Do Art

and even dark places become magical. A new month starts, hopefully with better weather than in July. However I've got ultracool rainboots (snakeskinprint), so I don't let the weather dictate my mood. Besides now that I work again, I've got enough other topics to think about than the weather. Have a magical and amazing new week. Make the best of it. PS: Watched "HP 7.2" on Saturday and I think it was slightly on the boring side*. Cutting out the jokes and giving Fred not a minute, what were they thinking?! *Putting it nicely.

WEEEKEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNDDDDDD.  Best time for pampering yourself and having fun with friends. Enjoy these two very awesome days!

Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, again. It's Friday and that means rest and fun is only a few more hours away. 

Sanssouci-Park, Potsdam

THE COVER from ARC magazine, Issue 3. FIND out more here . The cover is by Lavar Munroe.

9 out of 219 by Ebony G Patterson at Alice Yard Ebony G Patterson in conversation with Alice Yard's Christopher Cozier. Photos by Andre Bagoo. COFFINS everywhere. And bodies, too. They move, are moved, were moved. How motion stops the clock, makes the ephemeral eternal. How streets outside can enter these walls, this yard. Places of mourning become places of candle-light and flight. To feel alive. This is Ebony G Patterson's 9 out of 219 . FIND OUT MORE about this show, part of a series marking Alice Yard's fifth anniversary, here . * SEE more from the show here and here . * "The work, both in its participatory aspects as well as its form, evoked Emily Dickenson’s famous poem, “A coffin—is a small Domain”, the opening lines of which are: “A Coffin—is a small Domain, / Yet able to contain / A Citizen of Paradise / In it diminished Plane.” By making a place for these objects, the artist has taken the artist’s own space and carried it beyond its traditional limits.  ...

FROM the first in a series of shows to mark Alice Yard's fifth anniversary. Photos by Andre Bagoo.   READ more here .

* At night, you see, there seems to be one lit room. Who is at its exit, in the doorway, back turned? The soft rectangle of human frame widens. Who waits within the metal edging? In this state of nervousness, forearms go cold seconds before hands catch fire, excessive lotuses of flame. Would you – two dark torches loose at your sides – would you walk into the first of the long dark corridors in a building that consists more nearly of corridors than any that should ever have been designed? Each corridor runs like a spill of milk on a black tile reflected in a smoked glass ceiling clapped on the width of one layer of a hotel. These corridors are dark; you would feel them all like paleness? Though there were light I could not name their handcrafted nougat colours, gentler, intentionally washed-out. I walk in the dark, and you feel the walls’ paleness? For we ourselves are luminous. Except we do not give off light.  —From About by Vahni Capildeo, featured at Poetry International Web ...

A very special view. On the left: The Riquet House on the right Specks Hof.

Have a great new week everyone. I will.

Image from Danielle Boodoo-Fortune's tumblr . You are reading this And the poem is already Halfway down my throat... READ more poetry from Danielle Boodoo-Fortune at tongues of the ocean here

LAGAHOO:  The creature takes on the form of a man with no head who roams the night with a wooden coffin on his neck. On top of the coffin are three lighted candles — NALIS * * * A COFFIN—IS A SMALL DOMAIN A Coffin—is a small Domain, Yet able to contain A Citizen of Paradise In it diminished Plane. A Grave—is a restricted Breadth— Yet ampler than the Sun— And all the Seas He populates And Lands He looks upon To Him who on its small Repose Bestows a single Friend— Circumference without Relief— Or Estimate—or End— — Emily Dickinson * * * On  Monday 25 July , at  7 pm , Ebony G Patterson will present her work in progress  9 of 219 at Alice Yard, Woodbrook. Both installation and performance, the work will be a “bling” funeral using the Patterson's characteristic heavily decorated objects. Audience members are asked to participate by bringing candles to join in the vigil. All are invited to the event which marks the start of Alice Yard's fifth year anniversary. * * * MORE ...

Happy Friday everyone!

Seems to be flower week for me.

Goodness, I just love this picture.

Good morning. I wish you all a wonderful new week. "The world is, what you think it is."* So make it as you wish it to be. I think the world is beautiful, colorful and joyful. And you know what?! The world proves this to me over and over and over again. Day by day. Yesterday it was raining, however at sunset the sun was a red blaze under the clouds it was almost otherworldly. I didn't take a pic, since it was pouring. Still, I'm grateful that I could see this amazing view. * It's a quote but I'm not sure who said it first.

From Joanna Crichlow's Blueprint series  Perhaps the artists' most inevitable subject is herself. After all, we map our experiences and react to the world around us through the prism of who we are, what we are, what we have experienced, what we have not. Art could be a record of someone , through the medium of recording something . One thing artists Brianna McCarthy and Joanna Crichlow have in common is a direct engagement with the body in their work. This is, in fact, an engagement with their own bodies and, by extension, an engagement with the implications of their personal spaces in society. In a sense, all art is an engagement with the body: produced by the body, often depicting the body, reflecting the body via inanimate forms (mountainous landscapes, empty rooms). For if art reflects the artist, then she must admit that she is ultimately a body on a journey to something. "I juxtaposed images of mannequins with images of me," Crichlow said on Saturday night, expl...

"Nature is about form and function. And because it is so correct, that in itself is a beauty. A dead leaf or the patterns in a stone of the forms of a plant. They follow a natural harmony. When you have that balance, the soul has to respond to it as well as the eyes."-Barbara Jardine. FROM a short film by Mariel Brown on goldsmith Barbara Jardine. WATCH it here .

Maybe you'll find beauty such as this.

FROM ARC magazine's weekly inspirations at its website. SEE here .

Can be seen in Rodell Warner's Mordern Range. Creepy, cool: why is this giving me nightmares?.   SEE  more  HERE .

"From my gaze as a plus-sized woman, the mannequin becomes a mental paragon to me, one which I do not exist within.  It is an image of perfection, the icon of what I refer to as "industrialized idealism".  Through the concept of blueprinting, my work challenges the constructs of industrialized idealism by juxtaposing images of my own body with those of mannequins, to provoke questions such as, 'Can there be a blueprint for the human body?'"-- Joanna Critchlow I'm fascinated by the dynamics of masking and unmasking, to be literal; the faces we wear and why and when and how we wear them. I have several I think, as do many of us. Sometimes we all want to be unrecognizable, a deliberate riddle or barely concealed as if wearing wax.  I'd been feeling a little constricted recently by my own ideas of meaning and relevance. I had forgotten the advice I read in a Marie Claire magazine (I think) when I was probably 15, "Do what you love and the rest comes...

Time to recharge and enjoy nature on this wonderful day. Don't even dare to dwell on workrelated stuff. Just enjoy yourself!

FRIDAY!!!!

In case you didn't know, this is how driftwood might've looked before it became driftwood. Now this I call "livingwood". * Just another lovely Darss-view. *sigh* *Surprised at this? You really should know by now that I am slightly crazy. ;-)

My new colleague is lucky enough to be on the Darss right now. Lucky girl. Well at least I have my memories and these pictures to prove I have been there in March this year. And I will hopefully go back there this autumn for another long weekend. Good food and windy days. Love this combination. Work is quite taxing at the moment. (No complaint.) When I get home (around 8 PM) I eat, read an hour or so and then I already retire to bed. Which was almost always before 10PM in the last 1 and 1/2 weeks back at work.* But work pays off, tomorrow I go by train (6:39 AM, ugh) to Hannover and back. I love work trips. I'll bring my camera, because I never have been to Hannover before. *Before it was more like midnight or 1 AM.