August 14, 2012 by suzannesmom
When I saw the headline at Wired, it didn’t really compute.
“Artists Create Portraits on Live Grass.” What? I don’t get it. Did the artists set up easels and paint with oils? Did they paint directly on the grass?
Writer-photographer Jakob Schiller explains.
“It all started, as these things sometimes do, by accident. In 1990, before they worked in photography, [Heather] Ackroyd and [Dan] Harvey created an art installation that covered an entire room with grass. As part of the art piece they had left a ladder leaning against a wall and when they went to remove it they saw that the ubiquitous and fast-growing plant had been imprinted with the shadow. The grass had stayed yellow where the ladder had prevented it from receiving any light.
“ ‘We didn’t know straight away what we were looking at, but we knew that we had observed something important,’ Ackroyd says.
“They began playing with the idea of manipulating the light that hits grass and by the next year were projecting light through an old 35mm Kodak projector onto a swath of grass on the wall.”
What to think as the grass withers and dies? It’s kind of a Dorian Gray scenario.
Read more about the project at Wired‘s Raw File, here.
Photograph: Ackroyd & Harvey.
Myles, Basia, Nath and Alesha, The Big Chill Festival, Eastnor Castle, between the Cotswolds and the Welsh Marches. 2007
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ackroyd & harvey, art, art installation, big chill, cotswolds, dan harvey, eastnor castle, england, grass, heather ackroyd, jakob schiller, photographer, photography, portrait, wales | 3 Comments »
August 13, 2012 by suzannesmom
A couple Sundays ago, it was so hot that all we could do was sit. When we came to ourselves, we said: Who has air conditioning besides the supermarket? Where can we go to see something interesting or entertaining without wilting?
The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a place of wonder. It’s true that sometimes the wonder takes the form of “What the heck?!” But more often it provokes pondering and admiration. The piece below was both lovely to look at and food for thought. The artist filmed people moving obscurely behind ice. The work suggested ideas to me beyond the idea of ice (although ice itself was worth focusing on that day).
Ice often makes an appearance in art. I think of the First Night (New Year’s Eve) sculptures in Boston. And I remember a whole ice wonderland in St. Paul one January when we lived in Minnesota. Then there is the ice story by a native of that city, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald apparently wanted to cut his ties with his hometown, but St. Paul had other thoughts, naming the theater where “A Prairie Home Companion” plays just for him, and conducting a posthumous reading of “The Great Gatsby” in his honor.
Fitzgerald’s short story “The Ice Palace” is about a southern girl who tries to adjust to the culture of her betrothed’s wintry landscape. She becomes lost and terrified in an ice palace that somehow reflects his family and his nature, and she decides her future should unfold back home in the South. I read that a long time ago, but I recall many meanings for ice in it.
Meanwhile, at the deCordova, the “Ice Cave” video seems to be about the limits of perception, about seeing through a glass darkly.
What are the people doing? we wonder. Even if we knew, would we know what it meant?
Please share your ice images with the blog.
Image from Daniel Phillips’s Ice Cave video is at the Dodge Gallery in New York.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, artist, conceptual art, daniel phillips, DeCordova, dodge gallery, f. scott fitzgerald, ice cave, ice palace, st. paul, video art | Leave a Comment »
August 12, 2012 by suzannesmom
I liked NY Times columnist Jim Dwyer’s recent article “A Billionaire Philanthropist Struggles to Go Broke.”
“Charles F. Feeney, 81, a man with no romantic attachment to wealth or its trappings, said the world had enough urgent problems that required attention now, before they became even more expensive to solve.
“ ‘When you’ve got the money, you spend it,’ Mr. Feeney said. ‘When you’ve spent it all, let someone else get going and spend theirs.’ …
“Last fall, Mr. Feeney gave his alma mater, Cornell University, $350 million to seal its bid to build a new campus for advanced engineering that New York City has commissioned for Roosevelt Island. …
With “grand philanthropy often comes public glory for wealthy donors, as buildings and institutes are dedicated to benefactors, their names embedded above doorways like graffiti tags chiseled in marble. No building anywhere bears Mr. Feeney’s name. Among tycoons, he has been a countercultural figure of rare force, clinging to his privacy far more fiercely than to his money.
