Feeling a little disjointed, especially since someone hacked into my email account today and started spamming everyone I know. *Sigh* What a perfect day for this lovely graphic designer/ artist- Becha.
I was talking to my partner this morning and he told me about a story of a turtle who had adopted a baby hippo who had lost its mother.
I really strikes me sometimes that we as humans believe that we are the only creatures capable of making compassionate, sentient choices in our lives. This turtle obviously made the choice to help and care for another creature, one that it had no responsibility towards. It is always so important to keep in mind that all creatures have the capacity for intelligence and love, and to treat all beings with the respect they deserve.
I just finished watching Secretary, directed by Steven Shainberg by, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. Winner of a Sundance along with many other awards.
What a super intense movie. It really deals with the individual experience of a couple negotiating the realm of BDSM.
Interesting reading if you want to get a little bit more true life information: The Way of Whips and Chains: BDSM as a life path. by a woman named Sasha. Discussing BDSM as her own religious form of transcention and healing at the same time.
I've always been super interested in people who are really into this stuff. Some people take it so far that it seems to go against all evolutionary instinct altogether.
A lot of artists move into this realm as well, dealing with the breaking down or mangling of the body. One of my favorite all time artists, Belinde De Bruyckere, working with the intensity of destroying and recreating the human form.
Last but not least: A friend posted this song and I listened to it right after watching this movie. I found the mood very appropriate.
Since I just posted an obsessive toothpick sculpture, I'm going to post an artist who's toothpick sculptures are even more incredibly inspiring to me. Scott Weaver just leaves me in complete and total awe of what one can do with some materials, and more than a little bit of time.
There are some types of works that are created through repetitive motions over and over again, and that is what makes them special. Currently I'm working on a project that has to do with writing down my emotions throughout the day every time I remember. Eventually I will print them on things that I will wear. The beauty of things like this comes from the impact over time as an accumulation.
A beautiful work that I've seen like this recently is a work by Karina Smigla-Bobinski. It's a kinetic drawing sculpture- a helium ballon with writing implements on it that bumps along a room for a set period of time.
A beautiful work that I've seen like this recently is a work by Karina Smigla-Bobinski. It's a kinetic drawing sculpture- a helium ballon with writing implements on it that bumps along a room for a set period of time.
The mark-making that happens over time is amazing.
Another accumulation piece that I love is quite a lot older, but no less awesome- Library by Trong G. Nguyan. In this piece he has written entire chapters of books word for word on grains of rice as a re-interpretation of the library. Talk about making words sacred.
And one more that I just found- Plamen Ignatov spent 16 years of his life and 6 million matches creating this replica of Rila Monastery. Although I'm not in love with the object, this man's obsession over it makes me happy. I can't imagine having that attention span.
Kacper Hamilton, a swiss designer and artist who bridges the gap between fine art and commercial art very well. I'm especially intrigued by his series of wine glasses, modeled after the 7 deadly sins.
Just functional enough to be sellable, but still super interesting.
Yayoi Kusama is an artist who has worked with one subject matter for her whole career- polka dots. She is actually one of the few artists who has been diagnosed as clinically insane for her entire career, and yet still has managed to hold together her audience. She lives in an asylum and she continually paints polka dots because it helps her keep her world from collapsing.
Although I'm not normally in love with her work, I just saw a friend post about her recent exhibit at Queensland Art Gallery and I LOVED IT.
In this exhibit she painted a room entirely white and then throughout the exposition she let children cover all the surfaces with stickers. The change that occurs in the space is so magical. It takes a completely sterile space and makes it into something interactive and beautiful.
A total testament to what can be created collaboratively. It makes me want to give more children stickers.
It's still snowing out and everything is quiet and blanketed. It feels so soft outside.
Thinking of snow as a medium is super incredible to me. I could never do it because I'm a pansy about the cold, but I love the idea of making giant temporary sculptures that melt away.
I have a friend, Delayne Corbett, who makes the most magical snow, ice and sand sculptures. His ability to spend hundreds of hours making intricate creations that will not last is so beautiful.
