Show an artwork you'd like to own: Alejandro Almanza Pereda. "The dilapidated pillars of society", 2021, assemblage. *not entirely sure where I'd put it, but that's a problem for another day

Sunday

Glad is the palace of father Zeus the loud-thunderer over the delicate voice of the Muses which reaches far and wide. It echoes against the peaks of snowy Olympus and the abodes of the immortals. And they send forth an immortal voice as they give kleos first to the genos of the gods Hes., Th.40-44

The overheard rant that inspired Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing", the accident that produced that iconic riff, and the greedy Virgin that wrote a Sting into the tale: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHJj...

On Paul Klee's Personal Notebooks: These works are considered so important for understanding modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo’s "A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance," says Monoskop. www.openculture.com/2023/06/3900...

But why should I care about those things that keep going around an oak or a rock? Listen! Let me begin with the Muses, who please Zeus the father with their song, pleasing his great nóos as he abides in Olympus. (Hesiod, Th. 35-36)

An artwork is more than a pretty picture or object. It's a record of the many hours, months, and years of experiences, training, observations, feelings, thoughts, and countless trials and errors that produced it. It shows us ourselves, our predecessors, and who we could be in the future. Value it.

I think we're about a year away from where companies will start flying small drones into your house to project ads onto your walls, while broadcasting a bot's tinny voice at top volume. Governments will allow it because lawyers will argue that business models are now entirely dependent on these ads.

Many artists make work that is considered too experimental or commercially nonviable to show in galleries. We get it. Running a gallery is an exceedingly financially risky affair, and strange art is hard to sell. That leaves online galleries. But art is best experienced in person. Cue Uhaul Gallery:

Aristophanes has come to BlueSky

Melpomene objected to the form I had proposed to provide for her (I can see why later generations made her the Muse of dramatics), so here is the revised selection of objects to be used for her new outfit. (For the purists, yes that is a Dazey Churn No4, but it's missing the glass and wooden handle)

On Mirror Neurons: "the environmental context and the internal state of the observers (i.e., knowledge, motivation, emotion, etc.) profoundly shape the way in which an observed action is mapped onto their [the observer's] own motor system." (L. Bonini, C. Rotunno, E. Arcuri, V. Gallese, 2022, 775).

As a student, my philosophy course included this 'empathetic' interrogative process as an exercise in exploring the construction and critique of ideas. The same logic applies in assemblage art, where interpretation is premised on recognition of how it was made, as a key to defining what it can mean.

"It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die." (Nelson Mandela, 14 July, 2000)

Herewith the obligatory 'art-making process image sequence' (in reverse, as mandated by Article 15.6,32-a). Image 1: Kleio Play Image 2: planning drawing on wall and artwork in parts on workbenches Image 3: a chorus of very fine objects singing discordant harmonies

How T.S. Eliot says "o" www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAO3...

Just discovered that they released an official music video for Lynyrd Skynyrd's " Freebird" three months ago. It features an enviable workshop and those ring-binder photo albums with the glue that completely fuses to the back of the photograph as the protective sheet fades to opaque.

just saw @wildobliquities.bsky.social going on a date

To those who have queried the absence of selfies here: I don't look all that good in person, or in photographs, but I'm exceedingly attractive in theory. Lots and lots of theory.

Mnemosyne (Memory) dodging focus while Kleio holds perfectly still

Total eclipse of the moon over the Cape Town International Airport incoming flight path on a windy night as captured by an inept photographer. You're welcome.

I have it on good authority* that spilling your coffee is the adult equivalent of losing your balloon. *the dude at blackdragonforge.com

On the topic of using one's own GIFs on BlueSky: apparently something has changed and a sampling of people are very excited about it. Tried it, and it still looks like it's a video playing, but was able to upload it using the image icon without the result being a frozen frame. So there.

The workshop lighting-technician doing a pre-sculpture-shoot check.

"While the interest in the meaning and power of names is germane to early Greek hexameter poetry, Hesiod goes beyond what he has inherited from the poetic tradition: he turns the etymology of names into a didactic instrument." (Athanassios Vergados, 2020, 15)

Family portrait featuring "Mnemosyne Genos" and her daughter the Muse "Kleio Play" from my new series which draws on Hesiod's "Theogony". #ancientbluesky #assemblage #sculpture #classicalreception

It's Friyay! Send those Calliopes crashing to the ground 😀 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWqB...

