The Imagination Fully Dilated Blog

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

If it kept coming down, we were sure to drown in it.

Each of us could see what we needed to do individually and as a group to stop it, but few were willing to sacrifice in their personal lives, occupations and politics to make the change.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

With the fall of the great god Calculus, math, the bedrock of science, crumbled and there was no longer any means of testing our understanding.

Both a blessing and curse, anything was now possible.

Artwork—”The Fall of Calculus” a collaboration between Jill Bauman and Alan M. Clark

Text—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Did he have the courage to save his family?

Knowing he had little time left, he flipped through to the last few pages to get a look at the end.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Deep Sea Creatures Make Daring Rescue, Suffering Ruptures to Save One of Their Own.

Having developed gas, Crabnee Stalpinoster rose to the surface and was drowning in the open air, his bodily tissues rupturing as expanded gasses tore his cells apart, but rescuers in the experimental vessel, Grostilok, tossed him a rock that dragged him back down to the depths where he was rushed to hospital and treated along with his rescuers. All are expected to make a full recovery.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

This piece of art was produced by Darryl Elliot, Alan M. Clark and Mark Poole while at DragonCon at some point in the 1990s.

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Somehow Hypnozoid had emerged into the real world from 1950’s black and white Science Fiction.

His plot for world domination through mind-control was ultimately thwarted when those assailed by his superior intelligence merely laughed at his dated appearance.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

I was trying to create a new Dilation Exercise when an older one involving the painting  “Dexter’s Freezer,” the first in the four panel art and caption set below, combined in my mind with several other images and story lines I was considering to create a short story.

Freezer Burn

Delirious from lack of sleep during the heat-wave, I was cleaning out the freezer, removing the mysterious ice-encrusted packages and ice trays.

Suddenly it was a whole lot bigger in there, so I climbed inside to get a look around and the door shut behind me.

In my state of torpor, I wandered the frozen wastes, fascinated by the strange formations.

Only when I began to shiver from the cold did I begin to believe this was more than a dream.

I tried to return the way I had come, to find the door and get out.

The ice, shifting beneath my frostbitten feet, tangled my path and left me more disoriented, and I knew that if I didn’t find someone to help me I would die here.

She looked a lot older than she was, and when she told me her name I remembered.

“My name is Chicken Pot Pie,” she said, and I awoke with a start, bumping my head on the edge of the freezer and falling to the floor.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

In order of appearance, the paintings are “Dexter’s Freezer” copyright © 1986 Alan M. Clark, “Shipwreck Formations #3″ copyright © 2009 Alan M. Clark, “Shifting Ice” copyright © 2009 Alan M. Clark, “Locked in the Angel Closet” copyright © 2005 Jill Bauman and Alan M. Clark.

Last week I spend an afternoon with a hired gun, Vernon T. Williams, who recently moved with his family to Eugene. He’d seen my art exhibit at the Springfield City Hall and something about the experience prompted him to contact me and call me out. We met at my studio and discussed creative process, among other topics. While we did so, Vernon shot me, over and over. It didn’t hurt a bit. In fact I had so much fun we became friends. We’ve discussed a possible future collaboration in animation, but what form that will take is not firmed up yet. Below I’ve posted his write up for the shoot as it appears on his blog and some of his incredible photographs. Looking at those photos, it was as if I were seeing my studio for the first time.  What a nice place to work!  To see more of them, visit his blog: Hired Gun – A Photographer’s Journal

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

portrait of the day – alan m. clark

Monday, January 18, 2010

What a truly enjoyable day I spent with Alan. A quick morning shoot turned into lunch, which in turn became the better part of the afternoon.

I encountered Alan’s paintings in a hanging downtown and was immediately taken by the work. Each piece captures a moment in a fantastic story; some dark and mysterious, some with a sly sense of humor. There were several that captured my attention for many minutes as they begged me to complete the story in my mind. Alan put it so well; the best art asks you to bring a piece of yourself to the viewing. It leaves space for you to collaborate with the artist in creating a narrative that is different for you than for any other viewer. His work did that for me in spades. Some of my favorite pieces were to illustrate stories by Stephen King. His depictions from the Dark Tower series captured beautifully the Roland that had come to life in my head over the many years I’ve enjoyed those books.

You should check out Alan’s work, but know that an image on the internet can’t capture the vibrant, saturated colors and the intricate detail that I found so enthralling. They can, however, show you how the color and detail is there to serve a higher purpose; the mood and story that are so beautifully captured by his brush. Unfortunately one of my favorite pieces isn’t even there – a brilliant book cover commissioned to illustrate the King story, “Riding the Bullet.” It’s a striking vision of a ’69 Mustang fastback speeding down the rails of a derelict roller coaster and I was instantly drawn in. It has more layers than a Roxy Music album and reveals more each time you look at it. My son, Shane, was really taken by Alan’s paintings. One of his favorites was a particularly striking piece showing crows picking at a scarecrow.

Alan responded with enthusiasm to my request to photograph him and showed me such gracious hospitality when I showed up at his home studio. I made some photographs I’m proud of that day but, more than that, I got to have some great conversation with a gifted artist. Alan shared with me his time and his talent and I am truly grateful

Hired Gun – A Photographer’s Journal

—Vernon T. Williams

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

The idea had been around since the Renaissance.

But it wasn’t until the problems of the energy crisis were compounded by a magic deficit that anyone was willing to build it.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Our last best hope, we traveled over four-hundred light-years to find a technologically advanced civilization.

What we found instead was a single intelligence, now in decline and demented, but still capable of broadcasting its mathematical message.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

He tried for years to sell the moon, but found no one willing to pay his price.

Now that he was destitute, he would give it away piece by piece, and no one would dare to refuse his gift.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon