Confessions of a Crap Artist

A few nice Artists images I found:

Confessions of a Crap Artist

Image by pianetatschai

Because of being a tomboy she always used men's words, and when she got married the first time she married a man who made his living as owner of a little factory that makes metal signs and gates. Until his heart attack he was a pretty rough guy. The two of them used to go climbing up and down the cliffs out at Point Reyes, up where they live in Marin County, and for a time they had two arabian horses that they rode. Strangely, he had his heart attack playing badminton, a child's game. The birdie got hit over his head - by Fay - and he ran backward, tripped over a gopher hole, and fell over on his back. Then he got up, cursed a blue streak when he saw that his racket had snapped in half, started into the house for another racket, and had his heart attack coming back outdoors again.
Of course, he and Fay had been quarreling a lot, as usual, and that may have had something to do with it. When he got mad he had no control over the language he used, and Fay has always been the same way - not merely using gutter words, but in the indiscriminate choice of insults, harping on each other's weak points and saying anything that might hurt, whether true or not - in other words, saying anything, and very loud, so that their two children got quite an earful. Even in his normal conversation Charley has always been foulmouthed, which is something you might expect from a man who grew up in a town in Colorado. Fay always enjoyed his language. The two of them made quite a pair. I remember one day when the three of us were out on their patio, enjoying the sun, when I happened to say something, I think having to do with space travel, and Charley said to me,
"Isidore, you sure are a crap artist."
Fay laughed, because it made me so sore. It made no difference to her that I was her brother; she didn't care who Charley insulted. The irony of a slob like that, a paunchy, beer-drinking ignorant mid-westener who never got through high school, calling me a "crap artist" lingered in my mind and caused me to select the ironic title that I have on this work. I can just see all the Charley Humes in the world, with their portable radios tuned to the Giants' ballgames, a big cigar sticking out of their mouth, that slack, vacant expression on their fat red faces... and it's slobs like that who're running this country and its major businesses and its army and navy, in fact everything. It's a perpetual mystery to me. Charley only employed seven guys at his iron works, but think of that: seven human beings dependent on a farmer like that for their very livelihood. A man like that in a position to blow his nose on the rest of us, on anybody who has sensitivity or talent.

Extract from "

Confessions of a Crap Artist

" by Philip Kindred Dick



The Artist's Palette




Image by Anita363

View large or original & find the human being & the black-winged stilts for scale. (Original is still only 50% resolution -- if I can stitch the full-size images I'll repost it.) This is a good orientation shot for this section of the Wai-o-Tapu geothermal site. That's the Champagne Pool in the upper left, forming the 'thumbhole' of the artist's palette. The overflow from the pool spreads out here to form the Artist's Palette (the different colors come from the various bacteria that grow at different temperatures, and the various mineral deposits); it flows downhill on the other side of the boardwalk at the upper right to form a huge silica terrace. And even all of that stuff is just one section of the Wai-o-tapu site as a whole.