H L Birdsong

Sometimes the worst thing about work-from-home self-employment is not having colleagues to vent to when inevitable frustrations happen.

(I’m being facetious—the total lack of security is the worst thing. I’m just feeling frustrated and wish I had someone to commiserate with me.)

An ink drawing of a rocky island with small shacks and tall stony towers

#bloctober day 5, a couple of tall towers to loom over the fishing shacks this time. Wanna own this drawing? If you donate $25 or more to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, I’ll send you this drawing as a thank-you! pcrf.net to donate, new drawings all month long.

Dear past me, who got paint all over the edge of the jar and just put the lid on anyway: Fuck you.

Lid’s dented, hands hurt, and there are little dried paint chips all over my work surface—and a few, alas, in this (now open!) jar of paint. Probably gonna be picking them out til this jar’s empty

The entire AI debate is basically a bunch of tech bros stating, "We're going to steal your work--and even your face and voice" and artists angrily saying, "NO!"

Even the cops here find patrolling the building ICE rented to be pretty boring, and our police love escalating everything, “sanctuary city” or not

They could clean up the copious amount of crow shit, and that would actually be useful

The history of atomic testing in a nutshell, from Bikini Atoll to the Nevada Proving Grounds

My first thought was, “Oh no, will I have to give up my word of the day morning ritual?” Thankfully not!

I wonder if it got dragged by a boat somehow? Poor thing

Turns out Gabriel Byrne wrote a memoir and reads the audiobook version. I can now (more or less) achieve my adolescent fantasy, thanks to my local library

HE HAS! He wrote a memoir and reads the audiobook version. Thanks, Libby and Multnomah County Library

I wasn’t wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I still want Gabriel Byrne to read to me. Has he ever done any audio books…?

This persistent myth that “antifa” is an actual organization of some kind, rather than an informal, non-exclusive ideology entirely summed up by “fascism is bad” is so wild

I started adding a per-meeting fee to my contracts

At such times I always ask myself, usually with some aspersion, “Is it still procrastinating if it’s productive?”

But I’ve come to accept that sometimes I just have to do the Other Thing before my brain lets me focus on the Main Thing.

I went from panicking about not having client work lined up to having 3 projects with urgent, short deadlines—2 with minimal direction. Thanks, universe, for responding to that cri de coeur with such verve

I love a short-turnaround design project that has “I’m interested to see where you go with this” as the totality of client direction. 🫠

Why don’t contract projects with this level of freedom ever run on a slow track? Is this a Murphy’s Law of graphic design?

Attention volunteers, we need your help to pull invasive ivy! We are hosting 3 work parties in Forest Park and Marquam Nature Park this weekend for National Public Lands Day, and we want you to join us! It would be incredible to have 3 full work sites on National Public Lands Day.

bit.ly/4nk3gVt

I hate when that happens—but at least you have a head start on the next one, right?

webcomic name

Alex Norris. Here’s the original: webcomicname.com/post/1855884...

Big Tech Is Coming For Your Health Data. Here’s How To Protect Your Information. Here’s how you can protect your health information.

Big Tech Is Coming For Your Health Data. Here’s How To Protect Your Information.

A View From the Easel This week, artist studios in California, Florida, New York, and Oregon.

Julie Green spent half of each year working on The Last Supper—the sunnier months, because it was too emotionally fraught to work on in the dark, rainy seasons of the PNW. In March 2019, @hyperallergic.com featured one such moment in A View From the Easel. I love that such traces of Julie remain.

I was thinking about that mess recently. I haven’t set foot in that gallery since. It’s so hard for an artist to walk away from representation, but it was heartening to see you and others make that choice.

Julie Green at the 2020 Armory Show in NY, impeccable in hat, scarf, jacket, and signature red lipstick, smiling with a glass of champagne. The colorful plates behind are from the Fashion Plate series. The paintings are on Chinet paper plates, some with glow-in-the-dark elements—why I sometimes use glow pigment in my work—and/or gold leaf. Julie blended “high” and “low” in a deliberate challenge to materials hierarchy and perceived value.

Happy birthday to artist Julie Green, whom I miss very much.

Their most famous project, The Last Supper—paintings on ceramic plates illustrating final meals of executed US prisoners—is on view at the Boise Art Museum. A 3D virtual tour is available: boiseartmuseum.org/exhibition/j...

Probably won’t surprise anyone that I’ve long been a fan of Lygia Clark’s sculptural work.

Those ears! So cute!

Wow! Both hilarious and horrifying

Submit your work to our online exhibition: The Instant Photography Show today in celebration of Blue Sky's 50th anniversary year. There is no entry fee.
www.blueskygallery.org/news/the-ins...

“A refusal of AI in creative work begins with a refusal of that product’s ideological packaging. … The way out of AI hell is not to regroup around our treasured flaws and beautiful frailties, but to launch a frontal assault. AI, not the human mind, is the weak, narrow, crude machine.”

I always think, “Oh, it’s not so hard! I have loads of experience doing this!” But then it is still hard and feels like trying to walk around in the wrong-sized shoes