Oakfire Studios

All the usual excuses. Life, work, all that fun stuff. Latest drawing. Trying out some new ideas for pastel pencils.

I first read Michael Ventura’s essay, “Hear That Long Snake Moan” over twenty years ago.  I just had occasion to reread it.  It’s good when something from that long ago still has the power to move me.

This is what I’m currently working on. It’s mostly pastel pencils on Golden watercolor ground. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with the medium. I may have to work larger in order to get the kind of detail I want.

Is There a Culture War Against Populism?

3/2/18 by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Web player: http://podplayer.net/#/?id=47332263
Episode: https://podcast-a.akamaihd.net/mp3/podcasts/ideas-piv69i4e-20180302.mp3

Is it a positive wave or a troubling pattern? In this age of anxiety over joblessness and immigration, populist leaders in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Sweden and the Philippines are tapping in. Is populism, as the 1960’s American historian Richard Hofstadter called it, “a paranoid style of politics”? Or is it what others describe as “the essence of democratic politics”?

“Breath Arising” work in progress. Marker, pastel pencil, colored pencil. About five by seven inches. I’m thinking the background on the lower left still needs work.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf1Uqg1DTZP/

https://www.spreaker.com/user/iceboxradio/rib0308

Wisconsin’s Mound Builders

2/25/18 by Š 2015 Wisconsin Public Radio

Web player: http://podplayer.net/#/?id=47139116
Episode: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/UniversityOfTheAir/~5/6idoJjKla1Q/uoa150215a.mp3

Native American societies in Wisconsin built more effigy mounds than did those in any other region of North America . . . between 15 and 20 thousand of them, thousands of which remain. Wisconsin Historical Society Archaeologist Amy Rosebrough talks about some recent discoveries about the Wisconsin mound culture. Along the way, we’ll get a glimpse of what Wisconsin was like a thousand and more years ago, and find out how this area was connected to other parts of the country by trade and religion.

https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/j5xaqy/now-you-can-download-2500-japanese-woodblock-prints-from-the-library-of-congress

The Anatomy of Tyranny – Timothy Snyder

2/23/18 by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Web player: http://podplayer.net/#/?id=47062451
Episode: https://podcast-a.akamaihd.net/mp3/podcasts/ideas-r0ny3EZL-20180223.mp3

Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world. And Timothy Snyder wants to push back against this tide. A history professor at Yale University who’s written widely on Europe and the Holocaust, he takes an unusual approach in his little book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”. This episode features the lecture he gave in Toronto and a follow-up conversation with host Paul Kennedy.