Design studio updates and inspiration...
found wire, wool, oil paint, antique millinery ball
bees wax, tissue paper, string, butterfly wing, found objects
bees wax, string, butterfly wings, metal stand, antique metal base and scientific glass
"waiting" muscle shell, 22k gold leaf, illuminated vintage clock body
"waiting" detail
I am not a person who labels myself or subscribes to one school of thought or another. I like to think of myself as an individual who is constantly evolving, gathering information and growing as I learn. I have what seems to me, a very simple approach to my life: When the truth is clear, it’s clear and then you know, what ever that may be. Last year I picked up a copy of “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer (a book that saved me during my teens). As I re-read this brilliant text, I began to remember how confusing religion was to me as a child and an adolescent. I remembered how “un-clear” it all was to me and what stress it caused. I have relatives and friends whose intense religious beliefs I truly respect. I count on our open discussions to understand more deeply their points of view in order to constantly broaden my own. I am currently working on a series of portraits and mixed media with this theme. Following are a few of the new works.
Hand-cut cardboard puppets I used to begin sizing up my subjects.
"John" " Acrylic on glass with canvas background framed in a wood shadow box. (13 x 27 x 4.5)
"Paul" Acrylic on glass with canvas background and seed pod collage framed in a wood shadow box. (12x 12 x 4.5)
"Reinhold" Acrylic on glass with canvas background and string/match stick collage framed in a wood shadow box. (12 x 12 x 4.5)
"William" Acrylic on glass with canvas background and wire/string collage framed in a wood shadow box. (27 x 13 x 4.5)
One of many prints on rice paper using a hand carved rubber stamp and white ink. (9 x 11.5)
These images were pulled from my coveted and random magazine collection. hini&m “living locally, thinking globally” is a beautiful (and hard to find) Japanese magazine that contains thoughtfully curated stories on artists, fashion designers, product designers, poets, architects and other very cool creatives. This magazine is definitely worth collecting if you can get your hot little hands on one…
Deconstructing Leslie
Beeswax, string and white ink on found metal screen.
On a recent trip to New Orleans I visited 2 unique museums along with other fabulous and spooky spots. The first was the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum. What a strange and wonderful place….
library of herbs
Um, yea..women were pretty much drugged from puberty
Oh and, yes, folks, it's cocaine for your kids!
Lovely leeches...
Something stuck in your throat?..yikes!
So now that we’re all glad to be alive in this century….The next museum of interest was the Audubon Insectarium. This place has more bugs than any person, however interested, needs to see (my personal opinion). I did love the beautiful displays and the butterfly encounter. The “insect cooking demonstration and tastings” I leave to braver souls than I.
bees
bee display
beetle display
Um, yea, beetle wing necklace...
butterfly coocoon
live butterflies
Onward…You can’t go to New Orleans without a cemetery visit and a walk down Magazine Street. First we visited St. Roch Cemeteries. They are beautiful cemeteries located near the upper 9th ward. Here’s some text from their site:
“At the height of the yellow fever epidemic of 1867, a German priest named Rev. Peter Leonard Thevis arrived in New Orleans. Faced with the severity of the yellow fever epidemic, he turned to God invoking the intercession of St. Roch, the patron of good health. He promised that if no one in his parish should die from the fever, he would erect a chapel in honor of the Saint. Amazingly, not one member of Holy Trinity died from yellow fever, either in the epidemic of 1867 or 1878.”
St. Roch Shrine
ceiling
Room next to the shrine adorned with prosthetics from "healed" believers
Magazine street is one of my favorite shopping places. My husband and I filled our house with light fixtures on our last Magazine Street shopping spree. Here’s a few of my favorite finds from our stroll…
antique church banners
religious robes
awesome, antique, un-even bars
great leather chair
I have been asked by some of my friends, family and clients what I am working on currently. In response to these requests, I am going to be posting images with bits and pieces from my studio every week. I am happy to answer questions regarding any of the posted works. Following are some of my recent clock body sculptures. And yes….I will still be posting general inspiration, as always.
