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Money

... always money.

It’s hard to quantify the value of painter and all-around cultural icon Bob Ross, but $9.85 million is a good start.

The very first on-air painting from the very first episode of Ross’ beloved series “The Joy of Painting” is looking for a new owner after being kept safe for decades by one of the show’s early volunteers.

“A Walk in the Woods” was painted live on-air in January of 1983, and typifies everything the public came to love about Ross and his art-positive mission. It depicts a placid woodland scene in shades of gold and blue, painted with Ross’ preferred “wet on wet” technique, with deceptively complex-looking brushstrokes and, of course, an abundance of happy little trees. In the lower lefthand corner, Ross’ signature stands out in red.

The work was acquired by Minneapolis-based art gallery Modern Artifact earlier this year. Before that, it was owned by a one-time volunteer at the Falls Church, Virginia PBS station where the first season of “The Joy of Painting” was aired. The volunteer bought it in November of 1983 at a station fundraising auction, just months after it was painted. It has been verified as authentic by Bob Ross Inc.

What Freedom

Philip Reid and the Statue of Freedom

One of the most significant contributions by an African American slave in the construction of the Capitol was made by Philip Reid.

When construction of the Capitol began in 1793, Washington, D.C., was little more than a rural landscape with dirt roads and few accommodations beyond a small number of boarding houses. Skilled labor was hard to find or attract to the fledgling city. Enslaved laborers, who were rented from their owners, were involved in almost every stage of construction. Philip Reid may be the single best known enslaved person associated with the Capitol's construction history.

Born around 1820, Reid was an enslaved laborer in the foundry run by the self-taught sculptor Clark Mills, who cast the Statue of Freedom. Mills was a former resident of South Carolina, where he had purchased Reid in Charleston for $1,200. Mills stated he purchased Reid, "many years ago when he was quite a youth... because of his evident talent for the business in which your petitioner was engaged, and paid twelve hundred dollars for him."

Mills brought Reid with him when he moved to Washington in the late 1840s when Mills won the competition for an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson commissioned for Lafayette Park.

In order to construct the Jackson statue, a temporary foundry was erected south of the White House and, through trial and error, Mills, Reid and other workmen produced the first bronze statue ever cast in America. The accomplishment was extraordinary due to the absence of any formal training of any of the participants.

In 1860, the success of the Jackson statue prompted the secretary of war to give Mills the commission for casting Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom for the top of the Capitol's new dome. A financial agreement was reached whereby the government would rent Mills' foundry, pay him $400 a month for his services and pay for necessary materials and labor.

Reid was the only known slave working on Freedom. He worked as a laborer along side James A. Riddle, Peter Coyl, Resin (Rezin) Offutt, and Mikel Shedy (Michael Sheedy). As an enslaved worker Reid was paid directly for his work on Sundays; his owner received the payment for his work the other six days. He was paid at $1.25 per day, higher than the other laborers who received $1 a day.

Reid worked most weeks without a break between July 1, 1860, and May 16, 1861: over that period he was paid $41.25 for 33 Sundays at $1.25 per day, for "Keeping up fires under the moulds." He signed with an X by his name. There are no known images of Reid. (?)

While unable to read or write, Reid was described by Mills as, "aged 42 years, mullatto [sic] color, short in stature, in good health, not prepossessing in appearance but smart in mind, a good workman in a foundry..."

In June 1860, casting of the Statue of Freedom began. The first step was to disassemble the plaster model of the statue into its five main sections in order to move it from the Capitol to the foundry. The model was shipped from Rome to the United States in five main sections, and upon its arrival, an Italian sculptor was hired to assemble the model. However, when the time came to move the plaster model from the Capitol to the foundry for casting, no one knew how to separate it and the Italian sculptor refused to help unless given a pay raise. Fortunately, Philip Reid was there. He figured out that by using a pulley and tackle to pull up on the lifting ring at the top of the model the seams between the sections would be revealed. The statue was successfully separated into its five sections and transported to the foundry.

Philip Reid received his freedom on April 16, 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act that released certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. It is not known if he witnessed the event, but Reid was a free man when the last piece of the Statue of Freedom was put into place atop the Capitol Dome on December 2, 1863.

Author S.D. Wyeth wrote in The Federal City in 1865, "Mr. Reed, the former slave, is now in business for himself, and highly esteemed by all who know him."

Thought to be Reid - unconfirmed

More AI

Artificial Intelligence - kinda sounds like that one guy we all know who argues vehemently, and with great confidence, but knows practically nothing.

So I wonder if AI will eventually follow the Dunning-Kruger model. Maybe we'll see reviews in the TechMags like, "This AI thinks it's amazing but it's really not."

Like anything else that holds great promise, AI carries with it great danger.

