Thread of Consciousness

On Collecting and Presenting

2010-02-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

Maissa Toulet's Cabinets de Curiosity are sometimes fairly simple collections of objects you would expect together, such as Echographie below, birds eggs, etc.

Yet they become more complex and strange groupings.

She also has Le Cabinet de Sorcellerie:
a permanent installation, go have a look at her site, the images are stunning.

Folklore

2010-02-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

Spanish illustrator Beatriz Martin Vidal's work is on folk tales, such as ancient Greek mythology (above) or Russian fairy tales (below Carmilla and Russian Folk Tale).

Her work recalled for me, not in a literal sense but in the feeling of the imagery, a book written and illustrated by Jan Brett, Fitz and the Beautiful Horses. Much beloved by my sister and me as children this book has Scandinavian folksy styling.

Jan Brett, Fitz and the Beautiful Horses, 1949

One of the most famous Russian folk art illustrators was Ivan Bilibin, and we can see his work is much more graphic that of Vidal and Brett, and many of his illustrations include the iconic brightly colored boarders associated with Russian arts and crafts illustration.

Ivan Bilibin, The Red Horesman, Vasilisa the Beautiful, 1899

Ivan Bilibin, Morozko (Father Frost), from Father Frost, 1932

Ivan Bilibin, Vasilisa escaping Baba Yaga's chicken leg hut, from Vasilisa the Beautiful, 1899

Finally the legacy of Russian icon art can be seen in all these works. Below are film stills from the 1971 Russian animated film, The Battle of Kerzhenets, which uses the style of the Russian middle ages religous paintings.

From One1more2time3's Weblog

Food Journal 4

2010-01-13T12:48:00.001-08:00

I have had some wonderful meals this holiday season, including some at restaurants or other people's houses. A few things stood out as things I needed to try to replicate!

I had a wonderful and surprising Carrot Soup at Felix's at the Orange Circle. I immediately tried to figure out what it contained so I could make it myself. I may not have gotten it 100%, but this is the overall impression I had of the soup:

Carrots
Lemons
Garlic (so much garlic I could see it in the soup)

My replication was delicious and only took about 10 minutes to throw together for lunch.

I also had a really wonderful Red Cabbage Salad that my aunt made. I didn't ask for the recipe ( I will have to do that), but instead I tried to make it myself and, while it wasn't as good as my aunt's, it turned out well. I dressed the cabbage simply: white vinegar and balsamic vinegar and sugar mixed together to taste (that is, if you like your slaw really vinegary, don't add as much sugar). It's very important that the cabbage sits in the dressing for a while, so it will soften and take on the flavors.

My parents ate the red cabbage salad the next day as a topping and dressing on their green salads. I'm a big fan of things that only get better as they sit, and both this soup and this salad are in that category.

Also with leftovers, I remade the pounded nut pesto and put it on broken spaghetti. The next day we had tons of leftovers because the pesto goes a long way; you can just keep adding pasta, and it tastes just as rich. That day we wanted something a bit more hearty, so I put together a simple tomato sauce (crushed tomatoes, onions, and garlic, with plenty of salt and a smidge of wine), and I cooked it up with some spinach. Very nice second day interpretation

My family is now officially doing vegan with me as well, so we have had to come up with some things we can throw together fast for their busy schedules.

One of my sisters favorite vegan meals is Tofu Tacos:
We season the tofu with garlic and cyan pepper and salsa, and we pair that with shredded cabbage and black beans cooked in lemon. Of course all of that is served in corn tortillas. Yum.

Another quick thing that my family can grab on the way out the door is cookies. I made these sugar- free vegan oatmeal cookies from a recipe I found with a Google search. I won't post the recipe I used because I changed everything in it. But any recipe can be made Vegan and sugar-free by adaptation. Substitute oil for butter, banana for egg, and maple syrup for sugar. (Yes, I know that means that these cookies aren't really sugar free, but they don't have any white sugar; maple syrup is supposed to be better for us because it is less refined.) I also used almond meal instead of flour, which made the cookies extra good.

