Recommended Reads

happy holidays

I'm heading west on my continuing exploration of Turtle Island and will be on the road without connection the the world wide web for a while so posts will be few and far between for a few weeks. Regular service will resume upon my arrival in Europe in January. 

In the mean time HAPPY HOLIDAYS and I'll leave you with my U.S.A reading list and Joni Mitchell. I recommend them all and would be delighted to receive some recommendations from you! 

 L.O.V.E xx

sunday tune

saturday poem

A cold night crosses

our path

                  The world appears

very large, very

round now       extending

far as the moon does

                                        It is from

the moon this cold travels

                                        It is

the light of the moon that causes

this night reflecting distance in its own

light so coldly

                                          (from one side of

the earth to the other)

                                        It is the length of this coldness

It is the long distance

between two points which are

not in a line        now

                                       not a

straightness       (however

straight) but a curve only,

silver that is a rock reflecting

                                                      not metal

but a rock accepting

distance

                     (a scream in silence

where between the two

points what touches

is a curve around the world

                                                      (the dance unmoving).

'Winter Solstice' by Hilda Morley

new york, 1969

friday cartoon

Katherine Litz in the Dining Hall taken by Hazel Larsen Archer

If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Merce Cunningham taken by Hazel Larsen Archer

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

― Albert Einstein (on the Board of Directors at Black Mountain College)

Cy Twombly

Read to following: Tulips, photographs, photographs, prints and works.

www.cytwombly.info

Robert Rauschenberg and Elizabeth Schmitt Jennerjahn taken by Hazel Larsen Archer

Josef Albers teaching

Josef Albers teaching at Yale by John Cohen, ca. 1955 from Josef and Anni Albers Foundation on Vimeo.

I LOVE the movement in this silent clip.
I've never seen a separation between my art and movement teaching/practice. It's all the same thing. I get that from both Anni and Josef Alber's work.

you are a journeyman

Apprentice is the beginner - the first years you work in a craft in the European sense you are an apprentice. That takes 3 or 4 years. Then you are a journeyman. You can go from one master to another and learn other tricks and other secrets.

-- Josef Albers

Josef Albers

Photographs and paintings.

Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of materials. 

--Anni Albers Weaving in a College.

Anni Albers

Wallhangings, weaving's, drawings and jewellery

Merce Cunningham at the Boston ICA

dreaming of dance

Merce Cunningham

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.

― Merce Cunningham

cunningham technique

Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Weil

Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Weil,
'Female Figure' and 'Untitled'[double Rauschenberg], circa 1950

Black Mountain Collage

The story of Black Mountain College begins in 1933 and comprises a fascinating chapter in the history of education and the arts. Conceived by John A. Rice, a brilliant and mercurial scholar who left Rollins College in a storm of controversy, Black Mountain College was born out of a desire to create a new type of college based on John Dewey’s principles of progressive education. The events that precipitated the College’s founding occurred simultaneously with the rise of Adolf Hitler, the closing of the Bauhaus by the Nazis, and the beginning of the persecution of artists and intellectuals on the European continent. Some of these people found their way to Black Mountain, either as students or faculty. Meanwhile, the United States was mired in the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt, committed to putting people back to work, established the Public Works Arts Project (a precursor of the WPA).

The founders of the College believed that the study and practice of art were indispensable aspects of a student’s general liberal arts education, and they hired Josef Albers to be the first art teacher. Speaking not a word of English, he and his wife Anni left the turmoil in Hitler’s Germany and crossed the Atlantic Ocean by boat to teach art at this small, rebellious college in the mountains of North Carolina.

Black Mountain College was fundamentally different from other colleges and universities of the time. It was owned and operated by the faculty and was committed to democratic governance and to the idea that the arts are central to the experience of learning. All members of the College community participated in its operation, including farm work, construction projects and kitchen duty. Located in the midst of the beautiful North Carolina mountains near Asheville, the secluded environment fostered a strong sense of individuality and creative intensity within the small College community.

Legendary even in its own time, Black Mountain College attracted and created maverick spirits, some of whom went on to become well-known and extremely influential individuals in the latter half of the 20th century. A partial list includes people such as Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Vera B. Williams, Ben Shahn, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Dorothea Rockburne and many others, famous and not-so-famous, who have impacted the world in a significant way. Even now, decades after its closing in 1957, the powerful influence of Black Mountain College continues to reverberate

-- Black Mountain Collage History 

 I went to see the Black Mountain Collage Leap Before You Look  exhibition at the Boston ICA this weekend and was blown away by it.  I highly recommend taking a look (if you are in that neck of the woods). It is a wonderful exploration of the legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there...and it has inspired the theme for this weeks blog posts...

sunday tune

saturday poem

When they leave,
Do you think they hesitate,
Turn and make a farewell sign,

Some gesture of regret?

When they leave,
the music is loudest,
the sun high,

and you, dizzy with wine
befuddled with well-being,
sink into your body
as though it were real,
as if yours to keep.

You neither see their going,
nor hear their silence

-- Cy Twombly's 'interpretation' of Patricia Waters poem 'Now is the Drinking'

works by Cy Twombly 'Coronation of Sesostris 2000'
various panels
Acrylic, crayon, and pencil on canvas

friday cartoon

This. Kindly passed onto me by my wonderful ceramics tutor Violet. A gem!

hard skin

“The optimal way for getting super-regenerating skin would be to allow our foot to interact with natural surfaces outside of the shoe over a lifetime, prompting a slow adaptation in foot skin thickness over that lifetime, giving us a much better ability to cope with the sensations caused by walking barefoot.”

– Katy Bowman, Every Woman’s Guide to Foot Pain Relief.

Want to know more about building a good skin foundation for upper body strength and barefoot living the READ THIS from Katy Bowman.

Christopher McDougall

Christopher McDougall explores the mysteries of the human desire to run. How did running help early humans survive — and what urges from our ancient ancestors spur us on today? McDougall tells the story of the marathoner with a heart of gold, the unlikely ultra-runner, and the hidden tribe in Mexico that runs to live.

ginger tea

 
Ingredients
8 to 10 slices of unpeeled, fresh ginger
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
maple syrup or raw honey and fresh lemon to taste

Directions
Add ginger slices and grated ginger to 4 to 5 cups water and bring to a boil in a saucepan for approximately 20 minutes.
Add honey or maple syrup, fresh lemon (and or cayenne pepper, chamomile leaves, apple cider vinegar) to taste, whilst stamping a la Ginger Rogers. 
Strain and serve immediately...alternatively you can leave it to steep over night, which will give you more of a ginger kick.

Ed Ruscha

Intent

"Movements are not programs. They are intent, followed by constant adaptation to variables. The more control a person has over their individual articulations, the more degrees of freedom = better adaptability."

--Dr Andreo Spina

taking imagination seriously

this is beautiful!

Janet Echelman

"Janet Echelman creates experiential sculpture at the scale of buildings that transform with wind and light. The art shifts from being an object you look at, to a living environment you can get lost in. Using unlikely materials from fishnet to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with cutting-edge technology to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on four continents."

Lucy's Daughters