SKYTEMPLE SPACE DIVISION

Until now, Skytemple Space Division has been kept top secret. Skytemple staff have been legally bound to nondisclosure agreements. We have lived the last year in the shadows while secretly preparing to lead the way into the final frontier for web design companies.

Finally, our story can be told.

All the way back in 2011  a strange discussion erupted at one of our weekly meetings concerning the news of actor Ashton Kutcher’s recent purchase of a $200,000 ticket aboard one of Virgin Galactic’s new sub-orbital space ships.

Richard Branson, the billionaire head of the Virgin Group claims to have already sold 500 tickets aboard Virgin Galactic’s as-yet launched sub-orbital space fleet.

This got us wondering: why doesn’t Skytemple have a Galactic Space Fleet? We couldn’t come up with an answer.

So after months of soul-searching, we started construction on our proposed Orbiting Sky Temple and our fleet of Skytemple Space Cruisers.

It is thanks to these efforts that we are able to offer our celebrated services in a whole new way.

Websites, in SPACE!

The orbiting Sky Temple hosts three shuttle docks and an impressive array of anti-drone space missiles. Inside its fifty-thousand square foot interior, it boasts impressive living quarters including 70 bathrooms, a full space tennis court, a zero g sauna, and a staff of over three hundred robots. It is 4G and Space Wi-Fi integrated.

Each of the six Skytemple Space Cruisers is staffed by a crew of seven pilots, three engineers, and four attendants. In-flight meals are prepared by master space-chefs and include ‘Astronaut’ versions of all your favorite foods. Freeze-dried ice cream, freeze-dried open faced portable mushroom paninis and freeze-dried foie gras are just a sampling of the vast menu.

I know what you’re wondering. Will Skytemple still make great websites and offer expert consultation for all of my marketing needs? Of course. We will simply be doing it from our gigantic orbiting Sky Temple from now on.

Check back often for future news and information about how you can apply to live in the orbiting Sky Temple!

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Longtime resident of New Britain — Dr. Bruce T Fletcher — has spent years bringing dental care to those who would otherwise never have it and works with Lexington Dental to “inspire our friends to restore their teeth, gums, mouth and smile to optimal and maintainable health, comfort, function and beauty”.

With missionary work in Honduras, Bolivia and Equador, Dr. Fletcher has shown time and time again his dedication to equal access dental care. He is currently a member of the New Britain Oral Health Collaborative, which works to provide dental services to underprivileged youth in New Britain, a member of the Pierrre Fauchard International Dental Honor Society as well as a participate in the Mentor Program at the UConn School of Dental Medicine.

At his practice, Lexington Dental Associates, Dr. Fletcher emphasizes thoroughness. Located at 49 Lexington Street, it is all-ages, and also all-encompassing.

“Our interest lies not in “patchwork” or “emergency only” dentistry, but in advanced comprehensive care. We strive for results that feel good, look good and work well. This office refers as needed to specialists for some root canal treatments, surgical periodontal care, orthodontics, certain extractions and implant placement.”

In-house oral conscious sedation is offered for the more apprehensive patients, and many smile-enhancing treatments (such as bonding, crowns, natural-looking fillings, Zoom! two-hour whitening, and Smile Vision) are available.

You can learn more at their website here: Lexington Dental Associates.

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“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Everyday Magic

Many people swear by certain rituals to their art, certain music they have to listen to in order to create, certain times of day they have to work, or even certain shoes they have to wear. Some artists, however, know the mere act of art itself  as a kind of ritual; a way for each of us to rent the fabric of the ordinary and transform our everyday life.

