All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Gorgeous hand-marbled papers can be found at Jemma Lewis Marbling and Design. The papers are available to artists, craft workers, designers (interior, fashion, furniture), publishers and bookbinders, and retailers. Bespoke and historic restoration services also are offered. (My  thanks to Fine Books & Collections for the link.) Just look at Lewis's 'Marbled Meadow'!

Jemma Lewis Marbling & Design on FaceBook, Twitter, and Flickr

✦ Architect Arthur Pugliese turns construction worksites into art ateliers where environmental waste becomes sculptures and paintings. View his interesting TED Talk. (The talk also is on YouTube.) Also of interest: Roberto Lautert's talk about creating art on the iPhone using the "Finger Draw" app.

✦ Representatives from Google, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and Art21 joined digital artist Jorge Colombo at Rubin Museum for this panel discussion on the influence of technology on art, artists, and museums.

✦ An updated trade edition (in English, French, or German) of Studio Olafur Eliasson, about the Berlin interdisciplinary laboratory led by the Danish-Icelandic artist is available from Taschen.

✦ Today's video features Antony Gormley discussing his exhibition "Antony Gormley: Drawing Space" at The Phillips Collection, on view through September 9. I've had the privilege of seeing the show and recommend it. (My thanks to the museum's blog Experiment Station for the link.)

Additional videos showcasing Gormley's work are found here.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ One of my favorite New York City museums, Rubin Museum of Art, is showing through October 16 "Approaching Abstraction: Modernist Art from India". The show, the second in a series, presents both paintings and experimental films by the late M.F. Husain, the late Tyeb Mehta, and Akbar Padamsee. 

Exhibition Audio Tour from iTunesU

Interactive Exhibition Timeline

Rubin Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, Google Art, YouTube, Pinterest, and ArtBabble

✭ At New Museum, in New York City's Bowery, a selection of artists' holograms from 1969 to 2008 are being shown through September 30 in conjunction with the museum-wide exhibition "Ghosts in the Machine". Artists whose holographic work is included are Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Bruce Nauman, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha, and James Turrell.

New Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube

✭ Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina, continues through September 23 "Close Relations and A Few Black Sheep: Sculpture from the Permanent Collection" (images available at the link). The artworks are organized in several groups: "The Space of Architecture", including work by Sol LeWitt and Robert Smithson; "Going Organic", presenting the museum's newly acquired sculptures by the extraordinary Ursula von Rydinsgvard and Roxy Paine (her Graft is in the Sculpture Garden of our National Gallery of Art); and "No More Heavy Metal", including work by Tara Donovan.

WAMSpoon on FaceBook and Twitter

Museum Blog

Save the Date

In November, Maryland's Baltimore Museum of Art plans to reopen its renovated Contemporary Art Wing. Artworks from the BMA's collection will be presented thematically along with new acquisitions. In conjunction with the inauguration of the transformed wing, BMA will present in a new space for international, regional, and local artists an exhibition of large-scale color photographs by South Africa's Zwelethu Mthethwa. In a black box space, the museum will place on view video and digital artworks (to include A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear) by Allora & Calzadilla and, in a third gallery, a selection from its collection of prints, drawings, and photographs. (More information about the wing and upcoming exhibitions is available in this press release and this feature article.)

BMA on FaceBook and Twitter

Notable Exhibits Abroad

✭ The British Museum continues through November 25 "Shakespeare: Staging the World", which showcases, among more than 190 objects, including coins, armor, textiles, and prints, paintings, and sculpture, the "Robben Island Bible", the copy of the complete works of Shakespeare read by South Africa's Nelson Mandela and other Robben Island prisoners. The exhibition, a collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company, includes audio and visual performances by such well-known actors as Sir Ian McKellen. Tickets are required for entry and may be obtained online.

British Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

The Robotics of Beach Art

Before you throw in the towel and hang your swimsuit up for the season, take note of the latest research on the art of building sandcastles. According to this science article in The New York Times, investigators at the University of Amsterdam (see the technical "How to Construct the Perfect Sandcastle" at Scientific Reports in Nature) offer a perhaps counter-intuitive explanation of how to build better — and taller — structures on the beach: use less water. 

Simple, right? Just a matter of calculations? Let me know how your construction goes. 

If you don't get your ratios just right or fail to account for that fast-breaking wave, consider calling in a solar-powered robot from the Stone Spray Project at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, where a team is researching additive manufacturing (3-D printing) in architecture. According to FAQs on the project Website, the goal is "to push further the boundaries of digital manufacturing and explore the possibilities of on-site fabrication machines"; the Stone Spray Robot is one output. Using soil as its primary building material to which an eco-friendly liquid binder or solidifier has been added, the robot jet-sprays the mix into architectural shapes or "formwork", such as a tree, a wall, and a stool.

Leave it to technology to show us how a robotic 3-D printer "makes architecture out of soil".

Stone Spray Project from Stone Spray on Vimeo.

