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I rode my dirt bike up into Daggett Creek today to do some watercolor painting. There is an old cabin up there next to an old mine that I have visited often. There is an old outhouse just up the creek from the cabin. I noticed someone has built a horseshoe pit up near the mine, so someone has been spending some time up there. They also split some wood and stacked it inside the cabin. The front porch has fallen down on one side and the roof next to the creek has collapsed. The old Chevy truck is still back in there as well. I scooped water out of Daggett Creek to use for my watercolor paints. It was a gorgeous day and very relaxing to just sit and paint and listen to the creek running by and the wind blowing through the pines.
~Tad Jones
I updated my Mom’s website today with some of her latest artwork. She is producing some amazing work. Below is one of my favorite pieces called “The Five Elements”
Click here to visit the website for Deb Jones Yensen & see more of her artwork!
The 2009 ski season at Bogus Basin has been excellent! A great way to end the season was with the annual end of the season costume party. This year Karma and I were the “Killer Bees on Skis!” We met up with friends Clancy and Tucker Anderson and their families. Clancy’s son Oliver was dressed up as a Meerkat and kept us in line. Click on the image below to see a video of the last day and party at Bogus! Special thanks to Bogus Basin and the events director JJ McCleod for a fantastic season!
I rode my bicycle out to the Black Cliffs this weekend with my bike trailer in tow along with some art supplies. I did this watercolor painting looking up Car Body Canyon. The Black Cliffs are made up of columnar basalt rock formations. There were small patches of snow on the canyon rim which is depicted on the right-hand side of the painting. A small waterfall was trickling over ice in the very center of the canyon and every once in a while I could hear pieces of ice break off and crash to the rocks below.
Tim Prentice does some amazing installations. I ran across an installation in Coeur D’ Alene that was done in 2007. Of his installations my favorites are “Biplane” and “Yellow Zinger”.
As many of you know my Mom, Deb Jones Yensen, has been attending BSU to achieve her Master of Fine Arts. I am extremely proud of her for overcoming the daunting task of going back to school and completing the amount of work it takes to achieve such a goal.
This first piece is a collaborative work which she and five other artists produced after reading an article on what it takes to feed our world. My Mom produced the engraving of the cow. Below is a quote from her.
“I engraved the cow. We had to read an article about feeding the world; the article stated that most grain and corn is used to feed cattle, for people to eat, instead of feeding people the grain and corn.”
This second piece is a part of the Oregon Ink Spot exchange project and is entitled “crocus”.
The work she produces is very close to nature and has a lot of empathy and sensitivity. I am excited to see what she will produce next. Keep up the great work Mom!
–Tad
When I was in architecture school I worked at the airport to help supplement my tuition and pay for flight time. Often I was allowed to help the A&P mechanics work on the airplanes and perform menial tasks for them. When the mechanics would rebuild or repair portions of the planes they would throw the old pieces into scrap piles and sorting bins I always thought that many of those pieces were art forms in their own right. The forms and curves of airplane parts are absolutely beautiful to me. When I am performing the pre-flight before I fly, the feeling of running your hands across the airfoils and propeller blades somehow makes you feel closer to nature. You can feel the principles and theories developed over the years that we now know as aerodynamics run from the tips of your fingers throughout your body. As we are embarking on this new company that will integrate architecture and aviation I have been researching other companies that incorporate design with aviation and came across this one.
I believe that this company shares the same passion for design and aviation that has shaped my life and career as an architect and a pilot.
interflight studiosI would like to finish today’s blog with a quote from Antoine de Saint Exupery – the famous French Aviator and author.
“Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”
Antoine de Saint ExuperyI have been researching “illusions” that can have an impact on a pilot’s perception and actions and/or reactions. The idea is to gain a better understanding of the “illusions” and the effects they have on the mind and to mitigate symtoms such as “empty field myopia”. I first became interested in these “illusions” while studying under professor Bill Bowler at the University of Idaho. Bill introduced me to some of the art pieces and installations dealing with light and space by James Turrell.
Listen to the commentary at the end of the video below in which the woman says, “When you really start to look, then you start to lose yourself….and that’s when it becomes very…disorienting.” It then shows the woman bumping into the solid matter, “Whoa”.
The empty field is similar to the effect of flying into a cloud or into a dark night sky with no references in IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) conditions. Without a horizon or other objects to relate to, the pilot can easily lose directional control of the aircraft and end up in a spiral dive with the feeling that they are still traveling straight and level (if not paying attention to their instruments). The centripital force of the spinning motion can be misinterpereted giving the pilot the sensation that the airplane is traveling straight and level, when in “reality” the aircraft may be in a spiral towards the ground. As the woman in the video says above. “Whoa”. Click the link below to see what a spiral dive looks like from inside the cockpit with external references in VFR (Visual Flight Rules) conditions.
From inside the cockpit:
From outside the cockpit: