back to the drawing board

The marvelous Marthe Armitage, found via evencleveland:

'Making takes time, commitment and training. People expect to make their fortunes at the drop of a hat these days.'

Amanda Brazier

The work of Amanda Brazier, making her own paint from things she collects to layer her canvases. I LOVE the process.

Beyond talent lie all the usual words:
discipline, love, luck, but – most of all, endurance.

-- JAMES BALDWIN via The Paris Review

‘I am a reasonable and sane functionalist tempered by irrational frivolity’

– Alexander Girard

Agnes Martin

 D'Metrius Rice

bowling, 1921

Tatsuya Noda

it's to sing up the earth

Richard Long, White light walk (1987)

Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn’t, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one’s own vision.

- Kiki Smith

Lil Buck making my heart skip beats

Eric Roinestad

Kate V. Robertson, Revelation (2010)

Arna Óttarsdóttir, Green slab (2013)

community

I’ve said before that it’s important to have people that believe in you as much as you believe in yourself. Your community doesn’t have to be big but it has to have the heart

— Tina Dang 

read her interview on apieceapart.com 

NAF

“I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.”

- Sandra Cisneros

Haris Epaminonda

www.harisepaminonda.com

Dear Good Looker,
 

Gosh. So much to tell, so little time. Let's cut to the chase....

I need your help, dearest reader, with a project I have been busy putting together. I cordially invite you, and your loved ones, to celebrate the space of otherness, difference and delight that your body occupies through THIS SURVEY all about movement.

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**** ABOUT MOVE ME ****
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Move Me is an ever evolving survey designed to prompt people to think more deeply about their bodies in terms of movement choices, habits and patterns. The project is about commonality: The one thing we all have in common is that we have to move to live.

Researching the whys and ways of movement is a part of my job as a yoga teacher. I know there is a vast amount of information and advice about the way we 'should' move out there,  but often lacking from this are the personal stories, from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences,  that shape each of us in discrete and individual ways. Through eight years of teaching it is these stories that have come to help finesse what I do beyond the more 'evidence based' scientific discourse. This thread is a vital part of the map to understanding what it is we need to feel well.

Human beings are not built to float you see. They need an earthly anchor of meaning and care so they don't get left in confusion. This survey, with your help, is my contribution that anchor of meaning. The information gathered is being used on an ongoing blog and as research for an art project, both aim to express a riot of opinion and give a snapshot of the complexity of modern movement decisions with cultural influences; a portrait of the human body today revealing impulses that influence our daily ritual of being.

Anyone who has a body is invited to take part and I am also open to creative submissions about movement, like this wonderful story, from everyone and anyone.

Join me for this major shift in cultural thinking and be the laxative which lubricates the constipation of the way we contemplate movement (I'm so sorry about that sentence).

 CONVINCED? THEN MOVE TO THE SURVEY
(please note, you can answer anonymously and you DO NOT have to answer everything, just whatever takes your fancy.)

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**** FORWARD THIS POST ****
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The revolution is now. Yay! However, I know finding people willing to give up precious time to fill out a long winded survey is hard (I have no idea why). So, following the runaway success of my past newsletters free hug initiative, I urge you to forward this email to ALL PEOPLE WITH BODIES that might be interested in taking part. Come to me (click here) with evidence of your benevolence, and I will send you something magic in the post.

You can be social and forward via the magic of these buttons....

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Forwar

we cannot know that we are illuminated by a great light

My Red Hills, Georgia Okeeffe

Ed Ruscha

Rite of Spring, Pina Bausch

Agnes Martin

Stefania Vasques

That light cannot be known directly is expressed in contemporary terms by Peter Russell. When speaking of the light of consciousness, he asserts:

Although all we ever see is light, paradoxically, we never know light directly. The light that strikes the eye is known only through the energy it releases. This energy is translated into a visual imagery in the mind, and that image seems to be composed of light—but that light is a quality of mind. We never know the light itself. 

Russell is speaking from a scientific viewpoint, but the fact that we can never know light itself is helpful in appreciating the working of boundless compassion. When the light of compassion illuminates our existence, it reveals our self-delusions. Hiroyuki Itsuki ... describes this as follows: 

We cannot know that we are illuminated by a great light simply by looking up into the sky. But if we lower our heads and look down at our feet we can clearly see the long, dark shadow that stretches out from us. We know that the darker and blacker that shadow is, the brighter the light that shines upon us.

Taitetsu Unno, Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold.

Found via Evencleveland

water is patient

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

like real people do

Sitting with Snake, Kiki Smith

Mountain Crest, The Alps (1933), Marsden Hartley 

Mural Murals, 1981 documentary film by Agnes Varda.

Ann-Marie Rayney, Silkscreen

Lyn Marshall

Giacometti

Dave Hardy

Grand Canyon

Eventide fan - sheila hicks

Mostly inspired by yellow things, eavesdropping on the Ocean, 'your body is your soul' with Jaap van der Val and this....

"The validity of an answer often depends on perspective. Looking at things up close often reduces the number of components you're considering. When you perform cost/benefit analysis, or figure the efficiency of something, scale matters tremendously. What's the impact of your choices on the world?" --Katy Bowman