The project team has produced a book about its fascinating effort; read it here.

Stone Spray Project on FaceBook and Twitter

IAAC Blog

See my earlier post on 3-Dimensional Printing. This Forbes article examines trends in additive manufacturing and anticipated changes in the next five to 10 years.

(My thanks to TED Blog for the link to the Stone Spray Project.)

Exciting New Arts Initiative Coming to D.C. Area

Imagine. . . 

✦ A building that houses a photography center with six classrooms, three shooting studios, a gallery, a public darkroom, conference rooms, and an office/studio rental program for photographers.

✦ An arts center in that same 25,000-square-foot building, offering resident artists studio space in which to work and affiliate artists space on an as-needed and as-available basis.

✦ Classroom space for arts-related education — from how to run an art business, to networking, to exploring new processes — as well as gallery space and meeting rooms that can accommodate art groups of all kinds.

✦ Arts events and classes at times convenient to your schedule.

✦ Two local nonprofits sharing the building, which will be open 70 hours a week, every day of the week.

✦ Plenty of free parking and accessibility via Metro.

Imagine they did! The Washington School of Photography and Capitol Arts Network - CAN Studios, I'm delighted to announce, are about to realize their dream to open a new, inspiring, and lively arts space where Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.-area artists may work, network, collaborate, and inspire one another.  I know personally a number of the artists who have been involved in this venture and can attest to their dedication to see their initiative through and make it a success. What they've envisioned will benefit our area enormously.

Informational Meetings Scheduled

Next week, WSP and CAN will be convening two informational meetings for photographers and artists who are interested in learning more about prospective opportunities for resident artists or photographers. The events, both at WSP's current location (see address below), will be held on Wednesday, September 5, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m., and Saturday, September 8, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Plans and photographs of the building will be available for examination, along with takeaways, including an information packet, application, and an overview of WSP and CAN and the groups' collective creative vision.

WSP and CAN anticipate studio space for approximately 30 artists and 10 photographers and expect those spaces to fill quickly; so, get in at the start of this promising project by attending one of the meetings.

RSVP Judith HeartSong at judith@capitolartsnetwork.com by Tuesday, September 4. 

E-mail Judith to let her know that you would like to be added to the mailing list for gallery openings and art-related opportunities.

If you have questions, please telephone Judith HeartSong at 301-661-7590. 

Washington School of Photography
4850 Rugby Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
301-654-1998

WSP on FaceBook and Twitter

Please help get out the word by passing along this information to artists and photographers you know, your social media contacts in the arts, and local artist groups and guilds.

Wednesday Wonder: It's a Stitch

Graphic designer Briar Mark, the self-described "mad hand-crafter" from Aukland, New Zealand, provides today's bit of wonder: the amusing, entirely hand-stitched typographic "I Could Have Done This". The stitching on the paper canvas took Mark approximately 30 minutes per color per letter (there are 25 letters). I'll leave it to you to add up the time, and the number of stitches. Fun stuff, and a great conceptual statement!

Briar Mark on Tumblr

Perception (Poem)

Staszek Kotowski, Blue 

Oil on Canvas, 48"x 58"

Used with Artist's Permission

Perception

You hold night tight
in the starred-less sky,

Harvest Moon pressing
its face into the black velvet

curtain. In enough light
we could shade our differences.

Come morning, look over
the blues rippling a mile

out from shore and tell me
where you draw the line,

straight and unerring.

© 2012 Maureen E. Doallas 
_______________________________

This is the second poem inspired by Staszek's painting Blue; you will find the first, "Invoking Blue", at TweetSpeakPoetry, the T.S. Poetry Press blog, where the poem and image appeared in June as part of the ongoing "Image-ine" series.

Monday Muse: Moore at The Rosenbach

If you're in Philadelphia at the end of the week and find yourself with a block of free time, head to The Rosenbach Museum & Library in Rittenhouse Square for a "hands-on" tour about poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972). The museum, the repository of the important Marianne Moore Collection, is offering "Marianne Moore, Modernist Poet", between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Friday, August 31. Attendees will be able to examine Moore's letters and clippings, as well as some of the objects she liked to have at hand.

According to information on the Rosenbach Website, the Marianne Moore Collection includes not only the poet's manuscripts and papers but also her personal library, photographs, and the contents of her Greenwich Village living room, which is installed permanently on the third floor and is shown to visitors as part of the regular tour of the Rosenbach house. The room's contents comprise more than 2,500 objects, from furniture, to animal figurines, to postage stamps. Moore bequeathed her personal belongings to the Rosenbach, which in the late 1960s purchased the bulk of her manuscripts and correspondence.

Among highlights in the Moore collection are a letter Moore wrote in her senior year at Bryn Mawr in which she describes to her family an outing to see the pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski; a letter to Moore from Ezra Pound, indicating Pound's interest in publishing a collection of Moore's poems (Pound cautions, "You will never sell more than five hundred copies, as your work demands mental attention."); and a typescript of Moore's poem "A Graveyeard in the Middle of the Sea" (an image is in the online Gallery section of the main page of Marianne Moore Collection).

