Tea Fire
November 13, 5:45pm: A wind-driven wildfire, caused by human ignorance, raged through the hills of Montecito, ultimately consuming 220 houses in my neighborhood, including my home and art studio, burning everything down to the foundation.
I was downtown, racing home after a friend had called me letting me know that there was a huge fire in the foothills. When I arrived home, the fire was still “miles away” but approaching rapidly. I took this last photo in my studio before starting to evacuate…..On the table my engraving in progress of President Obama.
TEA FIRE OF THE NOVEMBER MOON by Shelley Flanders: An eyewitness account:
When my ex-husband called with the distinct warble of fear on his tongue and the harassing sound of soaring Santa Ana wind driven flames in the background on the evening of Thursday November 13th, I grabbed my keys.
Racing against all odds including the voice in my head, up to 306 Sherman Road in Santa Barbara, everyone else in their right mind was heading in the opposite direction. The full moon having earlier risen with such resplendent joy appeared crimson in the smoke filled sky.
The hills behind Dayal’s house held a massive ribbon of furiously raging flames that seemed laden with nefarious intent. He was functioning outside the boundaries of time and space as he searched in vain for boxes with which to place the compilation of invaluable original artwork and scratchboard illustration that comprised the framework of his impressive career. As I carried handfuls of his artistic memorabilia back and forth to the car there was no question that the flames were all too rapidly encroaching.
Having secured his two cats in the bedroom, the last thing Dayal did after the electricity died was to spend too many excruciating minutes looking for his pet carrier. In the pitch dark with the fire magnified between the reality out one window and the reflection bouncing off another and live embers landing at my feet, I was ready to load the cats into the Igloo chest, when Dayal finally returned from the basement with an old Chinchilla cage and those precious souls were transported to the car.
Two boys had been parked out front with their engine running in a weird state of petrified astonishment gazing at the brilliant storm, as if the driver’s feet were on the break and gas simultaneously. Both strapping youths had refused my initial pitch to lend a hand but at the last minute one of them hesitatingly agreed to drive Dayal’s new Smart car, sure to bite the dust or melt into its framework, otherwise. Our Smart hero pressed the panic button by mistake, which caused his horn to emit intermittent reverberating blasts that as he drove along seemed a profound and accurate ode to the tenor of the night.
For two sleepless nights my imagination traveled back through that house viewing everything that could or should have been retrieved. During the chaos I remembered worrying that Dayal would be upset at the mess I made in the basement looking for boxes. I remembered the mangled cardboard I kicked inside the garage in case an ember landed on its flammable surface causing it alone to burn down the house.
Dayal later told me that he had manually closed the garage door and carefully locked the front door to protect it from looters, that his tongue was literally glued to the roof of his mouth and that his arm hair was singed, and later that evening he remembered leaving behind the forty limited edition Obama posters, one personally signed by Barack Obama thanking him for his wonderful contribution to the campaign as an Artist for Obama.
Yesterday I watched in amazement while my daughter Gibran and her father carefully sifted through the wreckage of what had been their home as if they were archaeologists searching through the past. Each familiar fragment discovered became an object of remembrance and affection, a gift from the aftermath that filled them with a sense of wonder. It was an amazing therapeutic endeavor that helped them forge the reality of completion and assimilation to a way of life now completely annihilated.
Of course, everyone knows that things can always be replaced and nothing material has the value that a loving beating heart contains in its fragile breath upon this earth. Every lesson is a lesson learned of love and gives us the opportunity to feel and experience even more of it. The truth is that beyond measure, the value of Santa Barbara is not its real estate but in the real haven it embodies for the collective heart of the community it serves. Shelley Flanders is a freelance writer in Santa Barbara and can be reached at ShelleyFlanders@hotmail.com
Remaining scrap metal, ready to be recycled – /- The foundation cannot be used, it will have to be demolished…..While we are wondering what’s next.
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Tags: tea fire, wildfire
Wake me when it’s over!
I am no longer worried. (Small print) >…”About my stock portfolio because of an exciting new investment strategy I have recently developed which has proven very effective in the current financial crisis. Here is how it works: Whatever you do, no matter how much you want to, never ever look at how your stocks are doing.”