I don't particularly like banana as a flavor, though I've grown up eating banana bread, and these cookies were really very good despite their undertone of banana flavor.

On Falling

2010-01-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

The White Cosmonaut

Jeremy Geddes

Oil on Board

2009

Heat Death
Jeremy Geddes
Oil on Board
2009

Inopportune: Stage Two

Cai Guo Qiang
SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, USA
2006

Head On

Cai Guo Qiang
Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany
2006

Eclipse 8

Nick van Woert

Plaster bust and plastic

70x53x17 cm

Venus 2

Nick van Woert

Plaster bust and polyurethane adhesive

34x78x12 cm

2009

Photogram

2009-12-30T22:24:00.000-08:00

Phil Nesmith, Proximity Effect, 2009. Varnished dryplate photogram on black glass. 24 X 5 inches

Phil Nesmith, Descent, 2009. Varnished dryplate diptych photogram on black glass. 14 X 3 inches

Phil Nesmith, Finch, 2009. Varnished dryplate photogram on black glass. 18 X 19 inches

Phil Nesmith, Contained, 2009. Varnished dryplate photogram on black glass. 18 x 13 in.

On the Passing of Time

2009-12-30T20:40:00.001-08:00

Droskyn Sundial, Cornwall

Michael Sans Real Cuckoo Clock and Traditional Cuckoo Clock

A Victorian postcard showing a floral clock

St Pancras Clock Tower

Nixie Tube Clock

Food Journal 3

2009-12-20T22:13:00.000-08:00

December is a month of family visits and we had a big one in mid December. We made a feast of gluten-free food for our guests. Our ingredients were so lovely they looked like a painting. I had to break my veganism for one night, but it was worth it.
On the menu was:

Roasted Root Vegetables Including: Carrots, Potato, Sweet Potato, Parsnips and...

Celery Root Which I've never had before but was great. The texture of a potato but tasted like celery.

Parmesan Pear Salad

Braised Pork Shoulder The star of the show, and very good.

We also had a Lentil Soup, which I didn't get a picture of.
Which was simple vegetable soup with celery, carrots, and onions.

And for desert:

Rice Pudding
Maybe the best I've ever had.

Black Bean Brownies
These were really good considering there was no flour in them and the binding ingredient was black beans. They were really gooey and tasted exactly like regular brownies.

While we were waiting for dinner (and after dinner as well) Vega decided we should do a crafts project so we made this doll, all stitched by hand by myself, Vega, Whitney and Nico. Turned out pretty well for a spur-of-the-moment hand sewed project.

Of course we have been cooking for everyday meals as well here are some of them:

Walnut and Apple Salad with balsamic and Sprouted Wheat Toast

Farfalle with Walnut Pesto This recipe was from 101 Cookbooks today and is super easy to pull together and very good.

Spinning Discontent

2009-12-11T13:31:00.001-08:00

Frigga spinning the Clouds. J. C. Dollman.
From Myths of the Norsemen From the Eddas and Sagas. By H. A. Guerber, 1909

The act of spinning thread or yarn is reference to the oppression of women. Spinning was something that was done by every woman, and often women would gather to do their work in spinning circles. While working together, women would of course tell tales, hence the term “spinning a yarn” or “spinning a tale.” As spinning became a symbol of woman's gossip, the distaff became the symbol of womanhood in illustrations and fairy tales. The act of spinning places women in the “domestic sphere”; however, the distaff can also represent a woman's rejection of societal conventionalities. An example of the latter is the Durer illustration (several pictures below), in which the woman is a witch, a woman who ignores her place in society, and therefore doesn't use her distaff properly, as a domestic tool, but instead as a weapon.

Woman spinning flax using a drop spindle and distaff.

MS Fr. 599, f. 40, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

15^th c. France

Albrecht Durer Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, 1511

Old Christmas

2009-12-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

One of the three illustrators for my dissertation is Randolph Caldecott.
He is better known now for his illustrations of nursery rhymes, but in his own lifetime he was well known for his illustrations of O ld Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving.

