Sunday 28 February 2010

Theo Van Doesberg

Theo van Doesburg (1883 - 1931) was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.

De Stijl, also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and color; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white.




Friday 19 February 2010

I delve into my passion today



I love what I do for a living. Joseph Campbell once said, “Follow your bliss.” My bliss was placed in my heart before I was born. I can only create a masterpiece if I am passionate about the process. If the path I take to earn money is boring and plodding I cannot possibly create a work of genius.

“Heart” is what separates the good from the great. I study my passion. I take classes. I learn from masters. I immerse myself in my love. Then take what I have learned in order to create my own unique work of art.

I delve into my passion today.


I love what I do for a living



I love what I do for a living. Joseph Campbell once said, “Follow your bliss.” My bliss was placed in my heart before I was born. I can only create a masterpiece if I am passionate about the process. If the path I take to earn money is boring and plodding I cannot possibly create a work of genius.


“Heart” is what separates the good from the great. I study my passion. I take classes. I learn from masters. I immerse myself in my love. Then take what I have learned in order to create my own unique work of art.


I delve into my passion today.


Tuesday 16 February 2010


"Thirty seconds well used is a lifetime."

Acting


http://www.foreverbecoming.com/2010/02/tough-act-to-follow.html#comment-form


''We are all, in a sense, acting. In fact, we could say that it is our ability to act, amongst other things, that makes us human. Animals generally cannot, or do not, act. A shark will not decide to 'better itself' by becoming a vegetarian, nor will a gazelle decide to 'be a man' and stand up for itself the next time a lion comes calling. The idea that we can be
something other appears to be a distinctly human one, an upshot of our ability to imagine. In imagining we are able to think of alternate ways of being, ways that may often seem to contradict the image that our 'natural impulses' would hold us to. We imagine that we can be 'better', and in being better we must act. But this act needn't seem false. It is put on, and necessarily so: through putting it on we are able to craft ourselves, remould our basic image into the shape we want it to be. It is in this way that we become 'human'.''

Sunday 14 February 2010

Trust Yourself

''He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.''
Raymond Hull

Thursday 11 February 2010

sacred geometry etc etc

http://www.soulsofdistortion.nl/links.html

Wednesday 10 February 2010

Marge Piercy - Barbie Doll

This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.

She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.

In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.

Reading list.

Website for negative body image self: http://www.btinternet.com/~Negativecharisma/bodies/bodlist.htm

Books:

Body Work: Beauty and Self-Image in American Culture (Paperback)

by DL Glimlin


The beauty myth: http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Myth-Images-Against-Women/dp/0060512180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265820597&sr=1-1

Survival of the prettiest: http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Prettiest-Science-Nancy-Etcoff/dp/0385479425/ref=pd_sim_b_1

The presentation of the self in everday society: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385094027/?tag=adaptiveblue-20

Adios, Barbie [Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity] [Live Girls] (Paperback)

Lynda Schlosberg

Matrix IIIMatrix 4Matrix 6Matrix III

Quotes related to the self


"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." -Carl Jung


Today is it. Are you living your life? With passion, conviction, and pure joy? What about love? Do you seek it out? Do you believe and soak it in? Take the time now to breathe and wonder and feel and RETHINK your life. Your dreams. YOU.

"It was my journey inwards- the process of learning to listen to and trust myself- that electrified and transformed my outer journey, helping me conceive and achieve things beyond my wildest dreams." -Kelly Cutrone



Excelsior

ex·cel·sior (ek selsē ôr′, ik-; for n., -ər)

adjective, interjection

higher; always upward: used as a motto (as on the New York State seal)

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Peter Ragnar/Second Life relevance

"Galloping Imagination"
by Peter Ragnar

We always get exactly what we want in life. Yes! Even in spite of being unaware of our dominant desires and most dreaded fears. What do you think about most of the time? Whatever it is that occupies your mind, one prevailing thought, idea, hope, or fear forms your expectations. Your expectations form your attitude, which expresses your foremost desires. Thoughts create attitudes, which are bundles of compressed feelings. Feelings or emotions form a matrix of vibrations.


