reBIRTH

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Commandeering the blog reigns here, to send another message of rebirth. (Didn't we do this last year?) Rebirth, rejuvenation, invigorate, stay hydrated. It seems I have a cycle, dear readers, to suffocate in June. But alas, what can you do? I did, I read a self-help book. (It made me feel less crazy - bonus.)

In lieu of falling prey to any more inspirational gurus, I call to you - it's summer! Don't fight your urges! This season do two, if not three, or all of the following: (Enter your own list here, or feel free (!) to follow along with my list below.)

Learn how to do something you didn't know how to do before, but pretended that you did.

Finish that project that you keep telling yourself is almost done, but it's not.

Get. in. the. car. and drive. No, really.

Eat better.

Skip the sunburn, buy the sunscreen.

Get the play station, or the smart phone, or the net book, or whatever piece of technology that you've wanted but have continually talked yourself out of for the last year.

Walk the dog.

Keep your eyes open.

Turn off the TV - it will all be there come winter.

Call your friends, they miss you.

And when you're done with all that, read more (look at the pictures!) about Julius Gerhardt, mastermind of the wildly freeing outfit above, HERE.
PPS. Still working on that mad-unvieling, but you know how these things go...it's taking longer than expected...await with bated breath....

Wednesday Work: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Circling around to the grand unvieling of our big news, in excited anticipation we would like to "set the stage" with images from Hiroshi Sugimoto's theatre series. Shot with a large format camera in the late 1970s/1980s - Sugimoto captured in a single image the entirity of a movie watching experience. (So it is not an empty theatre or a blank screen, but a theatre which has both been filled up and emptied out, and a screen with a whole movie playing over top of it - over exposing the negative film to create an empty white glowing box). Experiments in time, but also begs to question: what does it mean to experience a thing?

Sugimoto has this to say about his work in the theatre: "I'm a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evenig I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie was finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That eveing, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behing my eyes."

Hold on tight to your seats, dear readers, the vision is about the explode behind your eyes - our experimenting towards realizing a vision and the grand unvieling - next, Wednesday Work.

Read more about Hiroshi Sugimoto and see more of his images, here.

Wednesday Work (Thursday Throwback?): Carleton Watkins: Yosemite (1863)

This past Saturday was "National Record Store Day", did you all attend to your neighborhood favorites? After feasting on bagel sandwiches overflowing with mozzarella cheese and marinated basil and tomatoes, we stumbled into a fairly new used records&books on 9th, down in Philadelphia's Italian Market. I couldn't decide on a record. But I did pick up a few used books. One, Susan Sontag's novel "America", has this Carleton Watkins image above on the back cover, and I was reminded: Susan Sontag can write, and: Oh wow - look at that photograph.

Carlton Watkins' photographs do what all good photographs should do (in my hungry opinion), they elicit adventure, they call for ambition, they show the viewer how much and how big it is out there - all the while without bringing with them any fears. There are no fears of falling in Carleton Watkins' photographs. We are viewing great feats of nature, but never are we at the cliff's edge. There is no physical danger here, nor is there chance of psychological or emotional harm. There are no others in Watkins' photographs with which we are to compare ourselves. We are not being watched or watching. The land is ours and ours alone, and the land is there to be taken.

Evading many of the trappings found in traditional formal photography, the rectangle or square, the whole thing placed behind glass - Watkins shot for stereoscopes (the View-Master, its like that), his images were cut down, placed in circle shaped mattes.

Watkins' worked on what he loved. He worked and worked and worked. He made photographs. I can't imagine he was thinking about a market, or an audience, (I could be wrong here, but let me have the dream, pretty please....)

I WANT TO BE (like) CARLETON WATKINS.

Follow your spring dreams readers. And read up on your history players. You can't hustle unless you know the game. These are my words of wisdom: T-Dubbya OUT.

(Carleton Watkins, photographs and info - here.)

[Aaaaand, if you're not into throwbacks (but really, either way) give this guy a listen: Hennesy Youngman]
Seriously.

Defy Monday: Bunny Up

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Wednesday Work: Yamini Nayar

Do you see that little eye? From Nayar's website: "Yamina Nayar's work explores an intersection found between photography, sculpture, and the constructed moment. Her large-scale photographs are made from sculptures built in the studio on tabletops from found and raw materials, and documented with a large-format camera. Nayar's works draw from historical sources of art and architecture, and fabricate structures that explore the natures of experience and memory in a contemporary moment. Once recorded, the structures are disassembled and discarded. Only the photograph remains, as an object and entry point into a moment held together for the lens." This is my kind of work!

