The End Of The Middle...

From day one, what's set this blog apart is that it was always meant to have an ending. Originally conceived of as the middle part in a three-part journey, I never knew exactly how this part of the journey would end, just that I wanted it to end with a better understanding of the world outside my own head and that the best way for me to reach that understanding would be to explore the world of other people's thoughts and feelings. So I looked at someone else's picture book, then someone else's job, childhood, imagination, and community. But I didn't start to find my own community until I took a good long look at the colored lights on someone else's porch, because those lights showed me that the world outside was filled with people that could be invited into my home. And while I was taking pictures of those lights, I was filling one wall in my home with other people's art...

The amateur paintings seen above aren't exactly da Vincis, but I love each and every one of them, and there's one in particular that got me thinking...

It's just a bunch of stars. But the more I kept looking at them, the more I kept thinking about how many there were and how they fit together. And since I've always sucked at math, the easiest way for me to do that kind of thinking was to do it visually. So I bought some construction paper...

Then I started cutting...

And the result of all that cutting was a better understanding of the painted stars...

So I taped my construction-paper stars to the wall, among the paintings...

My construction-paper art was unimpressive compared to its neighbors, but it was fun to make, and I was proud of it. So I decided to make more art, and since it was nearing Halloween at the time, the art I decided to make began with a plain-white pumpkin that was just begging to be decorated with psychedelic paint...

And that was loads of fun...

In fact, it was so much fun that I couldn't stop talking about my psychedelic Halloween while buying pot from the nice girl behind the counter at the local dispensary... and she had fun talking to me about her ideas for what I could do with my leftover paint.

I didn't want to get messy paint everywhere, but I still had a whole mess of clean construction paper, so I started fooling around with it...

All I did was make a dodecahedron, but the project woke up a need. So I put it next to some colorful lights on top of an old nightstand before deciding to buy some fluorescent-colored labels and sparkle-colored paper...

And if you remember my writing about it in a different blog, the aliens in my first novel have a religion based on color. The full-spectrum rainbow is the symbol of that religion, and I put spectra like gamma, x-ray, and ultraviolet on the rainbow's inside, the visible or vivid spectrum in the middle, and the infrared, microwave, and radio spectra on the outside. In the case of the projects seen above, art that's mostly sparkling represents one of the novel's characters, who sees things from the perspective of the infra-focused and externally-motivated superego. The mostly fluorescent-colored art represents another character, who sees things from the perspective of the ultra-focused and internally-motivated id. And I even used some vivid food coloring to make Rorschach-style inkblots in honor of another character, who sees things from the perspective of the visible-focused and balance-motivated ego in between...

Then, as a simple way of illustrating the concept for guests, I laid out as much fluorescent, vivid, and sparkle-colored paper as I had in a straight line above my fireplace, placing the fluorescent colors of the internally-motivated id on the right, the sparkling colors of the externally-motivated superego on the left, and the visible (construction paper) colors of the balance-motivated ego in the middle...

Then I made a wall fractal...

And then I made another one...

Then I got real excited and started making more...

And this is what the same wall looks like as of March 2026...

And this is a kaleidoscopic view of my whole living room...

The room itself is a kind of art installation. And I've sat or stood in the same four spots to take the same four pictures many times since the installation began...

But to help put the whole thing into perspective, here's a picture I took from a different spot, showing what's behind the living room couch...

There was a time when the most important (and only) things in the room were the scribbled notes on the walls. They wrap almost all the way around the room, comprising a timeline of rough sketches, scribbled, tangential, and final thoughts for my first novel (which is about an introverted artist who quits his life on 21st-century Earth in order to travel to a distant star system where he learns to see through alien eyes).

The timeline was so extensive that I started a different blog just to talk about it, but take a closer look at the growing stack of flat boards, sheet rock, and other materials I've collected...

The novel and notes were the journey's beginning.

Trying to understand other people, then filling my home with comfortable furniture, colorful lights, and inspiring art in an ongoing effort to open it and myself up to other people was the journey's middle.

I've entertained one guest, a neighbor, since the middle leg of that journey began, and, interestingly enough, he's also an artist. Check out some of the sculptures in his yard...

I probably could've picked a better time of day to take the pictures, but the one on the left is mostly made of chains, and if you get close, you can see howling wolves on top...

At night, you can see it with the lights on...

And if you get really close, you can see the Native-American-inspired art behind it...

But the reason for my neighbor's visit was to help with my art, measuring the fractals on my wall so we could cut some of the flat boards I've collected down to size in order to take the fractals out of the living room and into a gallery.

The fractals average two and a half feet in diameter, and though the installation isn't finished, the overall plan has always been that they should mirror or further the alien mythology in the aforementioned novel, each representing one of the seven spectra in the full-spectrum rainbow: gamma, x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave, and radio... and that each of those should in some way be representative of a different way of thinking, beginning with introversion and ending with extroversion.

It's a daunting task, but take a look at my latest fractal, seen below...

Its diameter is just eight and a half inches because it was designed to fit on the wall of a cubical in the office of a person who recently did me a solid. It's just shapes, colors, and pretty flowers from that person's Venezuelan home and in no way connected to my novel or representative of anything other than my sincere attempt at saying thanks. And I'm sure she'll love it, because when I showed her pictures of the wall fractals on my phone, she whipped out hers to show me a picture of the flower-like mandala that she'd painted with acrylic.

Regardless of whether or not my mandala-like wall fractals ever make it into a gallery, I personally am grateful to have gotten as far as making art for other people, because, one way or another, art is how I connect, meaning it's not only about how I express myself or share my own internal world, but it's also about how I understand other people through their art. Be it a mandala, a set of sculptures in the yard, or just a bunch of stars, I never know what work of art will inspire the next connection. But I do know that I'm not alone in my appreciation of light and color and that I'm not the only one trying to connect.

So, until next time, I'll look forward to connecting with you on WordPress... :)