El Anatsui

His wood pieces are rearrangeable, allowing the artwork to be reconstructed particular to space and time, even in a two-dimensional sense.

Plus...dense, rich, draped beauty.

A good article here.

And More Elegance!

This one I missed, but heard about from a friend.

An installation of a downpour, and floor of weight-sensitive grating, so that wherever you step the ground sends a signal to the sky to take a break from breaking--right over your head.  Very interesting Biblical undertones to this idea, plus juxtapositions of control and manipulation, natural and mechanized.  Inevitable, somehow.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1380

A Lot in a Little--Photo Installations in Studio

Here's some installation art that (some more than others) conveys a simple, elegant solution to her idea and space.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/lee-jeeyoung-stage-of-mind-room

Us, the Earth, and Things

Two recent reads.

Words are from the second--though they'd fit pretty well in either.

"I'm learning to embrace the idea of gardens that need us not to toil against weeds and bugs but rather as a part of the ecosystem, to hold the rudder and help steer nature in a direction of delightful abundance and elegant complexity." 181

"The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited.  The only limit on the number of uses of a resource possible within a system is in the limit of the information and the imagination of the designer." 202

And lastly, a lovely manifesto-of-sorts:

"We have a simple, creative life, full of family and friends, laughter and love, connected to the land and supported by meaningful work, with the time to appreciate it and experience it fully." 163

Words to live by. 

Francesco Clemente

Heavy and light, earth and sky and mind.

Arterial Images

I'm looking at these images for a body-inspired sound art installation I'm doing collaboratively in January.  These are images uterine arteries--but they happen to also look like a ton of other things.

Land! From Above!

More aerial imagery here!

Harrell Fletcher and Michael Rakowitz

One part of a series of artist to artist conversations, in book form.  These guys are art as social practice professors.

"Come Together" events: "I ask a set of people (sometimes ten, sometimes twenty or more) to each fine someone who does not see themselves as an artist but is knowledgeable about some topic and would be willing to discuss or demonstrate it publicly for ten minutes.  I organize it so that all of the presentations happen one after another...it really surprises the students to realiz that there are so many interesting people who go largely unnoticed around them all of the time." 22-3

"The notion that a sketchbook full of ideas is more important than the one you choose, or the collection of architectural models of buildings that were never built being more inspiring thanthe one that does, was an incredibly liberating notion..." 24

"I think there are undoubtedly people all over the world who have amazing "art" ideas but we never know about them because they aren't considered "artists" and don't have access to a means of producing and making the projects available to the public." 49

"I as an artist am raising questions about ethics, function and utility by submitting a project that simultaneously problem-solves and problem-makes." 54

"The residual idea exists as a pragmatic metaphor, a statement demanding a culture capable of enabling its existence, a poetic critique of reality." 67

"It might be impossible...to change the world, (but it is) possible to change the dinner conversation." 75

Omar Rodriguez Lopez

Had the great fortune of putting together some collaborative album art a few days ago, and this fellow came across the radar as inspiration for that, and a new dream project that's germinating.