A while back I mentioned the Jen’s Risom chair I picked up down in Salt Lake. Well, I finally got around to snapping a picture of my favorite spot in the house now, the reading corner in my bedroom.

Right next to the heater vent, books at the ready: down right heavenly.

Not to go all Martha on you…but.

After avoiding almost all of the Black Friday ridiculousness in local boutiques and antique dives, I stopped at the hardware store, and picked up these festive cedar swags at a bargain in the garden department. After weeding and feeding the lawn, I draped the swags about the posts and lintel using florists wire. One the garland was in securely in place, I trimmed it with sprigs of Japanese Barberry gathered from the various plants growing locally: their sharp thorns make for easy twining, and add a punch of delicate color. (Oh man, I wish I could do an audio post, so you could hear me do my best Martha-meets-Tim-Gunn voice — ha!)

Lately at work, and at home, I have been listening to nothing but Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. While not exactly Christmas music outright, it nevertheless does more for me to punch the holiday festivity up than hot chocolate made with dark Dutch cocoa and hand-cut homemade marshmallows.

And if you know me, you know that’s saying something.

Have a listen: Dinah Washington — Blue Gardenia.mp3 and Sarah Vaughan & Clifford Brown — April In Paris.mp3. You can thank me later.

This weekend has been a whirlwind of activity! Redecorated the living room, music room, and bedroom! Drew a lot! Had my family over for dinner! Finished the lawn! I am still kind of coming down off this crazy get-er-done high.

So here are some shots from recent projects:

I took a day down at my folks house, and my mom and I re-covered the pads for my Saarinen-esque dining room chairs. They were a horrible green polyester/tweed looking mess: stained, frayed and scratchy. Shown here, in my mom’s kitchen:

But I managed to score some great upholstery fabric in chocolate/sky-blue/turquoise pinstripe on sale from a local fabric store. Pair that with pale blue linen for the reverse and we were in business!

They look great, and feel terrific! This weekend, I made some stops at some local second-hand stores, Deseret Industries and the Green Ant, and managed to score this cool Jens Risom chair on the cheap! I will upload some shots of that once I get some better shots — I took a few but they look they were taken on a cell phone, I had the ISO up so high.

Meanwhile I’ve been up to my eyeballs in old cartoons — and it’s starting to show in my work at my day job. I was asked to illustrate a wintry scene for a local fundraiser’s holiday card, and this is what I came up with:

Tons of fun! In other news, I finally succumbed, and despite being warned I went ahead and delved into Heroes Season 3. And… wow. This is why I got rid of our television: shows like this rot my brain, are so infuriating, and I spend all day thinking “Man! That was horrible!” But I can’t. stop. watching!

I got my haircut today by a man named Jeff. Jeff works at Legends, this funky salon/loft in Provo, and came highly recommended by Hedi and Jeremy and Michele. Jeff hates Thomas Kinkade, Richard Paul Evans and Bob Ross; and is writing his own novel. Jeff and I got along swimingly. Anyway, it was just a trim.

I left Legends around 12, and was about to hop on the bus and head for home, but then decided I didn't really have anything to be doing, so I decided to go up the Meusem of Art at BYU. I had already seen the exhibits currently running there, but one in particular will keep me coming back weekly until it leaves, afterwhich I will probably be mopey and listless for a good long while.

Located in the Basement at the Museum is a machine. Actually, several machines. You hear them long before you get down the stairs, you hear them as you enter the building: bells (lots of bells), gears turning, toggles being flipped, paddles being struck, chimes being rang and the ever present din of rolling ball bearings.

And then there are the machines themselves. When you enter the basement, mounted across from the stairway you have just decended is a skeletal-metal figure mounted to the wall. An auger is silently spiralling upwards. Suddenly, a one-ich ball bearing comes rocketing into the contraption from a tube in the wall. The steel ball sling-shots around tiny-filamental rails, spirals around a coiled spring and comes to rest against the auger, where it is lifted up to a tube dissapearing into the wall.