Yamini Nayar

Awesome Bike CUBBY!

That's all.

We have an awesome bike cubby - in our house! And I want to keep it forever (the bike cubby that is - not so much the house, not forever).

Is it spring where you are yet?

Don't forget your helmet! Where's your U-lock? Do you have your lights? both front and back? And while you are preparing, brush up on your bike safety, here.

Yippeeeeee for fresh air commutes!

Lazy Day March

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I couldn't resist the image above because we have a similar one at home, both the blanket and the mutt. Check out misc-miranda, thrift and vintage fashion blog, and the original home of this wonderful photograph.

Are you all staying warm out there? I know there has blown quite the snow and rain around the country, though I have to say - we are enjoying some lovely mild weather here in Philadelphia.

And while the Sea and I would love to be cuddled up in blankets too enjoying a lazy day in march, we are busy-a-tinkering, working away on an exciting blog announcement!

But- it'll be awhile.

So curl up in your blankets friends, hulu some good ol' fraggle rock, picture me and the sea in those hard hats, albeit, ultimately designed and self-styled for each of us.

We will be unveiling soon....

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Wednesday Work: Adam Smith

"One Foot In..."
five color (screen)print

He's a common fixture in my neighborhood.
I see his work at the same studio almost every First Friday and fall in love with it again every time.

He's Adam Smith. Of www.dearadamsmith.com and at Part Time Studios here in Fishtown.

"Nobody Ever Really Dies"

Three color screenprint on French Poptone paper.  12.5" x 19"

Thrillist just told me that you can now get ol' Ben here on a t-shirt at therethere:

"First American"

And in the spirit of the coming (Hallmark, albeit) holiday, this diptych makes our hearts go pitter-patter. 

Stay Soft (diptych) - Acrylic on panel.  12 x 30" each.

Buy a limited edition print here while the gettins' still good!

Winter Print: Memory City II #3 by Sun Ji

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I've got my boots, now I need my coffee and my chocolate. Winter rain - ugh. But such a beautiful gray.

Defy Monday: Blizzard time AGAIN!!

Defy these mother nature.... just try.

Sorel Cate The Great

Sperry Top-Sider Pelican Boot

Keen Snowmass Low Boot


Until the Northeast gets over this spitting snow vehemently phase, we're just gonna have to wait it out.
In the mean time, stay safe and please people, protect those tootsies!

Wednesday Work: Tora Greve, you're in my dreams

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Where to begin? Tora Greve was mentioned a few weeks back on a blog I follow fondly, Fine Little Day - and while I am not in the practice of re-posting, it piqued my interest, and I had to investigate more.

Tora Greve is an artist residing in the Netherlands, hand weaving these wonderful, weird, intriguing tapestries. Her site is largely committed to the Sirius Solar System - an extensive series of tapestries telling the story of the place.

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I can't say I know anything about the Sirius Solar System, other than its moniker the Dog Star. But what I can say is this - I fell in love the minute I saw Tora Greve's work.

To work with such confidence in a seemingly free and playful way...well I want my studio practice to work like that. I am learning from you Tora.

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I would like to have a cup of tea, or several with Tora Greve, discuss the "news, rumors and anecdotes about the star Sirius, its inhabitants and contactees." Discuss her adventures chasing the solar eclipse.

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And see more of her Space Art. Then we should go to the flea market, look at the old and musty, while walking in the crisp autumn air, the browns and oranges and golden rod colors of the leaves on the trees, beneath our feet, crumbling, ... oh what a journey it would be.

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Look at Tora Greve's extensive body of work, here.

And if you are on the East Coast today - put on your boots! It's snowy out there!

DEFY MONDAY: Pants!

(The Bills)

The History of Western Subcultures in the 20th Century

(And a shout out to the Twins - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!)

Wednesday Work: Robert Wiene: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Light!, Composition! Perspective! Oh My! It's never quite been done as Robert Wiene has done it, in his film noir: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. (1920.)

Having been said to be the inspiration for such contemporary film titles such as "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", this film does not employ CGI, or any computer manipulation of the sort; this is real live set building, (tonal ranges painted in to play off of tonal ranges in the lighting (!)), real live film burning, capturing the exposure as the characters move across this surreal landscape in an early example of German expressionism.

There are not voices, nor is there dialogue, there are a few screens here and there of text, but mostly the film pulls you along via the visual experience with a classical musical score set over top.