Washington Irving was an American writer, best known for his Legend of Sleepy Hallow and Rip Van Winkle. These were both short stories found in the Sketch Book, which was published in a series of stories from 1819 to 1820. Old Christmas was written with the traditional English Christmas in mind. In fact, Irving used The Vindication of Christmas, 1652, as source material for his story.

Caldecott's version of the Sketch Book was done in 1886, when Christmas was well established in the culture. Yet the Victorian Christmas was influenced by Irving, who inspired Dickens to write his own Christmas stories; Dickens and the royal family, particularly Prince Albert, are generally credited for making Christmas what it is today. Many of our current traditions, such as Christmas trees and presents, were modeled and encouraged by the royal family. Queen Victoria even said, in 1865, that she "rejoices to think that the Prince and herself are the source of Christmas trees being so generally adopted...” Caldecott's illustrations of Irving's story furthered their influence of what Christmas was to look like.

One tradition that has not lasted in the American Christmas is the Masquerade parade.

On the occasion of the first winter storm of the year

2009-12-07T11:02:00.000-08:00

The Deluge. Francis Danby 1840

Frontispiece to Gustave Doré's illustrated edition of the Bible

Portland Flood of 1948

Ponyo 2008

Food Journal part 2

2009-12-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

Some of the meals we've been having in the past week. Its been so cold and these meals are all really hearty.

Cabbage and corn with Tofu over Barley

Coconut Lentil Soup with Spinach and Bean Sprouts
A quick soup with left over Lentils, Cilantro, Lime, Spinach and Bean Sprouts in a combination of Vegetable Broth and Coconut Milk.

Vegetarian Chile
Just something we threw together:
Black beans, Kidney Beans, Carrot, Serono Chilies, Potato, Stewed Tomatoes and Cilantro

Bulgar with Caramelized Onions
From the Moosewood Kitchen Cookbook

Food Journal: part 1

2009-12-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

As a reaction to the starch comas of thanksgiving and with the idea of Christmas cookie mayhem almost upon me I have decided to eat vegan for the next 20 days.
My sister turned me onto a food blog called 101 Cookbooks a while back and I decided to start there on Monday.
I made Curried Bean Salad.
Here's how it turned out:

The lentils and beans soaked up the lemon and curry and were really lovely. The flavors got more mellow after it set for a while in my fridge, it made a lot! We started putting it on top of a bed of salad greens; the perfect dressing.

Today, Thursday, I decided to use up some things and made a skillet dish of: green beans, a sweet potato, fresh corn, red onion, garlic, and pumpkin seeds which i mixed in with some barley and a quick lemon basil dressing from our garden. It was very yummy.

Explorations

2009-11-29T11:48:00.001-08:00

This week I have gone on two small hikes, much to my delight.

On Tuesday Nina and I went to Corona Del Mar and walked along the tide pools. The water was unseasonably warm, and there were fewer anemones and sea urchins than in past walks I've been on, but there were plenty of hermit crab fights to be seen.

This morning my parents decided to walk this trail that my father had often hiked during his time at the University of LaVerne. He used to hike to a swimming hole under a waterfall. We didn't have much hope of finding the same amount of water, but it was pretty.

Yet we were surprised. The trail was cut off by a stream.

My dad wanted to go across, but my mom refused on the grounds that she was the only one wearing full-length pants. Which means we will have to return more prepared for river fording at a later date.

(photos taken with my iphone...)

On the Collection and storage of eggs

2009-11-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

Meyers Konversationslexikon 1885-90 (German Encyclopedia)

One of my favorite rooms in a natural history museum is the bird and egg room. Something about the way in which the eggs are exhibited appeals to me: they are displayed either in compartmentalized drawers, or placed in nests next to the taxidermied birds. The contrast between wanting to see these animals as living creatures we should learn about and protect, on the one hand, with the extremely sterile method of showing eggs in drawers, completely removed from the animal that produced them, on the other—this is part of the contradictory atmosphere of these spaces that appeals to me. There is something left of the 19th Century in these places, partly because many of the collections were started long ago, yet also because we still love to see animals this way. As trophies. As collections.

