Category: Grey

#51 Salt & Pepper

Chaz DeSimone 16 Comments
51-salt-pepper
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Dad­dy died March 29, 1962, over a half cen­tu­ry ago. I was 10 years old. He was 62.

Now I am 62.

You can imag­ine March 29 this year has been on my mind a lot late­ly. I am healthy, still feel young and strong (until I do some­thing stu­pid at this age), so it’s hard to imag­ine my dad look­ing like such an old man when he passed away at only 62 years old.

But he always looked like an old man to me, and I loved him for it. That’s one rea­son I’ve always respect­ed my elders. You see, my dad was 51 years old when I was born. Already he had salt & pep­per hair, and still a full head of it in the cas­ket. That’s how I’ve always seen and remem­bered him: with this beau­ti­ful, wavy salt & pep­per hair that I want­ed when I grew old. Well, I have it. Mine’s more sol­id gray, but that’s okay. It still reminds me of Dad­dy. (I nev­er called him Dad, always Dad­dy as I was only 10 when he died. So if it sounds sil­ly that I still call him Dad­dy, well that’s okay…it just sounds right to me.)

I could tell you a lot about this man I loved and admired, and I will. But one thing that is absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing is that Andrew J. De Simone was born Decem­ber 31, 1899. That’s the last day of the cen­tu­ry before last! Which meant he was always the same exact age as what­ev­er year it was—to the day. That’s why it’s a lit­tle con­fus­ing to com­pre­hend he was 51 when I was born in 1951. And he was 62 when he died in 1962. Read More

#57 Early & Late

Chaz DeSimone 4 Comments

57-early-late

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You’ve heard the expres­sion “always ear­ly, nev­er late.” Or is it “nev­er ear­ly, always late”? Well, the oth­er day I was both — which inspired Amper­Art #57, Ear­ly & Late.

I was going to meet a new friend at the movies, and she said she’d be there at 7:15 (the show start­ed at 7:25). Not want­i­ng to make a bad first impres­sion, I arrived at the the­ater at 6:55.

Only to dis­cov­er I had for­got­ten my wal­let. Read More

#38 Form & Function

Chaz DeSimone 3 Comments

Form fol­lows func­tion, form meets func­tion, form & func­tion. It’s all about effi­cien­cy, sim­plic­i­ty & aesthetics.

Lamps that dou­ble as sculp­ture, sculp­ture that you can sit on, even a cool graph­ic that’s real­ly a cal­en­dar. Prob­a­bly the most ubiq­ui­tous exam­ple of form & func­tion is the wrist­watch. The rarest could be the 3 that dou­bles as an amper­sand (sort of) in the lat­est Amper­Art edition.

Form & func­tion is every­where: our cloth­ing, a build­ing (although some are so ugly they are mere­ly func­tion­al, & some are so poor­ly built they don’t real­ly function).

Anoth­er exam­ple of form & func­tion is a beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed serv­ing of food. How about some writ­ing instru­ments? And of course my favorite, my Mick­ey Mouse cof­fee mug. Fun to look at & very functional.

chaz sez:
Movie Night

Recent­ly I dis­cov­ered the IMDb, or Inter­net Movie Data­base. It lists the top 250 movies by pop­u­lar­i­ty accord­ing to the gen­er­al pub­lic, and it is con­stant­ly fluc­tu­at­ing, espe­cial­ly re-​ranking the new­er flicks quite frequently.
I have trad­ed in my habit of read­ing sev­er­al (actu­al­ly, too many) chap­ters of sus­pense and mys­tery nov­els every night that I’m not push­ing pix­els, for watch­ing every movie on the 250 list.
So far I have been tru­ly delight­ed with oldies like Char­lie Chap­lin’s “On the Town,” Lau­rel & Hardy in “Babes in Toy­land” as well as the lat­er Dis­ney ver­sion star­ring “Anette.” I’ve enjoyed “The Sound of Music,” “A Street­car Named Desire,” and “Har­vey” – a real delight. Also saw for the first time “The God­fa­ther” – sur­pris­ing­ly, since I’m Sicil­ian. Pazien­za!
But the most allur­ing and cap­ti­vat­ing movie I saw from this list – or from my entire life on this plan­et – is “The Foun­tain­head” from 1948. It express­es exact­ly how I feel about design where every sur­face, angle, col­or and detail must have a damn good rea­son to be there. The movie is about not giv­ing into soci­ety, not giv­ing up your prin­ci­ples, liv­ing your dream in the face of ridicule and even con­dem­na­tion – just because one artist is too bril­liant for the mass­es. The movie also fea­tures mid-​century mod­ern archi­tec­ture, my absolute favorite (aside from futur­is­tic archi­tec­ture – but back then it was futuristic).

Per­haps you’ve guessed that movie inspired my “Form & Func­tion” Amper­Art piece.