"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Although our artists must be individual, they must also be students, men who think a great deal about life, who read, study, men of the widest possible attainment, and who are constantly engaged in finding the special means of expression best suited to the thing they have to say." Robert Henri
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
High on Aerial Images
I just finished an incredible book by Adriel Heisey, an archaeologist/commercial pilot turned photographer. After flying at jet speeds over ruins he had explored by foot, he decided he wanted to slow down, so he built his own 30 foot plane. The engine sits on one half, and he sits on the other, strapped in by his legs to the nose of the plane. He goes on breathtaking solo flights over the American Southwest, leaning out over the plane for truly stunning shots.
Below are some images and quotes from From Above: Images of a Storied Land that I found particularly fascinating:
From above, the "land's more naked, more exposed." A more distanced yet simultaneously intimate perspective
"The ancient landscape is a lesson about change, and the inevitability of change" Leslie Marmon Silko (50)
"We all came from the same place, and we all came out with different languages" Bernard Siquieros (60)
"The past is every bit as gnarly, layered, complex, difficult, ambiguous, paradoxical as the present" (70)
"At this site, my heart is open--air is flowing through it, and there is no burden" (104) Architecture and the landscape revitalize, reinvigorate, reinvent, put humanity in context
"Landscapes as the interaction between communities and their environments. The landscape has many layers across physical spaces, as well as over time" Kurt Anscuetz, Rio Grande anthropologist (44)
"...then just to walk there, and walk, and walk, in ripples..." Lucy R. Lippard (46)
"I would say that archaeology is like music and the arts in the sense that the ultimate fate of man does not rest on archaeology. It's an enriching experience." Bruce Huckell (52)
"The fact is, there was never an empty land." "Pristine nature" is a "mythology" (130)
"That is where life is. It is in the ordinary that you find the profound." (130)
"The way you preserve landscapes is to actively use them." (134)
"We have certain stories that say we are not above other things, but we are equal to them. Think of water. People move to a new area because of resources--beauty and water. In the desert if you do not have enough water, you will die of thirst. But in the monsoons, if you have too much water, you will drown. What we need, then, is balance." (135)
"What I want to encounter is the aroma, the pith, the entirety of place. The natural dynamic is part of that. All places are dynamic. They are all in a creation flux. But human history of the landscape is also constantly changing and accumulating and that's an equally important component of the richness." William de Buys (139)
"The world then, one could imagine, consist not of a single web but many webs, each suspended from one another, laced across geographies as well as through time. We are linked to one another, to the land on which we depend, to those who have gone before us. Landscapes are not a single space--as life in modern cities too often leads us to believe--but interwoven and enlaced, a part of our very being." Chip Colwell-Chanthaponh (143)
Here's the man himself:
144
Below are some images and quotes from From Above: Images of a Storied Land that I found particularly fascinating:
From above, the "land's more naked, more exposed." A more distanced yet simultaneously intimate perspective
"The ancient landscape is a lesson about change, and the inevitability of change" Leslie Marmon Silko (50)
"We all came from the same place, and we all came out with different languages" Bernard Siquieros (60)
"The past is every bit as gnarly, layered, complex, difficult, ambiguous, paradoxical as the present" (70)
(39)
"At this site, my heart is open--air is flowing through it, and there is no burden" (104) Architecture and the landscape revitalize, reinvigorate, reinvent, put humanity in context
"Landscapes as the interaction between communities and their environments. The landscape has many layers across physical spaces, as well as over time" Kurt Anscuetz, Rio Grande anthropologist (44)
(41)
"...then just to walk there, and walk, and walk, in ripples..." Lucy R. Lippard (46)
"I would say that archaeology is like music and the arts in the sense that the ultimate fate of man does not rest on archaeology. It's an enriching experience." Bruce Huckell (52)
(67)
"The fact is, there was never an empty land." "Pristine nature" is a "mythology" (130)
"That is where life is. It is in the ordinary that you find the profound." (130)
"The way you preserve landscapes is to actively use them." (134)
"We have certain stories that say we are not above other things, but we are equal to them. Think of water. People move to a new area because of resources--beauty and water. In the desert if you do not have enough water, you will die of thirst. But in the monsoons, if you have too much water, you will drown. What we need, then, is balance." (135)
(100)
"What I want to encounter is the aroma, the pith, the entirety of place. The natural dynamic is part of that. All places are dynamic. They are all in a creation flux. But human history of the landscape is also constantly changing and accumulating and that's an equally important component of the richness." William de Buys (139)
(115)
"The world then, one could imagine, consist not of a single web but many webs, each suspended from one another, laced across geographies as well as through time. We are linked to one another, to the land on which we depend, to those who have gone before us. Landscapes are not a single space--as life in modern cities too often leads us to believe--but interwoven and enlaced, a part of our very being." Chip Colwell-Chanthaponh (143)
(47)
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Time flies
While reading this article:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122322542&ps=cprs
I got to thinking.