It is simply the rate of vibrations that makes up any of more than 100 fundamental substances that, in combination or alone, constitute all matter.

The atomic weight or vibration is the only difference between a chunk of lead and a piece of gold. Your personal and foremost vision, your mental pictures which you color with your emotion, creates the matrix, that something within you from which all things in your life originate. You will always receive the exact equivalent of the vibrational pattern you've created and sent out into the ethers of atomic structure.
"Imagination, vividly colored with emotion, creates your reality."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery stated, "A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." Or conversely, according to poet Hannah More, "Imagination frames events unknown, in wild, fantastic shapes of hideous ruin, and what it fears, creates." Yes! And what it fears, creates - even if it be a secret fear.
"Your imagination is the mirror in which you see yourself as you choose to be."
It is here in this reflection that you see romance, health, and vigor, your perfect location and abode, the car you drive, the jewels you wear, the treasures in your vault and the happiness you feel as a result of such accomplishment - an accomplishment only possible by using the one thing that you have absolute control over - your imagination.

You can lose your health, the love of your life, your riches, and even your reputation, but you cannot ever lose the power to recreate an even better reality - you can never lose your imagination, the brush of creation with which you paint your life. It's the frequency, the intensity, and the duration with which you hold your vision that's the secret to its power. If you feel good contemplating your desire, not at all concerned about how or when it will manifest, but you're like a little child knowing your birthday is fast arriving and your skin is electric - that desire is quickly gathering its atomic structure together. Not a force in the universe can stop, delay, or stall your vision's manifestation.

"I'm a horse lover (at one time owning a very impressive thoroughbred)."
Contemplating a stakes winner coming into my life, I bought Doug Prather's impressive coffee table book, Private Access - Behind the Gates of America's Premier Horse Farms and Ranches. Flipping through its pages, I read about an elite 3,000 acre horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky - it's called Airdrie Stud. Brereton Jones grew up on a dairy farm the next county over from where I had a 100 acre hill farm. Brereton had managed to save enough money to buy a 40 acre farm in Mason County, West Virginia after he got out of school. He began raising thoroughbreds. But his imagination was taking him to the bluegrass country of Kentucky. It's the mecca of the finest and most expensive horses in the entire world.

Amazingly, in 1972 he and his wife, Libby, were starting from scratch by building a four-stall stallion barn. Soon, adding acre to acre, the small enterprise became 3,000 acres, with 65 full time employees and 200 broodmares with high stakes winners bringing in untold millions as world champions. As a side note, this West Virginia farm boy who saw himself in his vivid imagination raising race horses in Kentucky also became the state's governor from 1991 to 1995. That's what I call "galloping imagination."

"Another of my favorite farms is Winstar, also a premier bluegrass estate."
Talk about a galloping imagination: here we have a couple of friends who met in Nebraska 30-some years ago, Kenny Troutt and Bill Casner. Let me tell you about Bill: growing up in El Paso, Texas, he dreamed about horses. Horses were continually galloping in his imagination. So much so, that he'd do anything just to be around them. During his summer breaks from school at Tarleton State University in Chicago, he lived in a tack room. He worked odd jobs around the track as a security guard, grandstand cleaner, and parking lot attendant, then got a sales job with Snap-on Tools. He and Kenny became very astute businessmen and, selling their other ventures, bought 450 acres in the Bluegrass. Today, Winstar sprawls over 1,500 acres with ten barns. That's what I call "galloping imagination!"
"Troutt and Casner bought among other top thoroughbreds, a mare, Belle's Good Cide."
She had been sent to New York to be foaled. The chestnut colt was then bought by five high school friends from Long Island - five friends who couldn't shake off the picture in their imagination of owning a winning race horse. That horse, Funny Cide, who I'd bet thousands upon, just happened to be the 2003 winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes! Galloping imagination?

100 people sat in my living room as I recounted this story of the power of an unrelenting imagination. I said, "I just really love Funny Cide." A woman named Carol raised her hand. "Peter, that's funny - I've just been hired to work with Funny Cide at Saratoga!!!" Go figure! That's galloping imagination winning by more than a nose. And wait until you hear the rest of the story.

