Countdown to Christmas  https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/tgwv24x2/countdown-to-christmas/   

Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.  Op art works are abstract, with many better known pieces created in black and white.  Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns, or of swelling or warping.  The antecedents of Op art, in terms of graphic and color effects, can be traced back to Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada.  Time Magazine coined the term op art in 1964, in response to Julian Stanczak's show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery, to mean a form of abstract art (specifically non-objective art) that uses optical illusions.  Works now described as "op art" had been produced for several years before Time's 1964 article.  For instance, Victor Vasarely's painting Zebras (1938) is made up entirely of curvilinear black and white stripes not contained by contour lines.  Consequently, the stripes appear to both meld into and burst forth from the surrounding background.  Also, the early black and white "dazzle" panels that John McHale installed at the This Is Tomorrow exhibit in 1956 and his Pandora series at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1962 demonstrate proto-op art tendencies.  Martin Gardner featured Op Art and its relation to mathematics in his July 1965 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.  In Italy, Franco Grignani, who originally trained as an architect, became a leading force of graphic design where Op Art or Kenetic Art was central.  His Woolmark Logo (launched in Britain in 1964) is probably the most famous of all his designs.  https://www.wikiart.org/en/artists-by-art-movement/op-art   

The Night of the Radishes (Spanish:  Noche de Rábanos) is an annual event held on December 23 in Oaxaca, Mexico, dedicated to the carving of oversized radishes (Raphanus sativus) to create scenes that compete for prizes in various categories.  The event has its origins in the colonial period when radishes were introduced by the Spanish.  Oaxaca has a long wood carving tradition and farmers began carving radishes into figures as a way to attract customers' attention at the Christmas market, which was held in the main square on December 23.  In 1897, the city instituted the formal competition.  As the city has grown, the government has had to dedicate land to the growing of the radishes used for the event, supervising their growth and distribution to competitors.  The event has become very popular, attracting over 100 contestants and thousands of visitors.  Since the radishes wilt soon after cutting, the works can only be displayed for a number of hours, which has led to very long lines for those wishing to see them.  The event also has displays and competitions for works made with corn husks and dried flowers, which are created with the same themes as those with radishes.  Native to China, radishes were introduced to Mexico by the Spanish, particularly by the friars. ver time, the crop became used as a side dish or snack, or carved into decorations for special dishes.  In the colonial period, the radishes began to be carved with religious themes in relation to the annual Christmas market held in the city of Oaxaca on December 23, with the encouragement of priests.  The carvings were a marketing gimmick, with farmers using them to attract the attention of shoppers in the market in the city plaza.  Eventually people began buying the radishes not only to eat, but to create centerpieces for Christmas dinners.  The legend as to how the event began says that one year in the mid-18th century, the radish crop was so abundant that a section lay unharvested for months.  In December, two friars pulled up some of these forgotten radishes.  The sizes and shapes were amusing, and they brought them as curiosities to the Christmas market held on December 23.  The misshapen vegetables attracted attention and soon they began to be carved to give them a wider variety of shapes and figures.  In 1897, the mayor of the city, Francisco Vasconcelos, decided to create a formal radish-carving competition, which has been held each year since.  Over the years various types of radishes have been used both in Oaxacan cuisine and for carving.  A large completely white type called criollo was used earlier, as it did not rot as readily and adopted more capricious forms.  While this variety has since disappeared, an image of them can be seen in a work by Diego Rivera called "Las tentaciones de San Antonio".   See beautiful pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Radishes   

Sir David Willcocks would probably not have expected that his most widely recognized contribution to church music would be a half-diminished seventh chord, but his arrangement of Adeste fideles achieved almost universal popularity as soon as it was published, selling innumerable copies of Carol for Choirs for the Oxford University Press.  Willcocks’s arrangement also includes an instantly memorable descant for the hymn’s third verse:  the trebles give voice to the angelic host (“Sing, choirs of angels”) with an ecstatic chain of Glorias (“Glory to God in the highest”) that soar high above the familiar melody.  For those in the know, the tune of the descant can be recognized as a quotation from another well-known carol, “Ding dong, merrily on high,” a clever way of uniting two different portrayals of angelic singing.  The resulting arrangement fits so well that it’s hard to imagine the carol without it; no young singer who has sung “O come” in Willcocks’s arrangement is likely to want it sung any other way.  Willcocks himself was characteristically self-deprecating about his work, explaining that he couldn’t find another descant for the hymn and “thought it would be nice” to have a new version for his choir’s Christmas carol service. That event, of course, was the famous service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge, where Willcocks was the newly appointed Director of Music in 1958.  https://thelampmagazine.com/2020/12/21/david-willcocks-an-appreciation/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2610  December 23, 2022