Apparently time seems to go faster when you are older because you are "embroidering" a bank of imagery already in place, embellishing, whereas when you are young and everything is new and fresh, each memory is denser and time seems to contain more information.
Art is a way of making the commonplace fresh again, thus slowing time down. Art is the fountain of youth. How fortuitous.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122322542&ps=cprs
I got to thinking.
Apparently time seems to go faster when you are older because you are "embroidering" a bank of imagery already in place, embellishing, whereas when you are young and everything is new and fresh, each memory is denser and time seems to contain more information.
Art is a way of making the commonplace fresh again, thus slowing time down. Art is the fountain of youth. How fortuitous.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
African Art Museum
Animals--each have symbolic meaning, each have positive aspect/personality emphasized
Chiwara masks--male and female masks meant to go together
Birds
spiral tails
feathers
bird flying = communication with spirit world
bird is a sort of threshold
(Yoruba people)
research bird calls
Flamingoes sleep the same way. Perhaps they have the best clarity into the meaning of the past while they are sleeping. Do they lucid dream?
Imagine using yourself as a pillow...how convenient.
Snakes = zigzag, coil
skin shedding = rebirth, creativity, infinity
waiting to catch prey = infinity
latent power in its patience = yin?
Chameleon = transformation, ability to eventually reach its destination
Walked when earth was new and ground was soft--superior balance
Daos ideally?
Tail curls (curl = life, time) up in art (opposite of nature)...what does this mean? Is the chameleon an optimist?
Mudfish
lives in and out of water = "magical rebirth", resurfacing of the hidden
Snail = coolness, control, serenity
idea of a storehouse for these things, a haven
Elephant = change, counterpart to kings, cycle of life and death
"One who follows the track of the elephant never gets wet from the dew on the bushes"
The museum interpreted this as if you stick with a powerful leader, he will protect you. I interpret it to mean if you blaze your own trail you'll have more of an adventure. But try to wear wool socks.
Scarab beetle = rising sun, rebirth
Butterfly = coming of rain
lots of kaleidoscopic patterns and psychedelic colors here!
Hippo = fertility, good fortune
blue!
can hold breath up to six minutes...is this how it became blue?
Turtle (and shell) = cross in circle/ordering of cosmos
cross = meeting of this world and spirit world
with triangle and spiral patterns = movements of moon, cycles of fertility and childbirth (creation on microcosmic scale?)
Masks with square shape and no teeth = non-threatening
Look into:
Guro people--Mami Wata figure = waterspirit
Senufo masked dancers
Creation story on turtle's back
Try:
Ink, paint, and chalk on plywood
Women emerging from gourd-shapes
Chiwara masks--male and female masks meant to go together
yin and yang
female mask has young on back/top
Birds
spiral tails
feathers
bird flying = communication with spirit world
bird is a sort of threshold
(Yoruba people)
research bird calls
Sankofa bird--looks over shoulder, using past to move forward into future
Flamingoes sleep the same way. Perhaps they have the best clarity into the meaning of the past while they are sleeping. Do they lucid dream?
Imagine using yourself as a pillow...how convenient.
Snakes = zigzag, coil
skin shedding = rebirth, creativity, infinity
waiting to catch prey = infinity
latent power in its patience = yin?
Chameleon = transformation, ability to eventually reach its destination
Walked when earth was new and ground was soft--superior balance
Daos ideally?
Tail curls (curl = life, time) up in art (opposite of nature)...what does this mean? Is the chameleon an optimist?
Mudfish
lives in and out of water = "magical rebirth", resurfacing of the hidden
Snail = coolness, control, serenity
idea of a storehouse for these things, a haven
Elephant = change, counterpart to kings, cycle of life and death
"One who follows the track of the elephant never gets wet from the dew on the bushes"
The museum interpreted this as if you stick with a powerful leader, he will protect you. I interpret it to mean if you blaze your own trail you'll have more of an adventure. But try to wear wool socks.
Scarab beetle = rising sun, rebirth
Butterfly = coming of rain
lots of kaleidoscopic patterns and psychedelic colors here!
