... and the Luminously Trivial.

Paris Métro Affiches

2012-02-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

45 x 50 cm limited edition book.

Red Fox Press is an Irish/Korean fusion of Francis Van Maele (Irish) and Antic-Ham (Korean). Together they produce and publish handmade books. Franticham is their collaboration name for work produced in Ireland; Franticham Zine is their diary of separation when one is in Ireland and the other in Seoul.

C'est Mon Dada is "a collection of small hand made artists' books dedicated to experimental, concrete and visual poetry, or any work combining text and image in the spirit of dada or fluxus."

Their newest work is Paris Métro Affiches, printed on recycled paper feed sacks from the Seoul market, reproducing the torn residue of posters in the Paris Métro. Silkscreened and collaged. Production photos below:

Francis Van Maele collecting in the Métro.

Antic-Ham

The Seoul feed market

Recycled feed bags for pages

Making the covers from recycled tarps in Ireland.

Bemis Center for Contemporary Art

2012-02-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

There's an application deadline of February 28 for the residency program at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Here's info. I have a friend who had this residency; it was deluxe. Pass the word.

Lucrecia Troncoso, artist-in-residence 2011 working in installation space at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

ARTISTS WANTED

The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts offers artists-in-residence the gift of time, space, and financial support. Application deadline: February 28

Because Exceptional Talent Deserves to be Supported.

Few programs exist either on the national or international level where the sole mission is to support the creativity of artists. From the beginning, the art-making process has been the highest priority at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, where both the atmosphere and environment offer ideal situations for creative growth and experimentation. Artists from around the world come to the Bemis Center to work in this supportive community and confront new challenges.

The Bemis Center provides artists-in-residence with the gift of time, space and financial support.

TIME:	2 - 4 months of uninterrupted, self-directed work time.
SPACE:	* The Bemis Center is housed in two urban warehouses totaling 110,000 square feet in downtown Omaha, NE. * Each artist is provided with a generously sized live/work studio with a private bathroom and kitchen, 24 hour access to facilities including a wood shop, approximately 9,000 square feet of installation spaces and a large sculpture fabrication facility. * The newly renovated 10,000 square foot Okada Sculpture Facility features 12 foot garage doors, a kiln room with a 31"W x 42"L x 27"D Bailey electric kiln, a clay mixing room, 176 square foot ventilated room, welding facilities and 6,000 square feet of open space.
SUPPORT:	$750 monthly stipend granted to each artist.

Are you ready for your residency?

JANUARY 2013 - JUNE 2013: Application Deadline: February 28, 2012

Our application is only online, please visit

BemisCenter.org/Residency

ABOUT THE BEMIS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS

The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts was founded in 1981 by artists, for artists. As an artist-centered organization, the Bemis Center’s sole mission is to support contemporary artists of exceptional talent. In this spirit, the Bemis Center seeks to perpetually give the institution to artists working at the forefront of contemporary culture. In addition to our international artist-in-residence program, our exhibitions, projects and community arts programs provide direct support to artists' process and catalyze their work to engage and challenge the public.

Former artist-in-residence Sam Duket (AIR 2011) working in the Bemis Center's newly renovated Okada Sculpture and Ceramics Facility

Melissa Cooke, artist-in-residence 2011

Yashua Klos, artist-in-residence 2012

Alejandro Almanza, artist-in-residence 2011

www.BemisCenter.org/Residency

Martin Pfeifle

2012-02-05T09:13:00.000-08:00

“Neues Rheinland” at Museum Morsbroich

Martin Pfeifle

Roger Ballen, photographer

2012-02-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

I just learned of this photographer a few days ago; now I see he's leading a workshop in Morocco. Wish I could go.

Expansive, profoundly disturbing work, can't look away...

Call for submissions!

1000 Words Workshop with Roger Ballen in Morocco, May 2012

Following successes with Antoine d’Agata, Anders Petersen and Erik Kessels

1000 Words Photography Magazine

is proud to present Roger Ballen as the workshop leader for the next retreat to Morocco (5-9 May 2012).

The 1000 Words Workshop takes place in an authentically restored and luxury riad situated in the medieval medina, at the heart of the beautifully evocative city of Fez, Morocco. The workshop will be an intense experience lasting five days and will consist of 12 participants. The medina is a vibrant labyrinth that will permeate all the senses. Surrounded by the Atlas Mountains, it offers a visually stunning backdrop for this truly unique workshop.

1000 Words is looking for a diverse range of participants who understand the work of Roger Ballen and feel that their own art will benefit from his guidance. The deadline for submissions is 1 March 2012.

“Somebody said my pictures are diamonds but they are diamonds with charcoal and carbon inside. What’s going on in the interior of that world is breakdown and chaos, but there is affection on the formal side. You constantly have to deal with these contradictions. They cause ambiguity, which is an important part of my art.” Roger Ballen

ROGER BALLEN:

Like most great artist-photographers Roger Ballen’s work is hard to define. Drawn from the documentary genre, Ballen has developed an approach all of his own. His photographs are complex tableaux of surreal and disturbing visions that attempt to reflect his own psyche, which he regards as revealing his existential journey in life. Focussing on the interactions between people, animals and objects that inhabit rooms - rooms that are typically squalid - Ballen stages unsettling scenarios that chafe on our subconscious.