On the other side of the wall, the ball is ushered into a much larger contraption, a cobweb of rails and slides, tons of tube and gears, all a steely-black. The rest of the room, however is a different story. The machines are all made of found objects, a gigantic conglomeration of assemblage art. Junk is literally bolted, welded, tied and trussed into one enourmous machine that works in noisy harmony.

The largest machine fills the center of the room. It is a monolith of gears and mechanical arms, of buckets and ramps, cogs and flywheels. All these parts are moving and gyrating. A crane arm with a magnet fixed at one end slowly lowers its payload: a ball bearing, into a metal basket. The ball is this-time sent rolling along a series of paths, slowly building speed until it is racing along coils and roller-coaster dips, rocketing off the path, jumping up two levels, then bouncing down a stairway made of xylophone keys. It comes to rest against a wagon wheel, which as it turns lifts the ball up, and sends it shooting down another series of rails, bouncing against windchimes and woodblocks, creating an impromptu symphony as it goes. All the while, a whole mess of other balls are shooting down alternate paths, adding to the dull roar. Every peice of the machine is painted a riot of color: electric oranges, turquoise blues, reds, rusts, corroded metals and sparkling gobs of welded joints. Buckets filled with spheres and balls and spools are slowly raised from the floor, and a crazy junk-plane glides over head.

What is especially neat about this exhibit is there really is no defined "peice space." The exhibits are all around you, they approach you. You interact with the art in a very surreal way: you cannot touch it, but you are forced to accomodate it; you walk around it, you dodge peices of it, you listen to it, you race along with it.

Across the floor is another machine, equally animated but noticeably quiter. The balls this time are made of light sponge foam. Instead of gravity and metal rails, they are propelled by silent gusts of air and snake-like pastic tubing. The make soft gonging noises as the strike the inside of giant metal chambers, and great bursts of water are sent glugging to the top of huge clear beakers. Some of the balls are confined to tiny cages, but are floating freely within them, bobbing atop steady streams of compressed air, tiny fans churning above them.

In addition to the moving peices, there are several static sculptures, all of which still seem to be very mobile. A makeshift Merry-Go-Round of garbage gliders, of bike-like contraptions, of junk-yeard carriages sits on platform, just waiting for someone to set into motion. In the corner, in a piece called "Spring," a flywheel attached to a spring is turning and turning, making the rusty-coil undulate and occilate, dancing like a gaint worm.

All of these sculpture are the work of a father and son team, Dennis and Andrew Smith, and are part of their exhibit "Poetic Kinetics." They are currently on display, and will be until October 13.

I have made the trip to the basement of the MOA at BYU maybe 15 time in the last two years. Seven of those times have been in the last two months, all of which have been spent in the Poetic Kinetics exhibit. I cannot express to you the intense joy these machines bring me.

I was talking to a 76-year-old woman today named Ruth. We were both standing in front of these machines grinning like total idiots. Ruth told me she took her grand-kids to this last night, and had to come back today for herself. We both made the comment that no matter how old you are, you are nothing but a total kid in this room. You have to be. I walk into that room and I might as well be six years-old. I oooh and ahhh with the kindergarten students next to me, and we both gasp in anticipation when one of the ball bearings alight from their path and swing up onto another some three-fett above our heads.

No matter what has happened earlier in the day, no matter how upset or depressing things are anywhere else, this exhibit makes you set everything aside, and just have fun. I am so giddy in this room it is ridiculous. At one point, while watching the black machine, Ruth actually clapped her hands together in total surprise, looking like she was about to faint. And I'm sorry, when a 20 year old boy, a 76 year-old woman, and a whole mess of pre-school age kids have the exact same reaction over the gyrations of one machine, you know you're on to something. This is astounding.

Imagine a gigantic musical game of Mousetrap, except the chain-reaction never stops, nor does the anticiaption.

I'm telling you, I am going to be torn up come October 14.

PS & ADDENDA: A link to Andrew Smith's website (really a must see, click on "rolling ball"), a link from BYU NewsNet regarding the exhibit; and Josh, you need to take Reece to this!