Booklyn

Booklyn is a highly advanced book arts gallery in Brooklyn. I visited there today. Go to their site for images of many extreme books, the way I like them.

View of Brooklyn from Booklyn.

Stacks of Occuprint portfolios -- silkscreen prints by artists worldwide made for the Occupy Movement.
Paintings of political figures by Ian MacGillivray, currently hanging in USA Today show in the gallery.

Series of three images by Ryan Jacob Smith, currently hanging in USA Today show in the gallery.

Nerve center of Booklyn: Felice Tebbe, Collection Development and Education, and Ariana Misfelt, Collection Development. 

The Booklyn Bridge.

Some of my favorite Occuprint images. Artists were given a size to work in. They are gorgeous; in the tradition of all great protest posters. See link for artists' names.

Swept Away

For the aberrant who love dust and rot, pollution and schmutz (we know who we are) – see the Museum of Art and Design's SWEPT AWAY: Dust Ashes and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design, NYC, through August 12, 2012.

Kim Abeles, Dinner for Two in One Month of Smog. 
She set a table on her L.A. rooftop and accumulated the particulate matter
over one month's time, using stencils to produce patterns.

Jim Dingilian, Questioning the Open Field, found glass liquor bottle, smoke.
He coated the insides of the bottles with soot, then used tiny brushes to remove the precipitant.

Jim Dingilian, installation.

Julie Parker,  Ritual Accumulations, dryer lint, cotton, latex, embroidery thread.

Maskull Lasserre, Murder, burned wood (including maple, oak, ash, cedar, basswood)

Phoebe Cummings, The Delusion of Grandeur, raw clay, in niche.

Antonio Riello, Ashes to Ashes, glass, burned books.
Each blown glass form is filled with the ashes of the book with which it is labeled.

Antonio Riello installation.

Stephen Livingstone, Dust and Shadows: Sixty-Four Extinctions, rusted steel cabinet, graphite, ash, rusted tins painted with smoke and ashes.

MAD is one of my favorite museums in New York; this time, all four floors were four-star exhibits.
This is a show of glass produced in Murano, Italy, in collaboration with artists who did not work with glass as a medium:

Tomas Libertiny,  Seed of Narcissus, mirrored glass, beeswax.
There is a video in the show of the bees making honeycomb on the glass.

Tomas Libertiny,  Seed of Narcissus, mirrored glass, beeswax.

Michael Joo,  Expanded Access, mirrored borosilicate glass.

Marya Kazoun, Frosty Grounds: The Beginning (detail), tissue, glue, glass, pencil, pen, acrylic, on paper.

Luke Jerram, Large Spiky Malaria and E. Coli, glass.

Barbara Bloom, Flaubert Letters II, 1987 - 2008. Glass engraved with fragments of letters from
Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colette, and from Barbara Bloom to Gustave Flaubert.

Barbara Bloom, Flaubert Letters II, 1987 - 2008 (detail)

Airplane Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style

To pass the time during long flights, artist Nina Katchadourian goes to the lavatory, adorns herself in tissue paper costume, and creates hilarious self-portrait photos in the style of Flemish Renaissance paintings. She calls the series “Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.” (thank you, EDW Lynch.)

"While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style."

Flight patterns.

Aaron Koblin experiments with visual realizations of data. Here is one of his projects: this is a still from a hypnotic video showing upwards of 16,000 planes entering and leaving the U.S. For more of his work, see his website. The video can also be viewed on YouTube.

Still from video: data from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration processed to create animations of flight traffic patterns and density.

MOOM

MOOM, April 6, 2011, 6:30 pm, International District, Seattle

Ursula Von Rydingsgard

Ursula von Rydingsvard, Ocean Floor, 1996.

When I was in New York once, I lay inside an Ursula Von Rydingsgard sculpture that looked very much like this one. I think it was at Art Exit Gallery. I didn't know who she was; I never forgot the work or the sensation of being in it.

Her video will kick your butt, if you need encouragement to get in the studio or to keep working.

Installation view Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991-2009.