Born in New York in 1950, Ballen has lived in Johannesburg, South Africa since the 1970’s. His work has been exhibited in many important institutions throughout the world and is housed in numerous museum collections including Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Ballen is represented by the Gagosian Gallery, Stills Gallery and Gallery Xavier Hufkens S.A. His books have received critical acclaim such as Platteland: Images from Rural South Africa (1994), Outland (2001), Shadow Chamber (2005) and his latest series Boarding House (2009).

PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

The cost of the workshop will be £1250 for 5 days. Once participants have been selected they will be expected to pay a non-refundable deposit of £500 within two weeks. Participants can then pay the rest of the fee according to deadlines (see below). Participants are encouraged to arrive the day before the workshop begins for a welcome dinner. The price includes:

- tuition from Roger Ballen (including defining each participant’s project; shooting; editing sessions; creating a coherent body of work; creation of a slide show; projection of the images of the participants.)

- a welcome and farewell dinner at a nearby restaurant

- lunch everyday and snacks during the afternoon at the riad, prepared by the 3 in house chefs

- 24 hour help from the 1000 Words team and an assistant/translator with local knowledge.

Participants will be expected to make their own travel arrangements and find accommodation, which in Fez can range from £150 upwards for the week. We can advise on finding the accommodation that best suits you. Remember that most of your time will be spent either at the riad or shooting. For photographers using colour film we will provide the means for processing and a scanner. Photographers shooting digital will be expected to bring all necessary equipment. Please note that for the purposes and practicalities of a workshop, digital really is advisable. All participants should also bring a laptop if they have one. Every effort will be made to accommodate individual technical needs.

TESTIMONIALS:

“I have had the most profoundly moving, fascinating, difficult, wonderful week of my life. Thank you 1000 Words. Words can not describe.” Laura

“The workshop in Fez has been a fantastic and motivational experience that I will carry with me my whole life.”Andy

“The choice of city (Fez) to develop such an educational and inspirational workshop is amazing, since the immersion begins as soon as you arrive. You are induced to leave your comfort zone and search for new references and perspectives, and given that the culture and language are so unique they also become great ingredients in this creative quest.” Alan

“My once beautiful but safely intimate portraiture became more real for me, evoking not only the fear of letting myself leap in a strange place but in the process of doing so, being able to see so much more in others.

The workshop venue was such a treat and incredible place to be able to go to every day. A sanctuary to rest and to edit and collect your thoughts. The food was more than I had expected and in fact pretty much the best food I ate in Morocco in my three weeks travel. The 1000 Words team were so on top of the workshop; they were there managing every detail from accommodations, food, coordinating the class meetings, running film to labs, scanning, and even just being sweet and kind pals to talk with about your day or have a beer with and brainstorm about your project.” Katie

HOW TO SUBMIT:

1000 Words requires that you send 10 images as low res jpegs and/or a link to your website, as well as a short biography and statement about why you think it will be relevant for you to work with Roger (approx. 200 words total). Submissions are to be sent to workshops@1000wordsmag.com with the following subject header: SUBMISSION FOR 1000 WORDS WORKSHOP WITH ROGER BALLEN.

01 March 2012: Deadline for applications

05 March 2012: Successful candidates contacted

12 March 2012: Deposit due (£500)

09 April 2012: Second installment due (£750)

04 May 2012: Arrive in Morocco for welcoming dinner

05 May 2012: Workshop begins

09 May 2012: Workshop ends

www.1000wordsmag.com

Reason to read the sports section.

2012-02-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

Canada has a well-defined circus culture, partly because of the presence of Cirque de Soleil in Montreal, where Julien Roberge first saw wall trampolining. He's now working toward making it a sport in its own right. This video is pure joy, and vicarious physical pleasure. The article appeared in the New York Times sports section on Monday, January 30, 2012.

Dan Savage and Rick.

2012-01-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

No doubt you've all seen it. As far as luminous political activism at the brilliance level, it doesn't get much better than this.

Adopt a typewriter.

2012-01-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

I have a fondness for typewriters, as I do for all outdated graphic technology. I blogged last summer about the typewriter man in the Istanbul square, who wrote letters for people.

So this plea of the publisher Ashland Creek Press on their January 2012 blogpost touched me deeply...

Soldier/Many Wars

2012-01-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

Suzanne Upton's images of soldiers – on billboards in ten cities across the country and at Platform Gallery this month. They wordlessly illuminate the soldier's condition and the human condition. And they've sparked much controversy.

See them here – Soldier and Many Wars, and at Platform in Seattle.

Suzanne Opton, Soldier/Many Wars, January 5 to February 11, 2012
Platform Gallery, Seattle, WA
Artist’s reception: Thursday, February 2
Artist’s lecture: Friday, February 3, 7PM , Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle

Soldier: Mickelson

Cliff Austin, WWII

From Platform's press release: "In the two series, Soldier/Many Wars, photographer Suzanne Opton photographs American soldiers close up, laying their heads before the camera, and American veterans who are draped. The subjects of the Soldier series are all young, active-duty soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the photographs were presented as billboards in nine American cities from 2008 through 2010.

