Douris’ school cup, detail, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

According to the Classical Art Research Centre this is a rare image depicting “boys at school.” The seated figure is an older boy showing a younger one how to hold a wax tablet and stylus.

Bottom half of Douris’ school cup, 28.4cm diameter

Wax tablets were made by pouring a thin layer of melted wax into a raised-edge frame often made of wood but sometimes made of metal or ivory.

Birth certificate on a wax tablet, 128 AD

Don’t you wish you had one of these to noodle around with at home? More inspiring wax tablet images here.

Thank you, Johanna Drucker.

Painter Karen Conduff and I are meeting today to talk about our July show at Rembrandt Yard in Boulder. We both love painting from life. The role of technology in our lives is part of what we’re talking about these days.

Watching this process reminds of the best and worst thing about working with wax. One: it’s bliss. And two: it’s bliss. Sometimes to the point of distraction.

Ooh! Have you seen the new Ab-Ex postage stamps at the USPS? I just picked up a sheet and man, oh, man. They are they great. Love the enormous Pollock stamp. Motherwell, too. Other artists on the sheet are Hans Hoffman, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Clyfford Still, Joan Mitchell, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman.

Interesting to see Gorky getting his due. (I think the de Kooning biography had a role to play in that, don’t you?) And I’m wondering, if they included Joan Mitchell, why they didn’t include Helen Frankenthaler, too? Had they chosen two women instead of just one it would have seemed less like a token.

Flower Petal Nest by Osima avoseta

In a tender new discovery scientists have learned that the solitary O. avoseta queen bee works alone to make these petal nests for individual eggs and larvae. More wonderful pictures on NPR. And nice story on eurakalert.

Thank you, Susan.

Ooh! This is fun… a collage machine!

Thanks to my dear friend Katia for the link.

Stacking by Alastair Heseltine

Larger image here.

Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302

“What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes!”

According the the Schmidt scale, a honeybee sting is “like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin,” while a yellowjacket’s is “hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.”

Ladybug gathering 7/18/09

While it’s normal to find insects, including clusters of ladybugs, at the top of Green Mountain in Boulder, Colorado it’s NOT normal to find so many.

Ladybug Tree

This singular tree, just south of the summit marker, was covered from tip to toe when I hiked up to check them out last Saturday. Entomologists are citing rain as the responsible party for this so-abundant-it-seems-magical event.

Holding Ladybugs

Unexpected gifts like this make life seem wonderful.

Wow. This dinosaur skin fossil looks like honeycomb. I think it’s beautiful. You can click to see a larger image and read the story here.

“It is a bit like looking at the surface of a choppy sea from below.”

- Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and namer of asperatus clouds.

Ha! This NYTimes slide show about the jelly art of Sam Bompas and Harry Parr is just… fun.


Crayon Physics Deluxe trailer 2 from Petri Purho on Vimeo.