Colors, Patterns & Textures

I'm heading tonight to the opening of a solo art show by Melissa Arrant, wife of my friend Chris Arrant. The show is in the Amelia Tapper Center at Gulf Coast Community (State?) College from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Come out and say hello. The show is called "Colors, Patterns & Textures," referencing Melissa's colorfield work.

EDIT: Back from the show, which had a BIG turnout. Here's a shot of Melissa getting her picture taken:

Meanwhile, I've obviously been away from the blog for several days. You might be distracted or entertained by the way I've been wasting my evenings, which will begin to become clear tomorrow as I launch a new regular feature that I'm going to call "Drive-In Saturday" (with that ever present wink and nod to David Bowie).

I have been salvaging old videos I created over the years and will be finishing the edits on them to make them presentable if not actually artistic. One per week, starting with my earliest effort, a "final exam" project for my TV Production II class at Pensacola Junior College in 1984, a mean and simple little black-and-white zombie short called "Our Dead."

Here's a screen capture from the film:

Next up, will be a 30-second PSA I made in 1989 for a contest I'm pretty sure I never entered. I call it "Future Warning," and it has been fiddled with a bit. Here's a screen capture:

Yes, that's me transmitting from the far future date of 2005. I have several others I'll be working on over the coming weeks, but the one I'm most pleased with getting some closure over is the one that goes with this screen capture:

That's the Scoutship Nokomis coming in for an emergency landing on an uncharted (and unfriendly) planet. My former brother-in-law, the late Karl Esneul, and I spent a long Saturday in 1989 shooting models and lasers and explosions to make special effects for a movie that we never got around to shooting the live action for. I have recently built a miniature set and used a vintage G.I. Joe astronaut figure to create a few segments that will allow a story to be told, though I confess that I don't recall if we ever actually came up with a storyline or just strung together some FX. This one is for Karl.

Look for the films every Saturday for the foreseeable future. (I have a lot of old video to work through.) If you see something you enjoyed, please let me know. It's pretty embarrassing to be putting some of this out there for the public to chew up. But then, I do that with my stories, too. So I guess I can take the shots.

Hope this finds you all well, and I sincerely hope the new year is being kind to you. Thanks for following.

Peace.