"Reviewing them for The New Yorker, photography critic Vince Aletti wrote: “The posture is vulnerable and startling intimate, as if these young men and women were facing someone in bed or on a stretcher ... Opton catches soldiers both on guard and off, looking out and inward simultaneously, and we can only imagine what they’re thinking, what they’ve done, and what they dread.”

"The project received extensive press coverage and even sparked a heated debate about America’s image of the military. The Many Wars series presents portraits of veterans from American wars over the past 70 years, most of whom are in treatment for combat trauma. Through interviews by the photographer, we learn how war has affected their lives."

Denver

St. Paul

Degenerate Art Stream

2011-12-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

Joshua Kohl and Haruko Nishimura of Degenerate Art Ensemble have begun a blog with new postings every day from artists. "They post about their inspirations for two weeks each at a time (they are required to make a posting every day for two weeks). The requirement is to post 'art related stuff that inspires,'" says Josh. It's called Degenerate Art Stream. Consider downloading Open Sauces, a transcendental cookbook. This image is called "luminous green".

It's not common to find olfactory artists. Thank you, Josh and Haruko and Pol Rosenthal.

While we're at the beach...

2011-12-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

The Venus flower basket is a sponge that lives deep in the ocean. It has a skeleton made of silica – hence its name "glass sponge". Here's a New York Times story about it.

Tiny shrimp swim in through its meshed boy, mate, and grow to a size where they can't get out, so they live their lives inside, together. That's why Venus is part of its name – goddess of Love (long-term).

I have one – about 12" long, very light and brittle. If I turn it upside down, I can hear the dried shrimp rattle inside.

Euplectella aspergillum

Drawings by Ernst Haeckel.

Miami and the beach.

2011-12-15T21:35:00.000-08:00

Just back from Miami, looking at art and showing it. Miami Basel, the big fair, was pretentious and kind of pathetic in its yearning to be ever-so-. But Miami Aqua, where SOIL Gallery was, and PULSE, and INK, and the other smaller fairs were bustling and great fun. Great connections. Good food in Miami! and 72º.

So, to refresh the palate, here is imagery that dazzles: grains of sand at a magnification of 250x.

PLUS! Luminously Trivial has been given a Versatile Blogger Award by Shift Collaborative Studio. Thanks!

Loose Leaf: Writers and Artists Make Books Together

2011-11-20T11:45:00.001-08:00

I organized this show at SOIL Gallery in Seattle. Three artists worked with four writers to make "books" that stretch the definition of "book" to the paper-thin. The exhibit runs through November 26, Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 5 pm, or by appointment with me.

Daniel R. Smith collaborated with performance poet Karen Finneyfrock on a marketing concept for the poem "What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (if she wasn't a pillar of salt)".

Julia Freeman and Stacey Levine made "A Book of the Future (A Maze)", a hieroglyphic/rebus maze that the reader walks through, reliving what it is like to learn to read.

I distilled, as best I could, the recent loss of my boyfriend Ian Rodihan by making two books. One: a structure that can be entered, surrounded by Patti Smith's "Auguries of Innocence". The second: a paged book made of cyanotypes inscribed by hand with the poetry of Patti Smith and the brilliant Frances McCue. Both poets lost their husbands suddenly, and wrote about it transcendentally.

Daniel R. Smith | Karen Finneyfrock, What Lot's Wife Would Have Said...

Ellen Ziegler | Patti Smith | Frances McCue, Imbue, cyanotype and hand-lettering, 52" x 32", 30 pages, hand-bound with leather cover.

Julia Freeman | Stacey Levine, A Book of the Future: A Maze, found and painted objects, lettering, mudding compound, wood.

Detail from A Book of the Future: A Maze

Ellen Ziegler | Patti Smith, On "Auguries of Innocence", found umbrella, inkjet printed and stained rice paper, bookbinder's gauze.

On "Auguries of Innocence, detail.

The Something Dance

2011-09-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

Go to the Poetry Foundation website and listen to Charles Wright read this poem...

Bedtime Story

The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.

It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,

is hungry for food,

And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one.

The forest begins to gather its silences in.

The meadow regroups and hunkers down

for its cleft feet.

Something is wringing the rag of sunlight

inexorably out and hanging.

Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads.

Something is licking the shadows up,

And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in.

Something is inching its way into our hearts,

scratching its blue nails against the wall there.

Should we let it in?

Should we greet it as it deserves,

Hands on our ears, mouths open?

Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat?

Should we turn on the radio,

should we clap our hands and dance

The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?

I think we should, love, I think we should.

Luminosity.

2011-09-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

It's been five weeks since my sweetheart Ian Rodihan died. First immobilized by grief, I'm now moving very slowly through profound sadness, mourning, desolation. But today I felt for the first time like posting something on Luminously Trivial. So here is the work of Diana Al-Hadid.

Built from our Tallest Tales, wood, metal, polystyrene, polymer gypsum, fiberglass, plastic, concrete and paint. 144 x 100 x 80 inches, 2008

Water Thief, steel, fiberglass, polymer gypsum, polystyrene, wood, high-density foam, paint. Hammer Projects: Diana Al-Hadid, 2010, dimensions variable.

