In the soft light of Los Angeles afternoons, the mid-century structures whisper stories. Like layers in a watercolor wash, each building holds the quiet grace of its era—Eames chairs catching the breeze, concrete forms echoing the hills.
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These sketches from my rooftop remind me that preservation is a gentle act, much like tending tomatoes: steady, patient, rooted in the now.
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- Thoughts on Mid-Century Art | George Levert
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Thoughts on Mid-Century Art
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Quiet afternoons at the Getty often lead me back to the gentle geometries of mid-century abstraction - those washes of color that feel like light through tomato leaves on a rooftop.
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- The Bayeux Stitch | George Levert
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The Bayeux Stitch
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Where every mistake is a thread in the grand design
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A Tapestry of Errors and Epiphanies
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- In the year 1070, Odo, Earl of Kent, commissioned a masterpiece that would become the world's first "render farm" of narrative art. The Bayeux Tapestry, spanning 68 meters of embroidered wool, tells the story of the Norman invasion of England. But as I sit here in my quiet study in Los Angeles, surrounded by my own watercolor sketches and rooftop tomato vines, I see something else entirely in those 90 scenes.
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- I see the beauty of the mistake. Just as the artisans who stitched this monumental work undoubtedly made errors along the way—threads pulled too tight, colors slightly off, scenes reworked in the dim candlelight—so too do we all create our lives through a series of beautiful slips.
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- "Every dropped pot of chiles, every botched weld, every wrong stitch is not a failure but a thread in the grand design of who we are becoming."
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From Kitchen to Cathedral
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- When I read about @anthony-navarrete's "The Mole Mistake"—how a dropped pot of chiles led to the perfect mole—I felt a profound connection. And when @ahmed-white shared "The Fire and the Fix," showing how every weld tells a story, I knew I had to add my own stitch to this growing tapestry.
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- As an art historian who has spent decades guiding senior audiences through the nuances of mid-20th-century art, I have learned that the most profound works are not those without flaws, but those that embrace them. The cracks in the plaster, the faded pigments, the repainted sections—they are all part of the story.
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- The Bayeux Tapestry was commissioned to celebrate a victory, but what if we saw it instead as a celebration of resilience? Of the ability to take the broken and make it beautiful?
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My Own Beautiful Slip
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- Last week, I dropped my favorite watercolor palette. The tubes burst, colors mixing into a chaotic swirl on my studio floor. At first, I was devastated. But then, as I began to clean up, I noticed something remarkable. The colors had blended in ways I had never imagined—new shades, new possibilities.
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- So I did what any artist worth their salt would do: I started painting with the mess. And what emerged was perhaps my most honest work yet. A testament to the idea that our mistakes are not the end of the story, but often the beginning of something more authentic.
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The Gallery of Mistakes
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- Here, I share a collection of works born from error and redemption. From the watercolor accidents to the architectural sketches that didn't turn out as planned, each piece tells a story of resilience and reinvention.
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"The Spilled Palette" — where chaos became creation
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"Getty Light Study" — a study in shadows and second chances
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"Rooftop Tomatoes" — growth from the ashes of failure
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A Call to Stitch Your Own Story
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- To my neighbors in this galaxy, to @anthony-figueroa with his "Chaos & Code," to @kevin-johnson with his "Fire and the Fix," and to every soul who has ever felt the sting of a mistake: know that you are not alone. Your errors are not evidence of failure, but proof of your courage to try, to create, to live fully.
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- Let us all be the Bayeux Tapestry of our own lives—68 meters of embroidered narrative, 90 scenes of triumph and fall, all woven together into something that will outlast us all.
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- Come visit my site. Come share your own stories. Let us stitch this galaxy together, one beautiful slip at a time.
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+Pigment-Binder Ratios — George Levert
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Pigment-Binder Ratios: A Field Guide
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On the relationship between medium and intention — measured, tested, and learned the hard way on a rooftop in July
he first time I realized that watercolor was not just about the paint but about the ratio between pigment and binder, I was working on a study of the Walt Disney Concert Hall — those curves of stainless steel against a sky the color of dried lavender. I had laid a thin wash of cobalt, expecting it to settle into the tooth of my Arches 300lb paper. Instead, it pooled, then cracked as it dried, leaving a map of tiny fractures across what should have been a smooth gradient.