A 16-page introduction to the collection followed by a summary of its contents, from poetry and prose manuscripts to notebooks, to financial records, to artworks, is available online.

On Delancey Place, the Rosenbach, which is open Tuesday through Sunday (hours are listed here), is  home to a remarkable collection of nearly 400,000 rare books, manuscripts (some no more than a page), and fine and decorative art objects. Among its other collections are Bram Stoker's notes and outlines for Dracula; original drawings and books by William Blake; manuscripts for two-thirds of Joseph Conrad's literary works, including Lord Jim and Nicholas Nickleby; more than 600 Lewis Carroll letters; the manuscript and typescript of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood; and more than 10,000 original drawings, preliminary sketches, manuscripts, books, photographs, and prints of Maurice Sendak.

(I was privileged to visit the Rosenbach last Thursday; it's a gem in a beautiful section of the city. To see up close so many rare and beautiful books and manuscripts is an honor. Our guide was extremely well-informed and his enthusiasm for the library's holdings was infectious. The Sendak illustrations now on view are delightful.)

Generally, program events are free with museum admission. 

The Rosenbach is designated a National Literary Landmark by Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations (ALTAFF), formerly Library Trustees and Advocates (ALTA) and Friends of Libraries, USA (FOLUSA), which merged in 2009.

The Rosenbach on FaceBook and Twitter

The Rosenbach Blog Rosenblog

Also of Interest

"Moore Adventures in Wonderland" at The Rosenbach (2009-2010)

Manuscripts Online 

Marianne Moore's "A Graveyard"

Marianne Moore, The Art of Poetry No. 4, Interview at The Paris Review, 1961

Marianne Moore at The Library of Congress

Marianne Moore Profiles at Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, Poetry Foundation

Marianne Moore Poetry Blog

Thought for the Day

. . . art is poultice for a burn. It is a privilege to have,

somewhere within you, a capacity for making something

speak from your own seared experience.

~ Molly Peacock*

___________________________

* Quoted from Molly Peacock, Chapter Four, The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 (Bloomsbury, 2010)

Of Interest

The Paper Garden Website

Mark Laird, Mrs. Delany and Her Circle (Yale Center for British Art, 2009)

Ruth Hayden, Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers (British Museum Press, 2000)

Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

Today's edition of Saturday Sharing draws its offerings from game designers, poets, illustrators, tech geeks, publishing pros, and an inspirational landscape architect. 

✦ Game designers have come up with a way to help us become more physically and emotionally resilient. Check out Superbetter. (My thanks to Patti Digh for the link.)

SuperBetter on FaceBook and Twitter

SuperBetter Blog

✦ Talented graphic designers-illustrators James and Michael Fitzgerald, a.k.a. The Project Twins, have created the "A-Z of Unusual Words". Could there possibly be anyone in the world who knew all of these words before landing on this project? The graphics, I'm delighted to say, do not, at first glance, give away the words' meanings. 

✦ When you reach the point that you just can't read another word on the Web, get rid of every one by using the Wordless Web, a creation of designer Ji Lee and programmer Cory Forsyth. The browser plug-in is featured at the coolest tech sites and here on Ji Lee's own site.

Ji Lee's Word as Image on FaceBook

✦ New to me and perhaps to you: Joyland Poetry, partner to Joyland Magazine; and Everyday Genius. (My thanks to PEN American Center for the links.)

✦ For writers who just can't get enough social media resources, there's LitBridge, which provides a steady stream of articles and interviews about writing and publishing, contest news, information about publishers, journals, and creative writing programs, and listings of conferences, residencies, and other events  for professional writers.

✦ You'll find a Lace Garden, a Cacticity, a Garden for Escher, and the Folding for Peace project among the creative landscape architectures created by the award-winning Anouk Vogel. 

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ New York City's Animazing Gallery, which since 1984 has been showcasing original illustrations and animation cells, has redesigned and renamed itself AFA (Animazing Fine Art). Online you'll find a Maurice Sendak Retrospective (images on view at the gallery through Labor Day), original work by Tim Burton, and robot sculptures by David Lipson.

AFA on FaceBook and Twitter

AFA Blog

✦ Don't miss these poetic color prints and monoprints by Keiji Shinohara. His woodcuts are collectibles.

✦ The series Oil by the internationally known photographer Edward Burtynsky has been released for iPad.

✦ If you haven't managed to get to Sydney, Australia, for the 18th Biennale, which continues through September 16, check out the dedicated Website, where you'll find a gallery that includes background information about and images of the work of artists Dorothy Napagardi, Makinti Napanangka, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, among others.

