Why Don't You

"That’s the fundamental thing about making art, or making religion
 or making anything that’s asking people about believing in a way,
 I suppose, that isn’t based in a pure practicality or functionality.
 But then, that does something too—it increases our human experience."

My interview with Eva Rothschild, here.

Charlotte Billingham

here

Rob Fornell

here

Eben Goff

Coast / Pole took place during two trips to the North Olympic Coast of Washington State in 2002 & 2003. Driftwood poles were collected on site. As soon as the morning's high tide began to recede the logs were set one at a time vertically into the sand or rocks at even spacings along the water line. The number of poles used in the configurations varied from around 30 up to 100 poles. All constructions washed away under the following high tide. 

here 

Also, flood cubes.

studiopepe

here

 

(Thanks, Tammy!)

Wade Guyton

On Fire.

And then some.

 

My fire collection, here.

And, also, the Hirshorn's set of Yves Klein fire paintings.

twain

Claude Cahun. Self-Portrait, c. 1927. Collection Soizic Audouard.

We in the (amazing) art collective that I am part of, The Art Foundation, are launching our second curated show at the end of the month, called twain. It's about the alter ego and its important role in laying new artistic ground in the face of societal and market norms. We've got a pack of amazing artists putting work in the show, but we're not telling who they are. (But I will tell you this.)

Read more about the show here, and follow our alter ego catch-all here.

Directive

Robert Frost

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Chris Powell

The Puckish and prolific Chris Powell -- graduate school mentor and Nature-translator. 

here

 

(All photos by Mr. Bradly Brown.)

Annette Kelm

here

The Eva Hesse Archives

 

here

Robert Kinmont

 

The quintessence of things.

 

Just About the Right Size

1970/2008

9 silver gelatin prints

 

here and (wonderfully) here

 

(Thank you, Terri.)

(more) Ann Pibal

here

field notes from Gotham

A re-cap of what I saw in NY galleries last month.

Nobuo Sekine

Reveling in my spiritual art ancestors, the Mono-ha Movement. My brief thoughts on Nobuo Sekine's work at the DMA, here. And more on the movement here.

Mishka Henner

When Google introduced its free satellite imagery service to the world in 2005, views of our planet only previously accessible to astronauts and surveyors were suddenly available to anyone with an Internet connection. Yet the vistas revealed by this technology were not universally embraced.

Surprisingly, one of the most vociferous of governments to censor political, economic, and military locations was the Dutch, hiding hundreds of significant sites, including royal palaces, fuel depots, and army barracks throughout their relatively small country. The Dutch method of censorship is notable for its stylistic intervention compared to other countries: imposing bold, multicolored polygons over sites rather than the subtler and more standard techniques employed in other countries. The result is a landscape occasionally punctuated by sharp aesthetic contrasts between secret sites and the rural and urban environments surrounding them. 

-- Mishka Henner, from this wonderful online exhibition, DB12    

Tracey Emin's studio, here. 

My mom handed me this issue of the WSJ Magazine months ago after reading it on the plane. "Here," she said, "there's an artist in here I think you'd like -- Emig, Emin... something or other. Anyway, she's seems very, er, interesting." 

I'm still trying to figure out how my mom finds corollaries between me and Tracey Emin, but ok. I like it.

Marc Digeros

here