"ἐρατὴν δὲ διὰ στόμα ὄσσαν ἱεῖσαι μέλπονται πάντων τε νόμους καὶ ἤθεα κεδνὰ ἀθανάτων κλείουσιν, ἐπήρατον ὄσσαν ἱεῖσαι. (And the Muses, sending forth a lovely voice, sing and make kleos for the norms [nomoi] and accustomed ways of all the immortals, as they send forth a lovely voice.)" Kleio Play

The niece asked me to take an ID picture of her, and will now have to present Sophia wherever she goes.

Fascinating report on South Africa's new red gold (in addition to Rooibos we also have the rare conditions required to grow saffron) featuring our very own @wandilesihlobo.bsky.social. Would this work in Namaqualand @80incognito.bsky.social? edition.cnn.com/2025/08/29/w...

Rumour has it that @tyranosaurossmudge.bsky.social is stalking under blue skies again. He has yet to issue any statements though. This may explain why 👇

Like Heracles and Achilles, Odysseus is a hero whose conduct and character does not always adhere to what the ancient Greeks considered socially or morally acceptable. When art only demonstrates how we should be, we lose the opportunity to explore the consequences of the various ways we could be.

For anyone who is resisting installing Windows 11, because it seems exceedingly wasteful to ditch a perfectly good computer for a new one (just so that you can run an OS that drives you nuts), Zorin (Linux) is not only free, it works beautifully. Should you take the leap, this video is very helpful:

Homeric poetics is a higher-level system than a language ... its compositional units and syntactical conventions are more complex and feature narratives and characters as well as words and formulas and lines of poetry, but it is not a text with a single synchrony or a single grammar. (Muellner 2006)

Musical behaviours are "fundamental to many aspects of the uniquely complex manifestation of social structures that we see in humans today [making these abilities] a fundamental component of what makes human societies possible." (Iain Morley, 2014, 168) Muse ΑΟΙΔΗΝ

For #BlueSkyArtShow a compilation image showing every sculpture in the series "A Catalogue of Shapes". A collection of assemblages constructed to explore compositional, structural, and interpretive similarities between Homeric poetics and sculptural assemblage. #pieces #shapes #ancientbluesky #art

"when removed from their from their original contexts ... loosening their relation with networks of usefulness ... A thing can become not just less useful or useless, but more expressive of what it is or was. Think of objects that remind us of other people, or of our past." F. T. Pellizzer, 2024

On how to build a 'para-academia': "The implication is clear: to hold an institution to account, one must first know it intimately – its practices, its logics, its internal contradictions." thescholarlyletter.scholar-square.com/p/on-not-lea...

Happy #internationalcatday from Herakles ΑΘΑΝΑΤΑΙ and Hurricaine Sophia to all who celebrate inviting murderous semi-divine apex predators into their homes because they're just so darn cute.

Earworm of the day. Nothing like a running beat to ensure it escapes eviction. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cXC...

South African sculptor Angus van Zyl Taylor with his massive stone sculpture "Dionysus 2/3". It was created by stacking and carving 2 billion year old Belfast Gabbro (granite), and will be installed at the Château de la Croix des Gardes in Cannes. #ancientbluesky #classicalreception #art

Herewith my expression of deep respect and admiration for the unknown editor of the Housewives' League of South Africa Cookbook (published 1950), for their sterling comparative work on page 54. Also, many thanks to Mrs. R. Joubert, for providing another variant of her despair.

When Nando's South Africa made an ad about xenophobia and diversity in 2012, local media refused to air it because ultimately, everyone in S.A. has at some point come from elsewhere, except for the Khoisan who says "I'm not going anywhere. You *&!@#" found us here." 😂 www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBID...

AI 'art' is like season 8 of Game of Thrones. All those well-developed characters, environments, and narratives were in place. Without a book by Martin to guide them, the screenwriters had to apply what they had learnt from his work over 7 seasons. But, they could not replicate his inventive skill.

Rituals encompass a process of constant reinvention hiding behind an illusion of unchanging permanence. The repetition of actions and verbalized statements characteristic of ritual practices reflect a notion of the ritual as both ancient and unchanging, yet combines stasis with adaptive flexibility.