I make paintings that incorporate photography as a hidden element, using everyday images of specific people, places, and objects. These moments are woven into broader, open-ended narratives that explore transcendence, popular culture, and shared human experiences. While titles may suggest meaning, each painting invites curiosity and interpretation, aiming to visually and perceptually engage the viewer, as I am during the making of the painting.
"Misfits" 24" x 36" Oil.Paper.Panel 2025
References - “Misfits” 24” x 36” Oil.Paper.Panel 2025
1. Dead Frozen bodies on the Alps
High Altitude: Many bodies are left on the mountain due to the extreme difficulty and cost of retrieval.
Trail Markers: Some bodies are used as landmarks. "They use the bodies as trail markers as there have been frozen bodies on those mountains since people started trying to climb them."
Ancient history
2. Ancient Secrets • March 17 at 10:12 AM • ®
Imagine discovering a mummy so well-preserved that her iris remains intact, her skin, though dried by time, still bearing the marks of an ancient world. She is known as The Lady with Long Hair, a woman who lived around 900 AD, her legacy hidden for centuries until her remains were unearthed at Huaca Huallamarca in Lima, Peru. Her hair, measuring an astonishing 2.10 meters in length, cascades like a flowing relic of her past, a testament to the care and reverence with which she was buried. On her body, a tattoo of a seabird was found, a symbol deeply tied to her culture's devotion to the ocean. It speaks of a civilization where the sea was more than just a source of sustenance-it was sacred, revered, and woven into their very identity. Beyond her striking physical preservation, her occupation as a weaver marks her as a member of the elite, for in her culture, weaving was an art of high status, a skill that carried deep societal importance. Through the strands of her hair and the ink upon her skin, she tells a story of craftsmanship, faith, and a life bound to the rhythms of the sea.
3. “The Misfits” (1961” staring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Kevin McCarthy, James Barton - Arthur Miller had written the script specifically for Monroe. Directed by John Huston
From the start, "The Misfits" (1961) was never just a movie; it was a pressure cooker of personal demons, fading stardom, and doomed intentions.
There was something hauntingly real about the emotions that bled onto the screen. Every look Gable gave Monroe felt like an elegy. Clift’s vulnerability was not a performance, it was confession. By the time "The Misfits" (1961) hit theaters in early 1961, it carried a weight far heavier than the sum of its scenes. It was the swan song of two Hollywood legends and a ghostly portrait of lives caught in a slow, painful descent. The film underperformed initially, baffling audiences who expected glamor but instead found existential dread and loneliness stretched across a Nevada wasteland. Over time, its brutal honesty and raw performances earned it a quiet, reverent place in cinema history, but that was not the point. Every frame of "The Misfits" (1961) bleeds with unspoken sorrow because the people living those characters were no longer acting, they were trying to survive. Historical America - Dakota
1. Dead Frozen bodies on the Alps
High Altitude: Many bodies are left on the mountain due to the extreme difficulty and cost of retrieval.
Trail Markers: Some bodies are used as landmarks. "They use the bodies as trail markers as there have been frozen bodies on those mountains since people started trying to climb them."
Ancient history
2. Ancient Secrets • March 17 at 10:12 AM • ®
Imagine discovering a mummy so well-preserved that her iris remains intact, her skin, though dried by time, still bearing the marks of an ancient world. She is known as The Lady with Long Hair, a woman who lived around 900 AD, her legacy hidden for centuries until her remains were unearthed at Huaca Huallamarca in Lima, Peru. Her hair, measuring an astonishing 2.10 meters in length, cascades like a flowing relic of her past, a testament to the care and reverence with which she was buried. On her body, a tattoo of a seabird was found, a symbol deeply tied to her culture's devotion to the ocean. It speaks of a civilization where the sea was more than just a source of sustenance-it was sacred, revered, and woven into their very identity. Beyond her striking physical preservation, her occupation as a weaver marks her as a member of the elite, for in her culture, weaving was an art of high status, a skill that carried deep societal importance. Through the strands of her hair and the ink upon her skin, she tells a story of craftsmanship, faith, and a life bound to the rhythms of the sea.
3. “The Misfits” (1961” staring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Kevin McCarthy, James Barton - Arthur Miller had written the script specifically for Monroe. Directed by John Huston
From the start, "The Misfits" (1961) was never just a movie; it was a pressure cooker of personal demons, fading stardom, and doomed intentions.
There was something hauntingly real about the emotions that bled onto the screen. Every look Gable gave Monroe felt like an elegy. Clift’s vulnerability was not a performance, it was confession. By the time "The Misfits" (1961) hit theaters in early 1961, it carried a weight far heavier than the sum of its scenes. It was the swan song of two Hollywood legends and a ghostly portrait of lives caught in a slow, painful descent. The film underperformed initially, baffling audiences who expected glamor but instead found existential dread and loneliness stretched across a Nevada wasteland. Over time, its brutal honesty and raw performances earned it a quiet, reverent place in cinema history, but that was not the point. Every frame of "The Misfits" (1961) bleeds with unspoken sorrow because the people living those characters were no longer acting, they were trying to survive. Historical America - Dakota
"Old-School" 24" x 36" Oil.Paper.Panel 2025
References for “Old-School”
24” x 36” Oil.Paper.Panel
2025
1. Image taken by Perry Ogden for the Francis Bacon Estate in 1998 before the contents of 7 Reece Mews was moved to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.
This photograph was published in the book John Edwards, Perry Ogden, 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon’s Studio, Thames & Hudson, 2001.
2. Square pusher … a reconstruction of 26 rue du Départ, Paris, based on 1926 image by Paul Delbo. © 2014 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust. Photograph: Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool has rebuilt the room where Mondrian painted, listened to records and entertained friends – while Turner Contemporary traces the development of his beautifully simple later style
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/04/piet-mondrian-painting-studio-tate-liverpool-turner-contemporary-colour
24” x 36” Oil.Paper.Panel
2025
1. Image taken by Perry Ogden for the Francis Bacon Estate in 1998 before the contents of 7 Reece Mews was moved to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.
This photograph was published in the book John Edwards, Perry Ogden, 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon’s Studio, Thames & Hudson, 2001.
2. Square pusher … a reconstruction of 26 rue du Départ, Paris, based on 1926 image by Paul Delbo. © 2014 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust. Photograph: Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool has rebuilt the room where Mondrian painted, listened to records and entertained friends – while Turner Contemporary traces the development of his beautifully simple later style
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/04/piet-mondrian-painting-studio-tate-liverpool-turner-contemporary-colour
"Somewhere Between" 24" x 36" Oil. Paper. Panel 2025
Reference Material - “Somewhere Inbetween”
24” x 36”
Oil/Paper/Panel
2025
20 Scariest Road Safety PSA’s
Heaven Can Wait - Axiom - {2002, Belgium}
Industrial factory in ruins with puddles of rain
Textile factory dismantled by the crisis, left and in ruins with water filtering rains. Placed in
Ontinyent, Valencia Community, Spain
24” x 36”
Oil/Paper/Panel
2025
20 Scariest Road Safety PSA’s
Heaven Can Wait - Axiom - {2002, Belgium}
Industrial factory in ruins with puddles of rain
Textile factory dismantled by the crisis, left and in ruins with water filtering rains. Placed in
Ontinyent, Valencia Community, Spain
"Seeking" 30" x 40" Oil/Paper/Panel 2025
Reference Material - “Seeking” 30” x 40” Oil/Paper/Panel 2025
1. Voronia Cave the closest point to the center of the Earth. One of Jules Verne's most desired dreams, as published in his novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in 1864, was to enter the interior of the Earth. Although the Veryovkina Cave will not take us to such depths, it does allow us to get as close as we know to the center of the planet. Veryovkina Cave, about 2212 meters deep, is the deepest cave in the world. It is located in the pass between the Krepost and Zont mountains in the region of Abkhazia, a self-declared independent state that is officially considered part of Georgia. In 1968 the cave was discovered by speleologists from the city of Krasnoyarsk, who were able to reach a depth of 115 meters. Already in 1986, a new group from Moscow and led by Oleg Parfenov managed to reach the considerable depth of 440 meters. Since 2015, a series of new incursions by the Perovo-Speleo group determined that the cave was deeper, reaching new and better marks repeatedly until reaching the record of 2,212 meters in March 2018 and recording an underground tunnel system of more than 6,000 meters.
2. The Shell Grotto is an ornate subterranean passageway shell grotto in Margate, Kent, England. Almost all the surface area of the walls and roof is covered in mosaics created entirely of seashells, totalling about 2,000 square feet of mosaic, or 4.6 million shells.
3. Image of a woman
4. Fractals
5. Modified beach image
1. Voronia Cave the closest point to the center of the Earth. One of Jules Verne's most desired dreams, as published in his novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in 1864, was to enter the interior of the Earth. Although the Veryovkina Cave will not take us to such depths, it does allow us to get as close as we know to the center of the planet. Veryovkina Cave, about 2212 meters deep, is the deepest cave in the world. It is located in the pass between the Krepost and Zont mountains in the region of Abkhazia, a self-declared independent state that is officially considered part of Georgia. In 1968 the cave was discovered by speleologists from the city of Krasnoyarsk, who were able to reach a depth of 115 meters. Already in 1986, a new group from Moscow and led by Oleg Parfenov managed to reach the considerable depth of 440 meters. Since 2015, a series of new incursions by the Perovo-Speleo group determined that the cave was deeper, reaching new and better marks repeatedly until reaching the record of 2,212 meters in March 2018 and recording an underground tunnel system of more than 6,000 meters.
2. The Shell Grotto is an ornate subterranean passageway shell grotto in Margate, Kent, England. Almost all the surface area of the walls and roof is covered in mosaics created entirely of seashells, totalling about 2,000 square feet of mosaic, or 4.6 million shells.
3. Image of a woman
4. Fractals
5. Modified beach image
"Irreversible Destiny" 30" x 24" Oil/Paper/Panel 2024/5
Reference Material - “Irreversible Destiny” 30” x 24” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024/25
- The title for this piece is the contradiction surrounding the work of Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, “Reversible Arakawa and Gins’ goal was to construct new living environments that allowed humans to overcome death. By challenging traditional notions about how space should be organized, the duo deliberately incorporated layouts in their designs that constantly stimulated the physical and mental self. To some, their designs might be seen as unexpected, awkward and inconvenient, but to Arakawa and Gins, the feeling of comfort was the precursor to death. To them, it was important that humans maintained a dynamic relationship with their environment, where people must overcome challenges and problems on a daily basis in order to sharpen the mind, boost the immune system and, eventually, defy death.
BY LISA KNIGHT, SEPTEMBER 7, 2022 UPDATED ON JANUARY 12, 2023
2. My art school friend, Steve Quinn, passed away in December of 2024. He was a terrific photographer and persistent documenter of friends and associates within the flow of life over five decades. As far as I know, the last image he shot was of the exam room in a Boston hospital. I spoke with Steve just before Thanksgiving last year. When we finished talking, I realized I had forgotten to ask him if I could use his image in a painting. I’m sure he wouldn’t have had any problem with that, but still, I wanted to ask. In the first week of December, there was a notice posted of his passing. It was a bit of a shock, given that in our November conversation, he felt he had maybe six months to a year before he would die. I used a modified, distorted image of that exam room in this painting.
3. a spiral staircase from the publication, “Loft Bible>”
4. an image of an abandoned hospital ward
"Dust to Dust: Accident and Intention" 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
Reference Material - Dust to Dust: Accident and Intention
24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
CNN — 2014
1. He’s been photographed dropping vases before – but that doesn’t mean it’s OK for just anyone to do it. Ai Weiwei has made a name for himself by not only creating visually arresting and thought-provoking art, but for his uncompromising activism in opposition to the Chinese government.
Ai was on the receiving end of a protest this weekend when a local Miami artist smashed a “color basis” vase valued at $1 million, part of the artist’s “According to what?” exhibition at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in the city. The exhibition also included photographs of the Chinese artist dropping what appears to be a Han Dynasty urn. Maximo Caminero, a Miami-based artist, was named in a police affidavit as the defendant. He told an officer that his act was a protest against the gallery’s decision to only display international art. Ai, meanwhile, told CNN that he didn’t have “much reaction” to the news, but said that he thought that a line should be drawn when it came to damaging public or private property as part of a protest.
“I can’t have a show in Beijing but I cannot go to museums to break work in Beijing,” he said in a phone interview. “My work is basically forbidden to be shown in China … The protest itself may be valid but to damage somebody’s work to do that is questionable.” Ai said that he considered his work – specifically the triptych which shows him dropping an antique urn – to be “very different.” “My work belongs to me, it doesn’t belong to the public and also it doesn’t [belong to] somebody else.”
2. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 is a show-stealer that depicts Ai Weiwei destroying a precious artifact. The destruction of this art piece is displayed in a series of three black and white photographs that show Ai dropping a 2000-year-old ceremonial Han Dynasty Urn. The first photo shows Ai holding the vase; the second one shows it in mid-air and the last one shows the vase shattered into pieces on the floor. Ai claims that he actually destroyed two urns in the process of creating the artwork, but his photographer was not able to capture the smashing of the first urn. Due to this act of destroying the historical artifact, the images became more valuable than the original object. The historical artifact became more exposed in a way the traditional methods of preservation couldn’t expose it.
3.Jo Lawson-Tancred Art News September 23, 2024
Every gallery-goer’s worst nightmare is to accidentally knock into a priceless ceramic. But one man who snuck into an Ai Weiwei exhibition in Italy on Friday was clearly planning to cause a scene when he toppled a porcelain sculpture by the Chinese dissident artist. The man destroyed the large blue and white Porcelain Cube at a busy private opening for the exhibition “Who am I?” at Palazzo Fava in Bologna on the evening of September 21. Local police arrested a 57-year-old Czech man who has been identified in Italian media as Vaclav Pisvejc, a provocateur and self-proclaimed artist known for targeting important works of art. It is not clear how the perpetrator gained access the invitation-only event but the museum has confirmed that the exhibition opened to the public as planned. In accordance with the artist’s wishes, the fragments were covered with a cloth and removed. They will soon be replaced by a life-sized print of the work and a label explaining what happened. On Instagram, Ai shared CCTV footage in which the man is seen loitering by the work before he suddenly moves behind it and forcefully pushes it forward so that it smashes across the gallery floor. He proudly holds up a broken fragment in a triumphant gesture before several suited men tackle him, pulling him off the work’s raised platform and onto the floor.
4. By Abigail Adams Abigail Adams is a Human Interest Writer and Reporter for PEOPLE. Published on February 21, 2023 01:17PM EST
Gamson previously told the Miami Herald he wondered at first if the incident was part of a "performance," but later realized it was an accident. Now, he hopes to purchase the broken sculpture himself.
24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
CNN — 2014
1. He’s been photographed dropping vases before – but that doesn’t mean it’s OK for just anyone to do it. Ai Weiwei has made a name for himself by not only creating visually arresting and thought-provoking art, but for his uncompromising activism in opposition to the Chinese government.
Ai was on the receiving end of a protest this weekend when a local Miami artist smashed a “color basis” vase valued at $1 million, part of the artist’s “According to what?” exhibition at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in the city. The exhibition also included photographs of the Chinese artist dropping what appears to be a Han Dynasty urn. Maximo Caminero, a Miami-based artist, was named in a police affidavit as the defendant. He told an officer that his act was a protest against the gallery’s decision to only display international art. Ai, meanwhile, told CNN that he didn’t have “much reaction” to the news, but said that he thought that a line should be drawn when it came to damaging public or private property as part of a protest.
“I can’t have a show in Beijing but I cannot go to museums to break work in Beijing,” he said in a phone interview. “My work is basically forbidden to be shown in China … The protest itself may be valid but to damage somebody’s work to do that is questionable.” Ai said that he considered his work – specifically the triptych which shows him dropping an antique urn – to be “very different.” “My work belongs to me, it doesn’t belong to the public and also it doesn’t [belong to] somebody else.”
2. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 is a show-stealer that depicts Ai Weiwei destroying a precious artifact. The destruction of this art piece is displayed in a series of three black and white photographs that show Ai dropping a 2000-year-old ceremonial Han Dynasty Urn. The first photo shows Ai holding the vase; the second one shows it in mid-air and the last one shows the vase shattered into pieces on the floor. Ai claims that he actually destroyed two urns in the process of creating the artwork, but his photographer was not able to capture the smashing of the first urn. Due to this act of destroying the historical artifact, the images became more valuable than the original object. The historical artifact became more exposed in a way the traditional methods of preservation couldn’t expose it.
3.Jo Lawson-Tancred Art News September 23, 2024
Every gallery-goer’s worst nightmare is to accidentally knock into a priceless ceramic. But one man who snuck into an Ai Weiwei exhibition in Italy on Friday was clearly planning to cause a scene when he toppled a porcelain sculpture by the Chinese dissident artist. The man destroyed the large blue and white Porcelain Cube at a busy private opening for the exhibition “Who am I?” at Palazzo Fava in Bologna on the evening of September 21. Local police arrested a 57-year-old Czech man who has been identified in Italian media as Vaclav Pisvejc, a provocateur and self-proclaimed artist known for targeting important works of art. It is not clear how the perpetrator gained access the invitation-only event but the museum has confirmed that the exhibition opened to the public as planned. In accordance with the artist’s wishes, the fragments were covered with a cloth and removed. They will soon be replaced by a life-sized print of the work and a label explaining what happened. On Instagram, Ai shared CCTV footage in which the man is seen loitering by the work before he suddenly moves behind it and forcefully pushes it forward so that it smashes across the gallery floor. He proudly holds up a broken fragment in a triumphant gesture before several suited men tackle him, pulling him off the work’s raised platform and onto the floor.
4. By Abigail Adams Abigail Adams is a Human Interest Writer and Reporter for PEOPLE. Published on February 21, 2023 01:17PM EST
- It might be broken — but Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" sculpture that was shattered at Miami's Art Wynwood event last week is still generating buzz in the art world. The $42,000 piece was destroyed last Thursday when a female art collector reportedly caused the shiny blue porcelain figure to topple over at the annual contemporary art fair. However, some collectors are still interested in purchasing the piece — or pieces, rather. "Some collectors offered to buy the shards," Bel-Air Fine Art district manager Cédric Boero told CBS News, adding, "we are still receiving offers as we speak."
Gamson previously told the Miami Herald he wondered at first if the incident was part of a "performance," but later realized it was an accident. Now, he hopes to purchase the broken sculpture himself.
"Looking At: Peering Into" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
Reference Material “Looking At: Peering Into”
. Boy watching TV for the first time in an appliance store window in 1948 This photo appeared in the May 2, 1949 issue of Life Magazine in an article on the recently opened television station WICU in Erie, PA. At that time there were only 61 stations broadcasting television in the US.
The original caption in the magazine: The wonder of television drops jaw of Dickie Osborne, 8, who watches a program in an appliance store window. Glass reflects the image off TV screen.
1960s Business And Work Holidays Travel And Places Matchbook Poconos postcards USA
Photographer Updates Postcards Of 1960s Resorts Into Their Abandoned Ruins
Ephemeral, disposable, they served only one purpose—to let someone know "I'm here. I'm thinking of you" - Pablo Iglesias Maurer
I found the old matchbook lying on a desk, writes Pablo Maurer. It was buried under some papers, beside a thick, water-logged book frozen solid in the January chill. I ran my fingers down its spine and read the title: “How to Run A Successful Golf Course.”
Weeks later, I score a cache of old postcards from the Poconos and Catskills on eBay, the sort that end up in family albums, stuck in some box in the attic. “Our Honeymoon.” In idyllic scenes at Penn Hills, The Homowack Lodge, Grossinger’s, and a fourth resort in the Poconos which we aren’t identifying, vacation-goers and honeymooners frolic in the mountains.
They have a surreal quality. Ephemeral, disposable, they served only one purpose—to let someone know “I’m here. I’m thinking of you.” It feels a bit like social media does sometimes, where you’ll snap a photo of some vista, sometimes to bring those you care about a bit closer to you. And like social media, the postcards manage to be a little impersonal: “I didn’t quite care enough to write a letter.” It’s analog Foursquare, a non-digital check-in.
Over the past few years, I’ve gone back to the places in the postcards.
On Christmas Day a couple years back, I went into an abandoned bowling alley in the Catskills, stood up some pins and bowled a couple of frames. That signature sound—the pins caroming about—sounds a lot different in a place like that. There are echoes of the postcard, where a bear of a man stands at the shoe rental counter. No shoes now, no phone, no counter.
Looking down the side of that same 70's structure. "Ultra-modern building houses the dining room, cocktail lounge, lobbies and offices." (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer, poscard by Kardmaster Brochures)
The browns and reds and oranges of this Poconos dining hall's carpet have turned green, the color of the moss that's taken its place. Photo by (Pablo Iglesias Maurer, postcard published by Kardmasters)
Summer in the Poconos. (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer, postcard published by H. Rubenstein)
. The title I gave this piece was arrived at with the help of my friend David Motlagh.
"The Continuing Saga of Futility" 36" x 48" Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
- Reference Material - "A Continuing Saga of Futility ' - 36” x 48” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
Palestinians look for survivors under the rubble of destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes in Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Israel's military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. When the war ends, any relief will quickly be overshadowed by the dread of displaced families for their future. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled, File)
Dick Hyland and Ray Campbell after a fight in 1913. It lasted 110 rounds, 7 hr 19 min (9:15 p.m.-4:34 a.m.), and was declared a no contest (later changed to a draw).
The longest fight in history captured the attention and admiration of boxing enthusiasts worldwide with its unprecedented display of endurance and determination. Lasting for an incredible 110 rounds over seven hours and 19 minutes, this battle of wills tested the physical and mental limits of both fighters. The sheer craziness and unbelievable stamina exhibited during the match left spectators in awe, with some even succumbing to sleep from the sheer exhaustion of witnessing such a remarkable display of sportsmanship. This extraordinary event will undoubtedly live on in the book of boxing history.
The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca 1495-1505) by Hieronymus Bosch
Animated by Studio Smack for Stedelijk Museum Breda.
“Lester Hayes: Selected Work, 1962-1975” continues through Sunday at Triple Candie,
But he will not be raised, because there is no Lester Hayes. He never existed. He is entirely an invention of Triple Candie. The gallery’s directors, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, the co-publishers of the magazine Art on Paper, So, with no real artist and no real art, what do you have here?
You have many questions raised about art and the often unquestioned ideas surrounding it, like originality, authenticity, influence, history, formal value and biography-as-value. Is contemporary art largely a promotional scam perpetuated by — in no particular order of blame — museums, dealers, critics, historians, collectors, art schools and anyone else who has a sufficient personal, professional or financial investment riding on the scam to want to keep it afloat?
An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World
Lebbeus Woods (May 31, 1940 – October 30, 2012) was an American architect and artist known for his unconventional and experimental designs.[2][3] Known for his rich, yet mainly unbuilt work and its nonetheless significant impact on the architectural sphere, Lebbeus Woods and his oeuvre are considered visionary, describing a radically experimental world built on the principles of heterogeneity and multiplicity and bridging thus the gap between numerous fields including architecture, philosophy, and mathematics. Reconfiguring the architectural space in environments of crisis, whether it be natural, social, political, or financial, Woods stated: “I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world. All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”[4]
"Frozen" 40" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
Reference Material “Frozen” 40” x 30” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024 – notes
1. Lengby, Minnasota - On the night of Dec. 20, 1980, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard's car hit a ditch. She tried to walk for help. She was found in the morning in the front yard of a local cattle rancher — frozen solid as a log. Most coverage of her story is pretty theatrical. She got into an episode of the TV show "Unsolved Mysteries." There was a dramatic soundtrack and fun, pulpy recreations.
Over the last 37 years, the story's been told and retold on late night TV, and the sort of websites that investigate supernatural events.
Hilliard tells her story..
"I had gone into town and met some friends," she said in a recent interview with MPR News. "I headed home about midnight."
Hilliard took a shortcut on an icy gravel road just south of Lengby. Her dad's Ford LTD had rear wheel drive and no anti-lock brakes. It slid into the
ditch. She knew a guy down the road, so she started walking. It was 20 below that night, and she was wearing cowboy boots.
"I'd get over one hill, thinking his place would be there, and it wasn't," she said. "I was more frustrated than scared."
Two miles later, she finally saw her friend's house through the trees. Then she says, everything went black.
She made it to her friend's yard, tripped, and crawled on her hands and knees to his doorstep. They said she lay there for six straight hours, with her eyes frozen wide open. Hilliard doesn't remember any of that. Jean was brought to Fosston hospital. She was frozen solid at 22 degrees, and her skin could not be pierced by hypodermic needles — the needles broke on contact with her skin. Her face was an ashen-gray color and her eyes didn’t respond to changes in light. Even though the medical staff thought she was dead, they decided to gradually warm up her body with heating pads. Eventually, they got a faint pulse of 12 beats per minute.
By midmorning, Hilliard woke in spasms. By noon, she was talking coherently. In a handful of hours, she'd gone from a block of ice, to a scared teenager, worrying about her dad finding out his car was in the ditch. The doctors considered amputating both her legs to avoid infection from frostbite. So when Hilliard went home with little more than blistered toes that were numb for awhile, it was national news. She went ahead to make a full recovery.
2. - –2015 - A two year-old girl has become the world’s youngest person to be cryogenically frozen and preserved for future revival. The remains of Matheryn Naovaratpong, who succumbed to brain cancer, were preserved by Alcor, an American company specializing in cryonics.
Cryonic preservation is the process whereby the patient is under goes a series of procedures and freezing, following death. The deceased patient is firstly placed in an ice water bath, while blood circulation and breathing is artificially restored with a heart-lung resuscitator. Alcor notes that this procedure preserves the brain and protects it from injury. The patient’s blood is then replaced with an organ preservation solution to prepare the patient for transport to Alcor’s main facility in Arizona. At the facility, the patient is then cooled under computer control by fans circulating nitrogen gas over three hours and to a further -196 °C over approximately two weeks. The patient is then stored under liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196 C. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34311502
3. - Scientists discovered a small 30 million-year-old praying mantis frozen within a pristine clear piece of amber from the Dominican Republic. It was discovered to have been from the Oligocene period, placing it anywhere from about 23 million to 33.9 million years old.
4. - Seconds before the 1st plane hit the north WTC tower at 8:46 a.m. 9/11 2001.
1. Lengby, Minnasota - On the night of Dec. 20, 1980, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard's car hit a ditch. She tried to walk for help. She was found in the morning in the front yard of a local cattle rancher — frozen solid as a log. Most coverage of her story is pretty theatrical. She got into an episode of the TV show "Unsolved Mysteries." There was a dramatic soundtrack and fun, pulpy recreations.
Over the last 37 years, the story's been told and retold on late night TV, and the sort of websites that investigate supernatural events.
Hilliard tells her story..
"I had gone into town and met some friends," she said in a recent interview with MPR News. "I headed home about midnight."
Hilliard took a shortcut on an icy gravel road just south of Lengby. Her dad's Ford LTD had rear wheel drive and no anti-lock brakes. It slid into the
ditch. She knew a guy down the road, so she started walking. It was 20 below that night, and she was wearing cowboy boots.
"I'd get over one hill, thinking his place would be there, and it wasn't," she said. "I was more frustrated than scared."
Two miles later, she finally saw her friend's house through the trees. Then she says, everything went black.
She made it to her friend's yard, tripped, and crawled on her hands and knees to his doorstep. They said she lay there for six straight hours, with her eyes frozen wide open. Hilliard doesn't remember any of that. Jean was brought to Fosston hospital. She was frozen solid at 22 degrees, and her skin could not be pierced by hypodermic needles — the needles broke on contact with her skin. Her face was an ashen-gray color and her eyes didn’t respond to changes in light. Even though the medical staff thought she was dead, they decided to gradually warm up her body with heating pads. Eventually, they got a faint pulse of 12 beats per minute.
By midmorning, Hilliard woke in spasms. By noon, she was talking coherently. In a handful of hours, she'd gone from a block of ice, to a scared teenager, worrying about her dad finding out his car was in the ditch. The doctors considered amputating both her legs to avoid infection from frostbite. So when Hilliard went home with little more than blistered toes that were numb for awhile, it was national news. She went ahead to make a full recovery.
2. - –2015 - A two year-old girl has become the world’s youngest person to be cryogenically frozen and preserved for future revival. The remains of Matheryn Naovaratpong, who succumbed to brain cancer, were preserved by Alcor, an American company specializing in cryonics.
Cryonic preservation is the process whereby the patient is under goes a series of procedures and freezing, following death. The deceased patient is firstly placed in an ice water bath, while blood circulation and breathing is artificially restored with a heart-lung resuscitator. Alcor notes that this procedure preserves the brain and protects it from injury. The patient’s blood is then replaced with an organ preservation solution to prepare the patient for transport to Alcor’s main facility in Arizona. At the facility, the patient is then cooled under computer control by fans circulating nitrogen gas over three hours and to a further -196 °C over approximately two weeks. The patient is then stored under liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196 C. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34311502
3. - Scientists discovered a small 30 million-year-old praying mantis frozen within a pristine clear piece of amber from the Dominican Republic. It was discovered to have been from the Oligocene period, placing it anywhere from about 23 million to 33.9 million years old.
4. - Seconds before the 1st plane hit the north WTC tower at 8:46 a.m. 9/11 2001.
. "Yesterday and Tomorrow" 30" x 40" Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
Reference Material “Yesterday and Tomorrow” 30 x 40” Oil/Paper/Panel 2024
2. Armageddon (1998) Cast - Bruce Willis · Harry S. Stamper ; Billy Bob Thornton · Dan Truman ; Ben Affleck · A.J. Frost ; Liv Tyler · Grace Stamper ; Will Patton · Chick.
Rating: 6.7/10 · 445,240 votes
3. Pavel Kashin was a Russian parkour artist from St. Petersburg. In 2013, he was performing a back flip stunt on the rooftop of a 16-floor building as a friend was filming him. Hence the photograph of Kashin captured just seconds before his fall and death.
4.The figures in this painting were taken from a photograph by Aaron Chang, sometime in the mid 1980’s. It appears that Chang came upon the young men in his travels, in the evening, near Highway 17, Charleston, South Carolina. Eventually a wide range of images by various photographers, was used to make a book. This book covered a number of topics in various U. S. States. Unfortunately, I don’t have the book anymore.
The heading for Chang’s photograph read: “In Charleston, Coming to Terms With the Past: The compulsion to engage the Charleston area’s history as a slave-trading center was, for the writer, a visceral thing, akin to the urge to revisit a crime scene.”
5. Elon Musk's Neuralink implants brain chip in first human
Reuters
January 29, 202411:20 PM PSTUpdated 20 days ago
Jan 29 (Reuters) - The first human patient has received an implant from brain-chip startup Neuralink on Sunday and is recovering well, the company's billionaire founder Elon Musk said. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday. Spikes are activity by neurons, which the National Institute of Health describes as cells that use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and to the body.
6. Woodstock – Sunday, August 18, 1969 11:00 AM Sunny, breezy. Sha Na Na was playing. Fifty years later, what percentage of the estimated 500 thousand people at the original Woodstock Festival are now dead? Assuming average age of people at that time was 25 years and current life expectancy of 80 yrs around 10–15 % may be dead and another 10% may be approaching death
7. Indra’s Net – is an infinitely large net owned by the Verdic deva Indra, which hangs over his palace on Mt. Meru, the axis mundi of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. In East Asian Buddhism, Indra’s net is considered as having a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, with each jewel being reflected in all of the other jewels. In the Huayan School of Chinese Buddhism, which follows the Buddhãvatamsake Sūtra, the image of “Indra’s Net” is used to describe the interconnectedness or “perfect Interfusion of all phenomena in the universe.