“He set up the philanthropies in Bermuda, in large part because that would allow him to escape United States disclosure requirements. That also meant he could not take tax deductions when he contributed his holdings.”
More recently, he decided to tell his story in order to encourage other people of means to share the wealth.
“Mr. Feeney, who grew up in a working-class family in Elizabeth, N.J., served as a radio operator in the United States Air Force and attended Cornell on the G.I. Bill. He sold liquor to sailors in ports, then formed a company that ran airport duty-free shops around the world. He secretly turned over the duty-free business to the philanthropies in 1984 and continued to invest. …
“He has given away essentially everything he has made, apart from decent, though not extravagant, provisions for his four daughters and one son. They all worked through college as waiters, maids and cashiers.
“ ‘I want the last check I write to bounce,’ Mr. Feeney said.”
Read the article.
“Charles F. Feeney, 81, has already given away $6 billion through his foundations.” Photograph: Brad Vest, NY Times
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged atlantic philanthropies, billionaire, charity, charles feeney, foundation, giving back, good works, nonprofit, philanthropist, philanthropy | Leave a Comment »
August 11, 2012 by suzannesmom
We lived in Minneapolis in the late 1990s and thought the theater scene there was super — many small, under-the-radar groups taking on adventurous work.
We also enjoyed going to music and art events, especially open houses in the former Warehouse District, where some of the Twin Cities’ best restaurants had sprung up.
So we weren’t surprised to learn that a national effort to tackle rundown areas in a way that benefits both local economies and artists emanates from Minneapolis.
Emily Badger writes about Artspace in Fast Company.
“The city of Minneapolis’ arts commission founded Artspace in 1979 to help connect local artists to affordable space in the city’s warehouse district. But the same artists kept coming back, priced out of their homes and studios, in need of yet another space. When [Kelley] Lindquist took over a decade later, the local arts community began to focus instead on the only permanent solution: They needed to control the buildings. Since then, Artspace has completed 30 live/work developments in 21 U.S. cities, with two more opening this fall, two more under construction, and another dozen in the pipeline.
“Lindquist recalls that in the ’80s, four other organizations — in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington and New York — were toying with a concept similar to Artspace’s (at the time, the five had been given a grant by the Apple Foundation to network with each other). Artspace is the only one of those original five that has survived to this day.
“ ‘I do honestly think that there is a prairie spirit here,’ Lindquist says, laughing. He sometimes thinks about why this idea got off the ground in Minnesota when it didn’t elsewhere. ‘Living in Minnesota is pretty rough,’ he says. ‘There can be easily six months of the year that would seem pretty hard to live in and intolerable to a lot of people. But I think it forced those of us here to try harder, and to be a little more experimental, a little more risk-taking on how do we keep our culture vibrant?’ ” Read more.
By the way, this lead came from ArtsJournal.com, a reliable source of bloggy inspiration.
Photograph: Warehouse Entertainment District
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged arts, artspace, emily badger, Kelly Lindquist, minneapolis, theater, warehouse district | Leave a Comment »
August 10, 2012 by suzannesmom
For an artsy, literary treat, take a look at the Project Gutenberg version of painter Marsden Hartley‘s out-of-print book, Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets, dedicated to Alfred Stieglitz.
Hard to resist an introduction like this:
“Sometimes I think myself one of the unique children among children. I never read a fairy story in my childhood. I always had the feeling as a child, that fairy stories were for grown-ups and were best understood by them, and for that reason I think it must have been that I postponed them. I found them, even at sixteen, too involved and mystifying to take them in with quite the simple gullibility that is necessary. But that was because I was left alone with the incredibly magical reality from morning until nightfall …
“I was constantly confronted with the magic of reality itself, wondering why one thing was built of exquisite curves and another of harmonic angles. It was not a scientific passion in me, it was merely my sensing of the world of visible beauty around me, pressing in on me with the vehemence of splendor, on every side. …
“It is because I love the idea of life better than anything else that I believe most of all in the magic of existence.”
(Thank you, Ellen Levy, for sending me the link.)
Art: Marsden Hartley
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aesthetic, art, artist, ellen levy, literature, magic, Marsden Hartley, painter, painting, poet, poetry, stieglitz | 5 Comments »
August 9, 2012 by suzannesmom
Alice Feiring has an interesting story in Newsweek.
