Tag: art

On my inner magpie, and other thoughts

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Teaching1 Comment

So, um, these showed up today. They are hand-numbered, 41/199. When I die, my wife can sell them to pay for my funeral. They will make me happy every time I walk past my bookshelves for the rest of my life.

Have I read the books yet? Nope. Although now I kind of have to. We’ll make it a summer project.

Teachers complain a lot, right? The understatement of the decade, surely. Like, read the site for five minutes. Teachers complain a lot. But one thing I feel like doesn’t get discussed enough is how emotionally fucked up the end of the school year can be, and now that I’m down to the last three days I’m starting to really have to stare that in the face. This has, on the balance, not been a bad year– there have certainly been moments, there always are, but in the main it’s been a pretty good year. Top half, let’s say.

Some years aren’t all that bad– last year comes to mind. But this year there are a good half dozen kids who I really, really like, who I’ve grown pretty close to over the course of the year … and I get to see them three more times and that’s it. They’re gone. And because I teach 8th grade, it’s worse, because they’re not just no longer in my class, they’re gone entirely. Like, maybe I’ll see them when they do their grad walk in four years, but that barely counts? And even if they do stay in touch, and some of them do, of course, it’s not like this is the kind of relationship where I can drag somebody out to lunch or go see a movie or some shit like that. Like, not even in a “that’s kinda weird” sorta way! A “people are going to assume terrible crimes are happening!” sort of way!

I don’t want to commit crimes! I just think your kid is cool and I would like to keep them in my life after seeing them nearly every fucking day for a year.

Next Thursday is going to really suck, is what I’m saying.

Related, but not really: I had a parent email me about a concern over the final, which in and of itself is just fine, but in the middle of the message she threw in “as you know, he tried taking his life a little over a month ago,” and NO THE MERRY FUCK I DID NOT, MA’AM. I thought for a minute she had mentioned it and I had forgotten, somehow, and looked through every previous email I’ve gotten from her, and … NOPE. There very much was no message about it.

And, like, how do you respond to that? Do I just pretend she told me? I ended up not directly addressing it one way or another and answering the substance of the email, which feels … weirdly flippant, somehow? I feel like I’m yadda-yaddaing a suicide attempt, but I also really don’t want to correct her on it. I may contact our social worker and see if he knew about it, but that potentially opens up an entire different can of worms if he didn’t.

Mental note, don’t put the question in writing.

In which I suck and it’s a lot of fun

On By Luther M. SilerIn artLeave a comment

We finally, after a reschedule or two, had our much-anticipated wheel throwing class tonight– the final part of my Christmas present, four months later. My pot, such as it is, is the one on the left, and the second of my wife’s two is in the back right. My first attempt was too terrible to even make it to the drying room; I essentially just let it die and go back to the recycling pile, and while our instructor really thought MLW should save her first one too, she thought the second was better.

Throwing pottery is really hard, as it turns out. That doesn’t actually surprise me– I was fully expecting to suck at this– but it was still a bit startling just how difficult things like “keep your fingers the same distance apart” can be. That doesn’t sound hard! But it is. You can see on my pot that there are a few places in the middle where it thins out abruptly, and that’s the same on the other side too, but one way or another it’s still a vast improvement over my first effort and I’m glad I ended up with something at least a little passable.

We want to take a whole bunch of other classes at this place, and I can easily see myself wanting to take the throwing class again just to have an expert on hand for when I inevitably screw up again. It’s super cheap just to go in there, buy some clay, and rent the wheel for a while, and we can do it any time they’re open, but I feel like it’d be wasted money until I can at least internalize the various hand positions for the different steps in the process. I need somebody around to tell me what I’m doing wrong and how to fix it if that’s possible.

(One random fun thing: the way you remove a piece of pottery, whether it’s good or complete failure, from the “bat”– that’s the disc it spins on– is by sliding a thin wire underneath it to slice it away from the bat. That has, for some reason, always looked like an intensely satisfying experience, and the best thing about my first attempt being a terrible piece of crap is I got to slice it off the bat. I am proud to report that that’s the thing I was best at, and it was exactly as pleasing as I thought it would be.)

We also have our mugs now, from our last attempt at this. We will glaze both items at once when the pots are done drying.

In which it’s cold & I made stuff

On By Luther M. SilerIn art2 Comments

We’re going to present these in reverse order, because one of them is a better picture than the other:

I finished the Lego Himeji Castle set this evening, which turned out to be a really fun build even if it continues the fine Lego tradition of putting a bunch of cool details in that are immediately completely covered up by other bricks, never to be seen again. I suppose I would rather have the cool details than not have them, but I wanna see them, dammit.

Also, I need a bigger house, because I have four unbuilt Lego sets sitting in boxes a few feet away from me right now and I have no idea where the hell I’m going to put any of them once they’re done. Anyone want to give me their house?