8. Inside a 250 year old French Violin Photographed with a Medical Laparoscope adapted to a Lumix G9ii Camera. The interior of a 1770 violin by Augustin Chappuy.
9. It took 10 years for the photographer Marcella Julia Pace to capture these 48 colours of the Moon.
10. Apple’s new headset Vision Pro
2. Armageddon (1998) Cast - Bruce Willis · Harry S. Stamper ; Billy Bob Thornton · Dan Truman ; Ben Affleck · A.J. Frost ; Liv Tyler · Grace Stamper ; Will Patton · Chick.
Rating: 6.7/10 · 445,240 votes
3. Pavel Kashin was a Russian parkour artist from St. Petersburg. In 2013, he was performing a back flip stunt on the rooftop of a 16-floor building as a friend was filming him. Hence the photograph of Kashin captured just seconds before his fall and death.
4.The figures in this painting were taken from a photograph by Aaron Chang, sometime in the mid 1980’s. It appears that Chang came upon the young men in his travels, in the evening, near Highway 17, Charleston, South Carolina. Eventually a wide range of images by various photographers, was used to make a book. This book covered a number of topics in various U. S. States. Unfortunately, I don’t have the book anymore.
The heading for Chang’s photograph read: “In Charleston, Coming to Terms With the Past: The compulsion to engage the Charleston area’s history as a slave-trading center was, for the writer, a visceral thing, akin to the urge to revisit a crime scene.”
5. Elon Musk's Neuralink implants brain chip in first human
Reuters
January 29, 202411:20 PM PSTUpdated 20 days ago
Jan 29 (Reuters) - The first human patient has received an implant from brain-chip startup Neuralink on Sunday and is recovering well, the company's billionaire founder Elon Musk said. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday. Spikes are activity by neurons, which the National Institute of Health describes as cells that use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and to the body.
6. Woodstock – Sunday, August 18, 1969 11:00 AM Sunny, breezy. Sha Na Na was playing. Fifty years later, what percentage of the estimated 500 thousand people at the original Woodstock Festival are now dead? Assuming average age of people at that time was 25 years and current life expectancy of 80 yrs around 10–15 % may be dead and another 10% may be approaching death
7. Indra’s Net – is an infinitely large net owned by the Verdic deva Indra, which hangs over his palace on Mt. Meru, the axis mundi of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. In East Asian Buddhism, Indra’s net is considered as having a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, with each jewel being reflected in all of the other jewels. In the Huayan School of Chinese Buddhism, which follows the Buddhãvatamsake Sūtra, the image of “Indra’s Net” is used to describe the interconnectedness or “perfect Interfusion of all phenomena in the universe.
8. Inside a 250 year old French Violin Photographed with a Medical Laparoscope adapted to a Lumix G9ii Camera. The interior of a 1770 violin by Augustin Chappuy.
9. It took 10 years for the photographer Marcella Julia Pace to capture these 48 colours of the Moon.
10. Apple’s new headset Vision Pro
"Illusions/Reflections 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
Reference Material "Illusions/Reflections" 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
1. “Of God and Machines” by Stephen Marche
“The future of artificial intelligence is neither utopian nor dystopian—it’s something much more interesting.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/artificial-intelligence-machine-learing-natural-language-processing/661401/ 2. Photographs of Charlize Theron 3. Photograph from Corey Olsen 4. Photographs from Brad Melamed / Midtown Mirror/Clarkson St. NYC
5. The Apple Store on the Upper West Side is a splendid oddity amid the retail recession, all steel, marble, and glass. 2010 Peter Aaron/ESTO At 67th Street and Broadway, a pavilion of marble and sheer glass walls opened in November, a composition as austerely purposeful as a classic Greek temple. Is this elegant glass-roofed room the home of a cash-flush hedge fund? The new store nestles snugly into a corner lot along Broadway.
1. “Of God and Machines” by Stephen Marche
“The future of artificial intelligence is neither utopian nor dystopian—it’s something much more interesting.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/artificial-intelligence-machine-learing-natural-language-processing/661401/ 2. Photographs of Charlize Theron 3. Photograph from Corey Olsen 4. Photographs from Brad Melamed / Midtown Mirror/Clarkson St. NYC
5. The Apple Store on the Upper West Side is a splendid oddity amid the retail recession, all steel, marble, and glass. 2010 Peter Aaron/ESTO At 67th Street and Broadway, a pavilion of marble and sheer glass walls opened in November, a composition as austerely purposeful as a classic Greek temple. Is this elegant glass-roofed room the home of a cash-flush hedge fund? The new store nestles snugly into a corner lot along Broadway.
"The Loss of Memory/The Inability to Forget" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
NEW CASTLE, Ind. – DNA evidence has been used to positively identify a body found in a New Castle field on Nov. 8 as an Alzheimer’s patient who went missing on Aug. 14.
Larry T. ,74, went missing after walking away from his assisted living facility, Addison Place. A Regional Silver Alert was declared as a result.
Police say Tucker’s body was found by a farmer who was harvesting corn around a quarter mile away from the assisted living facility.Police say it took multiple weeks for the body to be positively identified, because of its advanced state of decomposition.
On the right is an image of random young guy, who also has a beard. One catalyst for the painting was that in today's personal media world, many common, and unusual events are recorded, so much so, that by the time young dude is old, there will be documentation of his entire life, many things that he on his own would not remember.
Larry T. ,74, went missing after walking away from his assisted living facility, Addison Place. A Regional Silver Alert was declared as a result.
Police say Tucker’s body was found by a farmer who was harvesting corn around a quarter mile away from the assisted living facility.Police say it took multiple weeks for the body to be positively identified, because of its advanced state of decomposition.
On the right is an image of random young guy, who also has a beard. One catalyst for the painting was that in today's personal media world, many common, and unusual events are recorded, so much so, that by the time young dude is old, there will be documentation of his entire life, many things that he on his own would not remember.
"The Bridge between Loneliness and Solitude" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
Reference Material “The Bridge Between Loneliness and Solitude” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
“The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
--------------------------------------------
I have been alone but seldom lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well of my self
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and tonight sitting
staring into the dark
I now finally understand
the dark and the
light and everything in between.
peace of mind and heart
arrives when we accept what is:
having been born into this
strange life we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of leaving it all behind. ~Charles Bukowski
-------------------------------------------------
“The Substance of Silence: A Reading list about Hermits
by Chris Wheatley
"Eternally Present" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
Reference Material “Eternally Present" 24” x 30” Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
During a visit to the Smithsonian Museum of American in 1991, I came upon an installation that stopped me in my tracks. From a distance, it read as a gold and silver arrangement of objects. Upon getting closer I realized that the gold and silver were various pieces of foils, collected from cigarette packs and other castaway materials. The care and precision the artist had undertaken in his use, allowed me to feel a form of metaphysical transference. I noticed that in one area the artist had covered light bulbs with gold foil, using an origami type folding, where common pins were carefully placed to hold the foil together. It was all so totally convincing, the light of the world. I had come upon James Hampton’s, “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly.”
There isn’t a great deal of information about James Hampton. He led a quiet, reclusive life for the most part. But he did enlist in the service during WW2, stationed in Guam, where it is believed he made the first of the 182 objects that would make up the “Throne.” He worked as a janitor in a government building at night, and would then go to work on his massive undertaking. It was an undertaking, devoted to the second coming of Jesus Christ.
When he returned to Washington after the war, Hampton rented a garage for fifty dollars a month, and spent the rest of his life working on his spiritual project. Beyond its beautifully idiosyncratic construction, made from castaway junk, the entire work projects his faith in mental and material alchemy. Hampton worked on the piece there until his death in 1964. During that period of time, he tried to interest people to engage with him about the Throne. But nobody seemed interested in checking it out. Even his Black Baptist Minister refused to see it. Fortunately, somebody did eventually come to photograph a well-dressed James within the garage. And this may have happened twice, because the images of him seem to show a difference in age.
I doubt James thought he was an artist, even an outsider artist, but he was a man on a mission to do God’s work. James revealed that God spoke to him as to how the construction of the piece should proceed. I suppose the rationalist would say he had a strong intuitive nature.
As he lay dying from cancer in a Veterans Hospital in 1964, James must have thought that his life’s work was never going to be fully realized or seen. This is where his (garage) landlord, Myer Wertlieb, made the decision that would allow millions of people to experience James’s “Throne.” He knew that James had been working on something, and that it was important to him. Wertlieb went to the Smithsonian Museum, only a few blocks from the garage, and asked if they’d take a look at it. The museum was very interested in the piece and wanted to acquire it. The rest is history, as they say. From never having people see his Throne, the work has been on view every day of the year, except for cleaning and reinstallation, since 1964.
When I taught at Cal, I gave a final presentation each semester, titled: “Passion, Persistence, Different Paths: James Hampton and Jay Defeo” to the Art 8 classes. Hampton and Defeo were very different people, but they understood that passion is not histrionics, but runs quiet and deep, and persistence, to forge ahead regardless, when the “feeling” isn’t always there, but the sense of commitment must be honored.
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/james-hampton-2052
During a visit to the Smithsonian Museum of American in 1991, I came upon an installation that stopped me in my tracks. From a distance, it read as a gold and silver arrangement of objects. Upon getting closer I realized that the gold and silver were various pieces of foils, collected from cigarette packs and other castaway materials. The care and precision the artist had undertaken in his use, allowed me to feel a form of metaphysical transference. I noticed that in one area the artist had covered light bulbs with gold foil, using an origami type folding, where common pins were carefully placed to hold the foil together. It was all so totally convincing, the light of the world. I had come upon James Hampton’s, “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly.”
There isn’t a great deal of information about James Hampton. He led a quiet, reclusive life for the most part. But he did enlist in the service during WW2, stationed in Guam, where it is believed he made the first of the 182 objects that would make up the “Throne.” He worked as a janitor in a government building at night, and would then go to work on his massive undertaking. It was an undertaking, devoted to the second coming of Jesus Christ.
When he returned to Washington after the war, Hampton rented a garage for fifty dollars a month, and spent the rest of his life working on his spiritual project. Beyond its beautifully idiosyncratic construction, made from castaway junk, the entire work projects his faith in mental and material alchemy. Hampton worked on the piece there until his death in 1964. During that period of time, he tried to interest people to engage with him about the Throne. But nobody seemed interested in checking it out. Even his Black Baptist Minister refused to see it. Fortunately, somebody did eventually come to photograph a well-dressed James within the garage. And this may have happened twice, because the images of him seem to show a difference in age.
I doubt James thought he was an artist, even an outsider artist, but he was a man on a mission to do God’s work. James revealed that God spoke to him as to how the construction of the piece should proceed. I suppose the rationalist would say he had a strong intuitive nature.
As he lay dying from cancer in a Veterans Hospital in 1964, James must have thought that his life’s work was never going to be fully realized or seen. This is where his (garage) landlord, Myer Wertlieb, made the decision that would allow millions of people to experience James’s “Throne.” He knew that James had been working on something, and that it was important to him. Wertlieb went to the Smithsonian Museum, only a few blocks from the garage, and asked if they’d take a look at it. The museum was very interested in the piece and wanted to acquire it. The rest is history, as they say. From never having people see his Throne, the work has been on view every day of the year, except for cleaning and reinstallation, since 1964.
When I taught at Cal, I gave a final presentation each semester, titled: “Passion, Persistence, Different Paths: James Hampton and Jay Defeo” to the Art 8 classes. Hampton and Defeo were very different people, but they understood that passion is not histrionics, but runs quiet and deep, and persistence, to forge ahead regardless, when the “feeling” isn’t always there, but the sense of commitment must be honored.
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/james-hampton-2052
“The Infinite Grind” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Ballpoint Pen/ Panel 2023
Reference Material “The Infinite Grind” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Ballpoint Pen/ Panel 2023
1. Within a few weeks of teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in the fall of 1992, I noticed a rectangular structure extending about two feet above the top of an enclosed wall. It was wrapped in plastic and kind of had a bas-relief feel to it. I asked somebody what it was, and was told “The Rose” of course, the person finding it strange that I didn’t know about this piece or the artist Jay DeFeo. Coming from the East Coast, I had never heard of Jay DeFeo or “The Rose.”
“The Rose” Oil on Canvas with Wood, Beads, Perals and Mica
1958 – 1966, 129’’ x 92’’ x 8’’ Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art
It was a painting begun with traditional canvas on wooden stretcher bars. After DeFeo had worked on it for eight years, the paint had been built up to amass a weight of 2300 pds. It was a painting begun and continued with an undisturbed focus and obsession. The catalyst for the painting was the Kabala, the oldest book of Jewish mysticism. Jay DeFeo wrote in a philosophically beat mode, “Only by chancing the ridiculous, can I hope for the sublime.” (from the 1959 catalogue of the show “16 Americans,” held at The Museum of Modern Art, NY.) This catalogue was the biggest show of art world luminaries in the second half of 20th century. If you want to learn more about the “Rose,” check out the website below. This is a fascinating story about an artist and her commitment to a work of art above all else. https://www.jaydefeofoundation.org/artwork/the-rose/
2. McGinnis Skate Park, San Rafael, CA, Novato Skate Park, Novato, CA, and others.
When my older son Jeremy was ten, he began a love affair with skateboarding, focusing mainly on skate parks. He was obsessed with skateboarding. Regardless of breaking bones, or any other resistant obstacle, he pressed on. I drew a ballpoint pen rendition of McInnis Skate Park on the panel for this piece, as a metaphor for persistence.
3. Abandoned University Art Museum, University of CA, Berkeley
It was in this space where I saw a selection of Jay DeFeo’s paintings. I saw the beat culture show at the DeYoung Museum, where “The Rose” was included. My recollection is that I also saw “The Rose” at the University Art Museum. Its 2300 pd. presence was fitted into a welded steel infrastructure. Abandoned spaces interest me as they do others. But abandoned museums are especially interesting to me. Their aura as “temples of immortality” vanishes when they are abandoned. In my painting, I have distorted the abandoned space.
“Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, November 9 - Feb . 4, 1996/ June 2- Sept. 15, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis/ Oct. 5-Dec. 29, 1996, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.
University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA March 19–May 25, 1997
4. The Loft Bible – Copenhagen . 200m . Designer Lars Bruun
1. Within a few weeks of teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in the fall of 1992, I noticed a rectangular structure extending about two feet above the top of an enclosed wall. It was wrapped in plastic and kind of had a bas-relief feel to it. I asked somebody what it was, and was told “The Rose” of course, the person finding it strange that I didn’t know about this piece or the artist Jay DeFeo. Coming from the East Coast, I had never heard of Jay DeFeo or “The Rose.”
“The Rose” Oil on Canvas with Wood, Beads, Perals and Mica
1958 – 1966, 129’’ x 92’’ x 8’’ Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art
It was a painting begun with traditional canvas on wooden stretcher bars. After DeFeo had worked on it for eight years, the paint had been built up to amass a weight of 2300 pds. It was a painting begun and continued with an undisturbed focus and obsession. The catalyst for the painting was the Kabala, the oldest book of Jewish mysticism. Jay DeFeo wrote in a philosophically beat mode, “Only by chancing the ridiculous, can I hope for the sublime.” (from the 1959 catalogue of the show “16 Americans,” held at The Museum of Modern Art, NY.) This catalogue was the biggest show of art world luminaries in the second half of 20th century. If you want to learn more about the “Rose,” check out the website below. This is a fascinating story about an artist and her commitment to a work of art above all else. https://www.jaydefeofoundation.org/artwork/the-rose/
2. McGinnis Skate Park, San Rafael, CA, Novato Skate Park, Novato, CA, and others.
When my older son Jeremy was ten, he began a love affair with skateboarding, focusing mainly on skate parks. He was obsessed with skateboarding. Regardless of breaking bones, or any other resistant obstacle, he pressed on. I drew a ballpoint pen rendition of McInnis Skate Park on the panel for this piece, as a metaphor for persistence.