HSU Wildlife Museum's egg collection

Lastly, these illustrations are inspiring me to get back into egg dying. Perhaps I should collect fake eggs, label them and put them in drawers. Just to be contradictory.

Confusion between assertiveness and aggression

2009-11-28T09:21:00.000-08:00

The work of literalkid.com

Cliff Diving or What I got from watching New Moon last night

2009-11-21T17:59:00.000-08:00

Parade

2009-11-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

Altadena, California Entry to the Tournament of Roses Parade, 1908. A 35-foot Airship.

News Reel (end of video at 7:20 is Rose Parade Coverage)

The ticker tape parade for moon men Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. heads down La Salle Street. August 13, 1969.(Photo by Bill Mares.) Images © Chicago Sun-Times

Baby parade on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, 1-Jul-15

Ballooning

2009-11-19T19:18:00.001-08:00

Wikkimedia Commons Picture of the day:
(You can subscribe to to their RSS and see them everyday if you don't already)

Early Flight: 10 chromolithograph cards. Paris, between 1890 and 1900.

And in a continuing Balloon flight theme:

Bilingual leaflet commemorating Jean-Pierre Blanchard’s flight with a hot air balloon above the Sternschanze in Hamburg, Germany, on the 23th of august of 1786.

Emile Friant, Voyage a l'Infini, 1899

Technical illustration shows early balloon designs: "Lana's aeronautic machine," "Montgolfiers' balloon," "Blanchard's balloon," "Garnerin ascending [and] descending" in his parachute, the "Charles & Roberts' balloon" being inflated, the "form of the wings employed by Lunardi," and the "form of the wings employed by Blanchard." April 1818, by Rest Fenner, Paternoster Row

Elephants are silly creatures, part II

2009-11-18T16:12:00.000-08:00

Giant Elephant Hotel, Coney Island, built in 1882

Terrific Flights Over Ponderous Elephants

Exotic Elephant Pullalong Toy

“Wild Beasts and Their Ways” by Sir Samuel Baker. MacMillan & Co, 1890.

Howdah (saddle), parcel gilt silver, tiger-eye, wood and velvet, India, 60 inches long, 19th Century.

Sultan's Elephant, the Royal de Luxe company, 2006

Elephants are silly creatures Part 1

Yet another reason why I should have lived in the 19th Century

2009-11-18T11:57:00.000-08:00

Leonid Meteor Shower, 1833 (http://dangthatscool.wordpress.com/)

Just once I would like to see a meteor shower that looked like this.
As it is, my mother and I went out Monday and Tuesday night to a nearby park to see the Leonid Meteor shower, which is an annual event caused by the Earth moving into the debris stream left by the Temple-Tuttle comet.

Both nights were very cold, and as we didn't drive out of town, we had some light pollution; also, the fact that we were too tired to stay up until Leo was high in our sky counted against us. However, we saw about one event every 5 minutes. All of the meteors were very bright and had long trails, which lasted longer than most meteors I'd seen in the past.

The 1998 Leonid meteor shower. Rates at 300 meteors per hour.

Yet, despite the brightness of the meteors, this shower was not as enjoyable as the Perseid shower, which we watched earlier this summer, because although the Perseid meteors was not as bright, they were much more frequent.

Raining Perseids. Fred Bruenjes August 20, 2004

The best shower I've ever seen was one summer night when we were camping at Pismo Beach. We sat on the sand dunes and watched a scene much like the photo above (although that image is a composite), and it looked like shooting stars were raining down right above us. Amazing.

Next time there is a big shower, camping in the desert might be in order.

On the Victorian collecting of Feminism

2009-11-14T11:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my mom wrote in her blog about Victorian journalist/explorer Nellie Bly because, on that date in 1889, she began her famous trip around the world. Bly was inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in 80 Days, but she managed to do it in a mere 72, which was a world record.
Her fame was such that a set of collectible cards were produced with illustrations of Bly on her travels, accompanied by poems that have a decidedly feminist ring. These poems show Nellie Bly as a powerful woman who was equal to, and better than some of, her male peers.
.

