We’ve written before about Tom Sachs, an artist whose philosophy of making we really love. Sachs’ work, like the chair seen above, shows its seams, and doesn’t conform to the idea that a piece of art – or anything – is ever “finished.” We recently came across this quote from Sachs; his attitude about transparency in design, and the idea that if you can see how things are made, you can fix them and improvise with them, really resonates. read more…
(Video link here.) When we’re introduced to a venture, our first impulse is always to ask: what’s the story behind it? What were the seeds of the idea that grew into a fully realized project? It’s the stories that win us over, which is why we’re are so taken with Jam in the Van.
Based in Venice, CA, Jam in the Van is the project of music fans looking for an uncommercialized, authentic music experience. Armed with an old Winnebago that they’ve turned into a state-of-the-art recording studio, these guys invite musicians to perform, film the unique performances, and put much of it online for free (scroll down for the current list of musicians). Music fans get to discover new artists or check out fantastic live-versions of their favorite tracks, and small independent artists get amazing free publicity. It’s such a rare and beautiful thing to see a project come together sheerly out of passion and drive. read more…
(Video link here.) It’s been an eerily snow-less winter in New York City. With the exception of a single January snowfall there has been nothing—and we kind of miss it. This post is in honor of the snow we think may be on its way…and the possibilities it brings with it.
We wrote a couple of summers ago about artist Jim Denevan and his large-scale sand drawings which totally transformed how we think about playing in the sand. Now our attention has been called to his work with snow and ice. In 2010, Denevan made the largest piece of artwork in the world on the surface of Lake Baikal in Siberia. This nine-mile spiral of circles over the ice is stunning and allows us to once again completely re-imagine the possibilities of using snow as/in art. read more…
guggenheim archive
Recently we wrote about the ins and outs of selling your books online; one comment inquired about our collection of old art books and whether or not we would sell them directly to readers. While we can’t delve into the world of online sales right now, we DO want to point you to this great FREE online art resource: the Guggenheim has put 65 gorgeous modern art books online for anyone to access.
We stumbled on a treasure right away: Calder, A Retrospective Exhibition from 1963: a wonderful range of his work, from monumental sculptures and mobiles to improvised objects he made for his home. read more…
Last week Mondoblogo posted two photos taken at Art Basel of wonderful geometrically-painted walls with doors (they are part of the blog’s illuminating challenge to identify what is actual “art” and what is not). The top is “Final Cut” by artist Ernst Caramelle. The second “a random door”…
We’re putting them in our file of cool ideas for painting a room with a door. read more…
photo: john deane
Ever since we found this quote by the legendary choreographer Martha Graham on Elephant Journal the other day, it’s been haunting us, because we relate to SO much to it and because we DON’T relate to some of it, a curious mix.
“I believe that we learn by practice.
Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same.
In each, it is the performance of a dedicated
preciseset of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.One becomes, in some area,
an athleteof God.Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.” read more…
(Video link here.) Early this morning, rapt, we watched this wild Chinese version of the famous ballet Swan Lake, in which the ballerina literally dances on point on her partner’s head. It’s neither ballet nor pure acrobatics but an astonishing hybrid. A recent N.Y. Times article tells the story of its evolution: the vision classical ballet dancer and choreographer Zhao Ming imposed on the Guangzhou Acrobatics Troup, and the conventions he purposely set out to break:
“People usually talk about the skill of acrobats and the beauty of ballet. Now they can talk about the beauty of acrobats and the skill of ballet,” Zhao said. “I really love to turn things on their head.”