One of my favorite artists in the whole world is Andy Goldsworthy.
He makes art that is purely created out of natural materials. He sews things together with thorns, and balances stones to make free standing structures. He hand lays hundreds of sticks to intertwine and hold shape, or uses spit to make ice sculptures out of icicles. Incredible.
Fischer’s art, like Fischer himself, is highly memorable but hard to pin down. It consists, for the most part, of three-dimensional objects made from materials not usually associated with art... Since Fischer began showing his work, in the mid-nineteen-nineties, in Europe, he has produced an enormous number of objects, drawings, collages, and room-size installations. Fischer’s pieces range in size and scale from an ordinary apple and pear to a thirty-foot-high metal tree whose leaves are laser prints of more than two thousand of Fischer’s vivid, slapdash drawings.
Review from http://www.newyorker.com
In late 2007, Swiss-born artist Urs Fischer took a jackhammer to Gavin Brown's pristine white West Village floors. A gallerist has got to have a lot of faith in an artist to let him rip through the concrete, upend pipes, and fill the space with a huge open trench of dirt and debris. Faith is precisely what Gavin Brown has in the 35-year-old Fischer, who lives and works in New York and Zurich. On the heels of Fischer's extraordinary hole-in-the-floor show, gallerist and artist teamed up again to co-curate "Who's Afraid of Jasper Johns?" at Tony Shafrazi's gallery last May. The event was basically an experiment in outrage and orchestration, where the previous exhibition was minutely photographed and then turned into wallpaper to compete with a new set of paintings and sculptures. The project might sound convoluted, but Fischer's work is overwhelmingly straightforward. He uses everyday materials like wax, fruit, dust, and chairs, and there is always a lingering feeling of loss and decay.
Review from http://www.interviewmagazine.com
It's snowing out today and I have to go up to the mountain and collect some bark for my next project. All I really want in the world right now is to see these little creatures by Kate Clark running around with me! Oh wishful thinking...
It has an +18 rating because of a couple of mildly scandalous outfits, but it's clean and beautifully inspiring. I would show this to all children. Everywhere. :)
Here's something I need to remind myself of over and over again- Sometimes the most simple things are the most striking. One single interjection into a landscape can change the whole way of looking at things.
The January issue of Interfold Magazine got released today, and I am on page 11. No write up and just one shot, but I'm there!
Interesting, although I am completely unsure about the ethics. She's actually trying to physically make herself into an animal through medical science. She does deal with the subject matter I enjoy though, if a little extreme.
This is a super good article about her latest project Que le cheval vive en moi.
Performance
Dealing with Loss is a series of performance photographs that talk about the rituals we need to create for ourselves in order to properly grieve. Coming from a religious background where the rituals are are already created to mourn the loss of human life, the artist questions what happens when a person no longer subscribes to those specific rituals or beliefs.
Dressing in an outfit that represents her own human life, and the skeletal remains that will one day be her own body, the artist creates a succession of actions with the intention of creating a new space where loss can be acknowledged, felt, and released.
Working with her own symbol for unnecessary loss- the skull of a moose who has been shot by hunters who did not take away or use the body, the artist ties herself to its remains. Walking in the cold, staying with the body, tying and untying herself, the artist stays, freezing and mourning, for over 6 hours. Finally, when some sort of release is felt, the artist gives up the corpse back to its natural habit, leaving it to its natural process of decaying back into the universe.
One of my favorite SCAD shorts. I just love the mood of this. I saw it years ago and it still pops into my head every once in a while.
For more go to:
One of the aspects of Nick Cave's work is that he encourages other artists to be included in his work. This group of us decided to do a parade reminiscent of and expanding the dialogue on his work.
Finally finished my inside/outside animal based religious outfit today. I'm not quite sure what to do with it now, what space I want to put it in, or what I should do while I'm in it. However it is ready for the Nick Cave inspired soundsuit march that will go on this evening.
I was messing around with placing it in some old religious imagery I had on my computer. I'm not quite sure if I love it, but I need to start somewhere with placing it in an environment.