These trade cards, surely not the only of their kind (although these are the only ones I could find readily available on the Internet, there were other celebrity cards that manufactures produced as take-aways), show that it was beneficial for companies to sell their wares through the image of a strong woman. This was because, in the latter half of the 19th Century, there was a decidedly womanly view of shopping. The woman's place was in the home, but with that came control of all the shopping done for the family. There was even a male reaction to shopping as something too womanly to engage in. Therefore, advertisers focused their adds to appeal to a feminine aesthetic, as Commonwealth Clothing Co. is doing in these trade cards.

For more on the changes in shopping in the 19th Century:

Rappaport, Erika Diane. Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Loeb, Lori Anne. Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Women. Oxford University Press, 1994.

On visual education for the masses

2009-11-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hawkins' Sydenham Studio. Illustrated London News of December 31 1853.

In 1854 Prince Albert suggested that life-sized reproductions of the then-known prehistoric animals be constructed on the grounds of the Crystal Palace when it was moved to Sydenham. Prince Albert was interested in the newly formed study of Dinosaurs and often attended lectures by the man who coined the name, Richard Owen, who in 1842 gave the three well known species of large fossils--Megaloasurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus--the term sub-order Dinosauria. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, who was known by the prince and Owen, was commissioned to sculpt Owen's designs.

Sketch of the Sydenham park Sculptures. Creatures of Other Days, 1894

In an article in Prehistoric Times Magazine in 2003, David Goldman writes of Hawkins:
"Even though there was scant material to complete the conception, Hawkins, in his desire to provide Visual Education for the masses, didn't see that as a problem, simply going ahead and putting in a good guess where needed to finish the visualization. The "Masses" would get the idea that there were large strange beasts that once lived here a long time ago."

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. O. Baxter Proprietor and Pateratee, London. Oct. 7 1954.

This "informing the masses" despite the lack of accurate information is one of the reasons why there was a great concern for the value of knowledge and literacy during the Victorian period. While these sculptures were influential and based on what are now known to be mostly false assumptions, the guessing about prehistoric fossils is mostly an unavoidable step in paleontology. Some assumptions must always be made.

Yet the conflicting desire to present the lower and middle class with knowledge and art, while mostly understood to be in the name of progress of the nation, was sublimated by the idea that production for the lower classes needn't be of the same quality of that for the more educated class. The reduction of quality for the lower classes created a fear of the take over of "low" taste from "classic" taste. This kind of "dumbing down" is still a problem today, and often elitist pessimism creates more pessimism by assuming the apathy and stupidity of the rest of the world. Instead, we should assume that quality breeds quality and interest breads interest.

The sculptures today.

Sources:
The Unmuseum.
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and his New York City Paleozoic Museum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Waterhouse_Hawkins

In an instant, the ground burst open in four places, and up shot four sturdy melon-vines, that grew east, west, north, south!

2009-11-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

NIMBLE JIM AND THE MAGIC MELON By J. A. Judson. St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 No 1, Nov 1877

This summer my sister and I planted a vegetable garden. Most of the plants are still, sadly, very small and limp. But one zucchini plant has become a monster, taking over nearly its entire bed.

This zucchini plants has reminded me of a childhood impression left by illustrated material.

This book is about a vine that grows out of control for a while and takes over the phone lines. The idea that plants could grow so fast and take over our infrastructure was highly disturbing.

Which is probably why, when I saw The Private Life of Plants with David Attenborough, I found the noises that accompanied the time-lapse videos of plants growing highly disturbing.

"The Kids grabbed onto the traveling plant But it was like riding an elephant. It bucked, it rolled, out the keyhole it wound They wondered where in the world it was bound."

Which is probably why when I saw The Private Life of Plants with David Attenborough the noises which accompanied the time laps videos of plants growing I was highly disturbed.

Artifice

2009-11-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

Didier Massard's fabricated photographs.

