Flying Colors

"Red Spot" challenge!

A dynamic modern painting is occurring on Jupiter...
...plus the "Great Red Spot" is being challenged! imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2008.

Jupiter's Great Red Spots, Credit NASA, ESA, M. Wong, I. de Pater (UC Berkeley), et al.

The Great Red Spot is a great anti-cyclonic (high pressure) storm akin to a hurricane on Earth, but it is enormous (three Earths would fit within its boundaries) and it has persisted for at least the 400 years that humans have observed it through telescopes.
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An upstart storm now (since 2006) rivals the gas giant Big Red Spot as king of storms. A third red spot has appeared alongside the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. in the turbulent Jovian atmosphere.
NASA/ESA/U.C. Berkeley

IF • Modify

Vertical Gardening is a modified way of growing plants while being a wonderful solution to create an attractive and functional garden from limited space.
Visit Patrick Blanc a master artist/gardener with "Le Mur Végétal"

Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference. ~ Dee Hock

• The Tomato Tree / e-Stamp (NEW) - click to purchase
Lisa Rivas © 2009 • archival pigment print on 100% rag paper

Once again this next weekend August 8 - 9 is the celebrated Tomato Art Fest,
a neighborhood festival in East Nashville, TN. - USA.

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Leaves into spines...

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Cacti are distinctive and unusual plants,
which are adapted to extremely arid
and hot environments,
showing a wide range of anatomical and
physiological features which conserve water.
Their stems have expanded into green
succulent structures containing the chlorophyll
necessary for life and growth,
while the leaves have become the spines
for which cacti are so well known.
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All cacti are native to the America's and surrounding islands, with one exception: Rhipsalis baccifera.

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Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart. Russell Page

"Green" ROCKS!

Living Stones...were originally discovered by William John Burchell (English explorer - naturalist) in 1811 when he picked up a curiously shaped pebble and it turned out to be a plant!

Lithops is a genus of succulent plants native to Africa, their bodies are in fact a pair of leaves that have evolved to efficiently retain whatever moisture becomes available to the plant. To minimize any evaporation the leaves have become so truncated that they have lost the appearance of a normal leaf and have become rounded like a pebble! This has made them less obvious to foraging animals since they mimic the color and appearance of the soil and stones in their surroundings thus standing a great chance of survival.

 
The "Split Rock" plant looks like a green speckled rock split open in half.

"Lithos" means "stone" and "opsis" is "face" in Ancient Greek;
therefore, "Lithops" means "stone-face".

The pebble in the brook secretly thinks itself a precious stone.
Japanese proverb

A windowsill moon!

Moon Cacti are not a genus. it's the result of a cactus graft, an actual physical union of the vascular systems of the two plants.
Their colored top is not normal—this color occurs because the cactus does not produce chlorophyll. Thus this living arrangement is absolutely necessary because the top cannot survive without chlorophyll and the bottom supplies it.

Wishing You All a very, very "Merry Christmas",
specially the "Happy Cactus Monday" group...

  

"Ruby Moon" (original in process - not finished) • watercolor, wax on ricepaper

Red is not the only "achlorophyllous" color that occurs; in fact there are many beautiful genera which are yellow, pink, orange, or even multicolored. This Moon Cacti is a great windowsill culture but please keep out of direct sunlight because the sun would fade out the color and also it is easily sunburned!

There's part of the sun in an apple;
There's part of the moon in a rose;
There's part of the flaming Pleiades
In every leaf that grows.

Living Bridges

Ants comprise one of
“the most cohesive societies on earth"
because of their incredible
cooperative behavior!

Like this remarkable feat where
a group of ants build "themselves" into
a living bridge
so other ants can pass and cross over!

I found this photo coincidentally of
Ant Bridge by Jacinda Brown upon
searching for images & info of cacti.

It inspired me to create the following piece,
for Cactus Monday...

fused glass with copper shavings • 4" x 4" • 2008 © Lisa Rivas • "The Living Bridge"

A wonderful example of survival of group interests above individual interests.

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself;
for every man has the need to be forgiven. Thomas Fuller

Endangered species...

The Zayante band-winged grasshopper is found in a small area of the Santa Cruz Mountains known as the Zayante sand hills. These insects are good fliers and known to fly three to seven feet while producing a buzzing sound to avoid predators.

"ZAYANTE Band-winged Grasshopper" e-Stamp
• fused glass - illustration printed as an archival pigment print, 100% rag paper

The primary threat to the species is loss of habitat due to human activities and alterations, such as sand mining, urban and agricultural development. Other threats include the introduction of non-native species, pesticides, and over collecting.
PLEASE COLLECT STAMPS! You can also buy this stamp HERE

THIS SPECIES IS LISTED AS ENDANGERED!

One hundred trout are needed to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90,000 frogs, that must consume 27 million grasshoppers that live off of 1,000 tons of grass.
G. Tyler Miller, Jr.

Awns...

  ...are the long "bristlelike" projections
on the seeds of wheat, oats and grasses.

They play a role in the dispersal
of seeds in the air and the actual
planting of them in the ground!