18th Biennale on FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube

✦ An interactive installation by multidisciplinary artist Marie Watt (Seneca), Engine, has been installed at Tacoma Art Museum and is on view through October 7, part of the exhibition "Marie Watt: Lodge - Blankets, Stories, and Communities". Here's a time-lapse video of the installation:

TAM on FaceBook and Twitter

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ The Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, is celebrating its centennial with "100 Works for 100 Years", on view through September 16. Installed museum-wide, the exhibition draws from 12,00 objects in the permanent collection and showcases one or more artworks for each year the museum has existed. Among the works are Dale Chihuly's Persian Window, Grace Hartigan's Eleanor of Aquitaine, Edward Hopper's Summertime, Raphaelle Peale's Absalom Jones, and Frank Schoonover's Hans Brinker.

DAM on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ Pae White's installation Summer XX (2012) is on exhibit through late summer at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. 

Installation View

Pae White, Summer XX, 2012

Dimensions Variable

Photo Credit: Carlos Avendano

Also on view is Mark Bradford's Geppetto (2012), an installation comprising 2,000 newsprint pages.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ In San Antonio, Tex., McNay Art Museum continues through September 2 "Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine", described as "[a] celebration both of the greater African American story and the artist's personal discoveries about his family origins." The exhibition's title comes from sets of the artist's "medicine cabinet" sculptures. The show focuses on three themes: water, blues, and blood. Read more about it here and watch the introductory videos below.

Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine from McNay Art Museum on Vimeo.

The exhibition appeared at Atlanta's High Museum last year.

Radcliffe Bailey at Jack Shainman Gallery, Solomon Projects

Scott Andrews, "Radcliffe Bailey Searches for Life Beyond the Middle Passage", San Antonio Current, July 3, 2012

TheGrio's 100: Radcliffe Bailey, Creating Art from History (Video)

McNay Art Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ The acclaimed, award-winning photography of Los Angeles-based Richard Misrach is on view through October 7 at High Museum, Atlanta. The exhibition "Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach's Cancer Alley", showcases 21 large-scale prints that contrast the exceptional beauty of the images with their deadly environmental subjects. The images focus on a segment of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The area known as "Cancer Alley" is home to many petrochemical manufacturers and is a place, according to Misrach, that has one of the lowest quality-of-life ratings in the United States. (Tickets are required to view the exhibition.) Misrach's work is part of the Picturing the South series commissioned by the High.

Selected Exhibition Images

"Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach's Cancer Alley", Time LightBox, June 1, 2012 (Photo Essay)

Richard Misrach at ArtNet, Fraenkel Gallery (see Artists), Museum of Contemporary Photography, and National Gallery of Art 

Interview with Richard Misrach, SeeSaw, March 2006

High Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube 

In this video, curator Julian Cox talks about one of Misrach's images from 1998, Swamp and Pipeline, Geismar, Louisiana (the print is included in the exhibition): 

Painter Reinoud van Vught

I look at what the paint and the canvas have to tell me;

that's where I find my direction. . . .

. . . I try to touch the essence of nature. Perhaps something

lying behind nature. Because I try to discover what it is

that makes everything so special. . . .

~ Painter Reinoud van Vught

In the ARTtube video you'll find here, the award-winning painter Reinoud van Vught talks about his creative process and looking at, thinking about, and understanding art. Be sure to visit his online gallery for images of his paintings and photographs.

Earlier this summer, van Vught was part of the group show "Short Stay — 6 Painters and a Poet" at Galerie Zand in The Netherlands. Images

Reinoud van Vught Profiles at ArtSlant, Museum De Pont, Rabo Art Collection, and Saatchi Online

Images of van Vught's Work at De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, The Netherlands

Roald Dahl's 'The Sound Machine' (Film)

Below is a film adaptation, by Zahid Chohan, of Roald Dahl's short story "The Sound Machine", which The New Yorker published in 1949. Wordless, the film is an absorbing and thought-provoking essay about an obsession with science and sound and where invention can lead us.

Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom

Roald Dahl Short Stories

Also of interest is this series from The Telegraph, "Roald Dahl's Darkest Hour".

Home-Grown (Poem)

Home-Grown

The red geranium's leaf turns in
on itself, rolling up inside the wilt

that blights. I need to minimize
infection, finish with cuttings an end

begun as flowers fade. Already
it's late August. I pinch slips from stem

tips, fixing them a single inch in a mix
of perlite and sphagnum peat moss.

The trick to rooting successfully is
finding the place that nourishes deep,

out of the glare. North or east light
will do; holding back on water, too.

It takes time to get established. More
if you start from seed. In the tending

before the planting you can go so far.

© 2012 Maureen E. Doallas

Monday Muse: Do the Poetic 'Fabstractions' Walk

If this summer's high heat has left you drained of inspiration, Elastic City's upcoming Fabstractions, an evening walk near and within Brooklyn's Prospect Park, may give you some helpful insights and techniques to unlock or restart your creative engine. It also promises to be a lot of fun.