The Corals, 2004

chromogenic print

16 x 20” edition of 12

37 x 47" edition of 10 and 72 x 90" edition of 5

The Marsh, 2006

chromogenic print

16 x 20” edition of 12

37 x 47" edition of 10 and 72 x 90" edition of 5

Underwater Garden, 2005

chromogenic print

16 x 20” edition of 12

37 x 47" edition of 10 and 72 x 90" edition of 5

On the infectious nature of disproportion

2009-11-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

The Demon Seated. Mikhail Vrubel. 1890. Oil on canvas. 114 x 211 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

One of the best art classes I ever took was Russian Art. It was an infectious class because our professor was so excited about the material, it being her own area and lifelong research focus. Her primary love of the Russian arts and crafts movement, I can see looking back, affected my move from more monumental art history to that of more everyday art in illustrated books and ephemera.

The Demon Downcast. Mikhail Vrubel. oil on canvas, 139 x 387 cm, 1902. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

However, one of the most lasting impressions from the class was that of the use of disproportion by Russian artists during the first half of the 20th Century. The haunting paintings of Mikhail Vrubel are some of the major examples of this. The Demon Downcast, with its confusing anatomical composition, in particular shows Vrubel's disturbed imagery. Vrubel suffered at the end of his life from syphilis, which caused him to be in need of treatment for mental illness, and it was during this time that he produced his Demon works.

A Girl against a Persian Carpet. Mikhail Vrubel.

Oil on canvas, 104 x 68 cm. 1886.

Yet it is not only the Demon paintings that show this uses of disproportion. A Girl against a Persian Carpet shows a young girl who is inexplicably woeful. It is not only her expression that gives us this feeling, but her arms and hands are slightly wrong.

For me, it is these seemingly banal subjects that are the more disturbing. Vrubel's Demon paintings are up front about their subversive nature, but his portraiture is very nearly just another painting of a rich man's daughter. It is these images, which we do not expect to be disturbing, that creep deeper into our consciousness because of their subtlety

There is an image that has stayed in my mind even more than the ones shown above, and that I believe is also a Vrubel. It is a painting of a young girl in front of a flowering bush. If anyone knows this piece, I'd love to have the reference.

Halloween's Past 2

2009-10-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

As a Ballerina

A Mermaid

A Pirate

Halloween's Past

2009-10-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

In case you don't have your Halloween all planned out yet, here are some costume ideas from Dennison's Bogie Book from 1922.They also suggest party games to invoke the spirits. Such as:

Blowing Out Candles: Blindfolded players, in turn, blow out a lighted candle. The number of blows indicates the number of years before the player's wedding day.

Or the far creepier:

The Cellar Stairs Test: This test is for a girl and consists of backing downstairs with a mirror in her hand, trying meanwhile to see within it the face of her future mate.

A suggestion for how to choose dance partners: Girls draw red packages that contain witches' crepe paper hats, each bearing a number. The boys receive, in numbed orange-colored packages, false noses or mustaches, then match numbers for partners. It is almost unbelievable how a false nose will completely change a whole countenance.

Space Music

2009-10-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

The 47 Tucanae globular cluster contains as many as 22 millisecond pulsars, which emit radio waves. Because of the large number of pulsars, spinning at a slightly different rate, they sound more like music than most pulsars do.

Elephants are silly creatures

2009-10-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

Maryland Zoo Elephants enjoy Halloween festivities.

Fifteenth-century elephant
British Library, MS. Reg. 15 E. VI.

Derelict Scrambling

2009-10-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

This Sunday we went to the zoo. Not the one filled with animals but the urban ruins of the 1930's LA zoo before it was shut down and they moved the animals to their new location on a different hill in Griffith Park.

When I was a child, Griffith Park was halfway between my house and the house of my best friend, and we met there often, sometimes at the carousel or the park; but in all those years, I never visited the abandoned zoo.

We spent the time scrambling up the rock facades of the enclosures, and though we were there with a group of photographers, I only had my phone, and this was the only picture I took—because I was too busy rock-climbing myself.

