Posts Tagged ‘short story’

Printmaking Without A Press

Printmaking Without A Press

Li von Garske

The very ancient art forms are often thought of being crude or simple rather than fine arts, and are therefore assumed to be “crafts” for the non-professional.  I have a degree to prove my eligibility as a professional and I guarantee that the despised linoleum block, used with respect, produces fine art prints that cannot be equaled by any other method.  Since lino-cuts can be produced without expensive presses acid baths, or metal plates, the cost of producing a really fine print lies within the reach of many more would-be artists than any other type of prints, except woodcarving, and is much easier to carve.

The requirements for making a linoleum carving are as follows:
•    A piece of linoleum (called ‘the block’)
•    A set of carving tools (costing under six dollars)
•    A roller for inking the block
•    Some rice paper (your choice) to print
•    Some tracing paper, and a sheet of carbon paper
•    Talent, or in lieu thereof, a desire to express oneself

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Fishes Worth Their Salt

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY

DEPT: Marine Sciences: Ichthyology: EvG

Fishes Worth Their Salt

Aquarium keeping is one of the biggest leisure-time activities in the country today, and yet even the amateur aquarist of many years standing has seldom kept a brackish water tank.   Some of our most popular specimens have been considered as delicate, short lived, breedable only by specialists or by sheer luck or not at all, only because the brackish water tank was lacking.  In a day when Saltwater tanks are proliferating, it seems strange that the missing link between the two is neglected.    I think that this because most aquarium keepers do not quite know what fish are available for this environment, and what the rewards can be.  Some of the most exotic fish available like a brackish tank.

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The Deeper Door

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY

DEPT: Art History: Blog: EvG

Note:  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The Deeper Door

He was unshaven, unwashed, old, fat, sick, and very, very, famous.

What light there was seemed more that of a chapel than of a studio.  An on-looking eye could have seen the wall-sized canvasses of nearly identical hues only as a dark aura surrounding his lone figure.  What his eyes saw was not in that room at all.

He was looking back to the beginning of the world… and anticipating the end of it.

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The Latch-Key Brothers

The Latch-Key Brothers

A Modfolk Tale

Li von G.

Once upon a Tuesday, a few years back that-a-way, there were three brothers, Pit, Pot, and Peter.  The three brothers were part-time orphans.  Which is to say they were given their own latch-keys as soon as they graduated from preschool.  Their Mother worked as a social worker for the County, in order to help pay for the food, the utilities and the Porshe.  Their father worked as a legal clerk during the day to pay for the house, the pool, and the Ferrari, and worked at night as a Guru for the kicks.  Although they saw very little of their hard-working parents the little latch-key kids did not lack on advice on how to get on in the world.  They were given sage council by the teenaged babysitters that raised them.

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Why Grandmothers have grey hair.

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY
DEPT: Folklore: Bello Russian: EvG

WHY GRANDMOTHERS HAVE GREY HAIR

At the back of Mount Kaf, which is called The Caucasian Mountains today, they used to tell the story of why grandmothers have grey hair.  They say that it is because of the very first Grandmother a long, long time ago.  Like all grandmothers, she was first a mother.  A young mother with shining black tresses.  The young mother worked hard to make a nice home for her husband and her dearly loved child, but she always brushed her hair which was very long one hundred strokes every night.  Her hair was so beautiful and so dark that the night itself was not blacker.  The Dark Angel, whose job it was to search through the night, for people and animals who were sick and suffering and to carry them safely to Heaven where they would suffer no more, would sigh in passing at the beauty of her night-black hair.

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The Street and Simon L’Gree

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY
DEPT: America circa 1935: EvG

THE STREET AND SIMON L’GREE

It was a city street, but not the kind that would ever suggest danger.  It was a dinosaur of a street that the city had grown around and left untouched.  Houses were old without being shabby.  The street had never been wealthy enough for brick, but solid horizontal siding overlapped against winter’s strength.  No one ever got a sliver from them.  Well cared for houses are well-behaved and their edges were rounded with biennial layers of dignified color, with white trim.   Most were narrow, single-familied, two storied, standing in mirrored pairs, flanking double driveways.  All were in pale grey, white, or the more daring beige.  There were a few older houses, and a number of two-family flats with long verandas both upstairs and down.  Back yards had just room enough for the clotheslines and, beyond the concrete, a row of Hollyhocks against the wall that hid the alley.  The alley also served the back of the Civil War museum that protected the street against the city.  Front yards were only tiny squares of lawn and at the curb, a strip too narrow for trees.  Sometimes both were cemented over.  The boundaries of this small world were the park, the library, the school and the city, and it was about to become a battle zone.
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Mid Term

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY
DEPT: Creative Writing: EvG

Mid Term

{Instruction; see how many things you can deduce about the protagonist from the conversation supplied.  THEN write your own pastiche of a similar length with NO MORE description than is used here.  IE: two sentences.}

The man in the large four poster bed winced as his manservant moved a dreape to allow more light and air into the spacious bedchamber.  There was the faintest suggestion of spring violets.  Without opening his eyes the man said softly.

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DRAGON FIGHTER

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY
DEPT: Medieval Mythos: EvG

DRAGON FIGHTER

In the highest chamber of the towering mountain fastness, the great knight, woke and shook his golden mane out of his eyes.  The crisp, air was laden with the scent of snowdrops and crocus, but it was not the evidence of a spring that had wakened him.  There had been a sound.  A sound which all guardians of the keep knew instinctively as that of an ancient enemy.  The monsters were abroad again!

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A WALK WITH RHADAMANTHUS *

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY
DEPT: Writing: EvG

A WALK WITH RHADAMANTHUS*

{HOW IT CAME HERE, OR WHEN, WE ARE NOT EVER LIKELY TO KNOW, THE TING TO REMEMBER IS THAT IT WALKS LIKE A MAN…}

On eighty -eighth street, little Willie sat in a puddle of his own making and smeared some of it experimentally through his thatch of weedy hair.  In order to better evaluate the sensation he rolled his eyes upward, and was instantly entranced by an even greater marvel.  His eyes went wide and wider.  Wonder gave way to pleasure at his discovery.  The stranger, who looked back at him, seemed to send back that wonder and pleasure, multiplied by the shunting between them the way an image is between two mirrors.  Willie chortled with glee.  His laughter bubbled over and followed the stranger down the street.

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