positively primary

I'd never seen the launderer's bins in such an order, and they've never been in such an order since. These moments of beauty and clarity are fleeting, so I'll bottle them away for the rainier days...Remember color theory? It's still fun!

abby flower

An afternoon was spent in Kindergarten, crafting leprechaun ears, showing and telling with the letter N, building cardboard battleships, cutting, pasting, drawling, and discussing the importance of sharing with others. Abby drew me an Abby flower, and let me hold her pet Zebra. The insightful perspectives of a room full of 5-year-olds was a welcome break from the company of grown-ups. 

books & looks

Lately, I am filled with bliss, basking in the beauty of so many stacks of books. Check out these blissful pieces about books: A cheeky piece from Ray Fenwick's Hall of Best Knowlege, Animal indexes by Pa Design, and this installation of such lovely hues, by Mr. Jacob Dahlgren.

inventing kindergarten

A man by the name of Friedrich Froebel invented Kindergarten back in the mid-19th century, when he founded the Play Activity Institute in 1837. He was a pioneer in early child education, and a strong advocate for the importance of free play in childhood. His Kindergarten classes were structured around a series of "gifts," designed to be given to a child in order to inspire innovation and self-directed activity. See a full gallery of Froebel's Gifts here. 
Activities in the first Kindergarten were focused on "free work" and games, and included singing, dancing, gardening, and self-directed play with the Froebel Gifts. Check out the Kinder-garden, above! (Unidentified kindergarten, Los Angeles, circa 1900)
Some late-19th century "beauty forms" from anonymous kindergartners made with the fourteenth Froebel gift (paper weaving). Look familiar? It is no coincidence that the first generations to graduate from this new Kindergarten grew up to become those radical adults that formed the modernist movement:

"There was...an international force for change of dramatic potency that never appears in discussions about the roots of modern art and is only rarely mentioned as an influence on the movement's pioneers. The Victorian childhood of the seminal modernists and their audience coincided with the development and widespread embrace of a radical educational system that was a catalyst in exploding the cultural past and restructuring the resulting intellectual panoply with a new worldview...It was the seed pearl of the modern era and it was called kindergarten." 

-Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten

two lines align

Two Lines Align is the accompaniment to a recent exhibit curated by Michael Worthington at REDCAT gallery in Los Angeles, positioning the works of artists/designers Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge side by side in order to spark conversations about the oft-blurred lines between art & design, "the shifts in the perceived cultural worth of [graphic design and art] over time...by placing Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge's design careers end to end to make one chronological line, one lineage. While Fella's career reflects how graphic design has historically struggled to define itself in relationship to art, McFetridge follows a path wherein the integration of art and design is taken for granted."

A belated thank you to the MCAD library for ordering in this lovely and inspiring book for me. I miss it already...Check it.

best friends forever

Hmmm...really? Foreva? Foreva-eva? Though it is quite refreshing to to hear of politicians getting along, now isn't it? (Taken from last week's Time magazine).

Oh! And speaking of bff's, my new bff: Loy Bowlin, aka the Original Rhinestone Cowboy. Hmmm...too bad he's dead. 

R.I.P. my dear Loy B. You were truly a diamond of a man. 

quelques animaux...

un chat=a cat

une grenouille=a frog

The crazy collages of Hisham Bharoocha bring joy...

un éléphant= an elephant!

A small sampling of a petite book I made recently about the death of an elephant. Perhaps elephants are capable of more sincerity and ingenuity than humans. Babar was never able to truly fit in to the human world, although I often used to wish he actually existed... 

un oiseau=a bird

un lapin=a rabbit

une biche=a doe

un hippopotame=a hippopotamus 

Animal bowls by Hella Jongerious. Oh how delectable it would be to dine with a doe, to dip a chip next to a hippo, but these bowls are simply too pristine to eat off of...

animals and french lessons=good clean fun

of remembering

I attempted to recreate a moment from my childhood in a symbolic effort to remember the moment better. An old photograph was broken down into 862 pixels, and I then set forth to recreate the image, pixel by pixel, in three sections, using only my memory of the original photograph as a guide. The inaccuracies of the final outcome are a reminder that time forever marches on, clocks continue to tick, and those carefree days of my childhood will continue to overlap and distort, until the day when they all blow away...I cannot dwell in my past, yet the dwelling seems important now as my days get older and darker, for these memories serve as souvenirs of what was once happy and carefree. 