Comrade
listen carefully
Tell me what you know and I'll give you what you want
Borrowed From Wikipedia:
Born Marie Louise Fuller in the Chicago suburb of Fullersburg, now Hinsdale, Illinois, Fuller began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later choreographed and performed dances in burlesque (as a skirt dancer), vaudeville, and circus shows. An early free dance practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques. Fuller combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of her own design.
Although Fuller became famous in America through works such as Serpentine Dance (1891), she felt that she was not taken seriously by the public who still thought of her as an actress. Her warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded Fuller to remain in France and continue her work. A regular performer at the Folies Bergère with works such as Fire Dance, Fuller became the embodiment of the Art Nouveau movement. An 1896 film of the Serpentine Dance by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumière gives a hint of what her performance was like. (The unknown dancer in the film is often mistakenly identified as Fuller herself.)
Fuller’s pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artists and scientists, including Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, François-Raoul Larche, Henri-Pierre Roché, Auguste Rodin, Franz von Stuck, Maurice Denis, Thomas Theodor Heine, Koloman Moser, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marie Curie. Fuller held many patents related to stage lighting including chemical compounds for creating color gel and the use of chemical salts for luminescent lighting and garments (stage costumes US Patent 518347). Fuller was also a member of the French Astronomical Society.
Fuller is responsible for the European tours of the early modern dancers (she was the first American modern dancer to perform in Europe), introducing Isadora Duncan to Parisian audiences and developing the acceptance of modern dance as a serious art form. Her ‘Chinese dancers’ were the subject of the second section of W.B. Yeats‘ poem ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’.
After the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, Fuller toured Europe with Sada Yacco and company, acting as manager and press agent for the Japanese performers.[1]
Fuller formed a close friendship with Queen Marie of Romania; their extensive correspondence has been published. Fuller, through a connection at the U.S. embassy in Paris played a role in arranging a U.S. loan for Romania during World War I. Later, during the period when the future Carol II of Romania was alienated from the Romanian royal family and living in Paris with his mistress Magda Lupescu, she befriended them; they were unaware of her connection to Carol’s mother Marie. Fuller initially advocated to Marie on behalf of the couple, but later schemed unsuccessfully with Marie to separate Carol from Lupescu.[2] With Queen Marie and American businessman Samuel Hill, Fuller helped found the Maryhill Museum of Art in rural Washington State, which has permanent exhibits about her career.
Fuller occasionally returned to America to stage performances by her students, the “Fullerets” or Muses, but spent the end of her life in Paris where she died of pneumonia on January, 2 aged 65. Cremated, her ashes are interred in the columbarium at Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris.
I discovered Beth Campbell’s wire sculptures on the internet and sadly have not seen them in person. Since this show was apparently curated in 2008 it may be too late. I love working with wire and so admire the emotional draw of these pieces. I have borrowed the following text from Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery where it seems the 2008 exhibition took place:
Known for her multivalent investigations of repetition and interiority, Campbell’s work often begins with a stutter in space. Installed together in a seemingly endless grove of wired energy, Campbell’s mobiles are a striking counterpart to installations such as “Following Room” (2007-2008), exhibited in two variations at The Whitney Museum of American Art and Manifesta 7. Engaging further with multiplied and almost imperceptibly varied realities, Campbell’s wire mobiles suggest three-dimensional flow-charts, visualizations of endless abstract possibility.
Conceived as “drawings in space” rather than sculptural forms, the bends and twists of Campbell’s wire trace the action of her hand, forming peculiar investigations of subjectivity. As in Freud’s neurological diagrams, biomorphic form yields to psychological schema. Heavy metal becomes thread-like, energized. Varying in shape, weight, and patina, lines combine in dendritic structures evoking trees and nervous systems in their infinite, fractal detail.
Campbell’s work is rooted in futurist and modernist sensibilities yet engages contemporary interest in psycho-geography and mapping. Clustered in an ever-shifting installation, each mobile becomes another’s framing mechanism, creating interlaced relationships that suspend and cascade off one another. Social, technological, and architectural systems are evoked within the mobiles’ viral network. By recognizing pattern in endless renewal, Campbell’s forms resist fixity and stasis to plumb the abstraction of cause and effect.
