Check out these two posts in my Facebook feed. Sometimes my social streams present me with the most lovely juxtapositions, or, as they might say in the radio business, “adjacencies.” The images at top are from my cousin Bobby, who lives in Williston, North Dakota and captured an oncoming storms with her camera. The single image below is a painting of a storm front from Sharon Kingston, who is based out of Seattle, if I remember correctly. They are so similar in color and angle, but have some subtle differences that distinguish themselves. So very cool.
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Check out these two posts in my Facebook feed. Sometimes my social streams present me with the most lovely juxtapositions, or, as they might say in the radio business, “adjacencies.” The images at top are from my cousin Bobby, who lives in Williston, North Dakota and captured an oncoming storms with her camera. The single image below is a painting of a storm front from Sharon Kingston, who is based out of Seattle, if I remember correctly. They are so similar in color and angle, but have some subtle differences that distinguish themselves. So very cool.

Photos of Contrasting Similarities

A recent light-hearted post for the Being Blog:

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Contrasting Similarities

Sometimes the most striking sequences present themselves in the most unexpected places, non? Two of my favorite Tumblrs — Been Thinking and Destin a Terre — posted these photos within seconds of each other and showed up on our Being Blog dashboard exactly in this order.

The scenes couldn’t be more different in temperature and climate and condition, but the mood and the tone make them long-time companions who stopped by the local pub for an ale. They’re both clean, minimalist without being bleak and sterile. And both scenes are just so beautiful.

By the way, the second photo comes from Esther Hernandez, who is an artist located in the Canary Islands of Spain. Definitely check out her portfolio on her website and her latest work on Flickr.

Source: beingblog

One Hundred Million Seeds of Porcelain Contemplation

Ai Weiwei holds hand-painted, porcelain sunflower seeds from his installation at the Tate Modern in London. Ai Weiwei holds porcelain seeds from his Unilever installation titled “Sunflower Seeds.” (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) 

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s latest installation at the Tate Modern is an incredible feat: one hundred million hand-painted pieces of porcelain that resemble the shells of sunflower seeds. One finds oneself moved to understand its meaning, to grasp its scale, to contemplate the immense amount of energy and ability of so many artisans to produce something this massive — and oh-so delicate — all so that can be walked on, laid on, picked up, thrown, raked, or what have you in the midst of the minimal gray landscape of Turbine Hall.

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A close-up view of some of the porcelain husks used in “Sunflower Seeds.” (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Nothing appears to be what it seems. And, for Weiwei, the meaning goes much deeper: “From a very young age I started to sense that an individual has to set an example in society. Your own acts and behavior tell the world who you are and at the same time what kind of society you think it should be.”

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A girl and her mother sit and toss some of the 100 million porcelain seeds in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Where Anton Gormley’s massive humanoid sculptures somehow aid your eye on focusing on the environment in which they’re set, nature strangely becomes the focus. Here, I can only imagine, these objets d’art, these precious works of individual hands, become the focal point as you crush them beneath your heels. The sonorous echoes of this footfall is a social and political act in itself — probably one each observer doesn’t fully appreciate until you walk out to the River Thames and trample silently on concrete and manicured turf.

The Guardian has put together this insightful short video of Ai Weiwei discussing the humanity that drives his social and political stances on his art, the creative thinking coming out of China, and the way way technology enabled him to amplify his voice and “to speak for generations who don’t have a chance to speak out”:

Source: beingblog

My post on SOF Observed:

A World through the Hands

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

“Our destiny is written in the hand.”
—Renate Hiller, co-director of the Fiber Craft Studio at the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, New York

Practicing mindfulness. Paying attention. Listening generously.

For Renate Hiller, the fiber artist whom you see in the film above, these majestic phrases apply in all their richness. Her German lilt of the tongue reaffirms this exquisite eloquence as she connects the importance of using our hands with the way in which we understand and find value in ourselves and in others. There’s something so honest and pure about her thought — that we gain a deeper, more meaningful relationship with our own humanity and our greater world by using our hands.

Using our hands grounds us — in work and in relationship. As we create something, hopefully beautiful, with our hands, we are transforming our moral and social senses. We evolve; we change. We notice things that we passed over the day before: the curve in a sidewalk to make way for a tree in the boulevard, the purl of a scarf, the transition of a capital that greets the ceiling. We observe the mundane and see it anew. The process of creating through the hands becomes a spiritual practice.

Ms. Heller strings together so many “threads” that help me think about raising children; about living a fuller, more physically experiential work life (yes, even about writing marginalia in a script rather than using the track changes option in Word); about hearing differently the many stories from folks who write in to the program, especially the passionate accounts of people and their gardens.

She also reminds me of something Joanna Macy told Krista in a recent interview (show to be released on September 16th):

“I’m looking at my hand right now as we talk. It’s got a lot of wrinkles ‘cause I’m 81 years old. But it’s linked to hands like this back through the ages. This hand was shaped by when it was a fin in the mother seas, where life was born. This hand is directly linked to hands that learned to reach and grasp and climb and push up on dry land and weave reeds into baskets. It has a fantastic history. Every particle and every atom in this hand goes back to the first — what Thomas Berry calls ‘the primal flaring forth,’ the beginning of space-time. We’re part of that story.”

And, for those who are unable to watch the video, here’s a transcript:

Renate HillerRenate Hiller
“On Handwork”
 
I’m spinning wool with a stone spindle. This tool has been used probably for more than 30,000 years. And when we twist fibers into yarn we are actually creating a spiral. And the spiral is a cosmic gesture of creation.

