Pictorial Dreams

Artist's muse (2015) © Thom Buchanan.

Thom Buchanan, phenomenal artist and blogger at The Pictorial Arts, is putting together an art book of his drawings. Its publication is being funded through a Kickstarter campaign. Mr. Buchanan was interviewed on this blog in 2013, here, about his vision of Millennial humanism. He imagines a rarely optimistic, and yet non-tech-driven, future. Please take a moment to look at Thom's campaign page, here, and support him with a dollar or two if you can. Crowd-funding is one of the more hopeful innovations of our time, enabling smaller producers and creative people to find consumers or an audience in a marketplace increasingly dominated by marketers and corporations.

Thom says this is his "Poster for a movie never made, but really should have. Maybe think of this as a movie poster from an alternative universe."

Tibet's Lost Time Capsule

The Lost World of Tibet (2006) © British Film Institute. Video Source: Youtube.

In the interim while this blog is sleeping, see a beautiful film about pre-occupation Tibet, with rare historic footage from the British Film Institute. Before the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, Tibet's situation in a bowl in the Himalayas ensured that the great powers left it untouched, a medieval time capsule preserved across centuries. The most distinctive aspect of that time capsule was the persistence of a living state religion, in which 20 per cent of the male population became monks. The current Dalai Lama, Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dondrub,  was chosen as the state's God King.

Present-day autonomous Tibet. Image Source: Rolf Gross.

 

Tibetan cultural area. Image Source: Tibetan Trekking.