Eight Hundred Billion Dollars Later. (Small print)>…”We promise to keep on borrowing money we don’t have to keep the party going, keep Champagne flowing, the band playing and the fat cat dancing ’till the ship sinks. Because we don’t waste our time with risk management or rescue plans. We just ask the government to bail us out.”
There is still a third one on the way.We will release them shortly through our online store. Stay tuned!
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Fineline Editions
I am excited to announce the grand opening of Dayal Studio’s Fineline Editions, our newly designed virtual store, offering museum quality giclee prints of some of my most intriguing artwork. I will be adding more inventory of classic pieces that I have created during the last two decades of my career, along with recent fine art releases. I designed the look of the website, which was then developed and implemented by Chris Mele, a highly skilled web wizzard. If you need a website contact him here.
Our first release is my new Obama portrait “Change We Can Believe In”. Making it’s debut at the Manifest Hope Gallery in Denver in time for the National Democratic Convention, it is available in three sizes and is sold exclusively through Fineline Editions .
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“Yes We Can ” Sold Out!
My official Barack Obama campaign poster “Yes We Can” is now SOLD OUT.
I have a few oversized “Yes We Can” giclee prints available, 44×68 inches (see above), some 40,5x 26,5 inches and some 33×22 inches, all printed on Epson Enhanced Matte. They are artist proofs/ or prints we couldn’t sell at fundraisers in the days before the election. They have a better color balance than the official print.They are not numbered, but I signed them. Email me if you are interested. (No Ebayers !!)
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Obama Engraving (2)
In the wake of the Senator’s spectacular speech in Germany, my country of birth, I am unveiling my second Obama engraving. This is the first of a trilogy of portraits and will be used in a large format mixed media presidential painting I am intending to complete by the end of the year.
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The “Smart Art Car” has hatched…
After waiting over 14 months for delivery our Smart Car finally rolled out at the Santa Barbara Smart Center. It is still a blank canvas but in the coming weeks it will officially be turned into Dayal Studio’s Smart Art Car Project delivering a message of fine art throughout traffic in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and later San Francisco and beyond. Since the body panels are easily exchanged we can create new concepts frequently and showcase our most recent work. Hopefully we can invite other “smarties” to join our art project and periodically create a museum on wheels!
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Tags: smart art, smart art car, smart car
Coinciding with “Bastille Day”, the French Fourth Of July ( sort of…) I am releasing “ Vive la Liberté!” This giclee print in an edition of 200 measures 20×28 in / 51×71 cm and is printed on museum quality archival paper. It is now available as a “Bastille Day Promotion” for US$ 89 only – until Dayal Studio Fineline Editions, our online store, opens later this month. We accept V/MC/AX and PayPal. Please email Dayal Studio if you are interested. This print will later retail for US$129 unless it sells out before the store opens.
When I was living in Paris about three decades ago, as a free-spirited student and mostly broke, I always “found” enough money to visit the Louvre on a regular basis. As I was standing in front of Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting “La liberté guidant le peuple – Liberty Leading The People” it became clear to me that I am not only going to paint nice and beautiful things in my life as an artist. But that I also somehow have a responsibility to history, interpreting and preserving my impressions about life and events during my own lifetime, even if I would not at the moment understand the full extent or even tragedy of it.
In late 2000 I was commissioned to recreate this famous and powerful image in my signature engraving style for yet another Technicolor movie poster of “Les Miserable”.
I have since changed the flag for repurposing of the image, but it is noteworthy that Delacroix had painted himself into his own painting holding a rifle, looking at a dead soldier. I wonder what he was thinking?
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Tags: Bastille Day, Liberty, Vive La Liberte
Printing “Obama”
These photos were taken at Continental Colorcraft, the union printer responsible for the exquisite printing of the Obama limited edition series.
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Engraving Obama
The portrait of Senator Obama as it comes to live on my Kaolin coated scratchboard. After the image area is coated with black China Ink fine lines are engraved into the surface sculpting shadows and highlights….
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Tags: Antar Dayal, artists for obama, Obama Art, Obama Poster, obama poster by artist antar dayal, yes we can poster
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scratchboard engravings by Antar Dayal.«««
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