My wife got me (well, both of us, but I was the one who wanted them) registered for three pottery classes at a local makerspace for Christmas, and we had our second class today, charmingly titled “Build a Mug.” The first class was kintsugi pottery and I did not post my product from that one because, frankly, I screwed up on the very first step and didn’t notice it until it was much too late, and since the modern version of kintsugi involves repairing broken pottery with epoxy, the initial mistake meant that every subsequent piece I tried to put back together only ended up slightly more askew, and the final product just looks crap.

This mug? It’s not glazed yet, but I think I might actually use this mug once I have it finished in a couple of weeks. It needs to dry for about ten days and then we can go in and glaze it for final firing, so it’ll be a bit before I can post a picture of the final product, but my understanding is that glazing will smooth over a lot of the little imperfections. This obviously won’t look professional but I don’t think it looks completely crap, and the class was a lot of fun.

We’re actually doing a throwing class on Valentine’s Day, and I am fully ready to make pottery my entire Goddamned personality for a while if that’s as much fun as I think it might be.

On hobbies

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek5 Comments

I need a new obsession to keep me busy between now and the election. The way this weekend is going I’m going to have to do a full news/internet blackout in the next couple of weeks if I want to keep my sanity. Anyone want to buy me a lathe or a pottery wheel or, like, an easel and a bunch of those … things … you paint on, that I’ve forgotten the name of for some reason?

Holy shit, I really can’t remember.

Canvases! Anyone want to buy me an easel and some canvases? And I guess some paint?

Got thirty more cards done today. I think that’s my limit before my handwriting falls apart and I start misspelling things at random, as evidenced by the fact that I typed “limmit” just now and it was 100% deliberate and not a slip of the fingers. Either way, that’s a fourth of them done. Not bad.

Maybe I’ll make my son a couple more notebooks. He seemed to enjoy the first one well enough. I’ve got all this bookmaking crap lying around, I may as well use it.

New tattoo!

On By Luther M. SilerIn art, Teaching2 Comments

It has been, I think, sixteen or seventeen years since my last tattoo. I know my wife was with me; I’m less certain that we were actually married at the time. And while you very well might be looking at that and wondering what the hell I was thinking, I’ve been thinking about this exact design for my next tattoo (that’s my right wrist) for most of that time, and only just now decided to pull the trigger on it.

It is, oh, I dunno, sometime during the first Obama administration, and I am at a training with a bunch of other teachers from my school, none of whom are math teachers. We are presented with three pieces of construction paper, held together in the center by a brass paper fastener, in this shape: a large square, with a circle inscribed in the square, and a second square inscribed inside the circle.

“Figure out what the ratio of the inner square to the outer square is,” they tell us. “You can do whatever you like to come up with the answer.”

My entire group looks at me.

Sigh. Okay, fine, I’ll math this shit. To be entirely honest, I do not, at this time, remember exactly how I got the answer, but there was a lot of Pythagoras involved, and I think at least one place where I solved a set of equations with two variables. It took a few minutes. I’ve considered reconstructing the math, but I think the story is kind of better if I don’t. The ratio is 1:2. In other words, the outer square is twice the size of the inner square.

Anyway, they give us a few minutes, and then ask if anyone wants to share their answer. My group volunteers me to explain my answer, having heard my explanation and apparently accepting none of it. So I attempt to explain my logic to this group, again, none of whom are math people. It takes a few minutes and I may have killed at least one of them. The presenters, now with wide grins on their faces, because they are a step ahead of me and I have walked into their trap, ask if anyone else solved the problem in a different way. A large man on the other side of the room raises his hand. They call on him. He looks like a not-insignificant portion of the people who know him call him Coach, possibly including people he has never actually coached.

He asks if he can use their prop. They say yes, and their grins get larger.

He demonstrates a solution in about a second, by rotating the inner square exactly forty-five degrees to the left.

“S’ half,” he says, and sits the fuck back down.

I start swearing. There’s a moment of disbelief and then the whole room, including me, starts laughing.

Perhaps you have trouble picturing what he’s done. Let me draw this real quick:

I think it is probably immediately clear to everyone looking at this, with the inner square rotated, that the inner square is half of the outer square.

A few days later, I found a second construction-paper shape similar to this one in my classroom, also held together by a brass paper fastener. I kept it in my classroom for years. I don’t think I have it any longer, but I had it for a really long time, across multiple classrooms in multiple schools.

This tattoo is my permanent reminder that sometimes shit does not have to be complicated, which is something I have been fairly accused of in my life, more than once.

Survey results & explanation

On By Luther M. SilerIn art, Geek3 Comments

As I suspected, no one— and I include myself in this, for the record, I’m not trying to be demeaning– has any idea what an expensive watch looks like, at least not from pictures.

Most people thought watch B was the most expensive.

A tie for the mid-range watch, with some people thinking it was B and the rest choosing C. And finally:

A somewhat more significant majority picked watch A as the cheapest watch.

The truth: none of them are watches at all! Everything is cake.

Nah, not really.

Watch C, the Caliber 0210, is the most expensive watch, retailing at $8400.

