When we create for others, we call it design. When we create for ourselves, we call it art. Or possibly… trash. And then there’s the bits we call art that others call trash, and vice-verse. It all gets quite complicated actually. Design is profit-driven by it’s very nature. On the art side however, motives vary. Sometimes – it’s about love, or learning, or maybe even mitigating boredom. Perhaps a more graceful phrasing of the latter be the productive passing of time – which would be the case in what you witness here. Enter the first in what I will refer to as “The Mechanic Series”.
Having more than a few miles on our trusty ride, we make regular pilgrimages to our kickass car-doc for some R & R (repair and replacement). In a shameless plug for a service source that I regularly rely on, I would specify that Youngblood Automotive in Round Rock, Texas has been our car-fixer source for almost 15 years, and I send as many friends and acquaintances there as I happen to find in need of some quality fix-em-ups. So far, nobody has ever come back to me bitchin’, which I think is a purdy good thing.
Drifting back towards the point, my friends at Youngblood’s went thru a remodel a while back, and their nifty-cool waiting room is now nicely set up to accommodate us geeky ‘puter types with free wi-fi, and a schweetly set up “laptop bar” – enabling folks like me to engage their favorite apps while getting their sleds tuned. And unless I’m beating down a deadline on a project, and just want some mindless entertainment, my weapon of choice is usually Adobe Illustrator. Nice, light, laptop friendly app that I can spend hours whiling away, and making some spiffy art on. I kind of equate it to an old lady tooling away in the corner with some knitting needles and a bag of yarn. It gives me the same kind of therapeutic calm. And I can burn up a boat-load of time tweaking infinitesimal details of the composition of my fancy.
And until my name rings true thru the intercom, “Alpine Away for You”, trusty fam-van, knowing I’ll soon hear the purr of your heartbeat as it once again beckons the open road.