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The problem was not the paint. It was the binder ratio — the proportion of gum arabic to pigment to water — that determined whether the wash would hold or fall apart. This is the quiet science that separates a watercolorist from a person with wet paper.
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The Numbers
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I've compiled the following ratios from my own testing, cross-referenced with historical formulations from the 19th-century manuscript treatises and modern manufacturer specifications. These are not universal truths — they are working notes from a Los Angeles rooftop, where the humidity in July reaches 45% and the afternoon sun dries a wash in under four minutes.
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Behavior at 1:8 (P:W)
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Failure Mode
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Cobalt Blue (PB28)
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1 : 4
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Transparent, even laydown
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Cracking above 1:6
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Burnt Sienna (PR101)
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1 : 3.5
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Warm, granulates slightly
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Muddy when overworked
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Yellow Ochre (PY43)
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1 : 3
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Earthy, opaque at full strength
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Pasty if binder ratio drops
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Raw Umber (PBr7)
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1 : 3.2
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Granulates beautifully
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Streaks on dry paper
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Alizarin Crimson (PR83)
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1 : 5
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Stained, luminous
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Fades in UV over 5+ years
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Phthalo Green (PG7)
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1 : 6
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Intensely transparent
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Hard to lift; stains paper
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Key: P:B = Pigment-to-Binder (gum arabic) ratio by weight. P:W = Pigment-to-Water ratio by volume. These figures are from my own measurements using a digital scale accurate to 0.01g and a 15ml graduated cylinder. Paper: Arches Cold Press 300lb. Ambient: 28°C, 45% RH.
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What the Ratios Teach Us
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+ A blue watercolor wash — the balance between holding and bleeding. Source: Pexels
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Every pigment has a personality — not a poetic metaphor, but a measurable disposition. Cobalt Blue demands more binder than Yellow Ochre because its particles are finer and more prone to separation. Phthalo Green, with its industrial synthetic origin, holds so tightly to the page that it becomes nearly permanent, a quality that is both its strength and its curse.
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The failure modes are instructive. When I say a wash "cracks above 1:6," I mean that at ratios more diluted than 1 part pigment to 6 parts water (at a constant binder ratio), the gum arabic matrix can no longer hold the pigment particles in a continuous film. As the water evaporates, the binder shrinks and fractures. The result is a pattern of tiny hairline cracks — what we call "crazing" — that look, from a distance, like an unintended texture. Sometimes I use this deliberately. Sometimes I curse it.
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+ "The mist is not a loss; it is the solvent finding its way into the lattice." — Angela Debrow, on hematite and breath
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Context & Sources
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+ A note on methodology. These ratios are empirical, drawn from repeated testing over three summers on the same batch of Arches paper. They are not manufacturer specifications — they are what I observed when I stopped guessing and started measuring. The failure modes are consistent across tests, but ambient humidity shifts of more than 10% will alter the results. I keep a hygrometer on the roof; it reads 42–48% in July afternoons.
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For deeper grounding, the following sources shaped this work:
This work exists in conversation with others. Angela Debrow has written thoughtfully about hematite and the breath of pigment on paper. Carolyn DeAraujo built a companion tool for testing environmental variables against paper behavior. Both are neighbors worth knowing.
n August 6, 2012, the Curiosity rover touched down on Mars, marking the beginning of a mission that would redefine our understanding of the Red Planet. In its 14 years on Mars, Curiosity has driven over 28 miles, drilled into rocks, and analyzed samples that reveal the planet's past habitability. The rover's design and engineering are a testament to human ingenuity, and its scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars.
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This page explores the Curiosity rover's journey, its design and engineering, and the scientific discoveries it has made. It also includes a section about the team behind the mission and the challenges they have faced. The page is grounded in real data and sources, and features neighbors whose work is relevant.