via Kottke
Related posts: lines ballet’s alonso king: waking up our internal teacher
a dance lesson from zorba + anthony quinn
elizabeth streb on the necessity of risk-taking
new daily dance: staging possibility to shift your life
guerrilla dance goes viral in a spanish bank
nicole dextras
We really love artist Nicole Dextras ice texts series, especially this 6 foot high “VIEW” made out of ice and set out in the landscape and left to melt – a lovely, ephemeral artwork that changes our….view. You’ll find other potent ice texts and installations at her website, along with what amounts to “how-to’s” for making ice words. Dextras builds molds of individual letters out of wood, fills them with water, sometimes coloring them with food colors, and then waits for them to freeze before removing the molds…curiously similar to making a popsicle. read more…
A favorite way we’ve found to savor an artwork or image without owning it is simply to prop a book with the work open against a wall, on a shelf or sideboard or mantle. Every time we pass by or glance up, it is there for us to enjoy. When we tire of it, or become “blind” from seeing it frequently, we open the book to another page, or display another open book altogether.
We’ve found this is a great way to put ideas we want to remember in our field of vision…
For example, it allows us to have flowers in our place when no live ones are available or worth buying, like the begonia and sunflower, above, from Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones… read more…
(Video link here.) We were just getting disgruntled at Pandora’s “Bjork” stream when “All Is Full Of Love” came on. We WOKE UP, amazed at what we were hearing and went looking for the lyrics. They are beautiful, somehow making us think of the creative process as much as love. “You have to trust it, despite wrong turns. It’s there.”
This video of a young Bjork performing the song is a bit unfocused until 1:20 when it really picks up steam. At 2:30 she holds a note – the word “love” – for a stunning 17 seconds. It has an utterly forthright, courageous quality that reminded us read more…
photo:mark sherwood + queensland art gallery
For an interactive installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, artist Yayoi Kusama created a totally white room as a palette for visiting children to embellish as they pleased with colored dot stickers; ultimately thousands of stickers were used, to make bulls-eyes, whorls, dribbles and overlapping hits of color. The results of this crazy-simple exercise in spontaneous design is the increasingly stunning transformation of the white room…a big lesson to our often white-stuck decorating heads. Check out the transformation from start to finish…
We’ve been so busy, we haven’t given all the gifts we’ve had in mind to give to friends and family. Our fridge is still stockpiled with mason jars of Prunes in Armagnac we plan to give friends we meet up with in the next few weeks. And our favorite gift for this year, the extraordinary book Tantra Song by Franck Andre Jamme, sold out of its first printing after we’d gotten to send only two copies out. So we’re going to wait a month or two until it’s back in stock, THEN we’ll give it as a Christmas – or anytime – gift. The book is a rare collection of powerful modernist Tantric paintings from Rajasthan, done on salvaged paper: “things of beauty used to awaken heightened states of consciousness.” The book, and the story behind it ia SO remarkable that it is a well-worth-waiting-for-bargain at around $25. (It will be available here
We’re just following our Philosophy of Late Celebrations: read more…
In 1966, Alexander Calder and his wife Louisa published this full-page ad in the New York Times; it is a fantastically bold and hopeful statement. Every New Year’s Day, we remember that ad, finding it about the most perfect wish for the New Year.
Related posts: a new year’s wish spirals on
a new year: 20 seconds old…
a new year’s call from the future
neil gaiman’s benediction for new year’s (or any other time)
what are your new year’s…wishes?
The treasures to be seen on YouTube continue to astonish. For this lazy New Year’s weekend, we offer Émile Cohl‘s Fantasmagorie; created in 1908, one of the first animated films.
To make this film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings… the characters in the film look as though they’ve been drawn on a chalkboard, but it’s an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.
It is charming, odd, fabulous and at the .47 second mark seems to be secretly giving a New Year’s message.
via OpenCulture
Related posts: weekend road trip: ‘address is approximate’
dept of mindshifts: pencilhead ‘right here, right now’
teeny video: what having a new idea is like
archives of american art, smithsonian institution
A 1957 homemade holiday card by artist Alexandra Darrow, known for her Works Progress Administration murals of the 1930′s.
…And we’re wishing you fatso joy and blessings…
(We’ll be back on January 1st.)