3. Abandoned University Art Museum, University of CA, Berkeley
It was in this space where I saw a selection of Jay DeFeo’s paintings. I saw the beat culture show at the DeYoung Museum, where “The Rose” was included. My recollection is that I also saw “The Rose” at the University Art Museum. Its 2300 pd. presence was fitted into a welded steel infrastructure. Abandoned spaces interest me as they do others. But abandoned museums are especially interesting to me. Their aura as “temples of immortality” vanishes when they are abandoned. In my painting, I have distorted the abandoned space.
“Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, November 9 - Feb . 4, 1996/ June 2- Sept. 15, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis/ Oct. 5-Dec. 29, 1996, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.
University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA March 19–May 25, 1997
4. The Loft Bible – Copenhagen . 200m . Designer Lars Bruun
"The Core" 30" x 24" Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
Reference Material "The Core" 30" x 24" Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
A series of images by Tom Shearer of Agate rocks, minerals and gemstones caught my eye. These images were used as a metaphor in an article titled,“Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy,”an article on business by Thomas Malnight, Ivy Buche, and Charles Dhanarai.
I then came across an image of the Argentinian artist Marta Minujín, in her Paris studio in 1960. She is seventeen years old in this image.
“Marta became a pioneer in happenings, performance art, soft sculpture, and video. Minujín pursues a varied and irreverent practice that demonstrates a deep rejection towards the object of collectible art. She often uses ephemeral materials such as cardboard, fabric, and food, at the same time monumental and fragile. Reflecting on her life in 1983, Minujín expressed no regrets. Early determination, independence, and self-acceptance allowed her to thrive and generate exciting new artwork on three different continents.” (Aimé Iglesias Lukin, director and chief curator of Visual Arts.)
Today Minujín is still in full forward motion as an artist. She is now eighty-years-old.
Returning to her image at seventeen, I wonder exactly what is in her core that pushed her forward over the past sixty-three years to continue to envision and make art. I sense it is more about nature than nurture. It appears that long haul artists are condemned, in a good, but difficult way, to think about what it is they do each day. And along with that is the burden to keep moving forward conceptually, so as not to feel that they are just churning out a repetitious product. I’m sure much more can be said about this state of being.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-marta-minujins-radical-immersive-art-presaged-instagram-era
https://www.as-coa.org/events/studio-marta-minujin Marta Minujin All the Lovely People, 2010
A series of images by Tom Shearer of Agate rocks, minerals and gemstones caught my eye. These images were used as a metaphor in an article titled,“Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy,”an article on business by Thomas Malnight, Ivy Buche, and Charles Dhanarai.
I then came across an image of the Argentinian artist Marta Minujín, in her Paris studio in 1960. She is seventeen years old in this image.
“Marta became a pioneer in happenings, performance art, soft sculpture, and video. Minujín pursues a varied and irreverent practice that demonstrates a deep rejection towards the object of collectible art. She often uses ephemeral materials such as cardboard, fabric, and food, at the same time monumental and fragile. Reflecting on her life in 1983, Minujín expressed no regrets. Early determination, independence, and self-acceptance allowed her to thrive and generate exciting new artwork on three different continents.” (Aimé Iglesias Lukin, director and chief curator of Visual Arts.)
Today Minujín is still in full forward motion as an artist. She is now eighty-years-old.
Returning to her image at seventeen, I wonder exactly what is in her core that pushed her forward over the past sixty-three years to continue to envision and make art. I sense it is more about nature than nurture. It appears that long haul artists are condemned, in a good, but difficult way, to think about what it is they do each day. And along with that is the burden to keep moving forward conceptually, so as not to feel that they are just churning out a repetitious product. I’m sure much more can be said about this state of being.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-marta-minujins-radical-immersive-art-presaged-instagram-era
https://www.as-coa.org/events/studio-marta-minujin Marta Minujin All the Lovely People, 2010
"People Are Strange" 24" x 30" 2023
Reference Material "People are Strange" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2023
In August of 1967 I was seventeen, and a month away from attending art school. On August 10th I went to a concert, in my hometown of Brighton, Ma, to see the Doors. They had just come out that summer with “Light My Fire,” and were going to play in a small venue called the Crosstown Bus. I went to the first show, which had a somewhat smaller crowd, compared with the later show, which was packed.
It was an amazing show. I mostly watched them play, but was also curious about how the crowd was perceiving them. I would come to realize that Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore were playing off of each other, never showboating, contained and focused on delivering a totally particular kind of sound. Morrison was the perfect front man, disarmingly handsome and seductive, with a great voice and effortless in his movements. He was also not out of control or drunk, so no sideshow. The lizard king had yet to emerge.
The extended version of Light My Fire was the longest song of the night. At this point, nobody was dancing; all eyes were on Morrison. No screams or yelling from the crowd, just everybody silently staring up at him, transfixed if you will. I’m glad I got the opportunity to experience that night.
Antwerp . 1600 . Architect Kris My Brussels . 380 . Architect Lionel Jadot Antwerp . 1600M2 . Architect Ligne
In August of 1967 I was seventeen, and a month away from attending art school. On August 10th I went to a concert, in my hometown of Brighton, Ma, to see the Doors. They had just come out that summer with “Light My Fire,” and were going to play in a small venue called the Crosstown Bus. I went to the first show, which had a somewhat smaller crowd, compared with the later show, which was packed.
It was an amazing show. I mostly watched them play, but was also curious about how the crowd was perceiving them. I would come to realize that Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore were playing off of each other, never showboating, contained and focused on delivering a totally particular kind of sound. Morrison was the perfect front man, disarmingly handsome and seductive, with a great voice and effortless in his movements. He was also not out of control or drunk, so no sideshow. The lizard king had yet to emerge.
The extended version of Light My Fire was the longest song of the night. At this point, nobody was dancing; all eyes were on Morrison. No screams or yelling from the crowd, just everybody silently staring up at him, transfixed if you will. I’m glad I got the opportunity to experience that night.
Antwerp . 1600 . Architect Kris My Brussels . 380 . Architect Lionel Jadot Antwerp . 1600M2 . Architect Ligne
"Meandering" 24" x 36" 2023
Reference Material "Meandering" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel" 2023 - to meander, extreme U-bend in the course of a stream, usually occurring in a series. Meanders, named from the Menderes (historically known as the Maeander) River in Turkey, are most often formed in alluvial materials (stream-deposited sediments) and thus freely adjust their shapes and shift downstream according to the slope of the alluvial valley. A meandering channel commonly is about one and one-half times as long as the valley, and it exhibits pools in the meander bends and riffles (shallower zones with more turbulent water flow) in the reaches between the meanders. The length of a meander generally ranges from seven to ten times the channel width.
The uneven resistance to erosion of nonhomogenous material causes irregularities in a meandering stream, such as the stacking of meanders upstream of an obstruction. This commonly causes a meander to constrict and form a gooseneck, an extremely bowed meander. A cutoff may form through the gooseneck and allow the former meander bend to be sealed off as an oxbow lake. Silt deposits will eventually fill the lake to form a marsh or meander scar. Britannica Quiz Water and its Varying Forms
Learn how various disturbances in rivers and streams result in the formation of meanders
Subjected to rapid uplift, a meandering stream may cut into bedrock surfaces to produce entrenched or incised meanders. The rock walls thus formed are commonly quite steep and sometimes are symmetrical on both sides of the meander beds.
The uneven resistance to erosion of nonhomogenous material causes irregularities in a meandering stream, such as the stacking of meanders upstream of an obstruction. This commonly causes a meander to constrict and form a gooseneck, an extremely bowed meander. A cutoff may form through the gooseneck and allow the former meander bend to be sealed off as an oxbow lake. Silt deposits will eventually fill the lake to form a marsh or meander scar. Britannica Quiz Water and its Varying Forms
Learn how various disturbances in rivers and streams result in the formation of meanders
Subjected to rapid uplift, a meandering stream may cut into bedrock surfaces to produce entrenched or incised meanders. The rock walls thus formed are commonly quite steep and sometimes are symmetrical on both sides of the meander beds.
"Leslie" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Material "Leslie" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Leslie Louise Van Houten is an American convicted murderer and former member of the Manson Family. During her time with Manson's group, she was known by various aliases such as Louella Alexandria, Leslie Marie Sankston, Linda Sue Owens and Lulu.
Van Houten was born on August 23, 1949 in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena to Paul Van Houten and Jane (née Edwards). She is of Irish, English, Scottish, Dutch, and German descent. She grew up in a middle-class churchgoing family along with an older brother and two adopted siblings, a brother and a sister, who were Korean. Her mother and father divorced when she was 14. She began taking LSD and Benzedrine, and smoking hashish around age 15, running away for a time, but returning to complete high school. She said that later at age 17, she became pregnant and was ordered by her mother to undergo an abortion and to bury the aborted fetus in their backyard. Van Houten stated that after this event, she felt very removed from her mother and harbored intense anger toward her. She had a period of interest in yoga and took a year-long secretarial course, but became a hippie, living at a commune. Van Houten attended Monrovia High School in Monrovia, California, where she was a Homecoming Princess in 1966
During August of 1968, Leslie Van Houten joined the “family.” Charles Manson and his followers were based at the Spahn Ranch. Manson ostensibly ran his Family based on hippie-style principles of acceptance and free love. At the remote ranch, where they were isolated from any other influences, Manson's was the only opinion heard. At every meal he would lecture repetitively. Manson decided when they would eat, sleep, and have sex, and with whom they would have sex. He also controlled the taking of LSD, giving followers larger doses than he himself took. According to Manson, "When you take LSD enough times, you reach a state of nothing, of no thought".[9] According to Van Houten, she became "saturated in acid" and could not grasp the existence of those living a non-psychedelic reality.
Van Houten was not present during the Sharon Tate murder/s. 3301 Waverly Drive, Los Angeles, CA – Home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca
On August 9, 1969, Van Houten, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Clem Grogan and Manson went to the house of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Manson entered the house with Watson, then left with Atkins, Grogan and Kasabian. Krenwinkel, Van Houten, and Watson murdered the couple. He allegedly sent the others to kill an actor, but Kasabian claims she led Atkins and Grogan to an incorrect address.
Van Houten was convicted for holding down Rosemary La Bianca while the victim was stabbed more than a dozen times. She mutilated Leno LaBianca by carving the word “war” into his stomach with a fork. She then wrote words all over the house with blood. She claimed she wanted to ignite a race war- Helter Skelter” – that she would ride out, living in a hole in the middle of the earth. Van Houten believed Manson was Jesus Christ.
Leslie Van Houten was released from prison in CA . She is 73 yrs. Old.
Leslie Louise Van Houten is an American convicted murderer and former member of the Manson Family. During her time with Manson's group, she was known by various aliases such as Louella Alexandria, Leslie Marie Sankston, Linda Sue Owens and Lulu.
Van Houten was born on August 23, 1949 in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena to Paul Van Houten and Jane (née Edwards). She is of Irish, English, Scottish, Dutch, and German descent. She grew up in a middle-class churchgoing family along with an older brother and two adopted siblings, a brother and a sister, who were Korean. Her mother and father divorced when she was 14. She began taking LSD and Benzedrine, and smoking hashish around age 15, running away for a time, but returning to complete high school. She said that later at age 17, she became pregnant and was ordered by her mother to undergo an abortion and to bury the aborted fetus in their backyard. Van Houten stated that after this event, she felt very removed from her mother and harbored intense anger toward her. She had a period of interest in yoga and took a year-long secretarial course, but became a hippie, living at a commune. Van Houten attended Monrovia High School in Monrovia, California, where she was a Homecoming Princess in 1966
During August of 1968, Leslie Van Houten joined the “family.” Charles Manson and his followers were based at the Spahn Ranch. Manson ostensibly ran his Family based on hippie-style principles of acceptance and free love. At the remote ranch, where they were isolated from any other influences, Manson's was the only opinion heard. At every meal he would lecture repetitively. Manson decided when they would eat, sleep, and have sex, and with whom they would have sex. He also controlled the taking of LSD, giving followers larger doses than he himself took. According to Manson, "When you take LSD enough times, you reach a state of nothing, of no thought".[9] According to Van Houten, she became "saturated in acid" and could not grasp the existence of those living a non-psychedelic reality.
Van Houten was not present during the Sharon Tate murder/s. 3301 Waverly Drive, Los Angeles, CA – Home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca
On August 9, 1969, Van Houten, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Clem Grogan and Manson went to the house of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Manson entered the house with Watson, then left with Atkins, Grogan and Kasabian. Krenwinkel, Van Houten, and Watson murdered the couple. He allegedly sent the others to kill an actor, but Kasabian claims she led Atkins and Grogan to an incorrect address.
Van Houten was convicted for holding down Rosemary La Bianca while the victim was stabbed more than a dozen times. She mutilated Leno LaBianca by carving the word “war” into his stomach with a fork. She then wrote words all over the house with blood. She claimed she wanted to ignite a race war- Helter Skelter” – that she would ride out, living in a hole in the middle of the earth. Van Houten believed Manson was Jesus Christ.
Leslie Van Houten was released from prison in CA . She is 73 yrs. Old.
"Fear as a Conglomerative Pastiche" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Material - This piece is an amalgam already used images.
. "The Poetics of Less is More" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Material The Poetics of Less is More – 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/michael-heizers-city
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-mbs-neom-saudi-arabia/
https://brooklynrail.org/2019/11/1by1/Nancy-Holt-Sun-Tunnels
https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/sun-tunnels-0
Michael Heizer sitting
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/michael-heizers-city
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-mbs-neom-saudi-arabia/
https://brooklynrail.org/2019/11/1by1/Nancy-Holt-Sun-Tunnels
https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/sun-tunnels-0
Michael Heizer sitting
"Ambivalent Ideology" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Material "Ambivalent Ideology" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
For this painting, I used the characters represented in the short film below, and interfaced them with “The Allegory of the Cave.”
A film by Stuart Langfield “The Space Between Us” Short film on a Smartphone
Director Stuart Langfield’s ‘The Space Between Us’ is an abstract, yet reflective view of modern life under the unending grip of instant “connection” via social media. Without a spoken word, this film turns the mirror to the viewer, asking us to ponder how much time we put into building real relationships, versus those on the screen. Producers - Marcy Paterson & Rosie Gallagher at MTP
Starring Tunde Martin, Rebecca Murphy, Jaylene Mbararia, Matt Cairns, He Wang, Caitlin Crawford, Sally Pritchett, Clarissa Woods
Director of Photography - Gavin White, Editor - Jennifer Mackie, Stylist - Lucy Proctor, 1st AC - Michael Neal, 2nd AC - Jordan Tibitt
Production Assistant - Alannah Nicholson, Colourist - Nadia Khairat, Composer - Giles Lamb, “Never more connected/Never further apart”
Plato’s "Allegory of the Cave" is a concept devised by the philosopher to ruminate on the nature of belief versus knowledge. The allegory begins with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they've known nothing else.
Plato posits that one prisoner could become free. He finally sees the fire and realizes the shadows are fake. This prisoner could escape from the cave and discover there is a whole new world outside they were previously unaware of.
This prisoner would believe the outside world is so much more real than that in the cave. He would try to return to free the other prisoners. Upon his return, he is blinded because his eyes are not accustomed to actual sunlight. The chained prisoners would see this blindness and believe they will be harmed if they try to leave the cave.
For this painting, I used the characters represented in the short film below, and interfaced them with “The Allegory of the Cave.”