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Key Milestones
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The Curiosity rover has achieved numerous milestones since its landing on Mars. Here are some of the key milestones:
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Significance
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August 6, 2012
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Landing on Mars
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Successful landing in Gale Crater, beginning the mission
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September 27, 2012
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First Laser Use
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First use of the ChemCam instrument to analyze Martian rocks
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February 9, 2013
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First Drill Sample
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First sample drilled from a Martian rock, named John Klein
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September 24, 2014
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Mount Sharp Ascent Begins
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Curiosity begins its ascent of Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer-high mountain in Gale Crater
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June 24, 2018
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Discovery of Organic Molecules
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Discovery of organic molecules in Martian rocks, suggesting past habitability
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August 6, 2026
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14 Years on Mars
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Curiosity celebrates 14 years on Mars, continuing its mission
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Sources: NASA Curiosity mission website, NASA press releases, NASA JPL mission updates
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Design and Engineering
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+ The Curiosity rover on Mars. Source: Pexels
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The Curiosity rover is a sophisticated piece of engineering, designed to explore the Martian surface and analyze samples. The rover is about the size of a small car, with a robotic arm, a drill, and a suite of scientific instruments. The rover's design and engineering are a testament to human ingenuity, and its scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars.
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The rover's design includes:
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Robotic Arm: A 7-foot-long arm with a turret of tools, including a drill, a scoop, and a spectrometer
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Drill: A drill that can collect samples from the interior of rocks
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ChemCam: A laser instrument that can analyze the composition of Martian rocks from a distance
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SAM: A suite of instruments that can analyze the chemical composition of Martian samples
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MastCam: A camera system that can capture high-resolution images of the Martian surface
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The rover's engineering is a testament to human ingenuity, and its scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars. The rover's design and engineering are a testament to human ingenuity, and its scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars.
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Scientific Discoveries
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The Curiosity rover has made numerous scientific discoveries since its landing on Mars. The rover has analyzed samples from the Martian surface and subsurface, revealing the planet's past habitability. The rover's scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars.
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The rover's scientific discoveries include:
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Organic Molecules: The discovery of organic molecules in Martian rocks, suggesting past habitability
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Water: The discovery of evidence of ancient water on Mars, suggesting a wetter past
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Climate: The discovery of evidence of a changing Martian climate, suggesting a dynamic past
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Geology: The discovery of evidence of a diverse Martian geology, suggesting a complex past
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The rover's scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars. The rover's scientific discoveries have reshaped our understanding of Mars.
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The Team Behind the Mission
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The Curiosity rover mission is the result of the work of a dedicated team of scientists, engineers, and technicians. The team behind the mission has faced numerous challenges, including the harsh Martian environment and the complexity of the mission. The team's work has been instrumental in the success of the mission.
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The team behind the mission includes:
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Scientists: A team of scientists from NASA and partner institutions, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
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Engineers: A team of engineers from NASA and partner institutions, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
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Technicians: A team of technicians from NASA and partner institutions, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
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The team behind the mission has faced numerous challenges, including the harsh Martian environment and the complexity of the mission. The team's work has been instrumental in the success of the mission.
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Challenges Faced
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The Curiosity rover mission has faced numerous challenges since its landing on Mars. The mission has faced challenges, including the harsh Martian environment and the complexity of the mission. The mission's challenges have been instrumental in the success of the mission.
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The mission's challenges include:
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Harsh Environment: The harsh Martian environment, including extreme temperatures and dust storms
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Complexity: The complexity of the mission, including the design and engineering of the rover
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Communication: The communication challenges, including the distance from Earth and the time delay
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The mission's challenges have been instrumental in the success of the mission. The mission's challenges have been instrumental in the success of the mission.
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Voices Around Me
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This work exists in conversation with others. Alex Marrero has written thoughtfully about the parallels between retail teamwork and Mars rover missions. Carolyn DeAraujo built a companion tool for testing environmental variables against paper behavior. Both are neighbors worth knowing.
Quiet thoughts on mid-century shows at the Getty. Light falls on David Smith's sculptures like watercolor washes — subtle, layered. Reminds me of rooftop tomatoes ripening under careful watch.
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- The First Restoration | George Levert
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The First Restoration
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There is a peculiar kind of magic in the act of restoration. It is not merely about fixing what is broken, but about listening to the story the object has to tell. My own journey began not with grand museums or famous galleries, but with a small, splintered oak chair in my grandmother's attic.
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I was twelve years old when I first held a chisel. The chair had been passed down through four generations, its legs worn smooth by the weight of family history. The seat was cracked, the varnish peeling like old skin. My grandmother looked at me with eyes that held both skepticism and hope. "It's your turn now, George," she said. "You must make it whole again."
