Madame Peripetie on the Behance Network

I joined the Behance Network in order to build a new portfolio of my work. But I have come to realize that the site is probably the best place to discover amazing talent from all over the world. Here is a perfect example, some work entitled Dream-sequence from German photographer, Madame Peripetie.

Click this link to visit Dream-sequence on the Behance Network

Funny New Animated Edtoon by Mark Fiore

Confabulous Digital Art

I love it when art forces the viewer's mind to perceive new realities and invent new contexts. Everything is familiar about this, and nothing.


Circular Confabulation from QNQ/AUJIK on Vimeo.

More work from New Age proto-Shinto video motion graphics group QNQ/AUJIK can be found their Web site.

My new online portfolio...

Apple ceased supporting remote Homepages hosting which I had been using for my online portfolio, so I looked around for an alternative and found Behance, a form-based portfolio builder connected to a community including social networking applications. Great!

I've done a lot of widely varied types of work, from graphic design, to illustration, to photomontage, to creative direction, to editing and writing ... both in advertising and publishing ... so, it took me a while to redo all of the various sections. But it's nearly done. Take a look.

About the only thing left to post are samples from 18 years of editorial cartooning for the Palm Beach Daily News.

Fast facts on an historic (West) Palm Beach Home

Photo: Palm Beach County Historical Society

This photo of my great-grandfather, George Wells Potter's, home was featured in a recent Palm Beach Daily News article as an example of early Palm Beach architecture from the period just prior to Henry M. Flagler's arrival. It is actually one of the best examples of the work of George W. Lainhart, who built many of the early Palm Beach homes in the 1880's and '90s. But it was not built on Palm Beach island.

The caption under the Palm Beach County Historical Society photo is correctly dated as being taken in 1893. That was the year that George Potter married Ella May Dimick and built her a new home on the other side of Lake Worth, in West Palm Beach, after selling his 160 acre Palm Beach homestead. It sat on a ridge about 150 yards up from the shore, overlooking the lake. The Trump Towers occupy the location today.

It was also the year that George Potter and George Lainhart founded the Lainhart & Potter Building Materials Company. Potter's new house was their first project. They built a tramway nearby to offload the materials. and that tramway served the new company when they took on their next job; providing lumber and materials for Henry Flagler's Royal Poinciana Hotel.

I remember this house well. I visited my great grandmother Ella there many times as a child. Right at the entrance, in the foyer, was a large display case filled with a museum-quality shell collection that fascinated my sister and I. All of the shells were lined up on wide shelves and labeled with their scientific names.

My grandmother was born in this house and grew up in it. She would often speak of watching Flagler's Whitehall being built across the lake when she was five years old from the third floor dormer room windows as she played with her dolls.

The house and property remained in the family after my great-grandmother died, but sat empty on the lakefront for a good decade before it was torn down sometime around 1967. Over the years, the property had become increasingly valuable due to waterfront development and the taxes were eating my father and his sister alive. They had two choices, either sell the property or develop it and sell it for more later.

Unfortunately, there was no interest in the historical value of the home at the time.

My father, an architect, decided to develop the property with a motel that he designed himself. I was with him and my grandfather as we cleared the house of remaining furniture and fixtures before it was to be demolished. Up in one of the dormer rooms, my grandfather leaned on a closet wall and it fell through to reveal a secret storage area filled with china.

I was standing by my dad's side, watching, as the old house was torn down. I'll never forget how he laughed when the wrecking ball literally bounced off of the house. The demolition company had to call in heavier equipment to tear it down and it took them much longer than expected. The house was made out of Dade County Pine which has a sap that turns into a composite-like material with age ... harder than concrete. The corner posts were made out of 8" X 8"s, and the walls were framed with 4" X 4"s.

They don't build them like that anymore.

No. It's conformity that killed the cat.

My most standards, recycled homebuilder Dan Phillips seems like the quirkiest guy in the room ... until you hear him talk about his guerilla construction philosophy. Then, you realize he's the sanest man on the planet.

And now for a little North Polarization

This cartoon originally appeared in an earlier Synonumb post, but fits here too. Click the image to enlarge.

My wife and I are Palm Beach County Floridians who have friends in Alaska. On several occasions, we've had the good fortune to travel across the continent and see how the other half lives. It's quite different.

During the brief few months of spring and summer, Alaska explodes with the cycle of life, death and renewal. It should be no surprise that this is also deeply ingrained in culture of Alaskans. Many of them mount expeditions to net copious amounts of salmon and hunt deer, caribou and moose. All of these require special licenses. 

Having a successful hunt requires a great deal of preparation and effort, and one doesn't always come away with the prize. But when you do, it provides the healthiest meat anyone can put in their mouths. Stocking up also helps defray ever rising heating fuel costs during the long winter months.

In particular, it is hard to bag a caribou. They usually can only be reached by packing deep into the wilderness. If you manage to find, and then have the skill to kill one, you must then pack hundreds of pounds of meat back out — definitely not like a trip to the grocery store.

That's why this recent very popular blog by Aaron Sorkin on the Huffington Post is the pot calling the kettle black. Infinitely more "snotty" than Sarah Palin's defensive quip, it is utterly hypocritical. But worse, it is blatantly designed to increase polarization and perpetuate intolerance toward the diversity of American's culture.

I'm not a big fan of Sarah Palin, but she is an Alaskan. Heck, a lot of Alaskans don't like her politics or her grandstanding either, but the last thing they would criticize her for is bagging a caribou.