A film by Stuart Langfield “The Space Between Us” Short film on a Smartphone
Director Stuart Langfield’s ‘The Space Between Us’ is an abstract, yet reflective view of modern life under the unending grip of instant “connection” via social media. Without a spoken word, this film turns the mirror to the viewer, asking us to ponder how much time we put into building real relationships, versus those on the screen. Producers - Marcy Paterson & Rosie Gallagher at MTP
Starring Tunde Martin, Rebecca Murphy, Jaylene Mbararia, Matt Cairns, He Wang, Caitlin Crawford, Sally Pritchett, Clarissa Woods
Director of Photography - Gavin White, Editor - Jennifer Mackie, Stylist - Lucy Proctor, 1st AC - Michael Neal, 2nd AC - Jordan Tibitt
Production Assistant - Alannah Nicholson, Colourist - Nadia Khairat, Composer - Giles Lamb, “Never more connected/Never further apart”
Plato’s "Allegory of the Cave" is a concept devised by the philosopher to ruminate on the nature of belief versus knowledge. The allegory begins with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they've known nothing else.
Plato posits that one prisoner could become free. He finally sees the fire and realizes the shadows are fake. This prisoner could escape from the cave and discover there is a whole new world outside they were previously unaware of.
This prisoner would believe the outside world is so much more real than that in the cave. He would try to return to free the other prisoners. Upon his return, he is blinded because his eyes are not accustomed to actual sunlight. The chained prisoners would see this blindness and believe they will be harmed if they try to leave the cave.
. "Transfixed" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Material "Transfixed" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Transfixed – Cause someone to become motionless with horror, wonder, or astonishment
1. The back of the poplar panel on which L.D. painted the Mona Lisa The "Mona Lisa" was painted on a poplar panel, as were many works in Europe at the time. Poplar was also known as cottonwood.
2. Brad Melamed added a new photo to the album: The Shadow and Reflection Show. Polished back doors of a truck on W. 33rd Street, NYC
March 4, 2022 9:32 AM
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Persistence of Memory https://www.facebook.com/brad.melamed
3. Parade watchers in New York City, West 22nd and Broadway, 1938
4. Bismuth
Bismuth is a chemical element with the symbol Bi and atomic number 83. It is a post-transition metal, radioactive, and one of the pnictogens with chemical properties resembling its lighter group 15 siblings arsenic and antimony. Wikipedia Symbol: Bi Bismuth is believed to be a unique healer. Its rainbow colors emanate energies of togetherness that help to bond relationships better. It is also known to be used by experts in the process of astral travel and astral projections, as it accompanies the spirit, to travel easily from the physical plane to the spiritual plane. It is said that working with bismuth helps to make visualizations stronger, especially while working on a specific problem or issue. Even astral travel requires a lot of visualization and so bismuth is the ideal stone for the same.
https://www.healingcrystalsco.com/blogs/blog/bismuth
5. Loft Bible
Antwerp . 1600m . Architect Ligne V London . 370m . Paxtor-Locher Architects Cpenhagen . 200m . Designer Lars Bruun New York . 200m . Architect Desia/Chia Antwerp . 220. Architect Kris Mys
Transfixed – Cause someone to become motionless with horror, wonder, or astonishment
1. The back of the poplar panel on which L.D. painted the Mona Lisa The "Mona Lisa" was painted on a poplar panel, as were many works in Europe at the time. Poplar was also known as cottonwood.
2. Brad Melamed added a new photo to the album: The Shadow and Reflection Show. Polished back doors of a truck on W. 33rd Street, NYC
March 4, 2022 9:32 AM
·
Persistence of Memory https://www.facebook.com/brad.melamed
3. Parade watchers in New York City, West 22nd and Broadway, 1938
4. Bismuth
Bismuth is a chemical element with the symbol Bi and atomic number 83. It is a post-transition metal, radioactive, and one of the pnictogens with chemical properties resembling its lighter group 15 siblings arsenic and antimony. Wikipedia Symbol: Bi Bismuth is believed to be a unique healer. Its rainbow colors emanate energies of togetherness that help to bond relationships better. It is also known to be used by experts in the process of astral travel and astral projections, as it accompanies the spirit, to travel easily from the physical plane to the spiritual plane. It is said that working with bismuth helps to make visualizations stronger, especially while working on a specific problem or issue. Even astral travel requires a lot of visualization and so bismuth is the ideal stone for the same.
https://www.healingcrystalsco.com/blogs/blog/bismuth
5. Loft Bible
Antwerp . 1600m . Architect Ligne V London . 370m . Paxtor-Locher Architects Cpenhagen . 200m . Designer Lars Bruun New York . 200m . Architect Desia/Chia Antwerp . 220. Architect Kris Mys
. "Encasement" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Material “Encasement” 24” x 36 Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
1. Thesaurus encasement noun something that encloses another thing, especially to protect it, an encasement of several inches of silt had helped to preserve the sunken remains of the historic ship. Synonyms for encasement: armor, capsule, case, casing, cocoon, cover, covering, housing, hull, husk, jacket, pod, sheath, shell Words Related to encasement: cartridge, cassette (also cassette), bark, crust, carapace, house, mail, panoply, plate, plating, shield - The first known use of encasement was in 1741. Encasement doesn’t always convey a positive reality, as in fear of the outside world can encase a person just as surely as stone walls.
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2. Frank Lloyd Wright -" Fallingwater" a World Heritage Site U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Fallingwater is a house designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939 in the Laurel Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles (110 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. The house was built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, located in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. The house was designed as a weekend home for Liliane and Edgar J. Kaufmann, the owner of Kaufmann's Department Store. The incredible house stayed in the family until after the father, Edgar Sr., and his wife Lilliane had both passed away. In 1963, son Edgar Jr. entrusted the house to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and in 1965 it became a museum.
The home demonstrates Wright’s love of nature and expresses his desire to create harmony between man-made structures and the natural environment. The home is integrated into the natural landscape in multiple ways. It uses local materials such as stone quarried on the site, flagstone floors, and extensive wood to echo natural forms and textures in the surrounding environment. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture" and in 2007, it was ranked 29th on the list of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.The house and seven other Wright constructions were inscribed as a World Heritage Site under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" in July 2019.
3. While fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found during the last 100 years, discovering a well-preserved embryo is very rare, the researchers said in the release. The embryo's posture was not previously seen in non-avian dinosaur, which is "especially notable because it's reminiscent of a late-stage modern bird embryo." The researchers will continue to study the rare specimen in even more depth. They will attempt to image its internal anatomy. Some of its body parts are still covered in rocks. Their findings can also be used in more studies of fossil embryos.
4 .Freethink Twisty nuclear fusion reactor gets twice as hot as the sun The world’s biggest stellarator has overcome a heat-loss problem holding fusion back.
By Kristin Houser
September 13, 2021 Building a Solarpunk Future
Credit: Bernhard Ludewig / Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics We’re one step closer to a future of near-limitless clean energy.
Physicists in Germany just found a way to minimize a major heat-loss problem plaguing a promising kind of nuclear fusion reactor called a “stellarator.” The future of clean energy: Nuclear fusion occurs when the nuclei of two atoms merge into one. This releases an enormous amount of energy — it’s literally enough to power the sun and other stars. If we could harness the power of nuclear fusion on Earth, it would be an absolute game changer in the battle against climate change. Recreating fusion on Earth requires scientists to “put the sun in a box.”
Fusion doesn’t produce any carbon emissions (like the burning of fossil fuels) or long-lasting radioactive waste (like nuclear fission), and unlike solar and wind power, it isn’t dependent on the weather. Designing a nuclear fusion reactor: Nuclear fusion can only happen under extreme heat and pressure — Nobel-winning physicist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes once said recreating it on Earth would require scientists to essentially put the “sun in a box.” Scientists have designed a few different “boxes” — nuclear fusion reactors — that can create the conditions needed for fusion, but they require more energy than they produce, and until that changes, fusion won’t be a viable source of power. Stellarators 101: A stellarator is a type of nuclear fusion reactor that looks like a massive donut that has been squished and twisted out of shape. A coil of magnets surrounds the stellarator, creating magnetic fields that control the flow of plasma within it. By subjecting this plasma to extreme temperatures and pressure, a stellarator can force atoms within it to undergo fusion, and compared to other fusion reactors, stellarators require less power and have more design flexibility.
However, the device’s design makes it easier for the plasma to lose heat through a process called “neoclassical transport” — and without heat, you can’t have sustained fusion.“It’s really exciting news for fusion that this design has been successful.” Novimir Pablant
What’s new? Now, researchers have reduced heat loss in the world’s largest and most advanced stellarator — called the Wendelstein 7-X — by optimizing its magnetic coil. In doing so, they were able to heat the interior of their nuclear fusion reactor to nearly 54 million degrees Fahrenheit — that’s more than twice as hot s really exciting news for fusion that this design has been successful,” physicist Novimir Pablant said. “It clearly shows that this kind of optimization can be done.” And now, stellarators are one step closer to being a usable design for a nuclear fusion reactor.
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email [email protected].
5. A truck trailer outfit is loaded with 30 thousand pds. of steel pipe. The driver is on his way home, two thousand miles away. There’s a sharp curve, the heavy rig goes out of control, and ends up in a creek. The young driver is crushed to death in an instant by the shifting steel. The accident happened at about 1:30 in the morning. It was 5:30 before the body could be removed. Much of the steel had to be removed first, before wrecking equipment could be brought into operation. Adding to the tragedy was that the young man was on his first trip for a new company on a brand new job, his first over the road trip on his own. Was he sleepy? Was he going too fast for safety. What factor came in here to cause death? Whatever it was, it was swift and it was final. If it was speed, the warning was clear. If it was drowsiness, it still was a lesson, because driving is a fulltime job requiring 100% of the driver’s attention. And now the last act of the tragedy: the young man is on his way home.
Excerpt from Signal 30, 1959 ( This excerpt is from a movie focusing on drunk driving and inattentive driving, made in 1959. This video is as gnarly.
6. Life After People
A series on which scientists, mechanical engineers, and other experts speculate about what might become of Earth if humanity suddenly disappeared. The featured experts also talk about the impact of human absence on the environment and the vestiges of civilization thus left behind. The series was preceded by a two-hour special that aired on January 21, 2008, on the History Channel which served as a de facto pilot for the series that premiered April 21, 2009. The documentary and subsequent series were both narrated by James Lurie.The program does not speculate on how humanity may disappear, stipulating only that it has, and that it has done so suddenly, leaving everything behind including household pets and livestock that have to fend for themselves. The thought experiment is based on documented results of the sudden removal of humans from a geographical area and thus, the discontinuation of the maintenance of buildings and urban infrastructure. Lurie's narration begins:
What would happen if every human on Earth disappeared? This isn't the story of how we might vanish...it is the story of what will happen to the world we leave behind
The series' episodes thematically offer examples of urban and biological decay. The focus is on specific locations such as skyscrapers, religious icons, bridges and dams, and government buildings, and the fate of certain related objects, such as artifacts, documents and human bodies. The fate of some kinds of flora and fauna are covered as well. Each episode also contains a segment in which experts examine real locations that have been abandoned by people, including ghost towns and other sites of deterioration, where the deterioration has been caused by events similar to those outlined in the episode. Although the series speculates on the fates of landmarks around the world, the main focus is on situations that may occur at locations in the United States.
The various events that may occur after people disappear suddenly are depicted using CGI dramatizations. The timeline of predicted events begins approximately one day after the disappearance of humankind and extends up to one hundred million years into the future (one day, one week, one year, 10 years, 15 years, 25 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, etc.). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1. Thesaurus encasement noun something that encloses another thing, especially to protect it, an encasement of several inches of silt had helped to preserve the sunken remains of the historic ship. Synonyms for encasement: armor, capsule, case, casing, cocoon, cover, covering, housing, hull, husk, jacket, pod, sheath, shell Words Related to encasement: cartridge, cassette (also cassette), bark, crust, carapace, house, mail, panoply, plate, plating, shield - The first known use of encasement was in 1741. Encasement doesn’t always convey a positive reality, as in fear of the outside world can encase a person just as surely as stone walls.
·
2. Frank Lloyd Wright -" Fallingwater" a World Heritage Site U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Fallingwater is a house designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939 in the Laurel Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles (110 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. The house was built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, located in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. The house was designed as a weekend home for Liliane and Edgar J. Kaufmann, the owner of Kaufmann's Department Store. The incredible house stayed in the family until after the father, Edgar Sr., and his wife Lilliane had both passed away. In 1963, son Edgar Jr. entrusted the house to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and in 1965 it became a museum.
The home demonstrates Wright’s love of nature and expresses his desire to create harmony between man-made structures and the natural environment. The home is integrated into the natural landscape in multiple ways. It uses local materials such as stone quarried on the site, flagstone floors, and extensive wood to echo natural forms and textures in the surrounding environment. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture" and in 2007, it was ranked 29th on the list of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.The house and seven other Wright constructions were inscribed as a World Heritage Site under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" in July 2019.
3. While fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found during the last 100 years, discovering a well-preserved embryo is very rare, the researchers said in the release. The embryo's posture was not previously seen in non-avian dinosaur, which is "especially notable because it's reminiscent of a late-stage modern bird embryo." The researchers will continue to study the rare specimen in even more depth. They will attempt to image its internal anatomy. Some of its body parts are still covered in rocks. Their findings can also be used in more studies of fossil embryos.
4 .Freethink Twisty nuclear fusion reactor gets twice as hot as the sun The world’s biggest stellarator has overcome a heat-loss problem holding fusion back.
By Kristin Houser
September 13, 2021 Building a Solarpunk Future
Credit: Bernhard Ludewig / Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics We’re one step closer to a future of near-limitless clean energy.
Physicists in Germany just found a way to minimize a major heat-loss problem plaguing a promising kind of nuclear fusion reactor called a “stellarator.” The future of clean energy: Nuclear fusion occurs when the nuclei of two atoms merge into one. This releases an enormous amount of energy — it’s literally enough to power the sun and other stars. If we could harness the power of nuclear fusion on Earth, it would be an absolute game changer in the battle against climate change. Recreating fusion on Earth requires scientists to “put the sun in a box.”
Fusion doesn’t produce any carbon emissions (like the burning of fossil fuels) or long-lasting radioactive waste (like nuclear fission), and unlike solar and wind power, it isn’t dependent on the weather. Designing a nuclear fusion reactor: Nuclear fusion can only happen under extreme heat and pressure — Nobel-winning physicist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes once said recreating it on Earth would require scientists to essentially put the “sun in a box.” Scientists have designed a few different “boxes” — nuclear fusion reactors — that can create the conditions needed for fusion, but they require more energy than they produce, and until that changes, fusion won’t be a viable source of power. Stellarators 101: A stellarator is a type of nuclear fusion reactor that looks like a massive donut that has been squished and twisted out of shape. A coil of magnets surrounds the stellarator, creating magnetic fields that control the flow of plasma within it. By subjecting this plasma to extreme temperatures and pressure, a stellarator can force atoms within it to undergo fusion, and compared to other fusion reactors, stellarators require less power and have more design flexibility.
However, the device’s design makes it easier for the plasma to lose heat through a process called “neoclassical transport” — and without heat, you can’t have sustained fusion.“It’s really exciting news for fusion that this design has been successful.” Novimir Pablant
What’s new? Now, researchers have reduced heat loss in the world’s largest and most advanced stellarator — called the Wendelstein 7-X — by optimizing its magnetic coil. In doing so, they were able to heat the interior of their nuclear fusion reactor to nearly 54 million degrees Fahrenheit — that’s more than twice as hot s really exciting news for fusion that this design has been successful,” physicist Novimir Pablant said. “It clearly shows that this kind of optimization can be done.” And now, stellarators are one step closer to being a usable design for a nuclear fusion reactor.
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email [email protected].
5. A truck trailer outfit is loaded with 30 thousand pds. of steel pipe. The driver is on his way home, two thousand miles away. There’s a sharp curve, the heavy rig goes out of control, and ends up in a creek. The young driver is crushed to death in an instant by the shifting steel. The accident happened at about 1:30 in the morning. It was 5:30 before the body could be removed. Much of the steel had to be removed first, before wrecking equipment could be brought into operation. Adding to the tragedy was that the young man was on his first trip for a new company on a brand new job, his first over the road trip on his own. Was he sleepy? Was he going too fast for safety. What factor came in here to cause death? Whatever it was, it was swift and it was final. If it was speed, the warning was clear. If it was drowsiness, it still was a lesson, because driving is a fulltime job requiring 100% of the driver’s attention. And now the last act of the tragedy: the young man is on his way home.