I have to be honest, when I was made to watch this film early on in my schooling, I slept through it! Begrudging the experience even an ounce of my attention. Having grown older and wiser, now I look back at this gem of cinematography and shine in the afterglow of a masterpiece that is all but other-worldly.

(PS - It's available now on Netflix Instant Watch - you could see it for yourself while you eat breakfast!)

DEFY MONDAY: MLK!

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"I have a dream today."

(If you've never read the full-text, you should. ...Today is a great day to do it!)

Wednesday Work: Ivan Liovik Ebel

No, I don't speak French, but hearing it makes me blush.

Yes, I do love minimalistic, geometric, pastel, low-fi, etc... reminiscent of Paris in the Springtime.... GUSH!

L’envers du corps II, 2009

huile sur toile (oil on canvas)

170 x 170 cm

St. Peter-Ording, 2010

huile sur toile (oil on canvas)

100 x 140 cm

Perspective cavalière IV, 2010

écoline sur papier (ecoline paper)

70 x 50 cm

Légère incertitude, 2010

huile sur toile (oil on canvas)

150 x 90 cm

Thanks http://thisisnthappiness.com for sharing.

Thanks Ivan Liovik Ebel, for bringing me back to down to planet Earth!

Defy Monday: Identity Shiftin'

I was recently approached to do a fun photo shoot for a friend. To my surprise, the incorporation of a mask was at task. The search for just the right thing was much more interesting than I'd hoped, as I found all of these (and more!) along the way:

theNakedParrot.com

I had no idea the prevalence of handmade masks available for purchase online was so vast!:
 

Birch bark brown owl bird masquerade mask

Día de los Muertos in style:

MasqueFaire

MasqueFaire

 Maskworld.com carries these amazing hand-crafted Venetian Animal masks.

Want something a little more Donnie Darko creepy?, Yeah, they've got those too:

lamanomasks.com

 It's my belief that changing it up, even if for a temporary short time, can add some fun, mystery and spontaneity to your life. (Think back to the first time you saw the Breakfast at Tiffany's shoplifting dime-store scene...) Don't have to wait until Halloween or be a kid to enjoy a mask. You could even make it your next project and whip one up yourself!

Wednesday Work: Speaking of Baroque - Modern Still Life Photography

(Sharon Core)

Though I referenced antique Baroque paintings in my last post about Alan Lightman's book, Einstein's Dreams, it should be noted that it was actually a contemporary still life photograph that I used as reference.

(Marian Drew)

The still life photographs of Sharon Core, Marian Drew, and Laura Letinsky, are gorgeous.

(Laura Letinsky)

Let's go eat a watermelon.

Reading List: Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

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If you have not yet read Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, I encourage you to do so at your earliest convenience. Not only a masterpiece of prose, bending simple words in the most fantastic of ways, it acts as a beginner's guide to metaphysics. Lightman explores time and the ideas of its passage (or rather its cyclical recurrence, or rather that it's sporadic, or rather that...)

***

Lightman does not write for us about the world, instead his words create the world. When he points to darkened desktop or crumpled passersby - it is not that these subjects become lit up for the reader's regard of them, but more - it is as if at that very moment of Lightman's description the subject is born into being. As a consumer of Lightman's prose I am left to ponder that perhaps reality is not fixed, that it exists only in the moment of my recognition and the moment of my understanding of what is around me; that as a photographer it is not that I am capturing images, as much as I am discovering them; as an artist it is I who create (rather than react to) those personal truisms, as they are in fact built in my studio in the relationships I create between disparate objects and in the way that I place them in proximity to one another.

***

Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams does much to encourage the individual to consider their experience, consider their perspective, and to take control of the life they lead. For it is, in fact "I" who is in control, whether I be acting upon with force or lackluster disinterest.

(Sharon Core)

As a visual artist I am drawn to anything which can create an image for the audience, no matter the faculties it calls upon. Through this observation of the ways in which others choose to create an image, I am always looking for ways in which they may manipulate the image, and in turn, how these tools and techniques may be used to manipulate the audience.

(Joseph Cornell)

Einstein's Dreams for me brings to mind a warm turkey sandwich, heavy cream and melted cheese, eaten in a darkened bar tucked away down an abandoned alley on an undesirable day. I do not hear the birds, nor the trees. There is no traffic but I can see - and what is I am envisioning are so many antiquated Baroque paintings, and abstract dioramas, like those of Joseph Cornell's 4th dimension.

***

Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams - I really do recommend it.