de lis pattern on her long-johns draws the eye back toward a stuffed bear who is also peeking around a pair of TV rabbit-ears. I just can't figure it out. So I do what it is I do...to rid me of my daemons.

This digital rendering was compiled from photos in her photostream. The only rule I set: use only photos of MontiLee with no others (cats or stuffed animals from a fair don't count as others and were included); a little over 20 photos were poached from her flicker site.

As the creative process took less than three hours (more a sketch) an overall theme of creepiness came to the surface. I don't know why. Point of fact: although there is an angular man's face apparent in the upper right, and a few other vague faces elsewhere, they are all artifacts of the compilation; honest, Nosferatu and his fiends were not in any of her photos.

Note to MontiLee: I apologize for not getting your permission first, but I don't think an apology is required for my 'creepy' description, because, well, you are a little creepy and that's just what floated to the surface here.

I smile when she looks at me because it’s how I was taught: you acknowledge when acknowledged. She then taps her husband on the shoulder, leans in and says in a stage whisper they probably heard in the stockroom, “Never seen one like her before.” He turns in a shuffle, and his feet drag dirt across the floor in a circle to face me. He then shuffles back to the cashier and says, “Nope.” — Excerpted from "Never seen one like you before" by MontiLee Stormer

The Story Behind the Sign

A many few years ago there was a night spent in a drinking establishment with a handful of co-workers (the story begins).  A many few beers had gone down and we were walking back to the house of the nearest member of the intox-o-me-cated (mine).  As we were walking I noticed a sign stuck in the grass betwixt sidewalk and street.

Although I dis-recall what the sign was proclaiming (which may have more to do with beers than years) I remember it was just like a realtor's temporary signage—black metal angle iron frame jammed in the ground; top-edge about waist high.  So I said..."this sign is hil-air-i-ous.  I want it."  And I began to reach down.  My friend stopped me.  Instead of don't-steal-the-sign he said, "Let the strongest man here get that for you."  Then he bent, gripped the bottom edge of the metal sign, and lifted with his knees—not his back—in a practiced clean-and-jerk motion.

The sign didn't budge a millimeter.  Of course he sliced all eight fingers; six to the bone and the two pinkies only half-as-deep.

I only retrieved this memory from long-long term storage once I saw this (photo-shopped) picture while poaching for my last digital rendering:  sharp edges.

Epilogue:  we got him to the hospital, he got stitched and bandaged, his wife hated me from that night forward, because—obviously—it was all my fault, and...I still can't recall what the sign said.  I think it was something like:  PORN KILLS.

sharp edges

digital rendering by veach st glines — 2009

He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Larytta music; körner union video

Thanks to Centripetal Notion, for this kanimaleidascope—the first hypertext effluvium art of 2009 worth sharing.

There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge. — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Finate

digital rendering by veach glines — 2008

People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?'  In the first place I don't use ideas.  Every time I have an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment.  But I haven't run out of curiosity.  — Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)