After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the artist William Utermohlen attempted to understand the losing of his mind through a series of self portraits. "The paintings starkly reveal the artist's descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened, and details melted away." Read and see the series here. 

secret passageways

Sometimes when the masses overwhelm I pretend that urban passageways lead to pastures I have yet to tread. I close my eyes and absorb it all, grateful to be, yet wishing for something I cannot yet foresee.  

this is just to say

"...And then there are the passengers. Though the trains are always moving (while I photograph) I feel inextricably linked to the individuals inside. Each individual is alone but with me, connected, if only for an instant. Yet in this moment and in the sum of all these moments there is a seed of something larger and impossibly tangible. This is just to say: 'we.'"

-Ethan Levitas, Untitled/This is Just To Say

Eminent Domain, an exhibit currently on display at the breathtaking New York Public Library features the work of five New York-based photographers examining the fragility &  flux of New York's public spaces. Ethan Levitas' This is Just to Say series is titled after an imagist poem by William Carlos Williams. Aaah, art inspired by words. 

in the realms of the unreal

"Great art should baffle, but how often doesn that truly happen? When images bewilder and quiet, they resonate forever." -Robyn O'Neil

The American Folk Art Museum holds the largest collection of work by Henry Darger, and a recent exhibit examines his influence on contemporary artists, including Robyn O'Neil (see above please). After seeing Darger's work, it seemed so fitting to have seen the little girl below just moments before. Darger posessed the naiveté and sheer infatuation with making art that so many adults lose as we become too self-aware. I suddenly want some sidewalk chalk so I can hopscotch to infinity, and a good set of swings, so I can swing so high, I touch the sky.

studio in a school

I had the recent pleasure of stumbling upon the Studio in a School Gallery on my way to the American Folk Art Museum. Studio in a School is a wonderful program that works to "foster the creative and intellectual development of young people through quality visual arts programs directed by professional artists," and continuously promote and support arts programming for kids in NYC. If only we had such a cohesive and established program in Minneapolis. Little kid drawings=so fresh!

made in scandinavia

In 100 degree city heat, the beads of sweat cling to my chest in a now familiar pattern: a map of the zig-zagged blocks i have walked to reach my destination. Earth, it seems, has shortened the circumference of its orbit, and surely shines but inches away.  My pocketbook cannot spare a $2 subway ride, and so i trek on, ever forward, to...Scandinavia house! The Nordic Center of America! I breathe in that precise air of the Finns and the Nords, the Icelanders, the Danes, and the Swedes, and am chilled by the beauty, the precision, the divinity, the cold mystique of those faraway lands. 

ºººLimbo Lamp for Petur, an installation by Olafur Eliasson, and Manhattan textile pattern by Josef Franckººº

wandering de neighborhood

keith haring, mosaic light poles, joe strummer, mark gonzales! such delightful things i see while wandering about de hood. 

let us remember

Let us stand tall and be thankful for each other, for our connections and disconnections, our similarities and differences. Let us never forget how lucky we are that we can rise each morning with the sun and...breathe. Let us never be too proud to make mistakes, let us never take for granted our drive to create. And let us put these creative minds together and unite in remembrance of those we have lost along the way. 

ºººForgive me, Chris Johanson, for defacing your work, and Thank You and all the Beautiful Losers, for shining lights into tired eyes, and reminding us of the joys of our makingsººº

on those walls

A recent blurb about Keith Haring got me thinking about the functions of public/street art vs. "art art." Is street art meant to be preserved? Or does part of its beauty lie in the fact that is it so reliant on its environment–both a product and a victim of this public space. Buildings decay, taggers tag, posters come up and go down, or get covered by more posters...
I'm looking forward to hunting this down this summer–WACK! A Keith Haring classic.Keith Haring made both a street/public art and "regular" arty art, but always tried to make his art accessible to the masses, not simply the bourgeoisie. This is important...What defines street art vs. graffiti? Is there a clear distinction, besides terms of legality? The lines between "street art/graffiti" and high art have also become blurred, and street art styles are stripped from their original environment. Brad Pitt at a Banksy opening? Suburban kids tagging posters in their garages? Can street art/graffiti art still be relevant when it is entirely lacking in its original environment–that of a public space? 

The beauty of public art, especially graffiti, is it's dependance on its environment–its immediacy, spontaneity, and consequent ephemerality. It gains more meaning throughout time, through its decay and potential defacement by others. Check out super old school Fab 5 Freddy...rediscovered! Also, read more about this topic. The battles between street artists wage on, the criticism from high artists continues. This continuous dialogue is important...
One thing, however, remains clear: The facade of 40 Bond Street, a new luxury townhouse building in Manhattan is derive from graffiti forms. The building, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron is beautiful, but it is also incredibly disjointed. I'm guessing the residents of the luxury condominiums would be rather displeased if actual street artists put up tags and posters all over the front of their bright shiny new building. 40 Bond baffles me.