Hippo = fertility, good fortune
blue!
can hold breath up to six minutes...is this how it became blue?
Turtle (and shell) = cross in circle/ordering of cosmos
cross = meeting of this world and spirit world
with triangle and spiral patterns = movements of moon, cycles of fertility and childbirth (creation on microcosmic scale?)
Masks with square shape and no teeth = non-threatening
Look into:
Guro people--Mami Wata figure = waterspirit
Senufo masked dancers
Creation story on turtle's back
Try:
Ink, paint, and chalk on plywood
Women emerging from gourd-shapes
National Gallery of Art
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" T. S. Eliot
"The viewer is persuaded by his senses that he occupies the center of the world around him--a world he changes at will as he moves through it." Rudolph Arnheim
"The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms the second, and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is gray we need...made of bright and black, able to shed the former or the latter, and be the latter or the former alone." S. Beckett
(Or grey could be neither, something completely separate from its component parts. We are the grey of our parents, our surrounding culture, the world.)
Barnett Newman:
The split in his paintings is not a divide, rather reunites, making the works whole, stronger.
Like the self
or
aggregates, augmented matrix, recalcification of broken bone
Ideas from Jasper Johns exhibit:
Mediums to try/revisit:
Watchman--outside viewer
Upside-down imagery
Circular art--no fixed beginning/end
Jumping Dali
Famous portrait => kaleidoscopify
BLUE BLUE BLUE anything blue a field of blue
Turi's "there, there, gone" print
Mountain with ski runs like the tip of an iceberg, pink rothko sky, roots = water
Umbrellas
Beanstalk--like living ladder to the ball of gold
Sleeping in a question mark
Pretzels
Calder-esque shadows--in and out of focus
Fingerpainting/fingerprintpainting
Wrinkles
"The viewer is persuaded by his senses that he occupies the center of the world around him--a world he changes at will as he moves through it." Rudolph Arnheim
"The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms the second, and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is gray we need...made of bright and black, able to shed the former or the latter, and be the latter or the former alone." S. Beckett
(Or grey could be neither, something completely separate from its component parts. We are the grey of our parents, our surrounding culture, the world.)
Barnett Newman:
The split in his paintings is not a divide, rather reunites, making the works whole, stronger.
Like the self
or
aggregates, augmented matrix, recalcification of broken bone
Ideas from Jasper Johns exhibit:
Mediums to try/revisit:
Oil paintstick
Sharpie
Encaustic
Ink on plastic
Sand
Scrape-off technique (with gel medium too)
Draw with graphite then paint over with slightly translucent white, many layers?
Things to think about:
Watchman--outside viewer
Upside-down imagery
Circular art--no fixed beginning/end
Jumping Dali
Famous portrait => kaleidoscopify
BLUE BLUE BLUE anything blue a field of blue
Turi's "there, there, gone" print
Mountain with ski runs like the tip of an iceberg, pink rothko sky, roots = water
Umbrellas
Beanstalk--like living ladder to the ball of gold
Sleeping in a question mark
Pretzels
Calder-esque shadows--in and out of focus
Fingerpainting/fingerprintpainting
Wrinkles
Monday, January 18, 2010
A trip through the Southwest
Just read House of Rain, an incredible and beautifully written book about Craig Child's journey across the Colorado Plateau down to northern Mexico, following Anasazi ruins, in search of answers about the mysterious culture. Really brings the southwestern landscape to life. All I need now is to make the trek myself.
Some choice quotes:
"The cosmology of this desert is constantly revealed in different forms. I looked up and saw rock art unfurling down a sunbaked cliff, and bits of fallen cliff dwellings hanging from shallow alcoves. The movement of people is one of these thin veneers across the planet's surface. Flowing over the geologic ripples of the Colorado Plateau, people once slipped into these convenient spaces, journeying between gaps and along ridges as the earth flinched and rolled around them...the hands of the world were touching them, leading them first one way and then another." 224
Here the desert is the base, the living organism, the mover and controller, the active element. People are transient, guests--an interesting perspective on the place of humanity in the world
"...landscape and climate have always ruled the comings and goings of people, controlling, it seemed, my every step. I called (the Southwest) a landscape of motion, saying that the science of archaeology has been hampered by an inability to comprehend even simple distances. It is crucial that one walk across the land to earn a true sense of how people might once have traveled." 261
He studies the people through the lens of the landscape.