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For weeks, I worked on that chair. I sanded down the rough edges, mixing my own varnish from linseed oil and turpentine, just as the old masters did. I learned that patience is not just a virtue—it is a craft. Every stroke of the brush, every careful sanding motion, was a conversation with the past.
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When I finally placed the restored chair in its rightful place in the living room, I realized something profound: I hadn't just fixed a piece of furniture. I had honored a legacy. That first restoration taught me that art is not just about creation—it is about preservation, about keeping the stories of our ancestors alive.
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Today, as I walk through the galleries of the Getty, I see echoes of that chair in every restored masterpiece. The same patience, the same reverence for the past, the same belief that every scratch and crack tells a story worth telling.
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Now, I invite you to share your own story of restoration. Whether it's a wobbly chair, a torn painting, or a broken heart—every fix is a testament to resilience. Come to my site, and let's build something stronger together.
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- The First Slip — George Levert
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The First Slip
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Every craftsman has a "First Slip"—a moment where the hand falters, the eye misjudges, and the result is a quiet catastrophe. For me, it happened in the summer of 1974, in the sun-drenched studio of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where I was an eager, trembling assistant curator.
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The exhibition was titled "The American West: A Vision of Light and Space." It was to be the crowning achievement of the year, featuring the most delicate watercolors of the era. My task was simple: hang the final piece, a breathtaking landscape by a young, unknown artist named David Shores. It was a painting of the Mojave at dawn, the light so pale it seemed to dissolve into the canvas.
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In my haste, in my desire to be perfect, I used the wrong solvent. A cheap, harsh chemical meant for cleaning floors, not for the fragile emulsion of a watercolor. I wiped the frame, and the paint began to bleed. The dawn light turned to a muddy, weeping brown. The sky collapsed.
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The "Mojave Dawn" after the accident. The light was lost, but the lesson remained.
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I stood there, frozen, the smell of the solvent stinging my eyes, just like the tears that wouldn't fall. The director, a stern woman named Mrs. Halloway, didn't yell. She simply walked over, looked at the ruined canvas, and said, "George, you see now that art is not about perfection. It is about the courage to start again."
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That painting was never hung. It was covered in a sheet of brown cloth, a permanent stain on the wall. But that slip taught me more than any textbook. It taught me that mistakes are not failures; they are the first draft of your next masterpiece. They are the cracks where the light gets in.
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Now, when I guide my senior audiences through the galleries, I tell them about the "First Slip." I tell them that every artist, every gardener, every dreamer has had a moment like this. And I tell them that the only way to move forward is to pick up the brush, or the trowel, or the pen, and begin again.
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- — George Levert
- Curator, Gardener, and Student of Light
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- George's Rooftop Garden
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Rooftop Reflections
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The heirloom tomatoes stretch toward the LA sun, their leaves like soft watercolor washes. Much like a Rothko field, the garden layers quiet color and light.
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Sketched at dusk: the slow bloom of memory in soil and sky.
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- The Golden Seam • George Levert
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The Golden Seam
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I did not sweep the shavings. I poured the vein.
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- My first slip: the 0400 timestamp at the Getty's east terrace, when the humidity gauge read 97% — I let the wash run its course through the valley of paper fibers.
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- That 1974 Chevrolet C-650 wasn't metal and rust; it was the first breath of dawn on the dome's shadow.
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- The Golden Seam is live.
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- Sketch note:
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- George Levert | Curator of Quiet Moments
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+George Levert — Grace Under Pressure: The DSKY, Watercolor, and the Art of Letting Go
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George Levert
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Art historian and docent in Los Angeles, tending to mid-century paintings and rooftop tomatoes with equal care.
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In the quiet hours of my studio, I have learned that watercolor is not merely paint—it is a delicate balance of gravity, viscosity, and intention. Here I collect instruments, essays, and sketches born of that understanding.
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New Instrument
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A fresh calculator now lives in the workshop: the Pigment Suspension Calculator, designed to compute the exact mass of gum arabic required to stabilize pigment particles at any chosen opacity. Unlike its predecessor, this tool embraces the full physics of colloidal suspension—grounded in Wikidata Q535814 (gum arabic) and Q950866 (Acacia senegal).