When we look at our galaxy from outer space it is a spiral. And we find spirals in many, many places — in the plant world — on the back of our head we have a spiral. So, this is an activity that brings us closer to the cosmos, you could say. But at the same time we create something that is useful and beautiful because with the yarn that we have spun we can create sweaters, hats and mittens and scarves and so on.
 
To have the skill of knitting, to have the skill of crocheting, of felting, makes it possible for us not only to make something but it makes us skilled in general. The use of the hands is vital for the human being, for having flexibility, dexterity. In a way the entire human being is in the in the hands. Our destiny is written in the hand. And what do we do in our modern world with our hands? You know we move the mouse, we drive and so on. We feel plastic most of the time. The hands are relegated to very little that’s actually bringing dexterity to our times. So we have come ever more estranged from nature and from also what other human beings are doing. The whole social element comes into play as well because if I make something then I think ‘Hmmm, how was that yarn made?’

In the past there were all the professions of the shoemaker and the tailor and so on, and that’s also being lost. If you do practical work somewhere on the school grounds, there is practical work going on. The children will all go to that. They’re really drawn to that. They want to experience it and however the reality is that there’s less and less of that. In the home, you know you can use already bought vegetables, all chopped up and ready to eat. There is very little activity like kneading the bread, and you know children grasp first an item and then they grasp with their mind. So if they have very little to grasp other than plastic readymade toys then what their mind grasps is very little. The toy automatically moves and you know children can only be kind of astonished by that.

So though there is this loss of understanding the value of things, of the meaning of things, and in handwork, in transforming nature we also make something truly unique that we have made with our hands, stitch by stitch, that maybe we have chosen the yarn, we have even spun the yarn — even better, and that we have designed. And when I do that, I feel whole. I feel I am experiencing my inner core because it’s a meditative process. You have to find your way; you have to listen with your whole being. And that is the schooling that we all need today. Because we’re so egocentric and this makes us think of what is needed by something else. So we are in a way practicing empathy — empathy with the material, empathy with the design. I think this practicing of empathy that we do in the fiber crafts is paramount for being healing to our world. And it’s a service for the divine that we are surrounded by.

(A special thanks to Dorit of the Gerðandisgleðir blog for making connections.)

Source: beingblog

Digging the clarity of these Stephen King posters. Geekiz Magazine
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Digging the clarity of these Stephen King posters. Geekiz Magazine

Source: geekiz.com

As I think about ways to illustrate a narrative for our program on Sitting Bull, artists like Pootoogook reorient my imagination and give me a new approach to work with. Cotter’s piece helps me.

Worth Its Weight in Appreciation OK, first of all, why haven’t I happened upon The Nonist before. It’s an absolute gem, replete with hidden treasures and a clever — but not too self-aware — writing style. I’ve got some learnin’ to do. And, I must admit, there’s a large part of me that wants to covet this blog like a fine Ghemme nesting in some snoozy little nook of the basement. Then again, I’ve arrived at a few parties anticipating intimate affairs and couldn’t find a place to park. But, since you are a tiny audience, I vouchsafe this secret pearl to you as it was shared with me. Now, on to the meat of the blog: postcards, of the Japanese vintage from the early 20th century. Initially, I plodded down the immediate path of trying to intellectualize the series — figuring out what type of statement they were making since the journalist Miyatake Gaikotsu was behind them. I missed the point, if not the historical period and place. So, I retraced my optical steps. I hadn’t read most of the text first and then gone searching; I scrolled the page and scanned the images. I looked at them for their graceful lines and depth of color palette. Most were pleasing to the eye; others were down-right bold, but always ebullient even in their quietude. Of the entire series, I chose the postcard above for matters of reconciliation with the needs of my right and left hemispheres. The hands have a slight touch. The artist allows me to peek at the sleeve. And that nail clipper haunts me. To be sure, a loved one (?) trimming an extraordinarily long nail is a harmless thing. But why lock the pinkie so low, at the first joint? My experience tells me that those clippers are taking more than a chunk of dead excretion — just enough meat to institute pain and not call attention to the dastardly deed.
View Separately

Worth Its Weight in Appreciation

OK, first of all, why haven’t I happened upon The Nonist before. It’s an absolute gem, replete with hidden treasures and a clever — but not too self-aware — writing style. I’ve got some learnin’ to do.

And, I must admit, there’s a large part of me that wants to covet this blog like a fine Ghemme nesting in some snoozy little nook of the basement. Then again, I’ve arrived at a few parties anticipating intimate affairs and couldn’t find a place to park. But, since you are a tiny audience, I vouchsafe this secret pearl to you as it was shared with me.

Now, on to the meat of the blog: postcards, of the Japanese vintage from the early 20th century. Initially, I plodded down the immediate path of trying to intellectualize the series — figuring out what type of statement they were making since the journalist Miyatake Gaikotsu was behind them.

I missed the point, if not the historical period and place. So, I retraced my optical steps. I hadn’t read most of the text first and then gone searching; I scrolled the page and scanned the images. I looked at them for their graceful lines and depth of color palette. Most were pleasing to the eye; others were down-right bold, but always ebullient even in their quietude.

Of the entire series, I chose the postcard above for matters of reconciliation with the needs of my right and left hemispheres. The hands have a slight touch. The artist allows me to peek at the sleeve. And that nail clipper haunts me. To be sure, a loved one (?) trimming an extraordinarily long nail is a harmless thing. But why lock the pinkie so low, at the first joint? My experience tells me that those clippers are taking more than a chunk of dead excretion — just enough meat to institute pain and not call attention to the dastardly deed.