Starting fresh

MIKI HARDER ART

SO a big thank you to the Fabulous Mz. Mc Carson Jones for the idea of duhhhh.. Blooogspot!

I will have a web site someday.. but for now.. this is totally my speed..I can post new images (AS well as flaunt old) ..speak of process, alert to upcoming shows..

yes.. I think this is good.

So.. WOW...Saddness.... Benoit Mandelbrot has died. 
A brilliant, funny evolutionary thinker. One of the (if not THE ) Founding Fathers of Fractal Geometry.

AH HA!!!!!!!
A Sierpinski Triangle emerges from the primordial muck of metal!!!!!  A gizzilion thanks to Rich Stewart of Wings for his patience and  wisdom and super rad computer aided plasma cutter.... who'd have thought Triangles could be Soooooooo pretty!
Seeing each panel emerge, then starting to place them together.. I dunno what it is.. but there's this excitement of  MAKING something.. oh it was just fabulous!
I love collaborating..
 two brains and ideas start bouncing around .

 My initial vision was to create this Triangle.. the "nod" to  the lovely basic Fractal Geometry.. then to entwine in it.. a fern....the other perfect example (to me at least) of Fractals revealed in Nature.... BUT .. I'm not gonna go there!!! After seeing all these so beautiful triangles cut out (the "left overs") there was this thought.. Ooohhh.. creation.. triangles tumbling out of  the metal....AND using those bits as a base of sorts.. more support.. THIS is where Rich is always brilliant  and I forget about oh, structural integrity.  .. SO.. I don;t want to give it all away.. but the project is coming along swimmingly!   Heeey maybe I can  plant a real fern in the middle...
I brought my new baby home yesterday (the Triangle thank you) and finished welding..
 then..
grind grind grind..
 I forgot HOW much I LOVE metal work.. is it because it's  SHINY? :)
I also forgot how filthy you get.. still blowin' out black boogers...yea yea yea.. from BEFORE I put on the respirator.   That's all folks! Chat soon :) Mm

DID I MENTION I was getting ready for a show?

THAT is where all my energy is right now.. pre-show panic mode....Fractals STILL RULE THO.

Funny... I've gone thru this "seeing fractals everywhere and going bonkers because I want to paint or sculpt it constantly.. but don't know how."... a good friend advised to just let it all soak it.. it will manifest itself as it will.. right now.. just learn and enjoy. :) Cheers... soon... back at it. 

 Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles and bark is not smooth, nor does lightening travel in a straight line."

                      Benoit Mandelbrot

"This is a detail IN the Mandelbrot Set Fractal.
Detail is found by zooming in on the overall M Set image, finding edges&buds with interesting features.

Fractals are complex geometric shapes that exhibit patterns typified by self similarity or a tendency for the details of the shape to appear silimar to the shape itself.   Often the shapes resemble patterns occurring naturally in the physical world such as spiraling leaves, seemingly random coastlines,erosion and liquid waves.

Fractals are generated thru surprisingly simple underlying mathematical expressions producing subtle and spiraling patterns.

 The basic interative expression for the M. set is Z= Z squared + C operating in the complex (real, imaginary) number set."

Now that's a quote I found under that cool image.. now here's  the blurb from the Fractal Foundation Ed. pack as to How the Mandelbrot Set WORKS:

     " We start by plugging a value for the variable "C" into the simple equation below
                                                    Z new  = Z old (squared) +C
   Each complex number is actually a POINT IN A 2 DIMENSIONAL PLANE.
The equation gives an answer:  Znew.  We plug this back into the equation, as  'Z old' and calculate again. We are interested in what happens for different starting values of 'C'
   Generally, when you square a number, it gets bigger, and then if you square the answer, it gets bigger still. Eventually, it goes to infinity. This is the fate of most starting values of 'C'. However, some values of 'C' do not get bigger, but instead get smaller, or alternate between a set of fixed values. These are the points in the Mandelbrot Set which we COLOR BLACK   .  Outside the Set, all the values of  'C' cause the equation to go to infinity, and the colors are proportional to the speed at which they expand."

          Okay! That's the education for tonight! Coming up next? Who know.... that cloud image is from the front porch.. I'll see if I can find exactly WHY clouds are fractal rather than just claiming them so.... and thus again with water (oooh MORE cool images I have there.... )...... nite now.. and cheers.