Interesting to think of "earning" knowledge, as opposed to just learning--a different type of absorption
A story relating types of pottery to migration:
When tribes reached the Little Colorado River, they were given a choice of either a dull or brightly colored egg. The colorful egg contained a dark raven, signifying they were to stay on the Plateau. The dull egg contained a rainbow-colored parrot, meaning that the tribes were to migrate south. Colors of the birds match pottery types produced by the tribes. 269
Why did the colorful bird come from the dull egg and vice versa? The pairing of opposites here is interesting--such as vibrance born from plainness--and relates to concepts of yin and yang, universal balance.
Changes in pottery patterns signal shifts in ideology:
"The hard geometry of an earlier era of black-on-white styles softened into spiraling imagery, still orderly and mathematical in its approach, but given over to more playful asymmetrical scrolls and serifs. ...(it) signaled the rise of the Flower World, what the Hopi call siitalpu, a belief in a beautiful and chromatic spiritual dimension that parallels this physical one." 308
Childs intimates that this new perspective arose as part of the shirt from "austere country of desert into the mountains, with their silver flashes of creeks and springs". Landscape again shapes the people.
"Then I thought, maybe there are not a thousand paths. Maybe there are only a few. Maybe only one. The earth contains inevitable confluences. We come back again and again no matter who we are or when we come." 325
Like a river's tributaries converging, like Hindu belief of becoming one with Atman, of narrowing the focus down to one point that contains everything, or opening the focus to make everything into one great whole. Perhaps there is no need to worry about which path to take, because the only forks in the road actually work the opposite way, and divergences only differ from confluences in perspective.
Idea of reflection:
Mountains in the Southwest are symbols for water--they are where water falls, where that life-force (qi?) of the land can be found
"There are metaphorical mountains underground that mirror the tangible ones aboveground, bodies of water within the earth fed by precipitation on peaks scattered across the southwest." 421
Contrast of over vs. under, up vs. down, open vs. hidden--paired opposites
Underground aquifers like yin
Like 7/8 of iceberg
"A religion is centered on the mechanics of water. Even modern hydrologists cannot adequately explain the direct correlation between climate shifts and water table fluctuations. ...Perhaps they cannot explain it because they have not had to live and die by it for thousands of years. They are unaware that Tlaloc (the water deity) is breathing." 421
Hard science does not allow adequate room for all the possible perspectives, logic cannot explain the eccentricities of a living landscape
"Tlaloc is hydrology...The deity is a metaphor for the full hydrological cycle of moisture, ice, rain, snow, dew, and fog; pooling, draining, and evaporating. It is the movement of water, the lifeblood of the Southwest, a meter that any civilization here must obey." 422
Rhythm, RTA here mesh with qi. Think about pictures of moving water, water dripping, sounds created by water, crescendoing and fading with floods and years of drought, following an oscillating pattern.
A timepiece
"A form of motion stirred up from the land. People merely fell into step" 423
Here a culture truly in touch with its surroundings. To be at the height of awareness is to begin not to lose self-awareness, but to gain perception of dovetailing with everything else
Looking at a body in a very old grave:
"We have hardly changed in this short time. Tools of stone have been replaced by plastic and metal, but our capacity for imagination, for sensation, has not altered." 428
Seeing potsherds:
"I reached out and touched the grainy, wind-hounded face, startled to see pieces of pottery sticking out of its surface like teeth. ...My eyes ran up the one-story wall, seeing little discs and dishes, as if the remains of this past civilization could not be kept in the ground. They swept skyward, building a new culture." 439
"The rain will depart and the people will follow, walking a spiral that has no end." 445
Some choice quotes:
"The cosmology of this desert is constantly revealed in different forms. I looked up and saw rock art unfurling down a sunbaked cliff, and bits of fallen cliff dwellings hanging from shallow alcoves. The movement of people is one of these thin veneers across the planet's surface. Flowing over the geologic ripples of the Colorado Plateau, people once slipped into these convenient spaces, journeying between gaps and along ridges as the earth flinched and rolled around them...the hands of the world were touching them, leading them first one way and then another." 224
Here the desert is the base, the living organism, the mover and controller, the active element. People are transient, guests--an interesting perspective on the place of humanity in the world
"...landscape and climate have always ruled the comings and goings of people, controlling, it seemed, my every step. I called (the Southwest) a landscape of motion, saying that the science of archaeology has been hampered by an inability to comprehend even simple distances. It is crucial that one walk across the land to earn a true sense of how people might once have traveled." 261
He studies the people through the lens of the landscape.