Beth Campbell has recently completed solo projects with the Whitney Museum of American Art, Manifesta 7, and the Public Art Fund. Previous shows include the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Andrea Rosen Gallery, White Columns, the Drawing Room (London), and the Tang Museum. Her work is included in collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
526 W. 26th Street, No. 213
10001 New York, NY
Witnessing the work of William Kentridge was like being struck in the head and heart. I first saw his work at the New Maxxi Museum in Rome which by great luck had opened the month we were there (photos in a previous entry). The installation was a miniature theatre built with 6 or so seats which played The Magic Flute. In the early 90′s he gained wide acclaim for his animation art. Everything in black charcoal and pencil except for bits of red and blue, his imagery causes a pensive emotional stir. The music and sound effects are poignantly paired as well. I look forward to discovering much more of WIlliam Kentridge and his work. I highly recommend spending some time with the following videos, they are must see projects in my book:
William Kentridge – Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (1991)
William Kentridge – Weighing… and Wanting (1997)
William Kentridge – Mine (1991)
Sometimes the temporary nature of things brings great inspiration. For me, the idea of capturing momentary sculptures is awesomely beautiful. Laurent Millet has mastered the art of capturing spontaneous inspiration…..sigh
Millet photographs his own ephemeral, improvisational sculptures and then dismantles them. For this appealing new group of images, he uses a series of white rooms to stage spontaneous installations — each lasting no more than ten minutes — that suggest drawing in space. Calligraphic loops of wire connect apples, carrots, glass globes, handwritten notes, or scraps of bright paper in compositions that recall Calder and Miró at their most carefree. Another series, of what appear to be monolithic slabs set up at the shoreline, can’t compete with all the sprightly insouciance in the room
French artist Laurent Millet’s whimsical photographs and installations are so unexpected and, in some ways, so indescribable that reviewers have frequently invoked some combination of other artists to get at what he does: the Village Voice suggested that his images were like a chance meeting of Zeke Berman and Kahn & Selesnick, and the New Yorker said they brought to mind Paul Klee and Alexander Calder getting together to make photographs. When Millet was asked if there are any artists he finds inspiring, he mentioned photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard and sculptor Cy Twombley. The two seem to have little in common, but their sensibilities, strangely enough, are evident in Millet’s photographs, partly because he borrows freely from sculpture, drawing, and installation, never failing to create something beguiling.
In an early series, which was on view in New York at the Robert Mann Gallery in the spring of 1999, Millet used old-fashioned techniques, taking pictures with a nineteenth-century box camera, then toning the prints with selenium and walnut stain made with nuts from his grandfather’s walnut orchard. The subjects of the photographs — titled “The Petite Machines” — are spindly contraptions that Millet created out of old fishing traps, tree branches, twine, and rocks, and planted in the water just off the shoreline. Some bring to mind elaborate wind chimes, or a mystifying arrangement of fishing poles or animal traps.
Millet’s latest series, “Les Zozios,” is more contemporary, if equally fanciful, in tone. (“Les Zozios” is a French slang term, which, according to Millet, means roughly “a bird, or a strange creature with a strange personality.”) The color photographs show sculptural “drawings” that he has done on the walls of his own house, which is located on the estuary of the Gironde river in the Southwest of France near Bordeaux. The installations are like quick sketches, as opposed to the more complex and time-consuming “Petite Machines”: they contain bits of wire, to-do lists that were pinned to the wall, snapshots of friends and family, as well as brightly colored circles or misshapen squares of color that do, indeed, recall a Calder mobile. “I had always considered the landscape as a page,” says Millet, “and my ambition was to find another page, and see how it would react with my sense of the world, with the sense of line that I have.”
The “Petite Machines” were clearly labor intensive, both in the creation of the contraptions themselves, and in the printing of the photographs. (He made some of the larger versions of the series with a trailer-size camera obscura that produced 24-by-20-inch negatives.) With “Les Zozios,” Millet intentionally gave himself a set of constraints: to work quickly, and to use what was at hand: in one, a white radiator is incorporated into the installation; in another, an electrical outlet marks one point at the end of his line, the line being an electrical cord that powers a small light bulb. In an especially fanciful photograph, calledPetits Rouges, bright circles of various sizes seem to float within a wire construction built into the corner of a white room. “I try to use all the little things that are already here to make my drawings,” he says, “to reduce my intervention as much as possible.”