Excerpt from Signal 30, 1959 ( This excerpt is from a movie focusing on drunk driving and inattentive driving, made in 1959. This video is as gnarly.
6. Life After People
A series on which scientists, mechanical engineers, and other experts speculate about what might become of Earth if humanity suddenly disappeared. The featured experts also talk about the impact of human absence on the environment and the vestiges of civilization thus left behind. The series was preceded by a two-hour special that aired on January 21, 2008, on the History Channel which served as a de facto pilot for the series that premiered April 21, 2009. The documentary and subsequent series were both narrated by James Lurie.The program does not speculate on how humanity may disappear, stipulating only that it has, and that it has done so suddenly, leaving everything behind including household pets and livestock that have to fend for themselves. The thought experiment is based on documented results of the sudden removal of humans from a geographical area and thus, the discontinuation of the maintenance of buildings and urban infrastructure. Lurie's narration begins:
What would happen if every human on Earth disappeared? This isn't the story of how we might vanish...it is the story of what will happen to the world we leave behind
The series' episodes thematically offer examples of urban and biological decay. The focus is on specific locations such as skyscrapers, religious icons, bridges and dams, and government buildings, and the fate of certain related objects, such as artifacts, documents and human bodies. The fate of some kinds of flora and fauna are covered as well. Each episode also contains a segment in which experts examine real locations that have been abandoned by people, including ghost towns and other sites of deterioration, where the deterioration has been caused by events similar to those outlined in the episode. Although the series speculates on the fates of landmarks around the world, the main focus is on situations that may occur at locations in the United States.
The various events that may occur after people disappear suddenly are depicted using CGI dramatizations. The timeline of predicted events begins approximately one day after the disappearance of humankind and extends up to one hundred million years into the future (one day, one week, one year, 10 years, 15 years, 25 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, etc.). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Performance of a Lifetime" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Reference Notes "Performance of a Lifetime" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2022
Territorio Mexicano , 1995-1997 Performance de Loena Wolffer Las transgresions delcuepro, Museo Carrillo Gil, México D.F., México
Exchange Resources Festival, Belfast, Irlanda, Multivisión, México – Fotografías: Mónica Naranjo
LORENA WOLLFER – “MEXICAN TERRITORY” 1995 PIECE DONE AT EXCHANGE RESOURCE FESTIVAL, BELFAST, IRELAND Lorena Wolffer
Lorena Wolffer of Mexico City brings her politically charged performance Mexican Territory to a storefront in the Arcade on Sunday May 11. In her piece that lasts nearly six hours, she is tied to a surgical table and lays motionless while 30 liters of cow’s blood drips on her naked body and a voice endlessly and monotonously recites the phrase "Danger, you are approaching Mexican territory."
6 HOUR PIECE CONNECTED TO THE DEVALUING OF THE PESO IN 1994
– Wollfer SAID “I WANTED TO ESTABLISH PARALLELS BETWEEN THE IRISH POLITICAL STRUGGLE AND THAT OF MEXICO.” This performance is a commentary on Mexico's passivity towards their economic and political concerns. Wolffer co-founded Ex-Teresa, Arte Alternativo, an experimental art space in Mexico City, where she served as Curator and Director until 1996. I am a politicized Mexican woman artist, working in a highly charged environment: Mexico City of the late 1990s. I articulate the complexities of my country's political crises through both cultural activism and the creation of performance and installation artworks. Focusing on the body and its limitations, I search for archetypal symbols and metaphors that explain our condition as women and as a society in crisis.
Chris Burden shot in the name of art in iconic performance (video) 1 min 45 sec At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.
“Shoot” is 8 seconds of footage, filmed on November 19, 1971, in a gallery located in Santa Ana, California named “F Space.” With only a handful of his friends in attendance, he proceeded with the piece that he had already announced the intention to the editors of an art journal called Avalanche1. With a small number of people in attendance, he performed what was likely his most shocking piece. “Shoot” featured Burden, who was only 25 years old at the time, being shot in the arm at close range by a friend with a rifle. The danger in this piece was obvious. All it took was being off a few inches and Burden could have been killed.
Shoot documentary 4 min 40 sec Burden stumbling after being shot Even Burden wasn’t immune to the shock of being shot in the arm as he quickly walked off-screen. Burden implores viewers to listen to the sound of the empty shell as it collides onto the ground. The imagery of the shot man stumbling forward is one that is difficult to forget. What happened with the bullet? The bullet was only supposed to graze Burden’s arm, but the shooter was slightly off target. The shot went through his arm instead of grazing it. Although the film was only eight seconds long, it burns itself into the mind of the audience breaking through desensitization that is felt by most indifferent viewers. Aftermath of being shot
Following the performance, Burden and his friends were left to deal with the reality of a gunshot wound to the arm. They went to the hospital and had to explain the performance piece to the hospital staff that was left in disbelief. This part of the story reminds of the reality of Burden’s work, the reality of the violent brutality he was representing through the self-inflicted violence and resulting injury. The meaning of the performance
The piece is a reminder of the fundamental reality of our corporeal life and corporeal reality. If the bullet had only moved a few inches in one direction, Burden would have likely been killed. If it had moved a few inches in the other, he wouldn’t have been touched by the bullet. It brings us to the realization that the gun holder had Burden’s life in his hands, just as soldiers in Vietnam held lives in their hands, politicians held the soldiers’ lives in their hands, and so forth.
3. The Bob Ross art class of our dreams –
They paint like Bob Ross, while watching Bob Ross, dressed as Bob Ross. Video and photos by Timothy Chipp and Greg Jaklewicz of the Abilene Reporter-News. Humankind Humankind, USA TODAY 2.26.19
The words that Picasso said during the celebration of his jubilee (90 years) in 1971: “… Many become artists for reasons that have little to do with art. The rich demand a new, original, scandalous. And I, starting with cubism, entertained these gentlemen with absurdities, and the less they were understood, the more I had fame and money. Now I’m famous and very rich, but when I’m alone with myself, I do not have the courage to see an artist in myself in the great meaning o the word; I’m just an entertainer of the audience who has understood the time. It’s bitter and painful, but it’s true.” Arnold Newman ( American, 1918-2006 ) Picasso in his studio, Cannes 1956 Pablo Picasso true 452 notes
5.Speaking in the NGV Great Hall, in view of his magnificent participatory sculpture Golden Mirror Carousel 2014, Carsten Hӧller shares insights into his unique approach to art making, which provides audience members the opportunity to experience the world differently. From hallucinating reindeer to rethinking our built environment to incorporate slides as everyday transportation, this wide-ranging In Conversation event, a partnership between the Melbourne Festival and NGV, explores the thinking of one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists.
Golden Mirror Carousel appears to be a traditional fairground ride, except for one striking aspect: its speed of revolution. Turning approximately one cycle per five minutes, the work confounds the excess of velocity expected today from machines of entertainment. Our daily experience of speed – of vehicles, machines and even technological tasks – is faster and faster, and entertainment in the fairground context has evolved with this normalisation of speed, becoming ever more immersive and ‘on the edge’. Actively confounding this central aspect challenges us to submit to a slower pace and get lost in a movement of contemplation.
Many recent activities at the NGV reflect an increased interest, by artists and audiences, in art practices that might be considered participatory, interactive or relational, perhaps most notably as part of the recent Melbourne Now exhibition. Melbourne Now projects exhibiting these qualities were discussed in the essay ‘Playtime’, in the exhibition’s limited-edition publication, by Isobel Crombie, Assistant Director, Curatorial and Collection Management, NGV, which identified ‘play’ as a theme central to the works and, via philosopher Emmanuel Kant, central in fact to the creative act.
The Belgian artist Carsten Höller’s upcoming retrospective at London’s Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery will feature two of his popular slides, the BBC reports (see Höller to Taker Over the Hayward Gallery). A similar installation complete with five slides was featured at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2006, and at the Swiss furniture company Vitra’s headquarters (see Carsten Höller Unleashes 100-Foot-Tall Slide on Vitra Campus). The major survey exhibition titled Decision will feature works spanning the artist’s 20-year career. It sets out to encourages visitors to consider the consequences of their life decisions and to reflect on how past choices have impacted their present reality. In accordance with the theme of making choices, the exhibition will force visitors to choose once before entering, and once again before leaving the show: The gallery has been outfitted with two separate entrances and visitors also have the option of exiting via one of two of the artist’s shiny slides. Höller told the BBC that the slides would hopefully make visitors experience “an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness.” Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, said Höller was “one of the world’s most thought-provoking and profoundly playful artists, with a sharp and mischievous intelligence bent on turning our ‘normal’ view of things upside-down.” The exhibition, he added “will ask visitors to make choices, but also, more importantly, to embrace a kind of double vision that takes in competing points of view, and embodies what Höller calls a state of ‘active uncertainty’–a frame of mind conducive to entertaining new possibilities.” Carsten Höller Decision runs from June 10 to September 6 at the Hayward Gallery, London. 6. Vehicle vs Pedestrian Pomona 6.27.20 - Solo Vehicle Fatal Crash / Moreno Valley
Territorio Mexicano , 1995-1997 Performance de Loena Wolffer Las transgresions delcuepro, Museo Carrillo Gil, México D.F., México
Exchange Resources Festival, Belfast, Irlanda, Multivisión, México – Fotografías: Mónica Naranjo
LORENA WOLLFER – “MEXICAN TERRITORY” 1995 PIECE DONE AT EXCHANGE RESOURCE FESTIVAL, BELFAST, IRELAND Lorena Wolffer
Lorena Wolffer of Mexico City brings her politically charged performance Mexican Territory to a storefront in the Arcade on Sunday May 11. In her piece that lasts nearly six hours, she is tied to a surgical table and lays motionless while 30 liters of cow’s blood drips on her naked body and a voice endlessly and monotonously recites the phrase "Danger, you are approaching Mexican territory."
6 HOUR PIECE CONNECTED TO THE DEVALUING OF THE PESO IN 1994
– Wollfer SAID “I WANTED TO ESTABLISH PARALLELS BETWEEN THE IRISH POLITICAL STRUGGLE AND THAT OF MEXICO.” This performance is a commentary on Mexico's passivity towards their economic and political concerns. Wolffer co-founded Ex-Teresa, Arte Alternativo, an experimental art space in Mexico City, where she served as Curator and Director until 1996. I am a politicized Mexican woman artist, working in a highly charged environment: Mexico City of the late 1990s. I articulate the complexities of my country's political crises through both cultural activism and the creation of performance and installation artworks. Focusing on the body and its limitations, I search for archetypal symbols and metaphors that explain our condition as women and as a society in crisis.
Chris Burden shot in the name of art in iconic performance (video) 1 min 45 sec At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.
“Shoot” is 8 seconds of footage, filmed on November 19, 1971, in a gallery located in Santa Ana, California named “F Space.” With only a handful of his friends in attendance, he proceeded with the piece that he had already announced the intention to the editors of an art journal called Avalanche1. With a small number of people in attendance, he performed what was likely his most shocking piece. “Shoot” featured Burden, who was only 25 years old at the time, being shot in the arm at close range by a friend with a rifle. The danger in this piece was obvious. All it took was being off a few inches and Burden could have been killed.
Shoot documentary 4 min 40 sec Burden stumbling after being shot Even Burden wasn’t immune to the shock of being shot in the arm as he quickly walked off-screen. Burden implores viewers to listen to the sound of the empty shell as it collides onto the ground. The imagery of the shot man stumbling forward is one that is difficult to forget. What happened with the bullet? The bullet was only supposed to graze Burden’s arm, but the shooter was slightly off target. The shot went through his arm instead of grazing it. Although the film was only eight seconds long, it burns itself into the mind of the audience breaking through desensitization that is felt by most indifferent viewers. Aftermath of being shot
Following the performance, Burden and his friends were left to deal with the reality of a gunshot wound to the arm. They went to the hospital and had to explain the performance piece to the hospital staff that was left in disbelief. This part of the story reminds of the reality of Burden’s work, the reality of the violent brutality he was representing through the self-inflicted violence and resulting injury. The meaning of the performance
The piece is a reminder of the fundamental reality of our corporeal life and corporeal reality. If the bullet had only moved a few inches in one direction, Burden would have likely been killed. If it had moved a few inches in the other, he wouldn’t have been touched by the bullet. It brings us to the realization that the gun holder had Burden’s life in his hands, just as soldiers in Vietnam held lives in their hands, politicians held the soldiers’ lives in their hands, and so forth.
- Trans-Fixed was a 1974 performance by Chris Burden in which he was crucified onto a Volkswagen Beetle.
- On April 23, 1974, performance artist Chris Burden was crucified shirtless onto the back of a pale blue Volkswagen Beetle.[1] Burden stood on the car's rear bumper and leaned backwards.[2] His attorney hammered two nails through his open palms into the roof. Three other assistants ran the engine and opened the garage door, which opened into an alley called Speedway in Venice, California.[1] The assistants rolled the car out of the garage, where it ran while stationary for two minutes with the engine at full throttle.[2] Fifteen of his friends were there, having been invited but not briefed on what to expect.[1]
3. The Bob Ross art class of our dreams –
They paint like Bob Ross, while watching Bob Ross, dressed as Bob Ross. Video and photos by Timothy Chipp and Greg Jaklewicz of the Abilene Reporter-News. Humankind Humankind, USA TODAY 2.26.19
The words that Picasso said during the celebration of his jubilee (90 years) in 1971: “… Many become artists for reasons that have little to do with art. The rich demand a new, original, scandalous. And I, starting with cubism, entertained these gentlemen with absurdities, and the less they were understood, the more I had fame and money. Now I’m famous and very rich, but when I’m alone with myself, I do not have the courage to see an artist in myself in the great meaning o the word; I’m just an entertainer of the audience who has understood the time. It’s bitter and painful, but it’s true.” Arnold Newman ( American, 1918-2006 ) Picasso in his studio, Cannes 1956 Pablo Picasso true 452 notes
5.Speaking in the NGV Great Hall, in view of his magnificent participatory sculpture Golden Mirror Carousel 2014, Carsten Hӧller shares insights into his unique approach to art making, which provides audience members the opportunity to experience the world differently. From hallucinating reindeer to rethinking our built environment to incorporate slides as everyday transportation, this wide-ranging In Conversation event, a partnership between the Melbourne Festival and NGV, explores the thinking of one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists.
Golden Mirror Carousel appears to be a traditional fairground ride, except for one striking aspect: its speed of revolution. Turning approximately one cycle per five minutes, the work confounds the excess of velocity expected today from machines of entertainment. Our daily experience of speed – of vehicles, machines and even technological tasks – is faster and faster, and entertainment in the fairground context has evolved with this normalisation of speed, becoming ever more immersive and ‘on the edge’. Actively confounding this central aspect challenges us to submit to a slower pace and get lost in a movement of contemplation.
Many recent activities at the NGV reflect an increased interest, by artists and audiences, in art practices that might be considered participatory, interactive or relational, perhaps most notably as part of the recent Melbourne Now exhibition. Melbourne Now projects exhibiting these qualities were discussed in the essay ‘Playtime’, in the exhibition’s limited-edition publication, by Isobel Crombie, Assistant Director, Curatorial and Collection Management, NGV, which identified ‘play’ as a theme central to the works and, via philosopher Emmanuel Kant, central in fact to the creative act.
