Lifestyles of the Wet and Spineless

This is Spark. He's an artist. He draws and paints things both real and imagined. He's very good. I met him because we both hang out at our neighborhood Starbucks.

I took this picture of him as a kind of a challenge: he had said that only a great artist could take a good picture of an empty Starbucks cup. So I whipped my point & shoot out of my pocket and fired one shot. Lucky click. Maybe I'm not a great artist but the picture came out pretty well. I think.

Next is a portrait of Leslie done by Spark in acrylics . Leslie had seen a painting of a woman with an octopus crawling out of her backpack. She wanted a painting of herself with worms instead of an octopus. You see, marine worms are Leslie's biggest passion. The best I can hope for is to come in second after the worms. I'm okay with that. Really. (Click on the painting for an enlargement.)


The third picture is a pen & ink "snapshot" of me done by Spark on a Starbucks napkin. Spark has an ongoing project of drawing people on Starbucks napkins. He shows me sitting with my laptop, in my favorite Starbucks chair. (click on the drawing for a large enlargement.)

As this drawing was taken I was working on the fourth movement of my piece Wagner and Schubert Have Intercourse. I've been working on it for months as time allows; it's now scheduled for uploading beginning in July.

The fourth movement of Wagner and Schubert Have Intercourse has since changed into the third and fifth movements, which are entitled "Endless Symphony" and "Endless Opera". These things happen.


This Saturday, July 23, 2007, beginning at 11:45 A.M. at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, located in Exposition Park - Leslie will be giving a lecture and slide show, showing many of her fascinating pictures of bizarre marine invertibrates and describing their strange behavior.

This lecture is entitled:

Lifestyles of the Wet and Spineless.

If you're in the neighborhood, please attend. (Directions to NHMLAC, down near USC and the Colliseum)

Links for this post:

Some of Leslie's worm photographs. Highly recommended!!

Weekend Activities at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (this weekend only, starring Leslie Harris - check back next week for something entirely different.)

More about one of the world's largest marine worm collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Leslie Harris, collection manager.

Spark's MySpace Space It says he's 8' 11" tall. Check out his pictures, see what he does for a living.

Spark's ComicSpace Space Check out more of his pictures and an entire comic book he did called Helix.

Spark's previous Starbucks-Napkin-Drawing of me is featured in THIS Mixed Meters post from antiquity.




Painting Worm Tags: Spark. . . painting. . . drawing. . . marine worms. . . polychaete. . . Starbucks. . . Natural History Museum. . . Los Angeles. . . Richard Wagner. . . intercourse. . . Franz Schubert