NOT Your Grandmother's Origami

SHAKTI

Archangel Michael 

"For the exhibition Surface to Structure: Folded Forms, which will take place at New York's Cooper Union from June 19 to July 4, Nguyen has gathered more than 130 works from 88 artists around the world. Collectively the works demonstrate how origami artists are pushing the boundaries of technique and style. But today artists have moved beyond that, with many using software that helps them dream up and then fold their elaborate works."

Fabulous Ghana Coffins

 

 

"Kane Kwei’s grandmother died. She had never taken a plane, but often expressed her fascination for this revolutionary means of transport and was wishing, one day, to be able to do so.

Kane Kwei remembers then the coffin which had provoked the enthusiasm of crowds some months before. To honor his grand mother by giving her what she had not been able to accomplish of his living being, he constructs her a coffin in the form of a plane."

"The figurative palanquin connected with the totem of its owner is a special kind of litter used in the Greater Accra Region in Ghana. These palanquins called in the Ga language, okadi akpakai, belong to the royal insignias & were used only by the Ga kings or mantsemei and their sub-chiefs when they are carried in public at durburs and festivals like Homowo. With these figurative palanquins the Ga create ethnic differences between themselves and their Akan neighbors that only use simple boat or chair-shaped litters."

Tim's Vemeer

I was distracted by a recent disturbing event when I saw this movie, so in order to do it true justice, I may need to see it again. I don't think so though. My brain doesn't work this way. I felt like Jenison was being very right brained about the whole process & found myself becoming irritated by his attempt to paint the way the 17th century Flemish master Vermeer did by using the 'camera obscura' technique. Maybe if his finished product in any way conveyed the same response as a Veneer, I would have been a bit more bowled over.

When I look at 'Girl With the Pearl Earring', or any other work of art for that matter, I think about my emotional response & what the participants may have been thinking in a moment in time. The painting was created 300 years ago. Folks have had a lot of time to surmise who the girl was or how he painted her. Here's just a few of the comments made about the painting:

"The image is a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a ‘head’ that was not meant to be a portrait. After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, the subtle color scheme and the intimacy of the girl’s gaze toward the viewer have been greatly enhanced."

"Each generation perceives and describes the impressions gained from Vermeer’s works based on the intellectual baggage and the reception they master..... His (Vermeer's) low output was rather caused by the need for a long mental process before he was satisfied with the image. He needed a long period of maturing his works in order to reach an acceptance of having reached the final and aesthetically pleasant accomplishment. As many authors in the past have observed, Vermeer in many paintings deleted earlier rendered elements from his interiors. In lectures, I have shown digital reconstructions of how crammed some of his paintings may have been at earlier stages in their making." Jørgen Wadum  (Head of 'Girl With Pearl Earring' Restoration project)

I Should Be So Lucky: Leslie Laskey

http://leslielaskeyfilm.com/

 

See that piece of metal in his hands that he pulled out of a burnt fire? It's an object that this 80+ man finds excitement in & transforms onto paper. Painter, Mixed Media, Printing, Collage Artist..... his living space a wonder of found & alive objects...... he's in heaven. So am I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How To Paint A Queen Documentary by Alaister Sooke

Alastair Sooke is my new favorite Art Critic, Broadcaster & Television Program Creator on Art & Art History for BBC television & radio. He is knowledgable, personable & passionate about the ART world. He doesn't dumb down the material, but does make it accessible & entertaining. I've watched three of his documentaries for the BBC so far on the Treasures of Ancient Egypt, The Ten Most Expensive Paintings in the World & the following called, "How to Paint a Queen." 

"There are more images of Elizabeth II than any other historical figure, but how to paint a queen is one of the trickiest of artistic challenges. Alastair Sooke looks at the depiction of Britain's female rulers, from Mary Tudor & Elizabeth I to Queen Victoria & the current monarch, Elizabeth, & discovers how queenly portraits reveal Britain's changing ideas about women & power."