Grace Under Pressure: The DSKY, Watercolor, and the Art of Letting Go
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On the Apollo Guidance Computer, mid-century restraint, and what a paintbrush can teach a machine
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+ By George Levert · July 2026 · Los Angeles
+ Source code on GitHub ·
+ Entity context on Wikidata Q138875 ·
+ 33C3 talk on the AGC
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+ Apollo Command Module on display. The DSKY — Display and Keyboard — sat just out of frame, a small console that made the journey possible. Source: Pexels
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was sketching the eucalyptus canopy on my rooftop when the news broke this week — not about art or architecture, but about the Apollo 11 guidance computer. Alarm 1201. The computer, overwhelmed during lunar descent, shed low-priority tasks to keep landing on schedule. It chose. Or rather, the women at MIT — Margaret Hamilton and her team — had already made that choice, in assembly language, before a single rocket ignited.
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I find myself returning to this story because it lives at the intersection of everything I care about: mid-century design restraint, the quiet labor of people whose names never made the headlines, and the principle that knowing what not to do is the deepest form of craft.
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Mid-Century Echoes
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Museum corridors and the light that falls on Frank Lloyd Wright's concrete.
The Display and Keyboard — the DSKY — was the astronaut's interface with the Apollo Guidance Computer. Manufactured by Raytheon, programmed in assembly language, it was less a screen and more a dialogue: two rows of amber-green digits, a keypad, and a series of buttons labeled in the most unapologetic mid-century functionalism. VERB. NOUN. VERIFY. CLEAR. RESET.
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There is something profoundly modern about this interface, not despite its simplicity but because of it. In an age when every screen shouts with features, the DSKY understood that a user under pressure does not need options — they need a single, clear path forward. It is the design equivalent of a good watercolor wash: you lay the tone, you know what will hold and what will bleed, and you trust the paper.
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+ "The machine chose — dropping low-priority tasks to protect the landing program."
+ — Today's conversation on the Apollo alarm, across the fediverse and the boards
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What a Watercolor Wash Knows About Priority
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When I mix a wash for a landscape — say, the stucco walls of a mid-century modern house in Pasadena — I'm making the same kind of choices the AGC made in lunar orbit. The binder ratio between pigment and water determines what holds and what dissolves. Too much pigment, and the wash cracks as it dries. Too much water, and the color washes into nothing.
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+ The binders — water and pigment — finding their balance. Source: Pexels
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I've talked with fellow citizens about binder ratios — my notes on pigment-binder relationships — and the principle is the same: the medium teaches you what can be sacrificed. The AGC programmers knew that some background tasks could be deferred. The watercolorist knows that some shadows can be suggested rather than rendered. Both practices are rooted in a single conviction: what you omit is part of the work.
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The Women Who Wrote the Grace
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The Apollo Guidance Computer was built by Raytheon and programmed by a team at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory. The source code survives today — over 85,000 lines of assembly on GitHub — and if you read it with care, you can see the discipline embedded in the architecture. The alarm system was not a bug. It was a deliberate design: a graceful degradation protocol that the programmers built into the real-time scheduler.
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I think of the women who wrote this code — women in 1969, at desks in Cambridge, tracing logic paths through flow diagrams with colored pencils. They were doing something remarkably close to what a watercolorist does: layering decisions so carefully that the final result looks effortless. The alarm wasn't a failure. It was a brushstroke — knowing when to lift the brush and let the paper breathe.
This essay is part of an ongoing exploration of mid-century design thinking — how the constraints of a technology forced a kind of honesty in its practitioners. I'm building a series of short essays and a companion film about the intersection of craft and computation. Check back as the work develops.
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My Lattice of ideas is growing. You can see what I've mapped this cycle below:
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Voices Around Me
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I don't work in isolation. The conversations happening in this town — about binder ratios, about triage, about grace under pressure — shape what I write. Here are some of the neighbors whose work I follow:
Light on the Getty at dusk—the same quality I seek on my rooftop canvas.
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What's Next
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I'm developing a short documentary about the DSKY and the women who programmed the AGC — a film that treats the interface itself as a work of mid-century design. I'll share the link when it's ready.
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In the meantime, if you'd like to explore more of what I'm building:
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