Elastic City is now in its third season of presenting artist-conceived and artist-led walks and "ways" all over New York City, in Detroit and San Francisco, and in Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Reykjavik, and Sao Paulo. The organization describes its walks as "a narrative series of poetic moments" and its ways as "experiential workshops that explicitly engage participants in how to generate these moments" so they become part of your regular creative process. Walks and ways have been presented with such partners as Abrons Art Center, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, Friends of the High Line, Museum of the City of New York, San Francisco Arts Commission, Staten Island Museum, and Le Petit Versailles.

Led by Todd Shalom, who teaches "The Walk as Poem" at Pratt Institute and is the founder and director of Elastic City, a nonprofit, Fabstractions is scheduled for the evenings of August 21, 23, and 28 at 8:30 p.m. (The first walk is sold out; check the current Calendar for available spaces in the other two.) Each Fabstractions walk, which will be conducted in English (Shalom can speak Spanish), can accommodate 10 participants—small enough to lend the experience a personal and intimate feeling and big enough to ensure a sufficient number for group exercises.

As explained on the organization's Website and in an e-mail exchange with Shalom, Fabstractions, like other walks and ways on the calendar, is participatory, intended to focus "less on providing factual information and more on heightening" awareness and use of our senses creatively in public spaces. Shalom, who often collaborates with performance artist and director Niegel Smith to stage interactive performances in public and private environments, told me he plans to use sound, movement, and experimental poetry techniques to create abstract responses to found imagery. Participants, he says, will craft solo, duet, and collective performances as the walk progresses. For example, he adds, group members will "make individual performances through the simple act of picking up and dropping dirt. We will also construct text-based poems using signage" in the park. Participants also will have an opportunity to be part of a dance "that glows" and a light-play involving reflections with cars in the area.

A fee of $20.00, which helps defray artist fees and operating costs (liability insurance, marketing, etc.),   is charged to participate in Fabstractions. Gift certificates are available, and Elastic City also offers private walks or ways for corporate outings, birthday celebrations, student orientations, and the like.

To learn more about Elastic City's walks and ways, check the FAQs. Biographies for the artists who lead events, are here; in addition to poets, participating artists, who typically are commissioned to create walks, include urban designers, dancers, painters, architects, photographers, filmmakers, printers, and individuals working in sound art, theatre, and psychotherapy. 

Elastic City on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo

Elastic City Blog

Witness the Withering (Poem)

Witness the Withering

Leaves jump-suited in brown-stained uniforms
signal the fall the way a weak wrist fails the hand.
They're showing their backs to us now,
refusing from want to hold our attention.

Heat sours early morning air, dully clips the breeze
of rhythm, pronounces the sky's metallic canvas
a mockery of unworked clouds.

What strength it takes to witness the withering,
what will to keep untended fire burning.

© 2012 Maureen E. Doallas
___________________________________

I offer this poem for the dVerse Poets Pub call for poems about the "dog days" of summer. Go here to read about the prompt and leave the link to your contribution.

Thought for the Day

The edge is what I have.

~ Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

______________________________

Theodore Roethke, 1908-1963

Theodore Roethke Home Museum, Saginaw, Michigan

Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, Saginaw Valley State University

The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Anchor Books, 1974)

Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

Today's edition of Saturday Sharing takes you around the Web for inspirational poetry, Poetry Turned Around, e-publishing topics, and data visualizations. The video feature is an animation of a concrete poem (looking at the picture formed by the words will explain what a concrete poem is).

✦ Here's a marvelous online exhibition of "The First Photograph", View from the Window at Le Gras (c. 1826), by Joseph Nicephore Niepce of France. The image, owned by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, currently is on loan to Reiss Englehorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany.

✦ If you're looking for collections of work by Rumi, Kabir, Hafiz, Mirabi, and other spiritual and devotional poets, visit Poet Seers.

✦ Poet and videographer Vanessa Plain scouts the Web for videpoems that she shares at Viral Verse. Here's one of her offerings, Dudley Wild's The Slow Train, an animation of a concrete poem by Lemon Jelly: 

✦ At Poetry Turned Around, you'll find one-minute "poem reports", poetry news, videos, interviews, and more.

YRTEOP on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ Head to Griff's Graphs to get your fill of data visualizations. The site plots beautifully subjects as varied as programming languages, human diseases, social networks, and mathematicians.

✦ E-books, e-libraries, e-publishing news, and all things related to e-reading get noticed at TeleRead.

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All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, is featuring a wonderful online exhibition "A Tonic to the Imagination: Costume Designs for State and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co., 1889-1959".  Included are more than 200 images of costume designs and other materials from 60 theatre and film productions; among the 10 categories are Actors & Managers, Early Shakespeare, and Musicals & Revues.

✦ The nonprofit Institute of the 21st Century, dubbed i21c, a digital archive of curator  Hans Ulrich Obrist's Interview Project, which involved scores of major figures in art, architecture, literature, and science, debuted the weekend of July 29. More than 2,500 hours of interviews are eventually to become available.