All the Rest Have 31, on Violet Strays

2011-08-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

This week on Alyssa Volpigno and Serrah Russell's Violet Strays site is All the Rest Have 31: A One-Month Journal Using Thirty-One Years of Detritus Collected While Traveling. This project used up the collected ephemera of travel of the last 31 years. I gave myself one month to do it.

Ian Rodihan.

2011-08-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

A departure from luminous trivia, to something that is luminous, but not trivial: my sweetheart Ian Rodihan died in his sleep early on Saturday, August 6th. He was a loving, generous, curious and amazingly intelligent person. I loved him to pieces. I am in a haze of grief.

I am in Philadelphia with my daughter; in the next days, I'll be posting "wakes" of sensory celebration for and about him. We had nothing but fun; we were together almost exactly one year.

Seattle: Jason Larsen at Gallery4Culture, Renee Adams and Justin Gibbens at PUNCH

2011-08-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

At Seattle's First Thursday last night, I talked to Jason Larsen about his meticulously crafted portraits, made with a precise yet lyrical woodcut technique on Shina, a fine-grained Japanese plywood, inked in black. Rather than printing from the wood surface, he presents the woodcut itself as the artwork. Larsen's work is so time-consuming that curator Esther Luttikuizen gave him latitude to present only these five exceptional, highly-detailed pieces.

Jason Larsen, First Mate, woodcut (Shina plywood, ink), 48" x 36".

I wish I had more images from PUNCH Gallery's current show, Peaceful Death & Pretty Flowers, by Renee Adams and Justin Gibbens. The Thorp, Washington couple has been keeping bees for years, and presents work by and about bees, including their accidentally mashed carcasses. The image below is one of several "apologies" to the bees, made by Adams out of their flattened bodies.

Gibbens continues working in the style of 19th-century natural history paintings, including unsettling, myth-inspired images of an ox whose carcass mysteriously yields honey. He shows a different body of work at PUNCH than at his other gallery, G. Gibson – this current work is perhaps less marketable, but much more powerful.

Adams expands her flower imagery into collapsible and then-reconstructed sculptures that move like the wooden toy animals that fall down and pop up again when you push a button. The flowers and plants whimsically open and close, wilt and revive at the press of a switch on the bottom of the work.

In the center of the gallery is a cast of a lion's skull that was installed in one of their beehives, allowing the bees to build honeycombs inside. It's titled "Out of the strong came forth sweetness", referring to the Biblical verse that describes Samson finding a beehive in a lion's carcass.

Both artists draw from "ancient myths and modern maladies of the hive."

Renee Adams,
Telling the Bees 1
4.5"x12", pressed flowers & bees on paper, 2011

The Typewriter Man is now a published photo.

2011-07-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

I received an email from a college the Netherlands asking permission to use my photo (amazing they found it online) in a class on doing business in Turkey.

I was charmed by the Typewriter Men who sit in the public square with their manual typewriters, navigating the bureaucracy for their clients, and writing letters for those who couldn't read or write.

The college commented: "We would like to use your photo of a man typing a petition, 'dilekce'. It is a typical view in Turkey... A lot of things have to be handed in to the government in a typical way. And many people don't know how. But the people with the typewriters do."

I went looking for a Turkish typewriter one day – the characters are different and I love type – and the search took me all over Istanbul. I even received a marriage proposal (see blog entry.)

The last day I was there, I had him write a friend a letter in Turkish wishing her a Happy Birthday, and expressing my love and friendship for her. It is a beautiful document. You don't see the imprint of typewriters on paper anymore.

Riga Gold and squid ink pasta.

2011-07-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

Whatever you're doing, stop. Get in your car and go to Pacific Food Importers in Seattle (you be the judge of the pleasure/mileage ratio) and buy Riga Gold Smoked Sprats (sardines.) Unless you're a vegetarian. If you're not, while you're there get some squid ink pasta (it's black!)

From Latvia. PFI is closer, if you're in North America.

Looks great with contrasting colors.

JR's INSIDE OUT Project

2011-07-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

As many know, JR is a street artist who was awarded the $100,000 TED Prize. Take a few moments and watch his TED talk -- it will be well worth your time, and probably make your day.

Now that you know what he's doing with his prize money, here's the link to how the INSIDE OUT Project is going. I so admire his unflagging anarchic energy that is focused on rallying our sense of purpose in being human, together, in this insane world.

The work he was given the award for:

Slums of Rio de Janeiro

Because his vision is all-embracing by nature, he's made his work reach out into the world further than anyone I can think of.


Wall between Israel and Palestine: portraits of Israelis and Palestinians.

Rooftops of Kenyan slums; vinyl material keeps roofs from leaking.

Here are images from the movie trailer about the Inside Out Project:

"INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities. People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually on www.insideoutproject.net.

"INSIDE OUT is a collaboration between the artist JR and you."

LOXOLOP EGUNGUN!

2011-07-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

Pam McClusky, curator of African Art at the Seattle Art Museum, connected me with Ebere Groenouwe, a young Nigerian artist living in Amsterdam. Here is her work on her site, LOXOLOP EGUNGUN. Another black paper fan!