She writes that Kazi Anis Ahmed of Bangladesh, the 41-year-old cofounder and president of a company called Teatulia, was getting his doctorate in comparative literature when his father suggested expanding the family media and construction business into tea farming. The location he had in mind was the barren northwest of the country, not far from India’s tea-growing region.
Kazi Anis Ahmed liked the idea but felt strongly that any farm of his should be organic. Additionally, says Feiring, the family’s “mission was to provide jobs to the region. …
“The lack of agricultural tradition proved a blessing because the land was virginal, not ravaged by the government-supported, synthetic-fertilizer-dominated ‘Green Revolution.’ After reading the poetic One Straw Revolution by the master Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, Ahmed went one step beyond organic and tried to do low-intervention farming.
“The tea garden functions on minimal irrigation. They installed a plethora of plants next to the tea plants to feed and aerate the soil. What now exists is a breathtaking vision. The barren area has been transformed into an Eden with a resurgence of wildlife never seen before — recently, a pair of monkeys was spotted. The animals had not been seen in the area for decades.”
Read more at the Daily Beast. (Thanks for alerting me to this lovely story, Asakiyume.)
Photograph: Habibul Haque, Teatulia
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alice Feiring, bangladesh, environment, farm, Habibul Haque, Kazi Anis Ahmed, Masanobu Fukuoka, one straw revolution, organic, sustainability, sustainable farming, tea | 8 Comments »
August 8, 2012 by suzannesmom
Here is another great music outreach to kids: the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra’s Tune up Philly initiative.
“The mission of Philadelphia Youth Orchestra’s Tune Up Philly program is to nurture urban children in challenging social and economic conditions by keeping them engaged in success through weekday out-of-school hours music instruction. Through its Tune Up Philly program, Philadelphia Youth Orchestra organization believes that music education is a powerful vehicle for children to master skills that will enable them to acquire valuable tools for cooperative learning, teamwork, academic success and self-esteem.” More.
The Inquirer classical music critic Peter Dobrin wrote at Philly.com that an important goal of the initial program was to show the rest of the city what is possible.
“The brain-child of 24-year-old Curtis Institute of Music graduate Stanford Thompson … and adopted by the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Tune Up Philly started at St. Francis de Sales … with the aim of replicating itself at other sites …
“Modeled on the widely praised and emulated El Sistema program that has educated millions of children in Venezuela, Philadelphia’s upstart is already gathering considerable support. Since initial coverage in the Inquirer and subsequent media attention, the program has received donations of cellos, clarinets, double basses, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, violas, violins and other instruments, plus about $13,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind services.” More.
Photograph: First graders exploring xylophones in the 2012 summer program.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged challenged, disadvantaged, el sistema, music, music education, outreach, philadelphia, philadelphia youth orcestra, philadelphia youth orchestra, tune up philly, urban, youth | Leave a Comment »
August 7, 2012 by suzannesmom
Not long ago, I listened to a certain “Living on Earth” radio broadcast with amazement. A woman was explaining how she made up her mind to live without plastics. She did not make the effort sound easy, but she did make me think of ways I might cut back.
The “Living on Earth” account begins,”We live in a plastic-filled world. It’s used in almost everything, from cars to chewing gum to prescription drug bottles. Five years ago, Beth Terry decided to stop consuming plastic and she’s survived to tell the tale. Host Bruce Gellerman talks with Terry about her new book, ‘Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.’ ”
Terry tells the host, “Five years ago, almost to the day, I stumbled across an article about the plastic pollution problem in the ocean. And what completely blew my mind, and broke my heart, was this photo I saw of a dead albatross chick on Midway Island, thousands of miles from civilization — halfway between the United States and Japan. And it was just the carcass; it was full of plastic pieces. Like the plastic that I used on an everyday basis — things like bottle caps, things that didn’t come from the middle of the Pacific Ocean — they came from us. I just had to change. …
“I didn’t commit to stop using the plastic I already had, first of all, and I don’t recommend that anybody go through their house and purge the plastic and throw it away, because that’s just so wasteful, I think. But when my computer broke and it couldn’t be fixed — my first step is always to try and fix things and make them last as long as possible — but, when it couldn’t be fixed, I looked on Craig’s List and I found a secondhand computer.”