The Belgian artist Carsten Höller’s upcoming retrospective at London’s Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery will feature two of his popular slides, the BBC reports (see Höller to Taker Over the Hayward Gallery). A similar installation complete with five slides was featured at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2006, and at the Swiss furniture company Vitra’s headquarters (see Carsten Höller Unleashes 100-Foot-Tall Slide on Vitra Campus). The major survey exhibition titled Decision will feature works spanning the artist’s 20-year career. It sets out to encourages visitors to consider the consequences of their life decisions and to reflect on how past choices have impacted their present reality. In accordance with the theme of making choices, the exhibition will force visitors to choose once before entering, and once again before leaving the show: The gallery has been outfitted with two separate entrances and visitors also have the option of exiting via one of two of the artist’s shiny slides. Höller told the BBC that the slides would hopefully make visitors experience “an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness.” Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, said Höller was “one of the world’s most thought-provoking and profoundly playful artists, with a sharp and mischievous intelligence bent on turning our ‘normal’ view of things upside-down.” The exhibition, he added “will ask visitors to make choices, but also, more importantly, to embrace a kind of double vision that takes in competing points of view, and embodies what Höller calls a state of ‘active uncertainty’–a frame of mind conducive to entertaining new possibilities.” Carsten Höller Decision runs from June 10 to September 6 at the Hayward Gallery, London. 6. Vehicle vs Pedestrian Pomona 6.27.20 - Solo Vehicle Fatal Crash / Moreno Valley
“This Can’t be Happening; It’s not Real.” 24” x 30” Oil/Paper/Panel. 2021
Reference Material “This Can’t be Happening; It’s not Real.” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel. 2021. Title's words, Spoken to Jodi Doering, ICU nurse, by a patient who is dying from Covid. November 2020, South Dakota
1. A Promise That Never Bloomed, a Post-Minimalist You’ve Never Heard Of Last chance: Lester Hayes
“Lester Hayes: Selected Work, 1962-1975” continues through Sunday at Triple Candie,
But he will not be raised, because there is no Lester Hayes. He never existed. He is entirely an invention of Triple Candie. The gallery’s directors, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, the co-publishers of the magazine Art on Paper, So, with no real artist and no real art, what do you have here? You have many questions raised about art and the often unquestioned ideas surrounding it, like originality, authenticity, influence, history, formal value and biography-as-value. Is contemporary art largely a promotional scam perpetuated by — in no particular order of blame — museums, dealers, critics, historians, collectors, art schools and anyone else who has a sufficient personal, professional or financial investment riding on the scam to want to keep it afloat?
If you are affected — moved, amused, provoked — by the assembled Hayes oeuvre, then is it art? Are Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett artists? (They would certainly say no.) Are they themselves perpetrators of a scam? Or are they critical thinkers working in an alternative direction to the market economy? Imagine the consequences if lots of people started creating “fake” art without acknowledging what they were up to? The whole art-as-investment illusion would evaporate. The market would crumble. Art myths could no longer be trusted. The Triple Candie’s Hayes biography, in other words, is spun largely from myths and clichés that sell art and artists today. As for the “Hayes” art in the show, with its junk materials, slapdash handiwork and jokey titles, it’s not much. Or, rather, it’s exactly an alternative to “much.” When the show, which runs through Sunday, comes down, everything will be destroyed. And the gallery, which runs on a small budget and has a tiny board of directors, will go on to other projects, including a planned re-creation of one of the most controversial museum shows of the latter half of the 20th century, the Metropolitan Museum’s 1969 “Harlem on My Mind.” When that show opened, it was bitterly attacked for perpetuating racist myths and substituting documentary material for actual work by black artists. Can such charges be leveled at Triple Candie for the Lester Hayes show? Is it an example of the white art world — Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett are white — getting mileage out of the work of a black artist, real or not? According to his biography, Hayes was invited by fellow African-American artists to join them in protesting the Met exhibition, but he refused, stating that “it was ultimately more important for our community as a whole to be better understood, than for specific individuals to be celebrated via their work.” Maybe he and his work, however uncelebratable, will get a dollar-glutted art world thinking in more complex and alternative ways than he, had he existed, could possibly know.
By Holland Cotter Published: January 16, 2007 Art New York Times An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World
Lebbeus Woods (May 31, 1940 – October 30, 2012) was an American architect and artist known for his unconventional and experimental designs.[2][3] Known for his rich, yet mainly unbuilt work and its nonetheless significant impact on the architectural sphere, Lebbeus Woods and his oeuvre are considered visionary, describing a radically experimental world built on the principles of heterogeneity and multiplicity and bridging thus the gap between numerous fields including architecture, philosophy, and mathematics. Reconfiguring the architectural space in environments of crisis, whether it be natural, social, political, or financial, Woods stated: “I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world. All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”[4]
Top of FormBottom of Form“Berlin Free-Zone 3-2,” a 1990 proposal by Lebbeus Woods for an abandoned government building in reunified Berlin. The structure, more theoretical than practical, has no assigned purpose.Credit...Lebbeus Woods While the purpose of most architects is the construction of their designed work, for Woods, the essence of architecture transcended these limits by seeking something other than an idea expressed as a built form. Interested in what would happen if the architect was freed from conventional restrictions, he did not intend to generate and construct a design proposal of a specific geometrical form in order to approach an existing architectural problem. To the contrary, his work consists of intricately complex drawings and designs, envisioning and exploring new types of space. Yet, he considered his architecture neither utopian nor visionary but an attempt to approach reality under a radical set of ideas and conditions.[4] The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators. He is best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo that were included in the publication of Radical Reconstruction in 1997 (Sarajevo after the war, Havana in the grips of the ongoing trade embargo, and San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake).
3. Gordon Matta-Clark “It would be interesting to take a conventional living space, somewhere still inhabited, and transform it to the point of rendering it unusable”. During his brief lifetime, Gordon Matta–Clark studied architecture at Cornell and literature at the Sorbonne in the thick of May ’68 (his first encounters with Debord’s Situationism). Armed with various sharp tools and explosive ideas, he went on not to erect buildings, but to cut them in half or knock huge holes into them, stripping them down to their bare bones. His aim? To lay bare the forces that preside over traditional architecture and which make “states of enclosure” for “passive and isolated consumers”.A spectacular ideal of productive destruction emerged as he took sledgehammer and chainsaw to edifices due for demolition — hence nothing remains of his interventions apart from the short films (Splitting, Conical Intersect, Office Baroque) that document the work of this “anarchitect”.Matta–Clark is now a legend, remembered for his short, brilliant career (or perhaps for a meal eaten at FOOD, the artist–run restaurant he opened in 1971 in SoHo) and for his tragic and untimely death from cancer, at the age of 35.GALERIE DU JEU DE PAUME (Paris), until September 23.Photo: Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975Courtesy The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark et David Zwirner, New York / Londres / Hong Kong. © 2018 The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / ADAGP, Paris
The Bible Loft. 4. Stockholm . 210m . Architect Per Oberg, Brussels . 470m . Architect Serge Fontiny, Brusssels . 380m. Architect Lionel Jadot
House R 128 . Stuttgart, Germany . Werner Sobek . Architect
1. A Promise That Never Bloomed, a Post-Minimalist You’ve Never Heard Of Last chance: Lester Hayes
“Lester Hayes: Selected Work, 1962-1975” continues through Sunday at Triple Candie,
But he will not be raised, because there is no Lester Hayes. He never existed. He is entirely an invention of Triple Candie. The gallery’s directors, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, the co-publishers of the magazine Art on Paper, So, with no real artist and no real art, what do you have here? You have many questions raised about art and the often unquestioned ideas surrounding it, like originality, authenticity, influence, history, formal value and biography-as-value. Is contemporary art largely a promotional scam perpetuated by — in no particular order of blame — museums, dealers, critics, historians, collectors, art schools and anyone else who has a sufficient personal, professional or financial investment riding on the scam to want to keep it afloat?
If you are affected — moved, amused, provoked — by the assembled Hayes oeuvre, then is it art? Are Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett artists? (They would certainly say no.) Are they themselves perpetrators of a scam? Or are they critical thinkers working in an alternative direction to the market economy? Imagine the consequences if lots of people started creating “fake” art without acknowledging what they were up to? The whole art-as-investment illusion would evaporate. The market would crumble. Art myths could no longer be trusted. The Triple Candie’s Hayes biography, in other words, is spun largely from myths and clichés that sell art and artists today. As for the “Hayes” art in the show, with its junk materials, slapdash handiwork and jokey titles, it’s not much. Or, rather, it’s exactly an alternative to “much.” When the show, which runs through Sunday, comes down, everything will be destroyed. And the gallery, which runs on a small budget and has a tiny board of directors, will go on to other projects, including a planned re-creation of one of the most controversial museum shows of the latter half of the 20th century, the Metropolitan Museum’s 1969 “Harlem on My Mind.” When that show opened, it was bitterly attacked for perpetuating racist myths and substituting documentary material for actual work by black artists. Can such charges be leveled at Triple Candie for the Lester Hayes show? Is it an example of the white art world — Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett are white — getting mileage out of the work of a black artist, real or not? According to his biography, Hayes was invited by fellow African-American artists to join them in protesting the Met exhibition, but he refused, stating that “it was ultimately more important for our community as a whole to be better understood, than for specific individuals to be celebrated via their work.” Maybe he and his work, however uncelebratable, will get a dollar-glutted art world thinking in more complex and alternative ways than he, had he existed, could possibly know.
By Holland Cotter Published: January 16, 2007 Art New York Times An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World
Lebbeus Woods (May 31, 1940 – October 30, 2012) was an American architect and artist known for his unconventional and experimental designs.[2][3] Known for his rich, yet mainly unbuilt work and its nonetheless significant impact on the architectural sphere, Lebbeus Woods and his oeuvre are considered visionary, describing a radically experimental world built on the principles of heterogeneity and multiplicity and bridging thus the gap between numerous fields including architecture, philosophy, and mathematics. Reconfiguring the architectural space in environments of crisis, whether it be natural, social, political, or financial, Woods stated: “I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world. All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”[4]
Top of FormBottom of Form“Berlin Free-Zone 3-2,” a 1990 proposal by Lebbeus Woods for an abandoned government building in reunified Berlin. The structure, more theoretical than practical, has no assigned purpose.Credit...Lebbeus Woods While the purpose of most architects is the construction of their designed work, for Woods, the essence of architecture transcended these limits by seeking something other than an idea expressed as a built form. Interested in what would happen if the architect was freed from conventional restrictions, he did not intend to generate and construct a design proposal of a specific geometrical form in order to approach an existing architectural problem. To the contrary, his work consists of intricately complex drawings and designs, envisioning and exploring new types of space. Yet, he considered his architecture neither utopian nor visionary but an attempt to approach reality under a radical set of ideas and conditions.[4] The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators. He is best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo that were included in the publication of Radical Reconstruction in 1997 (Sarajevo after the war, Havana in the grips of the ongoing trade embargo, and San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake).
3. Gordon Matta-Clark “It would be interesting to take a conventional living space, somewhere still inhabited, and transform it to the point of rendering it unusable”. During his brief lifetime, Gordon Matta–Clark studied architecture at Cornell and literature at the Sorbonne in the thick of May ’68 (his first encounters with Debord’s Situationism). Armed with various sharp tools and explosive ideas, he went on not to erect buildings, but to cut them in half or knock huge holes into them, stripping them down to their bare bones. His aim? To lay bare the forces that preside over traditional architecture and which make “states of enclosure” for “passive and isolated consumers”.A spectacular ideal of productive destruction emerged as he took sledgehammer and chainsaw to edifices due for demolition — hence nothing remains of his interventions apart from the short films (Splitting, Conical Intersect, Office Baroque) that document the work of this “anarchitect”.Matta–Clark is now a legend, remembered for his short, brilliant career (or perhaps for a meal eaten at FOOD, the artist–run restaurant he opened in 1971 in SoHo) and for his tragic and untimely death from cancer, at the age of 35.GALERIE DU JEU DE PAUME (Paris), until September 23.Photo: Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975Courtesy The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark et David Zwirner, New York / Londres / Hong Kong. © 2018 The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / ADAGP, Paris
The Bible Loft. 4. Stockholm . 210m . Architect Per Oberg, Brussels . 470m . Architect Serge Fontiny, Brusssels . 380m. Architect Lionel Jadot
House R 128 . Stuttgart, Germany . Werner Sobek . Architect
"Backtracking" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
Reference Material “Backtracking” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
1. When we look at the night sky, how far back in time can we see?
The time it takes for light from objects in space to reach Earth means that when we look at planets, stars and galaxies, we're actually peering back in time.
By Stuart Atkinson
Published: January 8, 2021 at 11:22 am
When we look up at the stars, we are looking back in time. The light entering our eyes from these distant objects set off years, decades or millennia earlier. Every time we look at something ‘up there’ we’re seeing it as it was in the past. With enormous modern telescopes and sensitive detectors, professional astronomers can see far beyond what most back garden telescopes are capable of. As far as our own Solar System is concerned, one of the farthest objects observed so far is a 500km-wide asteroid, 2018VG18. Also known as Farout, it is over 120 times further from the Sun than Earth, or three times further away than dwarf planet Pluto. If you were standing on Farout’s dark, pink icy surface, Earth would be a mag. +6.8 ‘star’ hugging close to the Sun and Jupiter would shine at barely mag. +5.0. If a space probe ever reaches Farout it will take 17 hours for its radio signals and images to reach Earth.As for the most distant object ever seen in the Universe, the current record holder is a galaxy – GN-z11. Located in Ursa Major, GN-z11 is a young galaxy barely 1/25th the size of our own, and it is so far away that when its faint light is observed by astronomers they are looking back in time more than 13 billion years, to just 400 million years after the Big Bang. It is expected that when it finally launches, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to look even further back in time and observe events that happened long ago in galaxies far, far away… Science fiction has got it wrong; you don’t need a TARDIS or a DeLorean to travel back in time: your own eyes will do just fine.
2. Various galaxies used in the painting
Warped Edge-On Galaxy ESO 510-G13: This Hubble Heritage image of ESO 510-G13 shows a galaxy that has an unusual.... is so far away that the light from it has taken 11 billion years to reach Earth. Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038-4039: .Galaxy NGC 3079: 45,000,000 light-years from earth.
Overlapping spiral galaxies, 2MASX J00482185-2507365: 19190 km/s ... million light-years from Earth
Earth (from Old English: Eorðe; Greek: Γαῖα Gaia;[n 5] Latin: Terra[25]), otherwise known as the World[n 6] or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets. "Black Eye Galaxy" M64: . Majestic Sombrero Galaxy M104: . Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300: Hoag's Object Galaxy: . Starburst Galaxy M82: . Dusty Spiral Galaxy NGC 4414: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1512: . Warped Edge-On Galaxy ESO 510-G13: Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038-4039: .Galaxy NGC 3079: Overlapping spiral galaxies, 2MASX J00482185-2507365: . Earth An artwork included in Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Obsession” exhibition.
3. The Universe Is a Giant Donut That We Live Inside, New Research Suggests The idea that the universe has a 3D torus shape ties in to some pretty far-out stuff, like the CIA’s 1980s Gateway report on psychic phenomena. by Sarah Wells July 22, 2021, 6:00am The Universe Is a Giant Donut That We Live Inside, New Research Suggests Image: Alexey Brin via Getty Images
Without scientific instruments or knowledge to tell them otherwise, you can forgive ancient humans for initially believing the Earth was flat. After all, from a human perspective, the world does appear to stretch out before us without suddenly sloping down like a half-pipe. But while this notion has been thoroughly disproven for centuries, a new kind of flat-versus-curved debate has recently captured academic imagination. And this time, scientists are debating the very shape of the universe itself. In a paper recently published on the arXiv preprint server, a team of astrophysicists and cosmologists from Ulm University and the University of Lyon have studied the leftover light from the Big Bang—known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB—and determined that the universe may not be a flat plane, as many scientists currently believe.