8-Part Recorded Lecture on The Art of Curating, 2004 on YouTube

i21c on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ Are designers artists? Let's hear what Italian designers Elsa Shiaparelli and Miuccia Prada have to say about the issue in "The Surreal Body" by director Baz Luhrmann, conceived for the exhibition "Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations" at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the show closes August 19).

Luhrmann's video series for the exhibition includes "Ugly Chic", "Naif Chic", "The Classical Body",  "Hard Chic, "The Exotic Body", and "Waist Up/Waist Down".

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Santa Fe's Tai Gallery, one of the premier exhibitors of bamboo, ceramic, and textile arts, is showing through August 31 "Desert Bloom: Form and Motion in Clay — The Ceramic Sculpture of Fujino Sachiko". This solo exhibition for Sachiko, the first outside Japan, inaugurates a collaboration with Joan B. Mirviss Ltd., New York City. Information about the collaboration and exhibition is available here; information about the artist is here.

✭ Joining in the extensive continuing celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Romare Bearden's birth is Price Tower Arts Center, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which is presenting "From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden" through September 2. Organized by the Romare Bearden Foundation in New York City, the exhibition of more than 75 prints travels to the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, in  October, where it will be on view until January 6, 2013. A color catalogue accompanies the show, which ranges over Bearden's lithographs, etchings, and serigraphs, including his important photoengraving series The Train and The Family, as well as prints based on collages, including the Odysseus series and Piano Lesson.

Exhibition Gallery Guide (pdf) and Image List (29-page pdf)

Romare Bearden Foundation

Centennial Tribute Website

✭ British artist and light designer Bruce Munro has created a series of large-scale, site-specific light installations for the beautiful Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania (approximately 30 miles from Philadelphia). The installations, best seen at night, are on view through September 29. (Evening hours are until 11:00 p.m. through September 1. Find visitor information here.) The solo exhibition of eight outdoor installations and two installations within Longwood's four-acre Grand Conservatory covers 23 acres. 

Among the installations are the 300-foot-long Arrow Spring: Beyond Flower Garden Walk made up of 15,000 LED flashlights; Field of Light: Small Lake, comprising 7,000 frosted glass spheres; Waterlilies, for which Munro mounted recycled CDs on foam discs; Candlelight: Canopy Cathedral Treehouse, which uses lights concealed in porcelain vessels to illuminate the interior space; Water Towers: Meadow at Hourglass Lake, composed of 69 structures made with one-liter recyclable plastic bottles filled with water, laser-cut wood layers, and fiber optics connected to a LED projector and sound system; Forest of Light: Forest Walk, requiring 20,000 illuminated glass spheres; Snowballs: Orangery, for which Munro created six large glass chandeliers whose colors change in unison; and Light Shower: Exhibition Hall, comprising 1,650 teardrop-shaped diffusers suspended from the ceiling by fiber-optic strands. (A statement from the artist about each installation appears at each of the links.)

This time-lapse video shows the installations as they are being assembled and how they look at night (additional videos for the installations are available on YouTube):

Here's Munro's statement about the exhibition and a second brief video in which the artist talks about his installations:

In addition to the outdoor light installations, Munro has placed small sculptures on view for On Light Exhibit: Music Room.

Light: Installations by Bruce Munro App at iTunes for Apple and Google Play for Android

Exhibition Catalogue

Bruce Munro on FaceBook and Twitter

Longwood Gardens on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Longwood Gardens Blog Behind the Plants

✭ In New York City, George Adams Gallery will open "James Barsness: A Survey of Paintings, 1993-2008" on September 7. The award-winning Barsness is in numerous public collections, including those of Di  Rosa Art Preserve, Napa, California; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; and Yale University Art Gallery New Haven; Barness has exhibited extensively in group and solo shows around the United States.

Images Here and Here

Weaver Frans Dijkmeijer

I weave many cloths [that] I know can't be realized

technically. I make them more for my own development.

Otherwise you're very limited in how you express yourself.

~ Frans Dijkmeijer, Textile Artist

Below you'll find a lovely introductory feature about the late Dutch textile designer and artist Frans Dijkmeijer (1936-2011), who talks about the sources of his inspiration and explains some of his weaving techniques. Dijkmeijer was considered a masterful weaver and his elegant fabrics, whose weave is technically complex, continue to be among the favorites of interior designers.

In 2000, Dijkmeijer received the Profile Prize for his contributions to the textile industry.

Frans Dijkmeijer - A Life in Weaving from boogiemen on Vimeo.

Filmed at the artist's home and studio in Toulouse, France, the video was produced in conjunction with an exhibition, which  had been planned for last year and subsequently was postponed because of Dijkmeijer's death, that showcases the designer's fabrics. The exhibition, "Intervention #19 Frans Dijkmeijer — A Life in Weaving", is now on view through the end of September at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Holland.

Wednesday Wonder: Making a Book

As this video from 1947 documents, making a book in the old days required no little skill and effort.



(My thanks to Page Views and Paris Review Daily for the link.)

