T Stands for Tuesday

 Hi Everyone!

 

Today is Tuesday and that means a day with Elizabeth and Bleubeard.

 

You all know I love cookies. Actually, the cookie dough. 

Not store bought rather homemade with good ingredients. Even though I have not made any lately here are few from my past. 

Almond 

 

Whipped Shortbread

 

 

 

Root beer Cookies

 

Chocolate chip

and my all time fave peanut butter.

These are just a few of the types of cookies I have made. So, why am I showing these?

Because to my dismay I read this article. 

 

Scientists have successfully turned plastic bottles and agricultural waste into edible, protein-rich cookies

 

Whenever I read something like this I immediately think of 

"Soylent Green." 

 

Ya know, the 1973 movie that was based on the 1966 scify book,  

"Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison?
 

Welllllll.... it seems that NASA has backed researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale to turn plastic waste into edible, 3D-printed cookies called µBites. 

 In the simplest terms, the team uses high heat, pressure, water, and oxygen to break down plastic bottles and plant waste. Specially programmed yeasts eat the broken carbon pieces and turn them into proteins, fats, and vitamins. The final mixture, "slurry or slime" is put through a 3D printer to form small, disc-shaped cookies. 

The cookies have passed the smell test.

To make the cookies appealing, the team programmed specific yeast strains to generate vanilla flavoring directly from the plant biomass. Another engineered strain converts ethylene glycol into beta-carotene, which the human body turns into Vitamin A. 

Uhhhh I'm going to get my Vit A from real carrots.  

Once printed, the uBites are hardened in a microwave. This means they likely have a firm, dense, or slightly uniform structure rather than a light, crumbly texture of traditional oven baked cookies.

At this point the FDA has NOT approved human taste testing. 

 

The cost.

Currently, production costs sit at roughly $60 per kilogram, meaning they are far from commercial supermarket shelves.  It breaks down like this per cookie.

Small cookie, (15 grms) .90cents.

Medium cookie, (25 grms) $1.50.

Large cookie, (30 grms) $1.80. 

This may not seem like a lot but the cookies you buy now at the store run pennies to produced. Yeah, a rip off.

 

To sum it up. 

The research team 

 By using synthetic biology to turn inorganic trash into organic sustenance, the researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU) have created a proof-of-concept for a closed-loop food system. Lead researcher Dr. Lahiru Jayakody notes that with global food demand skyrocketing, we must urgently "reinvent the food production system to ensure food security." 

My personal note. 

We already have bio engineered foods in the stores. Governments start slow getting people used to what's available. Then, as this concept proceeds in creating other foods they will be introduce into the food chain.

When "real" food becomes a luxury fear driven government policies will easily cause the public to conform. Hunger makes the human spirit cross lines it once thought impassable. 

I'm old so maybe I won't be around for this but my grand and great grand kids just might be.  

 

 I think I will go bake come cookies to have with my real milk.

Photo from internet.
 

Have a nice Tuesday  

Nicole

Monster Monday

 Welcome to

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

We had a lazy one. Just doing what ever around the house. That's fine with me.

You know I love skulls, skeletons and well any kind of bones. 

So here are the, my lovable, monsters for today.

 

 

 

I just think they are so cool. 

 

Here are some nice images.

 

Wishing everyone a fabulous Monday
 Nicole

SITAR

 Welcome to 

SITAR is about ANYTHING art. Your art, someone else's art, writing, photography, the art of cooking, the art of sewing and textiles. Sharing historical art, street art, a story about art. Do you have a question or need help with art? Write a blog post and link it up here. We will all try to help with it. My only rule is that if someone asks for critique it must be done with generosity and consideration. 

This is a place of learning, encouragement and inspiration.

 

 

Introducing Janet Sobel. 

Check her shoes. Janet painted while wearing her high heels, stockings and skirts  Her choice of attire was not a performance, but a reflection of her identity as a 1940s Brooklyn housewife who integrated her art into her daily domestic life. 

 

Though I only recently discovered this artist's fascinating and tragic story, I was surprised to find just two  photographs of her. I asked AI why, and it gave me this response. 

 

"Misogyny and patriarchal snobbery were central reasons why so few photos of Janet Sobel exist and why she was erased from mainstream art history. While rare archival images do show her painting on her stomach on her apartment floor, the systemic gender bias of the 1940s Mid-Century art world prevented her from being documented like her male peers."

It is also highly documented that Jackson Pollock "stole" her invention of drip art.  Janet created the all-over drip paintings years before Pollock popularized the style. Pollock himself admitted Janet had an impact on him. Stole is a controversy word, however, being a man he got the credit for it.  

