It’s happened again, time to clean out my bookmarks.
Laurie Frick. Absolutely wonderful. She records and tracks data about herself, and then she uses that data to make incredible artwork.
I had bookmarked an image, but apparently, she has a blog as well. I haven’t explored it, but I intend to. It looks interesting.
Jill Gallenstein. Symmetry, pattern, beauty.
The Oregon Potter's Association show & sale in April is such a big show that I was glad I went with friends who were teachers. We went systematically down every row and looked at every booth. Much better than my version of going where things catch my eye.
Either way, I end up completely visually exhausted when I am done.
Here are my favorites from the show in no particular order.
(Loose Weave series, Our Town Potters)
Our Town Pottery. Love the dots. Love that they are dimensional. Love the colors.
Heads + heads + heads, Kim Murton)
Kim Murton had a wall of heads like this at the show. How can you help but smile? Her sculptures are fun too.
Tony Orrico, the human spirograph. How incredibly cool! (via swiss miss)
Absolutely stunning. There are not enough exclamation points in the universe to show how much I love these paintings by Sohan Quadri. The most beautiful things I have seen in ages. They speak directly to my soul. Via reckon which is always full of interesting stuff
Photographs of Ottoman architecture at but does it float.
Clouds. It dawned on me one showery day that there was better cloud watching than star gazing here in soggy Portland. Clouds are beautiful and ever changing.No matter what great idea I come up with, somebody has always thought of it before me, and, they usually do it better! The Cloud Appreciation Society, fighting the banality of "blue sky thinking". I think I am going to join.
Ooooh ooooh oooh…. The transparent quilts of Jill Ault. My friend Lauren told me about these. I think I must make some myself.
Blaise DeLong. Scrumptious colors!
Tile from Westminster Abbey
I haven’t done a linky post in awhile, but it is past time to clean out those bookmarks. Hopefully, this will distract you from realizing that I didn’t post a doodle for this week. Believe it or not, I didn’t make a single doodle last week, so there was nothing to pick from.
Never fear, The Doodle of the Week will return.
I love these Medieval tiles from The Textile Blog. I compulsively read a couple of very long and not so good books about cathedral building by Ken Folliet, and am googling all sorts of things Gothic and Medieval.
Illustrations from the Aberdeen Bestiary are amazing. A bestiary is a book of animals and allegory. I find them fascinating in general, and especially love that often the illustrators draw animals they have never seen. This is a Leukrokota, a beast which can call to men in a human voice. According to this, it was probably inspired by a description of hyena.
This is a good place to learn more about bestiaries.
Look, Ma,I can time travel! Jumping ahead several centuries...
The bookmark list is out of control again. We all know what that means, time for links!
This page of cancellation marks is from the amassblog. There are a whole bunch of interesting things to poke through on this fun site.
How can you not love somebody who belongs to the Ephemera Society? How can you not love it that there IS an Ephemera Society?
Follow me for more...
While flipping through their other products, I found this picture which reminds me of Théâtre de la Mode. The Théâtre de la Mode is one of my favorite things ever. It is housed at the wonderfully strange Maryhill Museum in Goldendale, Washington. They even have their own Stonehenge.
Along the same line, from Coilhouse, strange and mysterious costumes from a 1908 production called Blue Bird.
From the Textile Blog, we have wonderful abstract patterns from 1900 by Rene Beauclair. You can see more of this work in this Flickr photostream.
A crafty thing that caught my eye. I don’t usually make things that have directions, but I may actually have to learn to fold these shells, the lady in the video makes it look so easy.
Sculptor Tara Donavan. Beautiful white on white works, meditations on infinity.This image is called Haze and is made of clear plastic drinking straws.
Ross Racine’s digital drawings of imaginary subdivisions. Simultaneously snarky and beautiful. I love the aerial viewpoint and the geometry imposed by the subject matter. (via bad banana blog)
Some resources for tapa cloth. I love the bold geometric designs.This site has a nifty little video too.
Look at these! I have no idea how or where I came upon these scary surgical instruments, but they are interesting as objects. I wonder what I was thinking when I bookmarked them. But, since it is October, they are just right for Halloween.
Alright! I am actually getting to Part 2 when I said I would. Allow me a moment to be impressed with myself.
The next stop was the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Because of the embroidery component to my Books & Needles project, I wanted to see the Darrel Morris embroideries. The mere fact that he is male and working within a traditionally female
medium makes this work notable, but they are better than that and
beyond that.
Darrel Morris grew up in Kentucky and learned crafts from his grandmother while listening to her tell stories. His embroideries reflect both the crafting and storytelling traditions without being overtly traditional themselves.
The embroideries on display are large works, 6 feet or larger. They read like line drawings. There is a kind of jumbled energy to Morris' work. Figures trample all over one another. The intricately stitched line wiggles and vibrates. The works manage to be funny and scary at the same time.
That is what I went to see, but it was walking into Mandy Greer's world that made my jaw drop when I saw it. That is not a typo. An installation commissioned by the Bellevue Arts Museum, Greer's “Dare alla luce” is a stroll through another dimension. I can't recall another installation that affected me so profoundly. I wanted to climb into it and stay there.