That's the view from the mountain today.

Love and Success!

Sunday 7 February 2010

Follow your bliss



http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/319480653_d070467fdb.jpg


Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.


-- Joseph Campbell

Questions? Questions? Question?



Where am I now?

Where do i desire to be?

How am I going to ge there?

Chapman Brothers

Combining craftmanship and traditional skills with contemporary twist.

Questioning culture, making you think.





"The job of a work of art is to raise questions about its terms and conditions," said Jake Chapman in an interview with Time Out London. "That’s what we do. We present the viewer with a puzzle. We put an injunction on speedy consumption, by refusing to offer a straightforward aesthetic experience. And to defend the integrity of the work, we produce a bit of turbulence that makes it more than a simple sip – of art." "By the time we die we will have done everything – flower arranging, pottery, origami… We have no signature style; the work is recognizable for its attitude, not its form."







Alexander Stoddart

http://www.alexanderstoddart.com/portrait.html





The Daughter of DymasDiarmid O'DynaSt Rita of Cascia

Traditional classical sculptures, holding objects that are normal and expected by people.

Take these traditional sculptures but have them commenting on contemporary culture, poses in magazines.

Iza Genzkens 'Ground Zero'


Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth gallery in London is a series of sculptures by German artist Isa Genzken that are also architectural proposals for Ground Zero in New York. Leave any expectations that this notion may give you at the door, however, for Genzken's sculptures are far removed from formal architectural models and instead are wild, glitzy forms incorporating materials ranging from everyday household items to flowers.

Despite their chaotic style, Genzken in fact worked with a specialist team of engineers to ensure each model can be realised to the approximate scale of the World Trade Center Towers, and she has also considered their purpose, proposing that the buildings be predominantly social, which goes against the official designs for the site. In this exhibition are sculptures of a church, a hospital, a car park, a disco, a shopping centre, and a memorial tower. Ground Zero in Genzken's hands would be turned into an exciting, dayglo wonderland.



http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2008/05/igone.jpghttp://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2008/05/igfive.jpgigtwo.jpgigfour.jpgigsix.jpgigthree.jpg

Isa Genzken

For more than thirty years, Isa Genzken has been developing a versatile oeuvre, continually extending it by adding new aspects. Her settings, her unusual combinations of materials, and the fragile but monumental character of her constructions reflect the surrounding world and the fragility of human existence.

Her work—which includes sculptures and installations as well as photography, collage, and film—explores the space between public claims and private artistic autonomy, thus defining an interface where the personal and the universal meet. The formal and conceptual rigor at the root of Isa Genzken’s approach is tempered by unrestricted freedom, producing works that can be interpreted and experienced on very different levels

A central role is played by the choice and combination of materials with different connotations which the artist finds at home depots, builders’ suppliers, and department stores: whereas in the past Genzken used wood, plaster, epoxy resins, and above all concrete, the material of Modernism, her main materials today are plastic, synthetics, and a wide range of mirrors, as well as everyday items and consumer goods such as chairs—design classics alongside cheap camping chairs—garments, and plastic dolls and animals.


In an interview with Wolfgang Tillmans, Isa Genzken describes the way she thinks a sculpture should look: “It must have a certain relation to reality. I mean, not airy-fairy, let alone fabricated, so aloof and polite. [...] Rather, a sculpture is really a photo – although it can be shifted, it must still always have an aspect that reality has too.” (in: Camera Austria, 81/2003, p. 7.-18)







Thursday 4 February 2010

Cathy Wilkes




Cathy Wilkes, who lives in Glasgow, has created an installation featuring the mannequin on the loo.

The woman has horseshoes and pieces of wood tied around her face and is seated next to one of two supermarket check-outs.

Dirty jam jars, used breakfast bowls, and a mannequin with her face trapped in a bird's cage are also on display.

The Tate said the objects had been "very delicately and precisely placed within the space so that we might look with fresh eyes at things we pass by every day."