Be patient while the images load; it takes a while. While they are turning, you can grab them with your cursor and look at specific views.

Once you look through the moving images on the site, painstakingly photographed frame-by-frame (not a video or Flash), reflect on the fact that they are Miniscule.

Ebere's newest blog is LOXO-DROME, featuring the remarkable, hypnotic repetitive features of masks of the world, pulling at our yearning for bilateral symmetry. Her other blog is LOXOLOP FACADE.

LOXOLOP STATEMENT:

The loxolop arose from the study of origami but gradually developed into a unique construction method. The biomorphic and geometric basic shapes, used for making the complex 3D objects, almost spontanously present endless possibilities. Exploring these possibilties resulted in LOXOLOP EGUNGUN masks.

In many cultures masks are believed to not hide a person, but reveal a different persona or entity.
Egungun masks (from the Yoruba of Nigeria) are used to invoke the collective spirit of the ancestors.

Masks are important tools in many rites and rituals to transport both wearer and viewer from ordinairy reality into a realm of symbolism and mythology.

LOXOLOP EGUNGUN are an attempt to design a modern type of masks, influenced by ancient examples, with its own distictive characteristics.

(This website is not meant as a catalogue, representing something taking place in a gallery or exhibition space.These works are exclusively presented online. New works will be freshly uploaded regularly.)

Nathalie Miebach: Science to Art

2011-07-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

Many artists claim to cross the boundaries between art and science, some in collaboration with scientists, some inspired by their own discoveries to transform scientific principles into visual form. Science and art merge and juxtapose in the work of Nathalie Miebach via her formal skills and her intense curiosity.

Antarctic Explorer – Darkness to Lightness
Reed, wood, plastic, data, 4,5’ x 3’ x 2’ , 2007

A portable data device for the Antarctic Explorer, this piece explores the transition from complete darkness in June to 24 hour sunlight in October. Data translated include weather patterns, temperature variations, barometric pressure, wind data, azimuth of the sun, sunrise in relation to cardinal directions, tides, moon phases, moonrise and sunrise. Using a base of 24 hour, every weave represents one hour.

Nathalie Miebach is a sculptor who lives in Brookline, MA. She translates weather data and other scientific measurements into three-dimensional objects that accurately display temperature variations, barometric pressure and moon phases.

"My work focuses on the intersection of art and science and the visual articulation of scientific observations. Using the methodologies and processes of both disciplines, I translate scientific data related to astronomy, ecology and meteorology into woven sculptures. My method of translation is principally that of weaving – in particular basket weaving – as it provides me with a simple yet highly effective grid through which to interpret data in three-dimensional space. By staying true to the numbers, these woven pieces tread an uneasy divide between functioning both as sculptures in space as well as instruments that could be used in the actual environment from which the data originates."

Hurricane Noel
Reed, wood, plastic, data
32”x32”x36”, 2010

3D Musical Score of the passing of Hurricane Noel through the Gulf of Maine, Nov 6-8, 2007.

"Central to this work is my desire to explore the role visual aesthetics play in the translation and understanding of science information. By utilizing artistic processes and everyday materials, I am questioning and expanding boundaries through which science data has been traditionally visually translated (ex: graphs, diagrams), while at the same time provoking expectations of what kind of visual vocabulary is considered to be in the domain of ‘science’ or ‘art’."

“Changing Waters” looks at the meteorological and oceanic interactions within the Gulf of Maine. Using data from NOAA and GOMOSS buoys within the Gulf of Maine, as well as weather stations along the coast, I am translating data that explores the seasonal variations of marine life by looking at the interactions of atmospheric and marine data. Elements of the rich New England fishing history are also included. This large-scale installation consists of a large wall installation (33 feet wide) that plots information through the geographic anchors of a map of the Gulf of Maine, as well as a series of large, hanging structures (10 feet high) that look at more specific biological, chemical or geophysical relationships between marine ecosystems and weather patterns.

On display at the Fuller Craft Museum, Jan 15 – Sept 25, 2011. (www.fullercraft.org)

"For my most recent project called Recording and Translating Climate Change, I gather weather observations from specific ecosystems using very simple data-collecting devices. The numbers are then compared to historical / global meteorological trends, before being translated into sculpture. By examining the complex behavioral interactions of living/non-living systems between weather and an environment, I hope to gain a better understanding of complexity of systems and behaviors that make up weather and climate change. Lately, I have also started to translate the data into musical scores, which are then interpreted through sculptures as well as through collaborations with musicians. My aim is twofold: to convey a nuance or level of emotionality surrounding my research that thus far has been absent from my visual work and to reveal patterns in the data musicians might identify which I have failed to see."

Also see coverage of her work in the New York Times, July 10, 2010

All about me.

2011-07-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

I'll be showing The Book of Knowledge at Brand 40 at the Brand Galleries in Glendale CA. Juror was Peter Frank.

On view: September 17 - October 28, 2011
Reception: Saturday, September 17, 6-9 pm

THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE 40-page hand-painted book, mixed media on tar paper, 25" x 32", 2010.

THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE Plaster, gouache, solvent, waxed paper, ink, spray paint on tar paper. 50" x 32" spread, 2010.

THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE Metallic pigment, white ink, gouache, spray paint, on tar paper. 50" x 32" spread, 2010.

Fiddle tunes, and the Szpilman Award for Ephemeral Acts.

2011-07-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm in Port Townsend, Washington this week, at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. One of the great American summer music festivals, this year's week-long event features fiddle music from all the Americas: Huastecan (Mexico), Cape Breton (Canada), Swedish (Minneapolis), Cajun (Louisiana), and Appalachian (Virginia and Kentucky.) I've been playing old-time Appalachian fiddle and guitar for about 8 years now. This music – culturally as far from my own eastern European/German/Austrian/Russian-Jewish roots as it could be – captures my heart.

Here's a bit of a video of J.P. Fraley, playing a tune on his front porch in Kentucky and talking a bit about the music. And here's another.

Although my life is as a visual artist, I can't get by without music. I have no ambitions as a musician as I do as an artist. I just love it and I feel more whole when I play or sing every day.

I also play some blues guitar, and studied North Indian classical vocal music for five years. The formlessless of music has always attracted me; make it, and it's gone.

In that regard:

The Szpilman Award is awarded to works that exist only for a moment or a short period of time.
The purpose of the award is to promote such works whose forms consist of ephemeral situations.

Deadline September 30, 2011

2010 winners

Irresistible synchronicity.

2011-07-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

Cornelia Parker: The Folkestone Mermaid

2011-07-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

Cornelia Parker is an artist I admire greatly, for her embrace of ordinary materials and her ingenuity in transforming them.

She recently completed a "mermaid" for Folkestone, England, for the Folkestone Triennial, reprising Copenhagen's Little Mermaid through her own lens.

Her interview in the Tate video series describes both the project and her approach to her work.

"Parker's compelling transformations of familiar, everyday objects investigate the nature of matter, test physical properties and play on private and public meaning and value. Using materials that have a history loaded with association, a feather from Sigmund Freud's pillow for example, Parker has employed numerous methods of exploration- suspending, exploding, crushing, stretching objects and even language through her titles."

Poison and Antidote Drawing, 2010
Rattlesnake venom and black ink, Anti-venom and white ink
37 x 37 cm

Pornographic Drawing, 1997
Ink made from dissolving video tape (confiscated by HM Customs & Excise) in solvent
61 x 61 cm

Hanging Fire Suspected Arson, 1999
Charcoal, wire, pins, nails
Length: 140 cm Width: 84 cm Height: 220 cm

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991
A garden shed and contents blown up
Dimensions variable

Perpetual Canon, 2004
Flattened brass band instruments suspended
Dimensions variable

Reasons to go to Africa.

2011-06-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

My friend Steve Tanner recently joined the Peace Corps for a stint doing beekeeping in Zambia.

From his photos:

Maize granary with rat-proof accessorizing.

Better than having a closed mind complex...

Very large and handsome spider.

Zambian bureaucracy.

Objects I want

2011-06-24T09:26:00.000-07:00


Snorre Ytterstad, Ballpoint Pen Ball, ballpoint pens and wood


Snorre Ytterstad Cut #1, coin		At SQUARED TARGET Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway 24. June–18. September 2011

Fischli and Weiss spread their influence to rock and advertising.

2011-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Peter Fischli (8 June 1952 in Zurich) and David Weiss (21 June 1946 in Zurich), often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, are an artist duo that have been collaborating since 1979. They are among the most renowned contemporary artists of Switzerland. Their best known work is the film "Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go)." This was described by The Guardian as being "post apocalyptic" as it is all about chain reactions and the way in which objects fly, crash, and explode across the studio it was shot in.

For their work, they make use of a large bandwidth of artistic forms of expression: film and photography, art books, sculptures made out of different materials, and multimedia installations. They adapt objects and situations from everyday life and place them into an artistic context—often using humor and irony.*

This is three minutes from the mesmerizing 30-minute film made by Fischli and Weiss in 1987, "Der Lauf der Dinge (the way things go):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrRC3pfLnE
(The 30-minute film is on Netflix.)

In 2010, the band OK Go made this elaborate and exuberant promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

And in 2011, NTT Doomo, a Japanese cellphone service provider, with this exquisite contraption promoting a wooden cell phone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArLiKPFsFoU
According to a comment on the Youtube site, it took fifty-three attempts to get it right. I wonder what the stats are on OK Go?

*background from Wikipedia

More Mario Merz.

2011-06-23T17:45:00.000-07:00

From Louis Jaffe in CA. Thank you, Louis.

Mario Merz, The Lens of Rotterdam, 1988
Glass, stone, steel, painted metal, and painted wood

Inaugural sculpture display in roof garden, SFMOMA.

New summer classes: WD-40 for the Creative Soul – how to get unstuck.

2011-06-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been teaching WD-40 for the Creative Soul: how to get unstuck for five years now. Here’s a summary of the class:

Support your artistic practice by turning obstacles into raw material; learn daily routines to accelerate your studio work, no matter what your medium or level of experience.

Working with materials takes us out of our heads and into the flow of process. Define and refine your personal vision through the practice of keeping a visual journal – this is the single most valuable method I have found for supporting creative practice.