A Cautionary Tale: The Big Sleep

I had a hyperactive one year old & I couldn't sleep. I was yet to find out the complicated truth about the little cherub of mine, but in the meantime I could not sleep to save myself. You know the drill; days upon days of interrupted sleep & not sleeping while they take a nap because it's the only damn time you have five minutes to yourself to do eight billion things before getting back in the mom saddle. I was a 42 year old first time, sleep deprived mom & it was time for some big guns. I had been on a low dose anti-depressant for years which kept my head above water, but anyone knows you only need to go a few days without proper sleep to end up in loony tunes land. Somehow new mothers are able to be comatose & take care of their kids, but because Gabe already had undiagnosed mania & I was old : >, this didn't work for me. I needed some help to sleep. So, after a quick call to a psychiatrist, I was introduced to a prescription drug called Seroquel & entered, for the next 12 years, THE BIG SLEEP. Thus, this cautionary tale.
(to be continued at http://disupo-swimmingthroughmud.blogspot.com/ )

Happy New Year... REALLY!

Turkey; "Standing on Head, Doing the Splits"

I have a lot to be grateful for this New Years Eve. Even though there is a truck size poop still clogging our toilet & my boy continues to eat jars of peanut butter & whatever else he can get his hands on, he is a marvelous gift; teaching me everyday about patience, compassion, humor & JOY. He just turned 14 & spent his very first nights away from home this past summer at Kiwana's Camp.

At our family Boxing Day celebration a week ago, most commented on how much he has grown & matured this past year. He asked my niece Ellie, "How are you liking college?" I discovered them having a REAL conversation in about this & that & it made my heart soar.

We're also buying a new house through Habitat for Humanity by the grace of volunteers who are willing to help put a roof over the heads. I'm learning, at age 55, how to build a house from the bottom up.

Our boy was in serious trouble this past summer, hospitalized with a sinus infection that almost reached his brain. My dear friend, a writer, just came through chemo which left her fingertips wracked with painful neuropathy as she attempted to type & her life is forever changed. She wore a blond wig over bald head & a slinky gown over missing breast & toasted those at a party for those who helped her through on Solstice Eve.

We're alive. Life is good. Happy New Year! xo

My Blogging Lag & St. Paul's Church Tiffany Interiors

I've missed blogging here, but I the good news is that due to putting in hours to move into a new Habitat house soon & a busy holiday season selling on Etsy, I haven't had the time! One way I am earning 'sweat equity' hours is through managing our local Habitat for Humanity Etsy shop, so check it out here!

https://www.etsy.com/people/Habitatstoreejc?ref=si_pr

I was just looking at photos of stained glass on Etsy & came across some from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Troy, New York. I thought they looked like some Tiffany windows I had seen & sure enough when I looked them up on Wiki I found out the following:

"St Paul's is unusual because all aspects of the interior design are based on a concept by the Tiffany Company: chandeliers, glass mosaics, tile work, a glass jeweled altar rail, a baptistery of wood & plaster filigree, decorative stenciling of the ceiling, walls & organ pipes, pews & support members & stunning windows by Tiffany artisan J.A. Holzer - indeed, nearly all the interior elements. As such it is a fully integrated interior design; only four such churches done by the Tiffany Company have survived intact & St. Paul’s is arguably the finest expression of this concept."

The Antikythera Mechanism: A 2000 Year Old Eclipse Predictor

 

'The Antikythera Mechanism is a complex geared mechanism that is over 2000 years old. The remains of the device were first discovered in 1902, when an archaeologist noticed a heavily corroded gear wheel amongst artifacts recovered by sponge divers from a sunken Roman cargo ship. The ship was en route from the Greek island of Rhodes to Rome when it sank off the island of Antikythera, between Kythera & Crete. It is thought to be dated from 150 to 100 BC. & that it could possibly be the work of the great astronomer Hipparchus.

The mechanism, often described as the world's first mechanical computer, was used to calculate & display astronomical cycles & to accurately predict lunar & solar eclipses. The mechanism is technically more complex than any known device constructed for at least a millennium afterwards & is the first known instrument to use geared teeth within gears!'

A Halloween Story

This seems like an appropriate day to relay the story of Annie, the CPR dummy. I like to listen to historical ghost stories on NPR & came across this on Radio Lab. (See link below)

"Near the end of the 19th century, a mysterious young woman with a beguiling smile turned up in Paris. She became a huge sensation. She also happened to be dead. You'd probably recognize her face yourself. You might have even touched it.

Long ago, death masks were a common way of preserving the faces of famous people; surviving clay molds were made of Napoleon, Beethoven & Lincoln. One of the most famous death masks was of a woman who wasn't famous at all, while she was alive. Her face, known simply as "L'inconnue de la Seine", (the unknown woman of the Seine), eventually found her way into classrooms across Europe & eventually the United States.