Interesting to think of "earning" knowledge, as opposed to just learning--a different type of absorption
A story relating types of pottery to migration:
When tribes reached the Little Colorado River, they were given a choice of either a dull or brightly colored egg. The colorful egg contained a dark raven, signifying they were to stay on the Plateau. The dull egg contained a rainbow-colored parrot, meaning that the tribes were to migrate south. Colors of the birds match pottery types produced by the tribes. 269
Why did the colorful bird come from the dull egg and vice versa? The pairing of opposites here is interesting--such as vibrance born from plainness--and relates to concepts of yin and yang, universal balance.
Changes in pottery patterns signal shifts in ideology:
"The hard geometry of an earlier era of black-on-white styles softened into spiraling imagery, still orderly and mathematical in its approach, but given over to more playful asymmetrical scrolls and serifs. ...(it) signaled the rise of the Flower World, what the Hopi call siitalpu, a belief in a beautiful and chromatic spiritual dimension that parallels this physical one." 308
Childs intimates that this new perspective arose as part of the shirt from "austere country of desert into the mountains, with their silver flashes of creeks and springs". Landscape again shapes the people.
"Then I thought, maybe there are not a thousand paths. Maybe there are only a few. Maybe only one. The earth contains inevitable confluences. We come back again and again no matter who we are or when we come." 325
Like a river's tributaries converging, like Hindu belief of becoming one with Atman, of narrowing the focus down to one point that contains everything, or opening the focus to make everything into one great whole. Perhaps there is no need to worry about which path to take, because the only forks in the road actually work the opposite way, and divergences only differ from confluences in perspective.
Idea of reflection:
Mountains in the Southwest are symbols for water--they are where water falls, where that life-force (qi?) of the land can be found
"There are metaphorical mountains underground that mirror the tangible ones aboveground, bodies of water within the earth fed by precipitation on peaks scattered across the southwest." 421
Contrast of over vs. under, up vs. down, open vs. hidden--paired opposites
Underground aquifers like yin
Like 7/8 of iceberg
"A religion is centered on the mechanics of water. Even modern hydrologists cannot adequately explain the direct correlation between climate shifts and water table fluctuations. ...Perhaps they cannot explain it because they have not had to live and die by it for thousands of years. They are unaware that Tlaloc (the water deity) is breathing." 421
Hard science does not allow adequate room for all the possible perspectives, logic cannot explain the eccentricities of a living landscape
"Tlaloc is hydrology...The deity is a metaphor for the full hydrological cycle of moisture, ice, rain, snow, dew, and fog; pooling, draining, and evaporating. It is the movement of water, the lifeblood of the Southwest, a meter that any civilization here must obey." 422
Rhythm, RTA here mesh with qi. Think about pictures of moving water, water dripping, sounds created by water, crescendoing and fading with floods and years of drought, following an oscillating pattern.
A timepiece
"A form of motion stirred up from the land. People merely fell into step" 423
Here a culture truly in touch with its surroundings. To be at the height of awareness is to begin not to lose self-awareness, but to gain perception of dovetailing with everything else
Looking at a body in a very old grave:
"We have hardly changed in this short time. Tools of stone have been replaced by plastic and metal, but our capacity for imagination, for sensation, has not altered." 428
Seeing potsherds:
"I reached out and touched the grainy, wind-hounded face, startled to see pieces of pottery sticking out of its surface like teeth. ...My eyes ran up the one-story wall, seeing little discs and dishes, as if the remains of this past civilization could not be kept in the ground. They swept skyward, building a new culture." 439
"The rain will depart and the people will follow, walking a spiral that has no end." 445
Part of the Sky
Was watching Up (one of the most uplifting movies I've seen in a while...)
Some gorgeous hot air balloon photos:
They look like little dreams
...Must be in the top 50 destinations to lucid dream. Maybe there's a dream inside each one, and lucid dreaming is like lighting the fire inside, giving it a kind of direction
Crazy sunrise
There must be some way to use fire to make a boat go faster too...
Looks like something from "Spirited Away"
Completely transforms the landscape
The balloon is reflected in the lake below
Every place should have a Totem Pole
A forest of totem poles
The next ones are from Korea:
These are made by an art teacher in Hawaii--maybe my next job?:
And Clint Eastwood climbed this one in Monument Valley AZ:
This goes with the question "If you were an animal, which would you be?" I usually want to be like Arthur in the Sword and the Stone and spend a week trying different ones, but perhaps it would make more sense logistically to choose a few favorites and make a pole out of them.
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