Today, I am amazed. There are many days where I am amazed, but today I am particularly amazed because I have time to be amazed. It's Monday, which is my "day off" -- no class until 6pm. But today, as I was cruising Facebook, I noticed that a dear friend of mine has launched into a new form of artistic expression -- stained glass.
I've written about Mark before, but that post isn't about his art. Mark is not an artist by profession. He's actually an extreme scientist/genius by day. [That makes him sound kind of like a cartoon criminal mastermind. Which, you know, is kind of a cool idea.] But outside of his work (which I have to admit I don't even understand and should maybe ask about sometime) he creates some of the most beautiful images of dancers. His daughter, Emily, is an extreme dancer/genius (see what I did there?) and Mark always took photographs of her childhood dance career. What I love about Mark's work is that the dancers are just your average girls, not professional dancers, not unhealthfully thin, etc. They're people I've met in real life, and have seen dance in real life, and they're beautiful.
It just amazes me, then, that Mark has discovered this incredible talent later in his life. [Sorry to point out that you're old, Mark.] I guess I sort of always wondered where, in their sciencey family, Emily got her artsy genes. Mark unknowingly, it seems, passed his artfulness on to Emily. But it took Emily's expression of that artfulness to get Mark's to come to life. Does that make sense? I just think it's too cool.
Anyway, here are some of Mark's dancers.