Quintana Gallery specializes in indigenous art, old and new. At some point in the intervening years, they have moved from Old Town into the Pearl. I wonder why I had not visited Quintana in years.
My folks collected Inuit soapstone carvings, so I grew up with it. I have a couple of pieces, one badly damaged, and one small carving, that had been theirs in my home. They are not spectacular pieces, but they mean a lot to me anyway.
I have seen enough of this kind of work to know that the gallery had some really exceptional carvings. My favorite was this incredible walrus by Mathew Saviajuk. This piece is so alive, so full of walrusness. It is easy to forget he is carved in stone, he seems so blubbery. And amazing to imagine that this subtle carving was done with an axe.
I also enjoyed the spirit masks with their concentric circles representing different aspects of the soul, a physical manifestation of unseen worlds. They honor all who make life possible in the Artic, the ancestors and the animals. This is Loon Spirit Mask byJohn Nasoalook Tetpon. It was not one of the pieces that we saw, but it is similar.
The traditional art of the Pacific Northwest has rarely appealed to me in the past, the abstraction used to strike me as too blunt for my taste. But, after so many years here, I have changed my tune. The salmon, bear, whale and thunderbird images that I used to find ugly, must have worked their way into my blood.
It has been awhile since I have posted anything but doodles. So I thought it is time to show you what I have been looking at on the web so I can clean out my bookmarks.
Click through the galleries of the From Atoms to Patterns exhibition. In 1951, scientists and manufacturers collaborated to produce patterns based on x-ray crystallography. The patterns were translated into textiles and surface decorations for a variety of products. It pretty much sums up the 50’s aesthetic for me.
I am in love with Decopix! If it is Deco, they’ve got it here. This is a rather sad photo of an abandoned gas station, but I love the Mobile Pegasus. Ah, nostalgia.
The Textile Blog. How cool is that? I ran across it while researching the Atelier Martine.
Paul Poiret , the fashion designer, founded the Atelier Martine when he branched out into textiles, wallpapers and carpets. He didn’t hire designers, he hired teenage girls with no art training. He figured that would be the best way to achieve that Folk Art feel. Rather ingenious of him, and the designs are charming. Love and Thrift has a nice piece about it too.
Ben Butler is amazing. His work made me gasp. Do yourself a big favor and look at his work.
The galleries at sytes.org are a wonderful resource. Somehow they are easier for me to look at than flickr. Look at this collection of spiral images.
Or, things I have been looking at (and not looking at).
Everybody makes list posts, but me. If you can’t beat ‘em. Join ‘em! Each of these things to be a post all by itself, but I spent my time having fun this summer. So rather than moan about the posts that were never written, because I am unrepentant, here is a list of wonderful things.
1. Manufractured exhibit at Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Just amazing (and a wonderful overview available on the site). Laura Splan, whose work I adore, was the big draw for me. I was thrilled to see her work in person. I loved works by Cat Chow and Devorah Sperber who both work with zippers, spools of thread and other sewing notions, but to completely different ends. The knock out piece of the entire incredible exhibit was by Livia Marin, Ficciones de un uso, 2,214 lipsticks. You read that right: 2,214 lipsticks.
2. Clifford Rainey Retrospective at Bullseye Gallery. A master at his craft, and glass like I have never seen it before. Check out the slideshow from the exhibit.
3. John Dempcy at Augen Gallery. I saw a piece of his in the spring and said I would keep my eye out for
his work. How lovely of Augen to host a show in July. Mercury is my favorite piece from this group.
4. Tracy Kendall Wallpaper. Not only beautiful images, but a fun website with music too. What’s not to like? I especially like the Bespoke Stripe display.
5. Paper dresses. Yep, I can never get enough of these. For some reason I find fashion as art more interesting than actual clothes. My husband or daughter have to force me to shop! Lia Griffith (a Portland gal) makes some of the most beautiful paper gowns ever. Check out these beauties
.
6. Can you believe these beautiful objects by Kathleen Dustin are actually purses? I would have to find something more far precious and worthy to carry than my wallet, keys, pens, loose change and gum wrappers that’s for sure.
7. Cutting Edge Patterns and Textures by Estel Vilaseca. A book with so much eye candy that it is practically hypnotic.
8. Tribal and Village Rugs: The Definitive Guide to Design, Pattern and Motif by Peter F Stone. The title says it all. Fabulous book!
You might also be surprised at something I have not been looking at: Altered Books.
I am well aware that there are people out there doing amazing things with books. I am just not looking for them, because the idea to do them came to me in a dream. In the dream I was all alone and sitting in total silence folding pages, I think that both the silence and the isolation are a part of what I am doing, so I have to honor it.
Thus, no peeking at anyone else’s altered books. Please, please, stop sending me links (but thank you for thinking about it!). I can't open them. Art can be a harsh mistress.
(Images of Ficciones de un uso by Livia Marin, and Mercury by John Dempcy are from the Museum of Contemporary Crafts and Augen Gallery websites.)