Children who’ve grown up in Boston have likely seen the bronze sculptures of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack. The children’s book that inspired the models, Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, is fondly remembered by many Bostonians. Honoring the book’s 75th anniversary, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) currently has an exhibit showing some [...]
Taking inspiration from some of my favorite stories and sci-fi movies, I often drew maps and made up my own worlds when I was a kid. I remember sitting hunched over a large piece of paper drawing a squiggly coastline of my dream island, that may or may not have contained a river of lava somewhere in the middle. If ten-year-old me had [...]
Remember creating scale drawings in school? I do—I once designed an underwater scene, complete with fish and seaweed and bubbles. It was tedious to work the details into the tiny graph paper, but so rewarding to see the final picture! Imagine if that final picture wasn’t just on a page, but in a giant field, and the pencil lines were actually stalks of [...]
It’s impossible to write about the costumes of the Star Wars series without a rambling opening paragraph about Padmé (a.k.a Queen/Senator Amidala). The oft-debated prequels, are—in my opinion, at least—salvageable by one thing: Padmé. Besides the fact that she’s a peacekeeping galactic senator and very handy in battle, she rules the fashion world in literally every scene (like this one and this one and [...]
During my freshman year at Emerson College, my writing professor took our class to the Boston Public Library’s (BPL) Central Library in Copley Square. I remember browsing the fiction section, ogling at the texts in the rare books collection and trying to get the perfect shot of the beautiful courtyard. After less than half an hour, I knew I wanted to get a [...]
Where I come from in Millbrook, Alabama, people don’t recycle. The nearest recycling center is a 30-minute drive down the highway to Montgomery. But in Tacony, Philadelphia, the opposite is happening—recycling is being taken to an entirely new level. There, artists are showing what happens when trash is treasured at a recycling center called Revolution Recovery, one of the few recycling plants to allow [...]
PSG boasts a surprising number of musicians in the office. Almost every staff member has had experience playing music at some point, and the staff’s talents range from beginner’s experience in elementary school with a recorder to playing the clarinet in a high school competition in Hawaii. Currently, Ken sings with his church choir, but in the past, he sang with several college [...]
It’s easy for a work of art to be lost to the ages and, unfortunately, all too common. But what about art that’s been hidden behind other art? Though not as common as a piece simply being destroyed, there is a surprising number of paintings underneath other paintings. Discovering these hidden works has been almost impossible until recently, when X-ray technology has given [...]
If you were to begin talking about pop art, most people will immediately think of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962). If they’re more familiar with the movement, they may consider other works such as Wayne Thiebaud’s Three Machines (1963) or Jasper Johns’s Flag (1954). The subjects of these pieces might seem mundane and everyday, but the pieces are anything but drab and monotonous. A spark of [...]
As a kid, one of the scariest movies I ever saw was Jurassic Park. I remember lying awake in bed at night, listening to the sound of a giant T. rex stomping down trees in my backyard. Sure, it was just the sound of the new dishwasher, but I didn’t know that until I confessed to my parents what I’d heard. Before Jurassic Park, all I knew [...]