The setting put me in mind of a wonderful group whom I heard speak whilst I was in Exeter, UK. They are called Wrights & Sights. They do urban walking as site-specific performances. They create mis-guides and walking paths or "drifts," which are meant to illuminate a city or place you are already familiar with in a new way.

Their Mis-Guide to Exeter Reverse Archeology walk informs my understanding of the preciousness of derelict places:
"Look for ruins on which the future can be built. Fallen branches, metal rubbish, waste and dump can all be turned. Make your own statue, make your own thing. Erect a monument to a fictional event.
Imagine new ares of the city, make maps of them.
Make a Bizarre Quarter, a Nostalgic Quarter, a Sinister Quarter, a Cheeky Quarter, whatever Quarter you want... Start with a single existing fragment of a place and build a whole Quarter from it."

Tesla Spirit Radio

2009-10-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

This video was posted on Make today. Reproductions of technology of yore is always fascinating, but this one is exceptionally interesting and perfect for the week of all hallows.

Cassini

2009-10-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, after not going to the Griffith Observatory for several years, I found myself there three times in two weeks. My parents and I went this past Wednesday to hear a panel discussion given by a few of the scientists working on the Cassini Mission to Saturn.

The first talk was on the weather conditions Cassini has shown on Saturn, including this bizarre hexagon-shaped feature, which does not rotate, but which has a cyclone inside it.

The second talk was on the rings of Saturn. We saw some lovely images of the spikes caused by the gravitational pull of the small moons which shepherd the rings, and also this image, which is one of the most lovely ever taken of the rings: Saturn eclipsing the Sun, with Earth visible between the outer rings.

The third talk was about Saturn's Magnetosphere. This has been affected by the geysering of water from one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. After this talk, the curator said that, when teaching children about Saturn, we often say that it is so light in density that, if we could have a bathtub big enough, it would float; in reality, because of Enceladus, Saturn actually is swimming in water.

The fourth talk was about Saturn's 61 moons. The panelist said this is a loose number because there seem to be new moons discovered all the time. Her talk focused on Enceladus, which is causing a lot of news right now due to a hot spot on the south pole that scientists call tiger stripes. These are fissures that are spouting out water so violently that the geysers are visible from orbit. It is, so far, a mystery as to why there is a hot spot on the south pole, but scientists are hoping to do a fly-by to catch some of the water to look for signs of life.

The last talk was on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. This is the moon that has a thick atmosphere, made up mostly of nitrogen and methane. Cassini discovered lakes at the poles; these contain liquid methane and ethane. Images taken of Titan's Lake Ontario four years ago and those taken this year show that there has been a lowering of the lake levels, meaning that Titan has its own version of a hydrologic cycle.

Along with Enceladus's promise of a liquid ocean and Titan's hydrocarbon-based surface lakes, one of the scientists said that we are now in search of life. If we find it, he says, that would indicate a cosmic fecundity. He went on to say that we could send missions to Saturn to find out if there is life with just half of the money we spent to bail out AIG. Sound worth it? It does to me.

Unnatural History

2009-10-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

This is work from artist Dan Hillier. His Victorian illustration work is really nice. Go check it out.
http://www.danhillier.com/

On the interpretation of illustration

2009-10-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Illustration for textual content had a long struggle in history before it was deemed acceptable for the illustrations to be printed alongside the narratives they depict. Even during the boom of illustrated books in the Victorian period, when artists like Randolph Caldecott were producing books with a higher ratio of illustrations-to-text, the debate over whether illustration aids or negates the texts it accompanies still raged on. However, visual information won the hearts of the consumer and thus has entered firmly into our lives. As Alice asked in the beginning of her Adventures in Wonderland, "What is the use of a book without pictures?"

Yet now we have come out the other side of this debate and have removed the illustrated materials completely from the texts they were depicting. In some cases, we have expanded them to film form. I am talking about Where the Wild Things Are. The stunningly similarities between the look of this movie to Maurice Sendak's book illustrations beg a new question: What's the use of illustrations without texts?

