Let's now continue working on the project I introduced last weekend in my blog "Illusion or Truth."

What you see here on the left is the cloth that represents the justice system. It is the low end. The other end will be part of the cloth rising off the table holding up something that represents unreasonable doubt. The whole thing is an illusion in that this cloth should not be holding anything up like that. It's an illusion like the many illusions the defence threw out there for us to decipher and decide if in fact he was telling the truth.

What I want to do and explain how I created a fold along that low end of this cloth.

In the photo below you see I rolled out a slab of clay and laid it on the existing one. Both of the long sides are rolled quite thin. That is because on the  upper edge it's actually the end of the sheet and as it's silk, it must be quite thin. At the lower end It must be thin so I can create a seamless joint to suggest the cloth is folded and laying over the longer part of the sheet.

Two things. When I laid this new slab over the existing sheet of clay, I wet the lower edge with a clay slurry so there would be a good bond between the two.

Secondly, I had already rounded the end of the lower sheet to simulate a fold.

You can see below I've already smoothed out the left side so it will look like a continuous cloth folded over.

What I now did was continue this to make the whole thing look like the left side. I put a clay slurry all along the lower edge remaining to the right side, as you see in the right photo here. Then I used this wooden tool to pull the clay over the edge of the upper slab to make a smooth juncture with the clay below it. The goal is to do this without leaving any bubbles of air in the clay I pull over to seal the joint. I did this all along the edge.

You can also see I put some folded newspaper under the lower slab, just to make it look like the silk is not just laying flat but has some kinks or fluctuations. Hopefully that will make things look more realistic and interesting.

After this I wet my hand and moved it back and forth over the clay to smooth it out and remove any suggestion that there had been an edge there. It would now look like a continuous piece of cloth, with one fold over on itself.

In the photo below you see the results. Then I trimmed off the extra clay extending past the edge, the result being what you see in the first photo above at the beginning of this blog.

Next weekend I hope to talk about what I will place on the rising other end of the cloth. I am finding that getting an image that represents not only doubt but "unreasonable" doubt is hard to come by. I've had a few ideas but have rejected almost every one of them. But we will talk about that next time.

In a blog dated 12/15/2013 I wrote about "irresponsible doubt." I spoke abut the character on the Red Green show, Hap Shaughnessy played by Gordon Pinsent that you cannot trust. Who plays with the truth in such a way it all sounds true, but your not sure. You have doubts.

The idea has begun to take form in the piece you see above. Most important for me was how playing with the truth makes things dangerous, both in the short run and the long run. Therefore another word like "precariousness" also becomes important in this respect.

I ran across a magazine and a book on Illusions and because of my brain working on this project, drew my attention. I've always loved illusions as I used to do magic for the kids in my camp career. It was such fun. Here are a few examples.

How far did you read this before realizing you made some assumptions about what is true?

With our experience of the trial for the murderer of our daughter, our desire for "truth" has been very important. Now, that the trial and it's truth has been overturned by the appeal process, the truth issues has again come to the for-front. It seems understanding what is actually a real "truth" is not as simple as it sometimes seems.

This tells me that when we read we see a few letters, even so few as only the first and last letter of a word we "assume" it must be a certain word. That is because we came to it with a history. A history that has confirmed for our minds the truth that these particular letters will be this particular word. The "Optical Illusion Pack" explains it this way. That "Our minds do not read each letter by itself but the word as a whole, so if the first and the last letters are correct, the word can be read."

What does this say about truth and our perceptions of it?

Here is the explanation under this illustration. "In this square the pink lines do not look parallel - but in fact they are. The illusion is created by the black and white blocks which are not in straight lines but, instead zigzag across the square." (Optical Illusion Pack)

What does this say? What does this mean?

I went to the dictionary for a definition of truth and was surprised by how complicated the definition of truth actually seems to be. Here I'm reading about a whole whack of theories I've never heard of before, like; substantive theories, correspondence theories, coherence, constructivist, consensus pragmatic, minimalist, preformative, redundancy, pluralist theories etc. What happened?  Do I have to go to university to understand a simple thing like, what is truth?  

To add to all that, there is a sentence explaining further we must also consider, "the roles that faith-based and empirically based knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective or objective, relative or absolute." (Wikipedia)

Wow!

What I'm thinking now is that this is a dangerous track to walk on. That when our defense lawyers take advantage of us by using illusionary tricks and tactics of presentation that actually include lies and half truths, they are on a precarious path that is leading us away from true justice in our land. I am worried and feel more restrictions need to be placed into the system to preserve the purity of the search for real truth. Not what can I get away with. Not what illusions can I throw out there that the crown judge and jury won't catch and see as the illusions they really are.

Therefore I am creating a "precarious" illusion. It will be a cloth, looking
like silk, rising on one end holding up at the top an additional sculpture
illustrating something representing truth that is just truth. That after
all the arguments, still is truth and is unshakable and is simply there. The illusion is in the idea that a cloth of silk cannot just hold something up like that. How can it do that? And if it does that, it should also tip over
considering the size and weight of the item on the top of the raised portion of the silk cloth. The cloth in effect represents the justice system and it's precarious situation in using such tactics to actually risk or actually destroy the chance of the real truth of the matter coming out.

Here is what I know is true right now. It's early Sunday morning, and I really need a coffee! No "illusions" about that.

A box of laminate flooring
we discovered had some
imperfections!

It's January 2014 and time to evaluate and improve on things in our lives. The problem is we get pretty hard on ourselves, make these amazingly difficult and challenging resolutions and find that in a day or few, we already fail to follow them.

Our son was setting up his office during the holidays. (I can still feel the aching muscles!) We found a box of laminate that had imperfections. We did not return the whole order but set this box aside and later got a refund.

It is interesting that we don't buy a house because everything about it is perfect. We still go see the Jet's play hockey despite the fact they win only 50% of the time. We keep friends despite the fact they do things that sometimes bug us. Artist's draw, paint, create something and we say, "I could have done that!" It's because doing it perfectly was not the point at all. We all read cartoons that are not drawn perfectly and think nothing of it.

In fact to assist my art students and their lack of artistic confidence I constantly remind them that drawing something "perfectly" is not the point of the art work they are to be doing.

This drawing (doodle) of mine you see here is of the lily and the thorns mentioned in the Song of Songs. It is an abstract one dimensional piece. It's about two worlds clashing and competing for the attention of the lover. He, the lover has chosen a woman he calls a lily much to the consternation of the other ladies competing for his attention. These he refers to as thorns! It's about two worlds,  one of thorns and the other of the lily. Do the lily or the thorns look real? Not really. Do we get the point of the story, the lack of attraction, even repulsiveness of the many ladies and his love for the one? I hope so.

Let's be kind and reasonable with ourselves as we evaluate our lives during this new year season. We cannot and will not ever be perfect. We do fail. Some days we will be tired and feel like we can't go and exercise like we resolved to do. That after a few days into January we ate that desert, candy or chocolate we resolved we would not eat in 2014. That within a few days into this -30, icy road situation we over-reacted negatively to our spouse's back seat driving advice which we had resolved not to do in 2014! 

My advice is to remember your life is actually an abstract work of art within an abstract world. It will make things much easier and you'll have much more fun. First, no one or anything is perfect as we've just proven. Also, intention itself carries a lot of points. Finally, know that you have already been successful in fulfilling some of your resolutions, which means you have already been imperfectly successful. You fit right into the universe of abstraction and imperfection! Feel better? Good. It's going to be a great year.

Happy New Year to you and your abstractness of life!