In contrast to the light and loopy “Les Zozios,” the 2002 series “Monolithe” is darker and more imposing. To create it, he returned to the shoreline, but he replaced the quirky “Petite Machines” with pitch-black squarish shapes resting in the water. “I was looking for very minimalistic shapes,” he says, “that could be seen, on the one hand, as almost three-dimensional, and on the other hand, like a black hole in the picture.” The images were inspired by Richard Serra’s engravings, but he also had in mind the history of the beaches at Normandy, where the Canadians tried to disembark during World War II but were killed because their boats couldn’t land on the rocky shore. “In my imagination,” says Millet, “I was seeing these engines, half-covered by the water, like geometric shapes.” It’s not necessary to know what he was thinking when he made the pictures to feel they have a somber quality. And yet there is a delicacy about them too, in the irregularity of their outside lines, and in the flimsiness of the shapes themselves. “I have a strong necessity to build things,” he says, “but now my constructions have become faster and lighter.”
Like spiderwebs, Millet’s contraptions seem organic, and ephemeral — performance pieces captured by the camera before they are disassembled. Intensely personal without being in any way confessional, or even, for that matter, very revealing, they are as much about line — about the presence of the artist’s hand — as they are about photographic qualities. To paraphrase something Millet said when discussing what he finds compelling in the work of both Meatyard and Twombley, he has translated the vibration of the hand and the heart into the lines of his drawings and photographs. (borrowed from the Robert Mann Gallery)
THE MANIPULATOR magazine was born in 1984 into a world almost unimaginable today: no cell-phones, no internet, no Adobe Photoshop, no digital cameras. In those quondam times, it was the cordless phone, the fax machine, the colour-copier and the Apple IIc that defined the technologically savvy.
That same year, Michael Jackson nabbed seven Grammys for Thriller and Madonna, with her rendering of Like A Virgin at the first-ever MTV Awards show, shocked audiences — not for the last time. While the future-governor was just being introduced as The Terminator, Amadeus went on to win the Academy Award for best picture. Virgin Atlantic took to the skies and Indira Gandhi was laid to rest. Between them, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Ruhollah Khomeini were looking after things. It all seems such a long time ago. And so it was.
Nonetheless, 1984, and the remainder of the decade, were the golden years of independent publishing. Warhol had already set the ball rolling in the 1970s with Interview, his magazine dedicated to the cult of celebrity, a matter some in the industry huffily dismissed as too inconsequential to warrant much attention.
By the time the ‘80s dawned, Nick Logan’s The Face in London and Annie Flanders’s Details in New York had set the stage for a new kind of magazine. Though each focused on a specific theme — the UK music scene in the case of the former; the Downtown-New York club scene in that of the latter – they, in effect, presaged the “lifestyle” publications that would flood the market a decade later. Emboldened by the success of these non-establishment periodicals, and by the public’s obvious hunger for such eclectic material, a whole slew of magazines had hit the stands in Europe & the US by the mid- 1980s: Egoïste, Metropolis, I-D, City, Blitz, Vibe, Paper, just a few of the many that honed in on the expanding and varied interests of the populace. One of which was photography.
The once-rigid separation between commercial and fine-art photography was fast collapsing and some of the most exciting, new work began appearing, not on gallery walls, but in magazine editorials and advertising campaigns. With the drama of photographic aesthetics being played out on so egalitarian a stage, everyone was soon spectator, analyst, arbitrator and fan. THE MANIPULATOR was a champion for photography. Over-large format had been used on occasions in the past, particularly for picture-heavy publications, ,but THE MANIPULATOR was the biggest by far, able to reprint images in gargantuan, poster-like proportions. Its content reflected an obvious bias towards architecture, design, art and photography, but it was also one of the first consumer magazines to start addressing the looming ecological plight facing the world.
Deforestation, rising sea-levels, suspect animal-husbandry, acid-rain: these were issues regularly confronted in the pages of THE MANIPULATOR, made all the more compelling by the huge pictures that accompanied the articles.
