Pandora

I'm probably late to the game, but Joel recently referred me to Pandora and I love it. It's been ideal because my computer is right next to my drawing table. I've made a good electric blues station for myself.

They don't have classical yet, but say it's on the way.

"Art"

From Ed Morrissey:

When Exactly did Art Die?

At least the latest travesty in the art world comes Down Under rather than the US, but that only shows how global the collapse of art from a meaningful form to an anti-Christian realm of bigots has become. The latest examples are entrants in the Blake Prize competition in Australia, which features a statue of the Virgin Mary in a burqa and a holographic image of Jesus that transforms into ... Osama bin Laden:

THE artist behind a controversial work depicting terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden morphing into Jesus today asked people to look deeper into the work.

Queensland artist Priscilla Bracks denied she had deliberately set out to be offensive.

"Absolutely not, no, no. I am not interested in being offensive. I am interested in having a discussion and asking questions about how we think about our world and what we accept and what we don't accept," she told ABC radio. ... Ms Bracks said one issue behind her work was the glorification of Osama bin Laden in some parts of the world.

"What I was thinking about is, well, what would happen to the stories about this man over thousands of years. Could that possibly lead to someone with a cult-like status," she said.

Right. So Osama is somehow the Jesus of our time. I get that, too, because Jesus went around killing people as a show of his power, and directed his followers to go out into the world and kill everyone who didn't believe in his teachings. Oh, wait ...

Here is the entire post.

Froggy Inked

The Catechism on Art

2501 Created "in the image of God," man also expresses the truth of his relationship with God the Creator by the beauty of his artistic works. Indeed, art is a distinctively human form of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being's inner riches. Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man's own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God's activity in what he has created. Like any other human activity, art is not an absolute end in itself, but is ordered to and ennobled by the ultimate end of man.

Quote

I'm spending my Saturday night drawing and listening to the thunderstorm outside. It reminded me of this quote I recently found by Maryann Fariello (an artist I know next to nothing about):

Making art is such a private journey. The most inspiring and creative moments are in silence and solitude. They are unaccompanied by applause or fanfare; just internal thunder.