Z  (new)= Z(2)(old) + C
  This is the Mandelbrot Set.. beautiful huh?...I gotta run now, but when I get home.. I'll punch in the blurb from the Fractal Foundation's Educator's pack on how this works....  This set was discovered in 1980 (not too long ago!) ... not long after the invention of the personal computer...... Seeyou later taters. M

HIya HEY!!
OKAY!  SO current findings.... personal note:
 I have been SO concerned about giving wrong information about Fractals, or doing the WRONG thing that I have been rather.. is it catatonic? about posting findings or information.. well this is what I have found.. .. and not in a cynical way, but more in a freeing "Okay whatever" way, that.. well.. no one really gives a rat's patootie.. SO I can say whatever I want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THAT BEING said.. don't think I'll go off and be all gross.. I will freely express my current "logs" and what I am up to in the artistic world.. for I can't think that anyone is really  reading this.....
 THUS  :  THIS will by my very own self indulgent keeping of this Fractal thing project!
I'm IN    -------
Fractals STILL RULE.
The more I research...(ie:read and dabble in what the -puter has to say) .. I see Fractal evidence everywhere.. Neurons in the brain,stuff in our lungs (SURFACE area ..surface area AMY!)
tree branches.... spirals, ferns....all evidence of a self similar /continually duplicating system. ...either to the micro or macro infinitum!   And that is just in  the natural world .. which is where it grabs my attention..
 BUT...
drop into Geometry and mathematics... add some new (1980's baby!!)  computer skills and you can plot fractal equations..........these create  those crazy beautiful spiral "tie-dye" looking patterns you might equate with ...well.. stereotypical acid trips..
 I wouldn't know... but if these patterns are in your brain when you "go there" then you can find then again in some equation mapped on a computer screen.. doesn't that make you think about interconnected-ness.?
okay.. wierd tangent... but I see these computer generated patterns evident in NATURE too.

Yup... I'm getting OUT THERE.. maybe this is why my friends are starting to look at me funny.. but I'LL BET... they might see things in a more unique way.      Like my bike ride with Cheryl and Kim... riding by ferns and spirally plants.. the conversation shifted (amazingly enough.. :)  ) to THAT And then to rocks and the invention of the wheel and the "Intelligence of Nature"...
well.. I thought it was cool.
 Okay..connections. The OTHER cool part.
 Since delving in to this ART and SCIENCE project .. "alone" (yea right).. I have met the COOLEST  sciency art people!.. and THEY All help connect me to OTHER cool sciency art people.
Here's a story.. Elizabeth made me a T-shirt  last year with the word "chaos" printed on it since I couldn't shut up about the concept (thank you Liz. )...
 Well...I was working one morning and this fella comes up.. enthralled with my shirt.. he leaves and comes back with this whole completely over my head pamphlet thesis on "chaos and the creative person"... well thank you RANDY BURGE ... "chaos man" who has put me in touch with so many amazing people (him one of them)...........This Fractal Exploration has let me down paths I never thought I would venture.. so for THAT REASON alone.. I am grateful to the Dgo Discovery Museum (Haz) for asking me to do this thing.

 oh yea.. I should get to MY BIG IDEA>..  My art part of this I have gone round in spirals about (HA!)
and I think I GOT IT> I went to dear friend Rich Stewart's studio with a seed of an idea. He's a metal guy....taught me alot... he's quite remarkable... can make ANYTHING... I got to be his right hand girl for a few projects so  I picked up a few welding techniques.... my initial  thought..a gigantic FERN... then I thought about kids playing on it and my lack of trust in any structural integrity of anything I welded...  then..as it usually goes.. I present  seed idea to Rich and thus begins a volley of ideas and cutting each other off with thoughts till the dust settles and oh my god.. the coolest idea has emerged.
A Sierpinski Triangle... 4' X4' with a Fern growing up and out.. entwining the triangles...
For me it is a huge nod to geometry ( I was never a fan as a kid)....and my new appreciation to it for is is the key stone if you will to all the things in nature.. thus a fern (Classic  Natural Fractal structure) winding up and thru that S. Triangle (Classic Geometric  Fractal structure)...
the more I think of it.. the more personal it feels.
I am delighted to create it (with the help of Metal master) and donate it to the Museum.
Well.. that's about too much for today.. I really should not wait so long betwixt posts...
BUT.. oh another thing.. I had the most wonderful weekend in Santa Fe with Mark ... I got to witness the Santa Fe Complex..........a remarkable beehive of Science and creative thinking.. yes. ART too!!!!
PLEASE check out     sfcomplex.org    or Google Santa Fe Complex.... I have been encouraged by one of their founding members to try and get the Dgo. Discovery  and them in some kind of cahoots..............HOW Cool would THAT be????
 Cheers and good nite.