In 1960, an Austrian named Dr. Peter Safar was just developing the basics of CPR & needed a way for people to practice his new method. He tracked down a talented toy maker in Norway named Asmund Laerdal, who had constructed prosthetic wounds for use in military training. Little did Laerdal know that Safer had a compelling, personal reason for getting involved. Laerdal decided the best way to learn artificial resuscitation would be to practice on a 'dummy' & all he needed was the perfect face......"

Listen to Podcast:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/172693-death-mask/

My Art: Assemblage Shadowbox

Required Reading

Last Friday, after my son Gabe had been back at school for all of 10 days, I picked him up & his nose was running. When we got home I went to bed for 3 days. I wasn't being over dramatic, but did feel hopelessly like I was living a sick version of the movie Groundhog Day. The poor kid went through this same damn thing LAST September, then in December, then March, culminating in a two week hospitalization in June; his head blown up like a balloon with a sinus infection we feared had gone in to his brain.
I used to be a Psychology Professor in a previous life & the article below was required reading. Andrea Yates was made infamous by drowning her kids during her progressively worsening postpartum PSYCHOSIS, (not postpartum depression; a HUGE difference). She had five children under the age of seven, because her & her husband believed they were,"to have as many children as God wanted us to have." She's now sitting in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life, while her husband divorced her & went on to marry & have more children. :  / 

Playing God On No Sleep 

By Anna Quindlan

Jul 1, 2001

So a woman walks into a pediatrician's office. She's tired, she's hot & she's been up all night throwing sheets into the washer because the smaller of her two boys has projectile vomiting so severe it looked like a special effect from "The Exorcist." Oh, & she's nauseated too, because since she already has two kids under the age of 5 it made perfect sense to have another, & she's four months pregnant. In the doctor's waiting room, which sounds like a cross between an orchestra tuning loudly & a 747 taking off, there is a cross-stitched sampler on the wall. It says GOD COULD NOT BE EVERYWHERE SO HE MADE MOTHERS.

This is not a joke & that is not the punch line. Or maybe it is. The woman was me, the sampler real & the sentiments it evoked were unforgettable: incredulity, disgust & that out-of-body feeling that is the corollary of sleep deprivation & adrenaline rush, with a soupcon of shoulder barf thrown in. I kept reliving this moment & others like it, as I read with horrified fascination the story of Andrea Yates, a onetime nurse suffering from postpartum depression who apparently spent a recent morning drowning her five children in the bathtub. There is a part of my mind that imagines the baby, her starfish hands pink beneath the water, or the biggest boy fighting back, all wiry arms & legs & then veers sharply away, aghast, appalled.

But there's another part of my mind, the part that remembers the end of a day in which: the milk spilled phone rang one cried another hit a fever rose the medicine gone the car sputtered another cried the cable out "Sesame Street" gone all cried out stomach upset full diaper no more diapers Mommy I want water Mommy my throat hurts Mommy I don't feel good. Every mother I've asked about the Yates case has the same reaction. She's appalled; she's aghast, & then she gets this look. The look says that at some forbidden level she understands. The looks says that there are two very different kinds of horror here. There is the unimaginable idea of the killings, & then there is the entirely imaginable idea of going quietly bonkers in the house with five kids under the age of seven.

The insidious cult of motherhood is summed up by the psychic weight of the sampler on that doctor's wall. We are meant to be all things to small people, surrounded by bromides & soppy verse & smiling strangers who talk about how lucky we are. We are lucky. My children have been the making of me as a human being, which does not mean they have not sometimes been an overwhelming & mind-boggling responsibility. That last is the love that dare not speak its name, the love that is fraught with fear & fatigue & inevitable resentment. But between the women who cannot have children & sometimes stare at our double strollers grief-stricken & the grandmothers who make raising eight or ten sound like a snap & insist we micromanage & over-analyze, there is no leave to talk about the dark side of being a surrogate deity, omniscient & out of milk all at the same time.

The weight was not always so heavy. Once the responsibility was spread around extended families, even entire towns. The sociologist Jessie Bernard had this to say: "The way we institutionalize motherhood in our society--assigning sole responsibility for child care to the mother, cutting her off from the easy help of others in an isolated household, requiring round-the clock tender, loving care & making such care her exclusive activity--is not only new & unique, but not even a good way for either women or--if we accept as a criterion the amount of maternal warmth shown--for children. It may, in fact, be the worst."