Since the dawn of humankind, art has served to heighten the experience of everything it touches from our most holy rituals to our most mundane of tasks. From the ancient shamanistic cave paintings on the walls of our ancestral homes, intended to inject magical visages to prehistoric gatherings, to the war paint of celtic tribes to the ceremonial feathers adorning Native American warriors, art has been used for countless centuries to transform the world – to bridge the gap between the physical realm and the realm of ideas

Holidays are the best place to look for the ways the ritual of art transforms our world. Christmas finds us adorning sprawling living room totems in hopes of a joyful season. Without the baubles and decorations, the cards and wreaths hung from our walls each December, Christmas would lose much of it’s essence. Art as ritual creates the season. Halloween allows us to escape even ourselves for one night, by literally transforming ourselves with masks and garments which normally exist only in our individual or collected imaginations in the form of costumed heroes and villains from myth, legend, and more modern media.

Through The Looking Glass

One local artist has been exploring these very themes all her life. Megan LaBonte – who many Valley residents may already know as, “The Hoola-Hoop Girl,” a moniker Ms LaBonte picked up in the early aughts for her public impromptu Hoola-Hoop parties on the steps of the First Congressional on Main, has spent the last decade exploring the boundaries between art and life, most notably with her installation pieces placed in Northampton shop windows in which she turned blank white mainline heads into exquisitely detailed fantastical faces. This last year however, Ms LaBonte took the plunge, emerging her world in an everyday ritual to produce images of worlds which exist right on top of our own.

The 366 Program asks artist to take a picture of themselves every day for a year (in this case a leap year hence the 366). This seemingly simple task has blossomed into a treasure trove of opportunities for Ms LaBonte to explore reoccurring themes such as nature and the woods, femininity and sexuality to name just a few. Each day she uses her camera to become a kind of portal, allowing her each day a moment to transcend the every day. One day may find her transformed with brightly colored scales rippling across her face, while another a satyr deep in a green wood complete with horns and elven ears.

In the following podcast interview with Megan LaBonte, I discuss her ongoing 366 project, her past work and touch on some of the ideas discussed above.

Megan LaBonte-interview by Skytemple

View more of Ms LaBonte’s work at her online gallery here.

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The artist’s life is uncertain to say the least. The artist, by nature, operates in a world removed of the practical restrictions of the everyday. The painter chooses the color pallet with which to paint their sunset, free -if they choose- of the restrictions of what others see. Many people use art as an escape – a way to get away from the practical problems that sometimes seem insurmountable. Art allows us to imagine impossible ways to do just that. The artist is bound only by their imagination.

But selling art is a different beast. The ups and down of the public’s whim and fancy often dictate what design or painting sells from week to week. Making money sculpting or painting whatever one fancies does not often pay the bills. In the past, the artist might look to a gallery owner or private patron to fund their art. Much of Western culture’s finest early art was paid for by private donors for private courses. Painting of kings and family of royalty or commissions from the church. But much of the artist’s work, including often the style itself, was dictated by these patrons.

Today however, in a kind of ultimate democratization – just as sovereignty is now each citizen’s responsibility, so is, patronage. And the modern incarnation of democratized patronage is the internet. Now the artist is their own sales team, their own reviewer, their own accountant, their own banker. The artist is freed from the restrictions of suits interfering with ‘pure art’ but they are also forced to take into their own hands the mechanisms of the marketplace which many purists in the past have considered vulgar.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with local designer and artist, Scout Cuomo. Scout has been running an Etsy shop for a number of years from her apartment. Etsy allows her to sell her art work and design goods in a free environment online, while still providing technical support and a platform for advertising. Ultimately, however, everything in her store is hers. And, beside the minimal transaction fees, the money never has to go through a third party vendor.

Etsy shops have become a very popular way for people to sell everything from homemade pottery to hand knitted mittens to prom dresses to fine art.

In the following interview, held at the Haymarket, I spoke with Scout about the difficulties of balancing the artist with the business person.

Scout Cuomo on Her Art, Self Promotion and more. by Skytemple

VISIT SCOUT’S ETSY STORE TO PURCHASE ANY OF THESE ITEMS OR BROWSE LOTS MORE HERE

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Video Velveeda, Found Media and Privacy in Art

Dan Cashman’s Video Velveeda by Skytemple

And watch the trailer for Video Velveeda HERE

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