Archival photography was another favourite. Hand-tinted images taken in Japanese brothels in the late- 1800s; sepia- toned shots of Spanish bull-fighters from the turn of the century; murky photographs from the albums of the Victorian Egyptologists: all found a home in the pages of THE MANIPULATOR. When the USSR began crumbling under the onslaught of Gorbachev’s glasnost, the Novosti archives, which had been closed to the world since the revolution of 1917, were made available for reproduction in a 1989-edition of the magazine.
The romance between THE MANIPULATOR and photography as a platform for advertisements for trendsetting companies and brands for would last ten years. The decision to cease publication in 1994 was a relatively easy one – better to end it all while the magazine was still cherished and esteemed. The odd back-issue of THE MANIPULATOR would pop up as part of the set-dressing on a movie, or grace a popstar’s album cover, or be a prop in some music video, or a feature in some exhibit. Even Helmut Newton admitted to its influence when he published his same-sized Helmut Newton’s SUMO. THE MANIPULATOR was a revolution in its time ; the true trendsetting magazine in the worlds largest format.
Johnno du Plessis for the The Manipulator Family
(This text borrowed from the Manipulator website)
Thanks to my brother-in-law I am the proud owner of not one but four copies of this amazing (out of print) magazine. It was rumored that there was going to be a re-birth in 2009 but sadly I don’t think it happened. I search every now ant then for copies to add to my collection but I think I’m one of many.
I have been watching Sarah Moon’s photography since the late 90′s. Each of her photographs seem to tell a long and complicated story leaving the the viewer wanting to turn the page for more or dive into it for that matter. I look at her work and feel that if I stare long enough I may just fall down the rabbit hole. Would that be so bad? I like rabbit holes. I remember the first time I saw her work in Paris I almost spent my last Franc to own a piece…I didn’t… and now I regret it!
And so….down the rabbit hole you go!
From her bio on ulike:
Sarah Moon was (1960 – 1966) a model and since 1967 she is a fashion photographer and publicity filmmaker. Works in illustration, fashion and still life, in black and white and color. ‘Very often I say to myself: I would like to make a photo where nothing happens. But in order to eliminate, there has to be something to begin with. For nothing to happen, something has to happen first.’
Bye Bye Blackbird 2001…. For the life of me I can’t figure out how I missed it. The visuals are amazing and the teaser I saw on youtube flipped me out. I recently found photographs taken by Robinson Savary the director and began a search. I still haven’t seen the entire film but it is definitely on my short list of must find cinema.
Here is a link to the TRAILER and A short synopsis from film.com:
“The film is a beautiful but tragic love story set in a circus at the turn of the century, a tale of dreams, unrequited love and the flight in every trapeze artist’s soul. Stunningly original, a visual feast. Original soundtrack by Mercury Rev.”
Director: Robinson Savary
Cast: James Thierree, Isabella Miko, Malcom McDowell, Fairuza Balk, Michael Lonsdale, Sir Derek Jacobi and Jodhi May
A new friend recently asked “Have you heard of J. Morgan Puett?”. While the name had sounded familiar I couldn’t put my finger on how I had known about her. After looking at the link she sent me I realized that this was the woman who made the beautiful clothes my former boss had collected as far back as 20 years ago. I remembered admiring the pieces at the time but they were way out of my budget. I am excited to share these images that I am sure only scratch the surface of what she has been doing for the past 20 or more years.
J. Morgan Puett is one of those talents who defies a singular description. When someone personalizes their entire world with a unique aesthetic what do you call them? Artist, fashion designer, interior designer, producer, architect , stylist, visionary? I personally am enchanted. I’ll let you decide for yourself.
Photos courtesy of her site: http://www.jmorganpuett.com which you must check out to see what she is up to now. All I know is that I want a pair of her 1990′s linen suspender pants!
Broome Street Store, NY 1990
Broome Street Store, NY 1990
Broome Street Store, NY 1990
Wooster Street Store, NY 1993
Wooster Street Store, NY 1993
Wooster Street Store, NY 1993
Wooster Street Store, NY 1993
Wooster Street Store, NY 1993
Wooster Street Store, NY 1993
display/art piece
Seasonal Designer Collection, Washed Linnens 1990
Seasonal Designer Collection, Washed Linnens 1993
I hope you have enjoyed this discovery…or re-discovery as much as I have.