Sobel created Milky Way (1945) two years before Pollock began experimenting with drip painting (Credit: Scala/MoMa)
 

But, I'm ahead of the story.

 In 1938, a 45-year-old Ukrainian-born grandmother, with no previous artistic training, began fiddling around with her son's painting supplies and changed the course of cultural history. Born Jennie Lechovsky in a Jewish town in eastern Ukraine in 1893, Sobel escaped the violence of anti-Semitic pogroms (in which her father had been killed), and arrived in New York with her mother and three siblings in 1908, when she was 15. Because of her family's financial survival needs, Janet had very little formal education. Her childhood effectively ended at age 16 when she married Max Sobel, a fellow Ukrainian born Jewish immigrant and goldsmith, immediately transitioning into a lifetime of domestic motherhood. She never learned to read or write English.  She was married to Max for 58 years.

Much of the next three decades would be devoted to the rearing of their five children.  

There are several different stories about how Janet started making art.  Whatever the truth, her son Sol and an art student handed her painting supplies and told her to make art. It was the late 1930's that Janet began to experiment with making art.

"Heavenly Sympathy," an abstract piece Sobel painted circa 1947, featuring near endless swirls of figures and faces, overlaid one over the other in swarming layers of paint.

Edward C. Robison III/Courtesy The Menil Collection

 

 Sobel created pioneering drip works like Milky Way in 1945, while Pollock did not begin his signature drip paintings until 1947. Pollock and influential art critic Clement Greenberg saw Sobel’s work at a 1945/1946 exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery. Greenberg later acknowledged that both he and Pollock saw and admired those paintings. Greenberg famously dismissed Sobel as an untrained "primitive" or "housewife" painter. Even calling her art "housewife trash." 

In addition the media  and critics labeled her "primitive" and "untrained," refusing to grant her the intellectual status given to men.  Greenberg and other historians actively scrubbed Sobel from the "all-over" art lineage to protect Pollock's prestige. 

(Personal note; I have never liked Pollock's art, and the more I learn about him the less I like the man.) 

What notoriety Janet did have was ended 1947, at the peak of her success, when her husband moved the family to Plainfield, New Jersey for his business. Janet couldn't drive effectively cutting her off  from New York. In addition her primary champion, Peggy Guggenheim, closed her gallery and moved to Europe, leaving Sobel without institutional backing. Art historians widely view the mid-century modern art world as deeply biased against women, framing the erasure of artists like Janet Sobel and Lee Krasner not as accidental oversights, but as systemic exclusion.

Janet Sobel, Disappointment, c. 1943. Oil and sand on canvas, 26 x 30 inches. Private collection. Image courtesy the Menil Collection

 

Haber's Art Reviews

 

Patrons more about Janet.

 

These are just of few of Janet's pieces. Janet's art does not exist in public art databases. Historians and dealers estimate she completed more that 1,000 total works. While she was alive she profited very little with her art. Again, because she was targeted by the male mainstream there are no official records. 

Today, however, her art makes dealers a very good prophet. Major auction houses like Phillips have successfully sold her premier paintings for up to $76,200 USD, and her works on paper for over $16,500 USD.  

In the contemporary art market, her works generally trade between $300 and $16,000, with highly prized oils on canvas sometimes reaching up to $57,000.  

 Major institutional acquisitions by entities like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and recent exhibitions at the Menil Collection have driven up her estate's value. However, none of these modern windfalls benefited Sobel before her death in 1968. 

In other words her art was ripped off at every level.  

There is much more to know abut Janet Sobel. Just type in her name.

I hope you enjoyed SITAR.

 

Nicole 

 

I'm joining Gillena for  

Panorama Journal of the association of 

historians of American art.  

CNN 

  

 

Friday Face OFF (FFO) 8/21/26

 

Welcome To Friday Face OFF (FFO)

This is the place to show off your face art.

You know, ANY type of face, nature, the face of a flower, photography, drawings, paintings, AI. There just needs to be a face in your blog post, a link back to my blog and please use the image below. 

Thank you.

I feel very bad, that again this week, I don't have any art. I did start a piece but I will save it for next week. 

So what faces do you get this week?

Old ones.

 

Here are two of some colored pencil faces.  

 

 

I even did hair. LOL

 

I do like this one.

 

Here are a few AI pieces.

 

It's time for features.

Gillena 

 

Peppylady (Dora)

 

Melbourne Street Photography
Roentare 

 

That's it for now 

Don't miss

Sunday in the Art Room.

 

I will be joining Gillena 

 

Now it's time to show me your face.
 Nicole