In the meantime, people are still in charge, and some of them are using AI to put out some really good stuff.

Ain't Nuthin' New Here

30,000 years ago, some cave schmuck

was prowling around on

the original social media, and

hit the jackpot when his crush

responded to the world's first

"send nudes"

Overheard

Art is not only a mirror

that reflects the world around us.

It's also a hammer

that can be used to shape it.

Today's GIF(s)

If Van Gogh had a computer

A Little Wackiness

From a redditor - marveldeadpool

One of his things is to buy prints or paintings at thrift stores and add a little something to liven them up a bit.

Classical

Line Rider - In The Hall Of The Mountain King - Edvard Grieg

Historical Accuracy

In the interest of truth and beauty - and trying to take a little break from the fucked up insanity of American politics...

What's the story on all that white marble?

And what's up with the gloves?

And now ya know a little more.

Painting

The Arts

Art Education helps us develop critical thinking skills and a sense of shared experience (empathy).

Brian Kasida & Daniel Bowen, Brookings:

Engaging with art is essential to the human experience. Almost as soon as motor skills are developed, children communicate through artistic expression. The arts challenge us with different points of view, compel us to empathize with “others,” and give us the opportunity to reflect on the human condition. Empirical evidence supports these claims: Among adults, arts participation is related to behaviors that contribute to the health of civil society, such as increased civic engagement, greater social tolerance, and reductions in other-regarding behavior. Yet, while we recognize art’s transformative impacts, its place in K-12 education has become increasingly tenuous.

A critical challenge for arts education has been a lack of empirical evidence that demonstrates its educational value. Though few would deny that the arts confer intrinsic benefits, advocating “art for art’s sake” has been insufficient for preserving the arts in schools—despite national surveys showing an overwhelming majority of the public agrees that the arts are a necessary part of a well-rounded education.

Gee - I wonder why "conservatives" are always trying to cut back on what the arts can do for us.

Maybe it's because the problems we love to bitch about - poverty, crime, ignorance, tribalism, the degeneration of civil discourse, etc - can be at least partly attributed to the erosion of the skills we need, but don't get to learn about anymore, because Republicans keep shitting on the arts by cutting the funding.

And maybe those problems are due to deliberate efforts to cause the problems, blame it all on "the other", and then trade on that disinformation to gain ideological advantage and political power.

The GOP Playbook, Page 1:

1. Fuck something up
2. Wait
3. Point at it and say, "Whoa, look - it's fucked up."
4. Run for office by promising to fix it
5. "Fix" it by contracting the solution out to your pals
6. Collect "contributions" from those pals
7. Get re-elected as a "Problem Solver"
8. Start again at #1 above

- and -

We find that a substantial increase in arts educational experiences has remarkable impacts on students’ academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Relative to students assigned to the control group, treatment school students experienced a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others. In terms of our measure of compassion for others, students who received more arts education experiences are more interested in how other people feel and more likely to want to help people who are treated badly.

When we restrict our analysis to elementary schools, which comprised 86 percent of the sample and were the primary target of the program, we also find that increases in arts learning positively and significantly affect students’ school engagement, college aspirations, and their inclinations to draw upon works of art as a means for empathizing with others. In terms of school engagement, students in the treatment group were more likely to agree that school work is enjoyable, makes them think about things in new ways, and that their school offers programs, classes, and activities that keep them interested in school. We generally did not find evidence to suggest significant impacts on students’ math, reading, or science achievement, attendance, or our other survey outcomes, which we discuss in our full report.

Fun With Forced Perspective

Somewhere in Bolivia

Today's Fantasy

(overheard on twitter)

Let's give Trump supporters their own separate country.
They can ban Muslims, deport gays, imprison women who've had abortions, and stop immigrants at the border - pretty much whatever they wanna do.
When they finally run out of other people to hate, maybe then they'll realize that what they've hated all along is themselves.

Listen

Just listen - an awful lot of the time, that's all most people want from us. People need to know that someone has heard them.

Rock The Arts

A not-so-still life.

Today's Iconography

At CPAC yesterday, via twitter (@maxwelltani):

Change Gonna Come

Part of "The Vulnerability Series," a collection of paintings by Syrian artist Abdalla Al Omari.

World leaders - somewhere not too far down the very road we're on.

They all had more than a few chances to "make it right". Some tried harder than others, but the likely results will render those differences moot.

Obama

Ahmadinejad

Merkel

Cameron

Erdogan

Kim

al-Assad

45*

Putin

I'm anything but some kind of God-Knobbin' Jesus Pimp, but this tune has one of my all-time favorite lines: "On the 31st floor, a gold-plated door won't keep out the lord's burnin' rain."

Sin City -- The Flying Burrito Brothers

Python Imitates Life

Monty Python and The Holy Grail: