Miriam Badyrka is The Doodler

Doodle of the Week

I like this doodle even though there is an unfinished medallion in the middle on the right. There is one on the bottom left that looks like it ought to be the board from a Chinese board game. Maybe I should make one up. What do you think?

Doodle of the Week

We were up in Forest Park last weekend and it was so beautiful, it took your breath away. Spring has sprung and there is no way to stop it. The forest floor was carpeted in blooms and buds and shoots. My usual inclination is to call a group of medallions a bunch of stars, but to honor the season, I am going to call them a sprinkling of blooms.

Here is a little bonus doodle. I rarely write shopping list and such out any more. I use my phone for everything. Unfortunately, that means that I make fewer doodles in the margins.

While I was talking on the phone, I made this little doodle. I am pretty sure we were not discussing sending a horse into space, or giving dogs the evil eye. I would remember a conversation like that.

The return of half circles, horses, a head, and some dogs which may or may not be dacshunds in this week's doodle. If they are, I think its weird, because I have a labrador.

Anyway it reminds me of the strangest dog/owner interaction I ever had. This happened years ago. I was out roaming around the neighborhood. A dacshund ran over and chomped on my ankle for no apparent reason. The owner who is on the porch hollers, "Go ahead, kick him if you want."

I did want. Thing was chomping on me.

I will leave it to you to decide if I did it or not.

Doodle of the Week

Another imaginary alphabet. I call them that because whever I make these I think they must mean something. It's the orderly arrangement of the elements, it looks like language. If it is writing, then I must be able to read them. Right?

I have a giant cardboard tube that the flooring for our bathroom came on in my studio. I know what I have to use it for now.

Doodle of the Week

This week's doodle. That's all I have to say today. I am tired and/or boring. You pays yer money and ya takes your choice.

Looking at

It’s happened again, time to clean out my bookmarks.

Laurie Frick. Absolutely wonderful. She records and tracks data about herself, and then she uses that data to make incredible artwork.

I had bookmarked an image, but apparently, she has a blog as well. I haven’t explored it, but I intend to. It looks interesting.

(Quantify Me, Laurie Frick)

Jill Gallenstein. Symmetry, pattern, beauty.

(Silent Spring, detail, Jill Gallenstein)

Doodle of the Week

I saw the play Red over the weekend. It was about the great painter, Mark Rothko. This is not a review of the play. I am not a good critic. I basically love any art preformed right in front of me. But it got me thinking, which is probably the best thing a play could do.

In the play Rothko says (and I believe this is something he actually did say) that representative work asks less of the viewer than abstraction.

 This way over simplified, but Representation shows the viewer what it is. Abstraction cloaks its meaning and requires that the viewer look for what it is. 

I enjoyed the philosophical discussion of the work which dominated the play. I am not a rigorous academic. I do not work from a place of cool intellect. I work in an organic way. I work from instinct.

 My work is meditation. Both on my part making the work, and, I hope, on the part of the viewer contemplating it.

 The question is whatever you bring to it. The answer is whatever you think it is. The work itself is merely a focal point.

 

 

Doodle of the Week

This is a biggie, so just keep scrolling.

The medallions have less visual weight than the carpet. They are far more open and are a kind of visual resting place. I like the little animal shape that has begun to appear. The motif only faces one direction, which I think is odd. I flip it around, but only draw them facing one direction. I don't know why that is. Doodles are mysterious.

Doodles and Marginalia

I knocked over a pile of doodles and noticed that many of them have cryptic little notes on them. Here is a random sampling:

If you are not going to kill me, I have things to do. Anthony Gormley. History of the World in 100 Objects. Locksmith.George Dawes Green. Don't know what makes you so dumb, but it really works. Aardvarks. Folly & glory. 3:2. Wretched hive of scum and villany. Symbol of fertility vs symbol of death. I'll strike you down with the worst form of leprosy. Everything that existed as well as the inner meaning of existence. April 1906. You inbred puddle of piss. Sound as symbol. He's always talking about his inferiors, but no one can find them. Plunging whole hog into a celebratory spirit. Napolean didn't understand naval strategy. Charlie Kaufman. A zigzag series of cracks. You cannot *&%! the future, the future *&%!s you. Who wrote A Rainy Night in Georgia. Join the effin' club of everybody. Sesquipedalianism. Wallendar credit. These boots aren't made for running. Lipstick on a particular platypus. Epimetheus.

Epimetheus is a color name from a paint chip and the guy/god/whatever who was married to Pandora. I thought that was incredibly strange and random name to give to blue paint.

Doodle of the Week

 

A pretty carpet pattern this week. Some of the interior medallions remind me of kalidescope patterns. I love kalidescopes but I don't have any. I cannot resist looking through them when I come across them. There are some really incredible ones out there made from gemstones, but I even like the ones made with colored paper.

Of course, there are computer generated kalidescopes.  Here is a simple drag and drop one, and we have a video kaldescope too.