My own worry about plastics is how unstable the components are and how chemicals may escape into the air we breathe and the water we drink. When plastics are heated, as in a microwave, they can be dangerous. Please use ceramic containers for warming food in your — er — plastic microwave.
Read more of Terry’s alternatives to buying new plastics at “Living on Earth.”
Photograph: Beth Terry, with the plastic she collected in the first half of 2007.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beth terry, bruce gellerman, eco, ecology, environment, green, how i kicked the plastics habit, living on earth, plastic free, plastics, pri, sustainability, sustainable | 6 Comments »
August 6, 2012 by suzannesmom
I love artists. They come up with the wackiest ideas. And often the ideas have bypassed the rest of us because they are in fact so incredibly sane.
In the July 27, 2012, Boston Globe, Stephanie Steinberg writes about two such artists.
Carla “Repice, 40, and Geoffrey Cunningham, 37, who met while studying at Lorenzo de’ Medici school of art in Italy, started the performance art project Office of Blame Accountability [in 2007] while working on a separate project in California. The two artists, now self-proclaimed ‘blame accountants,’ were frustrated by the lack of accountability by the media, government, and individuals. …
“Repice had recently purchased a red 1920s telephone at a flea market. As they sat on a bench outside Cal State Fullerton Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana discussing whom to blame for personal and countrywide problems, Repice brought up the idea of the phone representing an emergency call.
“ ‘We were talking about blame accountability, and there was this red phone, and we thought, “OK, let’s create an office. . . . Let’s place a desk on the sidewalk and facilitate a space where people can engage this idea of blame and accountability,” ’ ” she said.
“Within an hour, they set up a desk and placed a typewriter, mock blame forms, and, of course, the telephone on top. They then started asking random passersby, ‘Do you have any blame to place?’ ”
The lovely part is that the “blame accountants” also ask people to consider their own role is the thing they are blaming on others. The results can be quite touching. Read more.
Photograph: Tisha Kawcak
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, artist, blame, blame accountants, Carla Repice, Geoffrey Cunningham, performance art, Stephanie Steinberg, Tisha Kawcak | Leave a Comment »
August 5, 2012 by suzannesmom
A NY Times article I saved from November 24, 2009, remains as inspirational as when I first read it.
In “Learning His Body, Learning to Dance,” Neil Genzlinger writes that “Gregg Mozgala, a 31-year-old actor with cerebral palsy, had 12 years of physical therapy while he was growing up. But in the last eight months, a determined choreographer with an unconventional résumé has done what all those therapists could not: She has dramatically changed the way Mr. Mozgala walks.
“In the process, she has changed his view of himself and of his possibilities.
Mr. Mozgala and the choreographer, Tamar Rogoff, have been working since last winter on a dance piece called ‘Diagnosis of a Faun.’ It is to have its premiere on Dec. 3 at La MaMa Annex in the East Village, but the more important work of art may be what Ms. Rogoff has done to transform Mr. Mozgala’s body.
“ ‘ I have felt things that I felt were completely closed off to me for the last 30 years,’ he said. ‘The amount of sensation that comes through the work has been totally unexpected and is really quite wonderful.’ ”
Choreographer Rogoff saw Mozgala perform the role of Romeo in a production by Theater Breaking through Barriers in March 2008 and knew she wanted to create a dance piece for him.
“Originally, [Ms. Rogoff] envisioned a simple study, maybe 10 minutes long. Mr. Mozgala’s expectations when he agreed to the project were equally narrow: he said that he thought that she would either merely create a dance that made use of the physical abilities he already had or, after seeing his limitations, tell him, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ ”
It turned out that their expectations were way too narrow. Read more.
Photograph by Andrea Mohin at The New York Times shows Gregg Mozgala rehearsing with Emily Pope-Blackman.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged actor, arts, cerebral palsy, choreography, dance, dancer, disability, Emily Pope-Blackman, Gregg Mozgala, Neil Genzlinger, Tamar Rogoff, Theater Breaking through Barriers | Leave a Comment »
August 4, 2012 by suzannesmom
I believe these marshmallows are used as prizes in the giants’ midnight games of dodge ball. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Other photographs of summer are less cryptic.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged boston, demonstration garden, greenway, photo, photograph, photography, point judith fishing fleet, quincy market, summer | 2 Comments »
August 3, 2012 by suzannesmom
Tom Jacobs alerted me to a piece he published at Pacific Standard, a publication that reports on studies in the social sciences.