Wheat FEEL

The awns feel the changes in humidity
and this leads to their bending.
This bending helps them push
the seed along. By bending back
and forth upon feeling these
slight changes in humidity
they accomplish the digging,
the pushing and then in
the final burial of the seed down
a few inches into the soil!
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 • 10" x 10" • Lisa Rivas © 2007 • "Feeling"
• watercolor, digital, printed on ricepaper and mounted on canvas

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. Lord Byron

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict. Simone Weil

"Arlecchino"...

...is one of the stock characters
of the Commedia del'Arte, Italian Comedy.
From his ludicrous dress comes the
meaning "particolored", colored in sections.

The Harlequin Bug is a stinkbug,
dressed in multicolored, fanciful-patterns.

They are of the family of insects called
Pentatomidae, from the Greek words:
pente/five and tomos/sections.

"Arlecchino Stinkbug" e-Stamp
• fused glass - illustration printed as an archival pigment print, 100% rag paper

Stinkbugs are so named because they secrete a foul-smelling liquid that is repulsive to most predators.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles
and all the years you have lived. Helen Keller

Who is Roy G. Biv?

Color is the visible manifestation
of light's wavelength.

Roy G. Biv is a mnemonic*
for the sequence of hues in
the visible spectrum, in rainbows,
and in order from longest
to shortest wavelength:
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green,
Blue, Indigo and Violet.

White light contains all colors, a "PRISM" can divide the colors and make them appear!

"Prizm Buzz" e-Stamp
• fused glass - illustration printed as an archival pigment print, 100% rag paper
Combining image layers with different blending modes,
in graphic applications will have similar "visible spectrum" effects!

*Mnemonic is something intended to assist the memory, as a verse or formula.
Mnemosyne the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology.
Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine consecutive nights and thereby created the nine Muses.

Breathing earth...

... or heartfelt ways!
When you are relaxed and calm your heart rate slows down.
The effects are similar to when you breathe deeply.

Deep breathing can help slow your heartbeat,
making the heart work more effectively to pump blood around the body.

"Airways"
• watercolor, wax, digital effects • Lisa Rivas © 2008

Plants breath by taking in gases from the air and give off others through pores in their leaves. It's a passive process, since there is no active pushing and pulling of air as animals do with lungs.

Nightshades...

The eggplant or aubergine or brinjalis is a native to India.
Greatly admired for its glossy "deep purple" color,
as well as its pleasantly unique bitter taste and spongy texture.

It belongs to the "nightshade" family of vegetables, which also includes tomatoes, sweet peppers and potatoes. Other nightshades plants are the petunia, tobacco, as well as the poisonous belladonna.

Nightshades contain a special group of substances called alkaloids. These biochemicals are designed to help protect the plants from insects. They are known to cause ill side-effects to individuals that have osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or other joint problems like gout.

Uppity up tomatoes!

Within "The Land" pavilion which is part of the EPCOT theme park in the Walt Disney World Resort at Lake Buena Vista, Florida is this amazingly huge “Tomato-Tree”.
It was achieved by using the "vertical growing technique" in which by providing a matrix of structural supports for the entire plant this enabled it to grow much bigger than it ever would under ordinary circumstances where gravity would be weighing it down.

This “Tomato-Tree” produces over 32,000 tomatoes in a 16-month period. It was recognized by Guiness World Records as both the largest and most productive tomato plant in the world.

EPCOT stands for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” and was originally intended to be a futuristic model community based on utopian modernist ideas of communal living, no cars and no private ownership.

Like diamonds...

...in the rough! Comets consist of dust, ice and rock.
They have a variety of different orbital periods, ranging from a few years, to hundreds of thousands of years. Orbits extending only as far as Jupiter while others have orbits extending well beyond Pluto.

As it approaches the Sun, the sun's radiation warms and excites the comet's nucleus causing it to glow and reflect the solar radiation. Solar wind pushes the excited material away causing a tail to form.
The tail follows an incoming comet and proceeds an outbound comet.

Comet Hyakutake
Discovered less than three months before it's closest approach to Earth 3/25/96.
It was the brightest comet in 22 years with a tail extending across half of a dark night sky.
Comet Hyakutake should return to our part of space in 29500 years!

Comet Hale-Bopp
Discovered in July of 1995 it's closest approach to Earth was on 3/22/97.
An extraordinarily bright comet, 1000 times brighter than Comet Halley when discovered.
It was even brighter than Hyakutake, but it had a pair of short tails, one of yellowish dust and reflected sunlight and the other a bluish tail of ionized gas. Hale-Bopp should return in 2980 years.

SYZYGY...

...is the alignment of three or more celestial bodies in the same gravitational system along a straight line. The word is usually used in context with the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon or a planet, where the latter is in conjunction or opposition.
Solar and lunar eclipses occur at "times of syzygy", as do transits and occultations.

These Web-eStamps show two astronomy syzygies, a transit and an eclipse.

These photos are courtesy of my friend John Cara and the following explanation:
The transit of Venus across the face of the Sun as seen from Earth are among the rarest of predictable astronomical events. They occur in a pattern repeating every 243 years in pairs 8 years apart separated by gaps of approximately 121.5 and 105.5 years. The last transit was 6/8/2004, the next is 6/6/2012. After that, it's likely not a person alive today will see the next transit in December of 2117.

Syzygy is also the highest scoring word that can be played in Scrabble without using an a, e, i, o, or u.