This class includes:

• the potency of line and color
• off-the-press printmaking techniques to transfer personal imagery into journal format
• incorporating type and text
• the emotional and visual power of page layout
• gluing and fastening for all occasions
• the More is More Theory of collage
• a weekly overview of international work
• individual and group feedback and critique.

I alternate teaching specific projects and techniques with assignments that allow for interior exploration.

Classes are Tuesday evenings. Click here for more info. And download testimonials (!) from past students on my site.

10% discounts available: members of Seattle Print Arts, Seattle Center for Book Arts, Book Arts Guild. And if you refer someone, you get a 10% discount on your own tuition!
I teach in Seattle, at my studio on Phinney Ridge, right next to Fremont and Ballard. Easy bus, easy parking.

The studio.

The view.

For any questions, or to register by snailmail: ellen@ellenziegler.com.
.Info: I have taught and lectured at University of Guanajuato, Mexico; the 2011 Sofia Biennale lecture series, sponsored by the Department of State; Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle; EDGE Program, Artist Trust of Washington; University of Washington School of Art; Seattle Central Community College; School of Visual Concepts, Seattle; Whitman College, Walla Walla.
.
In addition to my artistic and teaching practice, I have been a graphic designer for twenty years.

Kobi Levi Footwear Design

2011-06-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

Kobi Levi handmade shoes.

Fondazione Maxxi, containing Mario Merz.

2011-06-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

The absence of large contemporary art venues in Italy has always seemed incongruous to me. Now there is the one-year-old Fondazione MAXXI.
"MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, is the first Italian national institution devoted to contemporary creativity and conceived as a broad cultural campus. MAXXI is managed by a Foundation constituted in the July of 2009 by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and houses two museums: MAXXI Art and MAXXI Architecture.

"The programming of the activities – exhibitions, workshops, conferences, shows, projections, educational projects – reflects MAXXI’s vocation as a place for the conservation and exhibition of its collections but also, and above all, a laboratory for cultural experimentation and innovation, for the study, research and production of the aesthetic contents of out time."

Mario Merz
Untitled (triple igloo)
1984-2002
glass, clamps, iron, unfired clay blocks, series of blue neon Fibonacci numbers from 1 to 8
individual igloo: cm 300x600, 400x200, 200x100
Permanent collection MAXXI Arte

The work is composed of three concentric glass igloos, delimited by dollops of crude clay and numbers in neon. In the Fibonacci’s sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, …), from the name of the Pisan mathematician who discovered it during the thirteenth century, each number is the result of the sum of the previous two, and the relationship between the numbers refers to a process of the growth of natural phenomena. For Merz, a representative figure of Arte Povera, the igloo was simultaneously “the world and a small dwelling”, a cosmological and personal space, both physical and mental: it is a circular idea in which energy and space are in perfect harmony and in relationship with the surrounding context.

Mika Tajima and the Contortionists

2011-06-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

Collaboration has always been a part of my own work, and I'm so intrigued by other artists' juxtapositions. Like Mika Tajima, of Brooklyn, who collaborated with contortionists in her gallery show:

Part of New York Close Up: A New Documentary Series on Art and Life in the City

Proud to be an American.

2011-06-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

My friend Carol Brown, citizen of the world and traveler in over fifty countries, says of the Fremont Solstice Parade, "It makes me proud to be an American."

The Solstice Parade is a true descendant of street theater and circus traditions of Europe and Asia, of the Mardi Gras parades, and of pagan ceremonies everywhere. I'm surprised at how many Seattle residents have never been to it. We don't have enough gatherings in the public spaces of our city. Also see Bon Odori Festival.

Please let me know if there are others here that take over the streets...

World's largest dung beetle. See Video.

I love to imagine the people who sat around thinking of what to do for the parade, and then came up with "Hey! let's do a giant dung beetle!" Also: National Geographic video of the real thing. Having had an up-close-and-personal experience of these guys in the Texas desert, I am a fan.

And the parade:

Ephemerally luminous: "Constellations" at Cornerhouse, Manchester UK

2011-06-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Kitty Kraus, "Untitled," 2008. Courtesy the artist and Galerie NEU, Berlin.

Constellations
25 June–11 September 2011

Kitty Kraus, Takahiro Iwasaki, Katie Paterson, Felix Gonzalez-Torres

www.cornerhouse.org/constellations

Constellations presents a series of artworks that reflect impermanence, ephemerality and movement. Featuring internationally acclaimed artists Kitty Kraus, Takahiro Iwasaki, Katie Paterson and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, each of the artists are interested in ideas of fluidity and flux, creating a shifting landscape that evolves and changes over time. Constellations presents an active exhibition that is never static or fixed in its presentation but continually offers different perspectives of the work on every visit.

Constellations runs at Cornerhouse, Manchester from 25 June until 11 September and admission is free.

The exhibition includes Kitty Kraus' Untitled, a hauntingly beautiful work in which ice, infused with black ink, gradually melts on the gallery floor leaving behind pools of murky liquid that spread in patterns around which viewers must weave their way; and the first UK showing of Katie Paterson's 100 Billion Suns, a special confetti cannon which will be fired once daily, blasting out 3216 tiny pieces of paper, the colours of which correspond to Gamma Ray bursts—the brightest explosions in the universe. Each second-long explosion creates a miniature version of these vast cosmic events. Paterson is also exhibiting her celebrated Earth-Moon-Earth, which involves the transmission of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back.