Watch A, the Eco-Drive One, is the mid-range-for-our-purposes-but-still-holyshit-expensive watch, at $4750.

… which leaves Watch B, the humble Weekender, as the $236 watch. Which means that the plurality of votes for the most expensive watch went to the least expensive watch, and most people believed that the Eco-Drive One would retail for a price one-twentieth of its actual cost.

Now, I’m cheating just a bit here. We’re just using images, and I have no idea if it would be much more obvious in person that, at least, the Weekender was the cheapest one; I have to assume it would. I deliberately chose three watches that were as similar to each other as possible, too; I can imagine a world where I rerun this experiment using watches that are as different as possible to see if correct answers are more common.

As for the reasons for this little game: I’m annoyed with my current (and second) Apple Watch. I apparently went with a lower grade of glass when I bought the second watch, and at least compared to the first one it’s scratched to hell. I replaced the first watch after several years when the battery stopped consistently getting me through a full day, and this one is starting to head toward that neighborhood in less time, but the first watch was spotless when I got rid of it. There wasn’t a single mark anywhere on the damn thing. Not so much with this one, and I really don’t want to spend $800 on a new watch with the higher-end glass.

Also, I’m tired of being so tethered to devices all the goddamn time, and I’d kind of like a watch I don’t have to charge, which is how I’ve fallen down this current rabbit hole. I’m old enough and I have enough money that I’d like a Nice Watch; I don’t want to just go to Kohl’s and pick some $29 piece of bullshit off of a shelf, but the problem is that watches are proving to be really difficult to shop for on the Internet. You really need to be able to see a watch on your wrist to be able to judge whether you like it, and while Citizen(*) has a cool app that sort of mimics letting you try a watch on virtually, it ends up making everything look awful and so probably doesn’t work the way they want it to.

The other problem is that if I don’t want the aforementioned $29 piece of bullshit from Target or Kohl’s I have to go to an actual Goddamn jewelry shop, most of whom, at least around here, don’t really put their stock on their websites, and (I suspect) don’t really specialize in the $300-500 sweet spot that I arbitrarily-and-kinda-randomly decided my price range was going to be. Plus, clearly, no one can tell the difference between a $236 watch and an $8400 watch, so why would I shell out more than a few C-notes? I need the fucking thing to tell time, not impress people.

Also, every watch I liked on Citizen’s website had people complaining in the reviews that it was hard to read.

Also also, most watch companies appear to top out at 9″ bands. I continue to not believe I have enormous wrists, but I apparently have enormous wrists. I can’t order a single watch from Citizen that I’m confident will fit well. Which means I’m back into stores, which … rinse and repeat.

Style is stupid, is what I’m saying here.

(*) Also more or less chosen randomly, as a known Classy Brand that isn’t, like, fucking Rolex or something.**

(**) Did y’all know Swatch was back???? I’m pretty sure I went to school at least once wearing three Swatch watches at the same time. (***)

*** There is also such a thing as the South Bend Watch Company, which isn’t the original South Bend Watch Company, which was apparently a big deal in the early 1900s. They sell precisely three different watches and each of them costs $599.

Yearly supplies bleg

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I’ve got $75 in classroom decor stuff in my cart at Amazon at the moment, waiting for it to be tomorrow for my paycheck to hit before I pull the trigger, and I’m already planning on hitting the teacher store tomorrow for a few things I’d rather pick up in person. I think this purchase will put me right around $350 for this year, and school doesn’t start for another week and a half; there will be more. I went to work today for most of the morning, moving things around and putting things together and starting to make Real Decisions for how the classroom is going to look.

Which, uh, means it’s time for my yearly request for donations. If — if — any of you happen to have some money burning a hole in your pockets and want to donate something to your absolute favorite middle school math teacher, my Amazon wish list for my classroom is here. These are all consumable supplies; pencils, Post-Its, paper, markers, crayons, and dry erase markers are all enormously appreciated and will absolutely get used.

Thank you in advance for anyone willing to donate.

Terrible pictures of beautiful pictures

On By Luther M. SilerIn art, PhotographyLeave a comment

The Leeper Park Art Fair was this weekend, and I’ve been waiting a literal year to go buy something printed on metal from Josh Merrill, and we went and did that this morning. And, damn it, this looks gorgeous in person, and I was excited enough about it that I got it hung the same day we bought it, which qualifies as a minor miracle. So naturally now, because I’m a schmuck, looking at my picture of it all I can see is that damn smoke alarm and that it looks too small over the couch.

In person, not the case. That’s a 20″ x 40″ print, and in person it doesn’t look that small. Also, and in general, prints on metal don’t seem to photograph well; the colors glow in a way that I find completely entrancing in person, and I love this piece. That said, instead of fighting with glare and such to take another picture from my phone, here’s the piece, entitled “New Day,” taken from his website:

In case you didn’t click on the link, that picture is taken inside of an ice cave somewhere in northern Minnesota and it was seventeen below zero outside at the time. Josh is a lunatic, y’all.