Newly published research, he says, provides some support for the notion that children by nature want to help others.
“ ‘From an early age, humans seem to have genuine concern for the welfare of others,’ concludes a research team led by Robert Hepach of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. …
“But how exactly do you discover a toddler’s motivation? The researchers took a novel approach: by looking straight into his or her eyes.
“They note that our pupils enlarge in response to emotionally stimulating sights, and deduced this could provide an indication of what specifically prompts kids to perk up and take notice. Are they aroused by the sight of someone in need—or, perhaps, by the realization that they could play the hero by helping?
“Their experiment featured 36 2-year-olds, who viewed a scene in which an adult needed help reaching for a can or crayon. One-third of the children were allowed by their parents to help the person in need (almost all did so); another third were held back from providing assistance.”
Curious? Read more.
(By the way, the same institute was behind some research that Alan Alda featured on the PBS show The Human Spark, here.)
Photograph: Two-year-old meeting his cousin’s need for conversation.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged children, empathy, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, pacific standard, Psychological Science, psychology, robert hepach, tom jacobs, wish to help | 2 Comments »
August 2, 2012 by suzannesmom
All through one of Concord’s hottest summers, Sophie has been creating a mural of Tuscan vineyards for Period Realty. Take a look at the progression. I especially like the latest touches showing a tasting table and distant bicyclists.
Read more about Sophie and the mural here.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged concord, mural, period realty, sophy, tuscany, vineyard | 2 Comments »
August 1, 2012 by suzannesmom
Lately, it seems that lot of young people want to make the world a better place and are starting nonprofits to do so.
Marian Daniells writes in the Boston Globe about one young activist, who attends Northeastern University.
“Mike Behan spends six months out of the year in Njabini, Kenya. But it’s no safari vacation. Behan, 21, is the cofounder and CEO of Njabini Apparel, a nonprofit company selling handcrafted accessories made by landless and handicapped mothers in the Kenyan settlement.
“A rising senior at Northeastern University, Behan first visited Njabini in June 2010 as a volunteer with Flying Kites, a nonprofit group that supports orphaned children in Kenya. With Flying Kites’ help, Behan then started Njabini Apparel with Tom Mwangi and marketing director Erin O’Malley (both volunteers with Flying Kites) in August of that year. By October, they were selling hats and scarves. Most of Njabini Apparel’s sales are done online, or by volunteers for Njabini Apparel and Flying Kites. …
“Participating mothers are able to immediately earn four times the average national income (equivalent to $780), which is then driven back into the local economy.” Read more. It will make you feel good.
Lucy Wanjiku at Njabini Apparel, a nonprofit cofounded by Mike Behan that sells handcrafted goods made by landless and handicapped mothers in the Kenyan settlement. Photograph: John Deputy
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged charity, Erin O’Malley, Flying Kites, kenya, Marian Daniells, Mike Behan, Njabini, Njabini Apparel, nonprofit, orphan, Tom Mwangi | 2 Comments »
July 31, 2012 by suzannesmom
Today I walked down to 300 Summer St. for one of the Channel Café’s great lunches and to see the latest in the Fort Point Arts Community Gallery.
The exhibit, a touring show organized by Terra “Touria” Fuller, features unusual carpets woven by Zahra, a cave-dwelling nomad in Morocco, and Mouhou, a subsistence farmer.
Touria also created a documentary. In “Living with Barbarians and Cave Dwellers … Fuller moves to the pre-Saharan desert plains of Morocco from 2008-2010 and integrates into an Amazigh village and learns the survival skills necessary to live with a family of cave-dwelling nomads on the edge of the village. Over two years, she follows along and documents their lives. This is a rare look into a private and fiercely independent nomadic people made possible by the patient friendship Fuller built with the villagers and cave dwelling society.”
More about the Boston show here.
Touria also is bringing two master weavers on tour this year, and you can learn about that at Kickstarter.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged carpet, cave dweller, channel cafe, fort point arts, fort point channel, morocco, mouhou, nomad, summer street, terra fuller, touria, weaving, Zahra | Leave a Comment »
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