The sculptural landscapes of Takahiro Iwasaki's work made delicately from cloth, tape and wood, construct the undulating contours of mountain ranges forming and changing over an eternity. The unstable existence of the work means it will settle and shift over the duration of the exhibition, swayed and disturbed by air-flow through the space and the movement of people. Untitled poster stacks by the acclaimed artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres are an endless supply of takeaway posters depicting the sea, inviting the audience to remove the work until nothing is left. Here Gonzalez-Torres uses the sea as a metaphor for transience, time and travel. Water appears throughout all of Gonzalez-Torres' major bodies of work—the image is a reflection not only of the literal, transient nature of travelling from one place to the other, but more importantly captures the essence of a moment.

At the core of the exhibition is the idea of a constellation not as something fixed, but an organic, evolving grouping with chaos and chance at its core.

Curated by Karen Gaskill and Michelle Kasprzak.

Cornerhouse
70 Oxford Street
Manchester UK, M1 5NH
E press@cornerhouse.org
T + 44 161 200 1500

Galleries open:
Mon: Closed
Tue-Sat: 12:00–20:00
Sun: 12:00–18:00

A sterling critique of contemporary art.

2011-06-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/talks/shea_hembrey_how_i_became_100_artists.html

Too bad he runs out of time at the end...

"Seek is a new international biennial. The inaugural exhibition showcases the work of 100 artists selected by curators Calinda Salazar and Fletcher Ramsey. (All are fictional characters invented by Hembrey—who created the actual artworks."

Welcome.

2011-06-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've switched to Blogger so that I can link to the other blogs I love. The Biennale/Istanbul blog will still be available at ellenziegler.tumblr.com

I'll begin this new blog with the story of the Diving Bell Spider, from the New York Times. Magnificent.

The water spider weaves a silk bubble, known as a diving bell.

Of the tens of thousands of spider species, only Argyroneta aquatica spends its lifetime underwater — even though, like its terrestrial counterparts, it requires oxygen to survive.

The water spiders occasionally venture above the surface to take in oxygen, but as researchers now report in The Journal of Experimental Biology, they can safely stay underwater for a day or more at a time, longer than previously thought.

The spider weaves a silk bubble, known as a diving bell, on underwater vegetation. It uses this bell to extract oxygen from water, said the study’s first author, Roger Seymour, a biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The bell acts as a gill, and pulls in dissolved oxygen from fresh water. Although this was previously known, Dr. Seymour and his colleague Stefan K. Hetz of Humboldt University in Berlin, used a device to measure exact changes in the bell’s oxygen levels for the first time.

Even in warm, stagnant water, the bell extracts oxygen that the spiders can rely on, they found.

“The value of staying underwater is that you don’t scare the prey away,” Dr. Seymour said. “And if you go to the surface often you might alert a bird.”

Water spiders trap insects and small fish in their bell, just as terrestrial spiders capture insects in their webs. They have the ability to sense when something hits their underwater web, and they dash out to paralyze the prey before pulling it into the bell, Dr. Seymour said.

Female spiders lay eggs within the bell, and hatched spiders build bells of their own.

The researchers found that the bell shrinks as nitrogen from the bell diffuses into the water over time. Eventually, the spider must surface to create a replenishing bubble that resupplies the bell with oxygen.

... and the Luminously Trivial.

Paris Métro Affiches

Bemis Center for Contemporary Art

Martin Pfeifle

Roger Ballen, photographer

Reason to read the sports section.

Dan Savage and Rick.

Adopt a typewriter.

Soldier/Many Wars

Degenerate Art Stream

While we're at the beach...

Miami and the beach.

Loose Leaf: Writers and Artists Make Books Together

The Something Dance

Go to the Poetry Foundation website and listen to Charles Wright read this poem...

Bedtime Story

Luminosity.

All the Rest Have 31, on Violet Strays

Ian Rodihan.

Seattle: Jason Larsen at Gallery4Culture, Renee Adams and Justin Gibbens at PUNCH

The Typewriter Man is now a published photo.

Riga Gold and squid ink pasta.

JR's INSIDE OUT Project

LOXOLOP EGUNGUN!

Nathalie Miebach: Science to Art

All about me.

Fiddle tunes, and the Szpilman Award for Ephemeral Acts.

Irresistible synchronicity.

Cornelia Parker: The Folkestone Mermaid

Reasons to go to Africa.

Objects I want

Fischli and Weiss spread their influence to rock and advertising.

More Mario Merz.

New summer classes: WD-40 for the Creative Soul – how to get unstuck.

Kobi Levi Footwear Design

Fondazione Maxxi, containing Mario Merz.

Mika Tajima and the Contortionists

Proud to be an American.

Ephemerally luminous: "Constellations" at Cornerhouse, Manchester UK

A sterling critique of contemporary art.

More argyroneta aquatica -- see last post for story.

Welcome.

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Published: June 13, 2011 in the New York Times