Flood Song and Other Poems

This month's theme at TweetSpeakPoetry is rain. In response to last week's call for book spine poems that touch on the theme of rain or water, I offer the following:

Flood Song

Flood song
delights & shadows
the last usable hour

We almost disappear

After the point of no return
the sea and the bells
see me improving

Poets, in order of titles: Sherwin Bitsui, Ted Kooser, Deborah Landau, David Bottoms, David Wagoner, Pablo Neruda, Travis Nichols

Hands Washing Water

Hands washing water

reversing the spell

moment to moment

saving the daylight

Poets, in order of titles: Chris Abani Eleanor Rand Wilner, David Budbell, Jim Harrison

The sunken lightship

is late:

Dumb luck.

Poets, in order of titles: Peter Makuck, Wayne Dodd and Ceclia Woloch, Sam Hamill

Salt Water Amnesia

A thousand vessels

jam the city in which I love you.

Tell me

I have tasted the apple.

Tell me

the captain lands in paradise

where currents meet.

Poets, in order of titles: Jeffrey Skinner, Tania Runyon, Joe-Anne McLaughlin and Li-Young Lee, Kim Addonizzio, Mary Crow, Kim Addonizzio, Sarah Manguso, Elizabeth Austen

Blessing the boats

small gods of grief

double going

against distance

for the kingdom

Poets, in order of titles: Lucille Clifton, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Richard Foerster, Peter Makuck, Anthony Piccione

Monday Muse: A Poet Leads a Peace Caravan

I had never thought of starting a movement or being a spokesman

for anything. I'm a poet, and poets are better known for working

with more obscure intuitions. But . . . I was reminded

that the life of the soul can be powerful too. . . .*

~Javier Sicilia

Did you know that more than 60,000 people have lost their lives to drug-related violence in Mexico? Or that another 10,000 have been "disappeared" and more than 160,000 have been displaced? That less than 2 percent of the crimes have been solved?

What do these heart-stopping statistics have to do with poets and poetry?

Sometimes it takes a death to get someone to act. Sometimes it takes a well-known voice to get people to listen.

In Mexico today, that voice belongs to poet, novelist, and essayist Javier Sicilia, even though he has said that "Poetry doesn't exist in me anymore."

* * *

For Sicilia, silence ceased being an option in 2011, when his son Juan Francisco, 24, lost his life to the so-called "drug war"; six of Sicilia's son's friends died with him (it is thought Juan Francisco and the others were targeted after they were overheard in a bar talking about the drug cartels and the violence). Sicilia's deeply personal loss was a catalyst, prompting the writer to lend his widely recognized voice, and now face, to his country's Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity**, whose motto is "End the Drug War — No More Violence". Sicilia, featured among a series of profiles of protesters in Time magazine's 2011 "Person of the Year: The Protester" cover story, also leads the MPJD's trans-border initiative Caravan for Peace.

With logistical and other support from Global Exchange, the Caravan for Peace has come to America. (I heard about the group through an organization I've supported, the Quixote Center, which is a co-sponsor of the caravan.) According to the group's Website,  Caravan for Peace left Tijuana for San Diego, California, on August 11 and over the next month will travel to cities throughout the United States, including Los Angeles; Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico; El Paso, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas;  Jackson, Mississippi; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; New York City; and Baltimore, Maryland. (See all the cities on the planned route and dates of arrivals or stays.) On September 12, the caravan will end its trek in Washington, D.C.

(Click image to enlarge view.)

At each stop, Caravan for Peace will repeat its organizing call ᴉEstamos hasta la madre! ("We've had it!") and seek to increase Americans' awareness of the drug war violence and how government policy on both sides of our border with Mexico contributes to the problem. By engaging with and helping to inform and mobilize activists and concerned citizens here, Caravan for Peace aims to promote civil discourse about arms trafficking, money laundering, migration, drug prohibition, and bi-national security (these themes are identified here) and the kinds of reforms needed at local, state, national, and international levels to bring the drug war within control.  

Go here to learn how to add your own voices, poetic or not, and make a difference to the bi-national initiative. Expressions of support, including housing and food for caravanners, monetary donations, and publicity, are welcomed.

In this video, Sicilia talks with a Democracy Now! interviewer about his activism:

Caravan4Peace on FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube

Caravan for Peace Blog

* Quoted from Tim Padgett, "Why I Protest: Javier Sicilia of Mexico", Time Magazine, December 14, 2011

** Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad and Allied Organizations

WikiPedia Profile of Javier Sicilia

Betto Arcos, "Artists React to Mexico's Drug War with Music and Poetry", NPR Music, January 21, 2012

Wim Jansen, "'My grief is Mexico's grief'", Radio Netherlands Worldwide, July 30, 2012

Enrique Krauze, "Can This Poet Save Mexico?" The New York Times, Opinion, October 1, 2011

Joanna Moorhead, "Javier Sicilia: 'I have no more poetry in me'", The Guardian, October 28, 2011

Thought for the Day

. . .  To be kind is to respond with sensitivity

 and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others.

 Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten 

a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people. . . .

~ Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Winner, 1991

_______________________________

Quoted from Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel Lecture Delivered June 16, 2012

10-Minute Interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, June 15, 2012

Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

Regular readers of Saturday Sharing expect the eclectic and the unusual. There's a bit of both in today's edition, which offers "endangered sounds", a dip or two into alchemy, and "walking drawings".

✦ If you prefer your inspiration via video in 60-second sound bytes, visit Spark in 60, which claims to offer "a smattering of unique insights and experiences from the New York creative community". Make any choice; it will take you only a minute.

Spark in 60 on Twitter

✦ Thanks to the Museum of Endangered Sounds, launched in January of this year, we'll never be able to forget the noises of products of our own making. Maintaining this site clearly is a labor of love.

✦ The musical aspects of language are showcased by the poetry publication Glass Seed Annual. The first issue is all about pantoums.

✦ The future of design is the focus of inhabitat, which tracks sustainable innovations in product, interior, and architectural design.

inhabitat on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Anything and everything to do with alchemy can be found at The Alchemy Website. The site's breadth and depth are astonishing. 

✦ Today's video feature is the trailer for  Evewright Studio's project Walking Drawings Across the Estuaries, described as "a series of live experimental art installations" for which the artist, Everton Wright, has created large-scale drawings on "sandscapes" along Britain's coast and then invited members of the public and horseriders to "walk their lines" to engage with the art. Read more about Walking Drawings. Signed, limited-edition prints of the beautiful (and ephemeral) sandscapes are available.

Walking Drawings Across the Estuaries-Trailer from Evewright Studio on Vimeo.

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The independent, nonprofit Asia Art Archive, now boasting more than 34,000 digital records and still expanding, is worth more than a cursory browse. Bookmark the site and return to it frequently to keep up to date on contemporary Asian art.

Asia Art Archive on FaceBook and Twitter 

✦ The ARTtube, an online video channel created by Dutch and Belgian museums, launched recently.

ARTtube on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ A new Calder Gallery is open at Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland. In its collaboration with the Calder Foundation, Fondation Beyeler will present curated exhibitions of Calder's work. 

Fondation Beyeler on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✦ Graham Caldwell combines glass with steel and other media to create a range of inventive sculptures. Additional images of Caldwell's works may be viewed online at  G Fine Art Gallery, Washington, D.C.

✦ This month Penn State University Press publishes The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing by curator and writer Rachel Poliquin. Be sure to visit Poliquin's fascinating Website.

✦ His The Kiss has inspired many things and now, 150 years after his birth, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is reduced or perhaps elevated to the level of rock opera star. The artist's life is the subject of "Gustav Klimt — Das Musical", which  debuts September 2 at the Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria. Here's a peek at what's in store for theatre-goers:

(My thanks to ArtInfo for the link.)

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Thirty-seven woodblock prints, drawings, and watercolors dating from 1905 to 1953 are the focus of "Provincetown", on view through November 11 at Indianapolis Museum of Art. Provincetown, Massachusetts was a center of woodblock printmaking for some 40 years, beginning in 1915. A group of artists who congregated there invented the white-line woodcut, which is a color print made from a single block.

IMA on FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and ArtBabble

✭ Photographs of rare and exotic plants by Jonathan M. Singer are featured in the second of two exhibitions of Singer's work at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton. On view through August 26, the large-scale color images that comprise "Botanica Magnifica" are exquisite. Singer, who practiced medicine in Bayonne, New Jersey, began a second career in photography in 2003. He has collaborated closely with scientists to record rare and endangered plants and has been honored for his gorgeous work with the Hasselblad Laureate Award and Linnaeus Silver Medal (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). His books include Botanica Magnifica: Portraits of the World's Most Extraordinary Flowers & Plants (Abbeville Press, 2009; see as e-Book) and this month publication of Fine Bonsai: Art & Nature, with text by William N. Valavanis.

Images of Botanica Magnifica

Megan Gambino, "Flowers Writ Large", Smithsonian, May 21, 2009

Here's a 2009 CBS video feature about Singer and his work:

New Jersey State Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ At the Cleveland Museum of Art, you'll find "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" on view through September  16. Work by more than 60 painters, sculptures, and photographers, including Thomas Hart Benton, Luigi Lucioni (see Lucioni's Paul Cadmus), Elsie Driggs, Edward Hopper, Nickolas Muray, and Winold Reiss, is showcased. Detailed exhibition information, a selection of exhibition images, and a videotaped conversation with the show's curator may be accessed here.

CMA on FaceBook and Twitter

CMA Blog

Save the Date

✭ On September 14, the Gallery at The Jerusalem Fund, Washington, D.C., opens "Mihrab: Metaphorical Portal", an exhibition of the paintings of Anne Barber-Shams paired with odes by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish poets. The work will be on view through October 26.

Mihrab