Aside from the wonderful job this movie did with the interpretation of the monsters, the largest hurdle the film makers faced was expanding a book that has only a few words. Visually this movie was, in my opinion, hugely successful. But it fell into a narrative trap that picture books create. Despite the attempt to flesh out Max's character, both through the Max role itself and though the caricatures of his personality depicted in each of the wild things, there was almost no character arc. The end of the movie leaves us with Max abruptly deciding to go home, either out of fear or because he has some ideas on how to improve his situation. Once he returns home, unlike in the book, which has one of the most memorable and touching endings in children's literature, Max has face-to-face contact with his mother and a chance to repent for his behavior in some way. Yet he does not. The movie, even with its expanded format, failed to expand on the characters that the picture book developed in only 37 pages.

I am cognizant that it is increasingly hard to interpret the classics, especially if you are attempting to be faithful to not only story but to its original aesthetic treatment. All in all, this was a good attempt.

21 Miles of String

2009-10-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

This Thursday Sean and Lindsey and I went into LA to see Feathered Edge: A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio at MOCA at the Pacific Design Center.
It was one of those art installations which was so experiential and dynamic that documentation is almost futile. But that didn't stop us from trying.

Especially Sean who even crawled under the piece to get this shot.

The coloration of the string and the way it was hung created moiré patterns and color blends that shifted as you moved around the piece. Even the shape was impossible to tell as you walked up the stairs into the gallery. Only when we walked around the room did we see that it seemed to grow and shrink and move with our movement. It was like a cloud of color in the room. This is what I love about art. One can create an emotional, almost sublime experience with 21 miles of string, a bit of dye and some white walls.

Thursdays also happen to be free evenings at MOCA from 5 to 8. So we went to see the permanent collection which included some really nice pieces. Photographs from "T he Americans" by Robert Frank, which Sean was excited to see. An Ektacolor print by Larry Johnson, Untitled (Jesus + I), was one of our favorites. As well as Marco Maggi's Hotbead (LA), which were stacks of letter paper with very detailed fine cuts in the top sheet which created architecture in the peice.

We then spur-of-the-moment decided that we would go to Griffith Observatory since it was a clear night and Lindsey had never been. We saw a star cluster in Cassiopeia and Jupiter though the big telescope. We hear it was good atmospheric conditions but that the telescope was still only running at 20% of its capacity and on really really good nights it can look like Hubble images. Alas our Jupiter view was not in color but we did get to see four of its moons, including Ganymede which was in front of Jupiter so it looked like a black dot, as well as some of the bands of weather that stripe Jupiter's atmosphere.

It was the kind of day we need to make happen more often.
For more photos of the day Sean has them posted on his Facebook: Art and Science Day

Etsy Shop

2009-10-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Well I finally set up a shop on Etsy for selling my embroidery.

MelindaMaire.etsy.com or Shop name: Thread of Consciousness.

A fairly intimidating process, (I don't really know what my return policy is!) but I am excited to see what happens next.

Check it out! Feedback is appreciated.

Thread of Consciousness

On Collecting and Presenting

Folklore

Food Journal 4

On Falling

Photogram

On the Passing of Time

Food Journal 3

Spinning Discontent

Old Christmas

On the occasion of the first winter storm of the year

Food Journal part 2

Food Journal: part 1

Explorations

On the Collection and storage of eggs

Confusion between assertiveness and aggression

Cliff Diving or What I got from watching New Moon last night

Parade

Ballooning

Elephants are silly creatures, part II

Yet another reason why I should have lived in the 19th Century

On the Victorian collecting of Feminism

On visual education for the masses

In an instant, the ground burst open in four places, and up shot four sturdy melon-vines, that grew east, west, north, south!

<br /> <br />

NIMBLE JIM AND THE MAGIC MELON By J. A. Judson. St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 No 1, Nov 1877

Artifice

On the infectious nature of disproportion

Halloween's Past 2

Halloween's Past

Space Music

Elephants are silly creatures

Derelict Scrambling

Tesla Spirit Radio

Cassini

Unnatural History

On the interpretation of illustration

21 Miles of String

Etsy Shop