It has gotten no better since those words were uttered 25 years ago. Worse, perhaps, with all the competing messages about what women should do & be & feel at this particular moment in time. Women not working outside their homes feel compelled to make their job inside it seem both weighty & joyful; women who work outside their homes for pay feel no freedom to be ambivalent because of the sub rosa sense that they are cutting parenting corners. All of us are caught up in a conspiracy in which we are both the conspirators & the victims of the plot. In the face of all this "M" is for the million things she gave me" mythology, it becomes difficult to admit that occasionally you lock yourself in the bathroom just to be alone.

What a DIVINE Treat! YOYO 1965

 

In the vein of Fellini, Chaplin, Tati & Lloyd, YOYO could have been made in the 1920's or today, but is actually from a delightful series of black & white films made by Pierre Etaix in the 60's. 

'A French comedy master whose films went unseen for decades as a result of legal tangles, director & actor Pierre Etaix is a treasure the cinematic world has rediscovered & embraced with relish. His work can be placed on the spectrum of classic physical comedy, but it also stands alone in its good natured delicacy. Influenced by his experiences as a circus acrobat, clown & by the silent film comedies he adored, his movies are elegantly deadpan while radiating warmth. YOYO is collaboration with the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière & is not anything less than a bracing & witty delight.'

Worth Another Look: Exit Through the Gift Shop

In the vein of Where's Waldo, 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' asks, Who's the graffiti ARTIST? Theirry Guttah? Mr. Brainwash? Bansky? AndyWarhol? ANYBODY?

One consistent theme in the reviews was the authenticity of the film: Was the film just an elaborate ruse on Banksy's part, or did Guetta really evolve into Mr. Brainwash overnight?  Glen Friedman, a prominent American photographer, successfully sued Guetta over the use of a photograph of the rap group Run DMC. French journalist Marjolaine Gout linked Mr. Brainwash with Jeff Koons & criticized Thierry Guetta's art as toilet papering.

More questions then answers, but a hell of an entertaining ride! Try it! You'll like it! 

Woman III HUH?

Woman III is a painting by abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. Woman III is one of 6 paintings by Kooning in which the central theme was a woman. It measures 68 by 48 1/2 inches and was completed in 1953. In November 2006, the painting was sold by David Geffen to billionare Steven A. Cohen for $137.5 million, making it the second most expensive painting ever sold.

La Maison Picassiette Festival of Lights: Chartres, France

"Raymond Isidore, the original house owner, began to build his house in 1930 & eight years later in 1938, he started to decorate his little house in mosaic. He was walking in the field when suddenly he was attracted by the flickering colors of tiny pieces of glass, porcelain & crockery. He collected & piled them in his garden. For this reason, he earn a mockery name as Picassiette means Pique (steal) assiette (plate). Some people define Picassiette as Picasso Assiette."  Feily Puspita

Since 1996, an international meeting of mosaics has been held every two years in Chartres. This event welcome the mosaic artists from 15 nations to win the awards - Prix Picassiette for professionals, amateurs insiders, amateurs & youths group categories. The next Prix Picassiette will be held in 2014 & I HOPE TO BE THERE!

 Chartres Cathedral Festival of Lights

Autumn Equinox September 21-22 2013

Post Pope Letdown

I'm not a Catholic, but I do feel a connection to the only western church that has some grounding in ritual, recognizes Godliness in lay women & men who can & do become saints & to the obvious veneration of Mary who is rarely even mentioned in other forms of Christianity.

When Francis recently became the Pope, I got downright giddy when I heard he was asking us to remember the poor, the downtrodden & to even have compassion & acceptance of GAYS! Whoa.

Then he tried to send me & more then half of the human race back into our corner of oppression. It's o.k. not to have women priests because it is not in the original 'doctrine' & Jesus was a man. Huh?

What a shame & what would Jesus have to say about this? What a shame to be present & affirming to men & children, but not to women. What a damn shame.

Women I Admire! xo

Sade 54

Judy Dench 78

Frida Kahlo Died age 47

Tina Turner 73

Anna Quindlen 61

Joni Mitchell 69

Michelle Obama 49

Helen Mirren 67

Annie Lennox 58

Beyonce 31

Georgia O'Keefe died at 99

Melissa McCarthy 42

Tina Fey 43

Peg Shapiro 60

Angela May 54

Adele 25

Lori & Corbin 43

Florence Welch 26

Tilda Swinton 52