“The example in our paper is… a donut shaped universe model,” explained Thomas Buchert, a professor of cosmology at the University of Lyon and coauthor on the new paper, in an email. This shape is also known as a three-torus, Buchert wrote, AKA a three-dimensional donut. The idea that the universe has a torus shape is at the center of some pretty far-out stuff, such as the CIA’s 1980s Gateway report on psychic phenomena. This paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but Buchert said it has been submitted to journals for consideration. Buchert and colleagues are not the first to propose an oddly shaped universe. The idea of a torus shape originated in the 1980s, and new data reinvigorated discussions among researchers in 2003. But in the last 18 years scientists have broadly come to a different conclusion about the universe’s shape. Namely, they believe it to be geometrically flat—meaning parallel lines in the fabric of spacetime remain parallel—and infinitely expanding. This last tenet is evidenced by observed redshifts, a signal from light that it’s retreating, at the edge of the universe. This idea that the universe’s shape is essentially an infinite sheet of flat paper would seem like the end of the story, but Buchert and colleagues write in their paper that there was something in the CMB that didn’t quite line up. “The [CMB] spectrum is not only discrete but has in addition large gaps,” they write. Which creates “intriguing discrepancies between predictions of the [standard model] and CMB observations.” In other words, there appear to be signals missing from the CMB that would be present if the universe were truly infinite as the standard model proposes. One explanation for this would be that the universe is actually “multiply connected,” at these missing points, meaning that its topology is curved in such a way that it connects back onto itself like a donut. The same way you can fold a flat piece of paper into a curved shape without changing its parallel properties, this solution would mean the universe could be both flat and donut shaped. Through simulations of the CMB, this is exactly what the researchers found. However, if proven to be true, this would mean that the universe was no longer infinite, said Buchert, which may be philosophically jarring to some. “Finite universe models might be scary to some people, but you do not experience a boundary,” said Buchert. “So you live in an unbounded Universe although it has finite volume.” But even if you won’t necessarily bonk into the edge of this finite universe, can you sail around it and end up back where you started? Theoretically, yes. “Light can travel around the whole finite Universe, but for a space-traveler it'll be difficult,” said Buchert. “Certainly, if future technologies would allow to create wormholes in spacetime, or if we would realize [warp drives that are] not limited by the speed of light, then it is in principle possible to travel around.” But even if you could hop onboard a warp-speed spacecraft, it might have some unintended consequences, warns Buchert. “It is expected that your proper time within the warp bubble is considerably shorter than the time elapsed at Earth where you started from,” he said. “If you would complete the loop and come back, Earth might no longer exist.” While they wait for new warp craft to be developed, Buchert and colleagues will instead continue probing this mystery the old fashion way: analyzing data from probes like Planck, WMAP and COBE to uncover hidden clues at the birth of the universe.
4. Excerpt — The Infinite Complexity of CellsMichael Denton
October 2, 2020, 6:47 AM
In terms of compressed complexity, cells are without peer in the material world, actualized or imagined. And there is likely far more complexity still to uncover. Even as recently as 1913, when Lawrence Henderson composed his classic The Fitness of the Environment, the cell was a black box, its actual molecular complexity a mysterious unknown. Only as the veil began to lift with the mid-century molecular biological revolution did science begin to glimpse the sophistication of these extraordinary pieces of matter. Subsequently, every decade of research has revealed further depths of complexity. The discovery of ever more intricate structures and systems with each increase in knowledge — including vastly complex DNA topologies and a vast and growing inventory of mini-RNA regulator molecules — tells us there is probably much more to uncover. What we glimpse now may be only a tiny fraction of what remains to be discovered. As Erica Hayden confessed in the journal Nature, “As sequencing and other new technologies spew forth data,” the complexity unearthed by cell biology “has seemed to grow by orders of magnitude. Delving into it has been like zooming into a Mandelbrot set… that reveals ever more intricate patterns as one peers closer at its boundary. A Third InfinityThere is much more to discover about the cell, but even from our current limited knowledge of its depths it is clear that this tiny unit of compact, adaptive sophistication constitutes something like a third infinity. Where the cosmos feels infinitely large and the atomic realm infinitely small, the cell feels infinitely complex. But cells are not just complex beyond any sensible measure and beyond any other conceivable material form. They appear in so many ways supremely fit to fulfill their role as the basic unit of biological life. One element of this fitness is manifest in their incomparable diversity of form. Contrast a neuron with a red blood cell, a skin cell with a liver cell, an amoeboid leucocyte with a muscle cell. Each of these different forms is found in the human body, and many more. Or consider the diversity of ciliate protozoans. From the trumpet-like Stentor to the dashing Paramecium, the universe of ciliate form is absurdly diverse. Or take the radiolarians. Even within this small related group of organisms, the diversity of cell forms is stunning. And yet every member of this fantastic zoo of radiolarian forms is built on exactly the same canonical design. Unique FitnessThe unique fitness of the cell to serve as the fundamental unit of life is also manifest in its amazing abilities and the diversity of functions it performs. Even the tiny E. coli, a cylinder-shaped bacterium in the human gut, has spectacular capabilities. Howard Berg has marveled at the versatility and capacities of this minuscule organism, calling its talents “legion.” He notes that this tiny organism, less than one-millionth of a meter in diameter and two-millionths of a meter long, so small that “20 would fit end-to-end in a single rod cell of the human retina,” is nevertheless “adept at counting molecules of specific sugars, amino acids, or dipeptides; at integration of similar or dissimilar sensory inputs over space and time; at comparing counts taken over the recent and not so recent past; at triggering an all-or-nothing response; at swimming in a viscous medium… even pattern formation.”
Capable of…Almost AnythingThese remarkable specks of organized matter have constructed every multicellular organism on Earth, including the human body, itself a vast collective of as many as 100 million million cells. Cells compose the human brain, making a million connections a minute for nine months during gestation. Cells build blue whales, butterflies, birds, and the giant sequoias of Yosemite. Cells constituted the dinosaurs and all past life ever born on Earth. And through the activities of some of the simplest of their kind, cells gradually terraformed the planet over the past 3,000 million years, generating oxygen via photosynthesis and releasing its energizing powers for all the higher life forms. They are the universal constructor set of life on Earth. In short, they can do almost anything, adopt almost any shape, and obey any order. They appear, in every sense, perfectly adapted to their assigned task of creating a biosphere replete with multicellular organisms like ourselves. This photo is the most detailed model of a human cell to date, obtained using X-ray, NMR, and cryo-electron microscopy data sets .
"Cellular landscape diameter through an eucaryote cell. " - by Evan Ingersoll and Gael McGill .
5. This painting is constructed from three previous paintings I made, which are attached.
"Echo" 24"x48" Oil/Paper/Panel 2004 "Seduced Again" 45" x 80" Oil/Paper/Panel 2005 "Compressed" 40" x 60" Oil/Paper/Panel 2017
1. When we look at the night sky, how far back in time can we see?
The time it takes for light from objects in space to reach Earth means that when we look at planets, stars and galaxies, we're actually peering back in time.
By Stuart Atkinson
Published: January 8, 2021 at 11:22 am
When we look up at the stars, we are looking back in time. The light entering our eyes from these distant objects set off years, decades or millennia earlier. Every time we look at something ‘up there’ we’re seeing it as it was in the past. With enormous modern telescopes and sensitive detectors, professional astronomers can see far beyond what most back garden telescopes are capable of. As far as our own Solar System is concerned, one of the farthest objects observed so far is a 500km-wide asteroid, 2018VG18. Also known as Farout, it is over 120 times further from the Sun than Earth, or three times further away than dwarf planet Pluto. If you were standing on Farout’s dark, pink icy surface, Earth would be a mag. +6.8 ‘star’ hugging close to the Sun and Jupiter would shine at barely mag. +5.0. If a space probe ever reaches Farout it will take 17 hours for its radio signals and images to reach Earth.As for the most distant object ever seen in the Universe, the current record holder is a galaxy – GN-z11. Located in Ursa Major, GN-z11 is a young galaxy barely 1/25th the size of our own, and it is so far away that when its faint light is observed by astronomers they are looking back in time more than 13 billion years, to just 400 million years after the Big Bang. It is expected that when it finally launches, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to look even further back in time and observe events that happened long ago in galaxies far, far away… Science fiction has got it wrong; you don’t need a TARDIS or a DeLorean to travel back in time: your own eyes will do just fine.
2. Various galaxies used in the painting
Warped Edge-On Galaxy ESO 510-G13: This Hubble Heritage image of ESO 510-G13 shows a galaxy that has an unusual.... is so far away that the light from it has taken 11 billion years to reach Earth. Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038-4039: .Galaxy NGC 3079: 45,000,000 light-years from earth.
Overlapping spiral galaxies, 2MASX J00482185-2507365: 19190 km/s ... million light-years from Earth
Earth (from Old English: Eorðe; Greek: Γαῖα Gaia;[n 5] Latin: Terra[25]), otherwise known as the World[n 6] or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets. "Black Eye Galaxy" M64: . Majestic Sombrero Galaxy M104: . Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300: Hoag's Object Galaxy: . Starburst Galaxy M82: . Dusty Spiral Galaxy NGC 4414: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1512: . Warped Edge-On Galaxy ESO 510-G13: Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038-4039: .Galaxy NGC 3079: Overlapping spiral galaxies, 2MASX J00482185-2507365: . Earth An artwork included in Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Obsession” exhibition.
3. The Universe Is a Giant Donut That We Live Inside, New Research Suggests The idea that the universe has a 3D torus shape ties in to some pretty far-out stuff, like the CIA’s 1980s Gateway report on psychic phenomena. by Sarah Wells July 22, 2021, 6:00am The Universe Is a Giant Donut That We Live Inside, New Research Suggests Image: Alexey Brin via Getty Images
Without scientific instruments or knowledge to tell them otherwise, you can forgive ancient humans for initially believing the Earth was flat. After all, from a human perspective, the world does appear to stretch out before us without suddenly sloping down like a half-pipe. But while this notion has been thoroughly disproven for centuries, a new kind of flat-versus-curved debate has recently captured academic imagination. And this time, scientists are debating the very shape of the universe itself. In a paper recently published on the arXiv preprint server, a team of astrophysicists and cosmologists from Ulm University and the University of Lyon have studied the leftover light from the Big Bang—known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB—and determined that the universe may not be a flat plane, as many scientists currently believe.
“The example in our paper is… a donut shaped universe model,” explained Thomas Buchert, a professor of cosmology at the University of Lyon and coauthor on the new paper, in an email. This shape is also known as a three-torus, Buchert wrote, AKA a three-dimensional donut. The idea that the universe has a torus shape is at the center of some pretty far-out stuff, such as the CIA’s 1980s Gateway report on psychic phenomena. This paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but Buchert said it has been submitted to journals for consideration. Buchert and colleagues are not the first to propose an oddly shaped universe. The idea of a torus shape originated in the 1980s, and new data reinvigorated discussions among researchers in 2003. But in the last 18 years scientists have broadly come to a different conclusion about the universe’s shape. Namely, they believe it to be geometrically flat—meaning parallel lines in the fabric of spacetime remain parallel—and infinitely expanding. This last tenet is evidenced by observed redshifts, a signal from light that it’s retreating, at the edge of the universe. This idea that the universe’s shape is essentially an infinite sheet of flat paper would seem like the end of the story, but Buchert and colleagues write in their paper that there was something in the CMB that didn’t quite line up. “The [CMB] spectrum is not only discrete but has in addition large gaps,” they write. Which creates “intriguing discrepancies between predictions of the [standard model] and CMB observations.” In other words, there appear to be signals missing from the CMB that would be present if the universe were truly infinite as the standard model proposes. One explanation for this would be that the universe is actually “multiply connected,” at these missing points, meaning that its topology is curved in such a way that it connects back onto itself like a donut. The same way you can fold a flat piece of paper into a curved shape without changing its parallel properties, this solution would mean the universe could be both flat and donut shaped. Through simulations of the CMB, this is exactly what the researchers found. However, if proven to be true, this would mean that the universe was no longer infinite, said Buchert, which may be philosophically jarring to some. “Finite universe models might be scary to some people, but you do not experience a boundary,” said Buchert. “So you live in an unbounded Universe although it has finite volume.” But even if you won’t necessarily bonk into the edge of this finite universe, can you sail around it and end up back where you started? Theoretically, yes. “Light can travel around the whole finite Universe, but for a space-traveler it'll be difficult,” said Buchert. “Certainly, if future technologies would allow to create wormholes in spacetime, or if we would realize [warp drives that are] not limited by the speed of light, then it is in principle possible to travel around.” But even if you could hop onboard a warp-speed spacecraft, it might have some unintended consequences, warns Buchert. “It is expected that your proper time within the warp bubble is considerably shorter than the time elapsed at Earth where you started from,” he said. “If you would complete the loop and come back, Earth might no longer exist.” While they wait for new warp craft to be developed, Buchert and colleagues will instead continue probing this mystery the old fashion way: analyzing data from probes like Planck, WMAP and COBE to uncover hidden clues at the birth of the universe.
4. Excerpt — The Infinite Complexity of CellsMichael Denton
October 2, 2020, 6:47 AM
In terms of compressed complexity, cells are without peer in the material world, actualized or imagined. And there is likely far more complexity still to uncover. Even as recently as 1913, when Lawrence Henderson composed his classic The Fitness of the Environment, the cell was a black box, its actual molecular complexity a mysterious unknown. Only as the veil began to lift with the mid-century molecular biological revolution did science begin to glimpse the sophistication of these extraordinary pieces of matter. Subsequently, every decade of research has revealed further depths of complexity. The discovery of ever more intricate structures and systems with each increase in knowledge — including vastly complex DNA topologies and a vast and growing inventory of mini-RNA regulator molecules — tells us there is probably much more to uncover. What we glimpse now may be only a tiny fraction of what remains to be discovered. As Erica Hayden confessed in the journal Nature, “As sequencing and other new technologies spew forth data,” the complexity unearthed by cell biology “has seemed to grow by orders of magnitude. Delving into it has been like zooming into a Mandelbrot set… that reveals ever more intricate patterns as one peers closer at its boundary. A Third InfinityThere is much more to discover about the cell, but even from our current limited knowledge of its depths it is clear that this tiny unit of compact, adaptive sophistication constitutes something like a third infinity. Where the cosmos feels infinitely large and the atomic realm infinitely small, the cell feels infinitely complex. But cells are not just complex beyond any sensible measure and beyond any other conceivable material form. They appear in so many ways supremely fit to fulfill their role as the basic unit of biological life. One element of this fitness is manifest in their incomparable diversity of form. Contrast a neuron with a red blood cell, a skin cell with a liver cell, an amoeboid leucocyte with a muscle cell. Each of these different forms is found in the human body, and many more. Or consider the diversity of ciliate protozoans. From the trumpet-like Stentor to the dashing Paramecium, the universe of ciliate form is absurdly diverse. Or take the radiolarians. Even within this small related group of organisms, the diversity of cell forms is stunning. And yet every member of this fantastic zoo of radiolarian forms is built on exactly the same canonical design. Unique FitnessThe unique fitness of the cell to serve as the fundamental unit of life is also manifest in its amazing abilities and the diversity of functions it performs. Even the tiny E. coli, a cylinder-shaped bacterium in the human gut, has spectacular capabilities. Howard Berg has marveled at the versatility and capacities of this minuscule organism, calling its talents “legion.” He notes that this tiny organism, less than one-millionth of a meter in diameter and two-millionths of a meter long, so small that “20 would fit end-to-end in a single rod cell of the human retina,” is nevertheless “adept at counting molecules of specific sugars, amino acids, or dipeptides; at integration of similar or dissimilar sensory inputs over space and time; at comparing counts taken over the recent and not so recent past; at triggering an all-or-nothing response; at swimming in a viscous medium… even pattern formation.”
Capable of…Almost AnythingThese remarkable specks of organized matter have constructed every multicellular organism on Earth, including the human body, itself a vast collective of as many as 100 million million cells. Cells compose the human brain, making a million connections a minute for nine months during gestation. Cells build blue whales, butterflies, birds, and the giant sequoias of Yosemite. Cells constituted the dinosaurs and all past life ever born on Earth. And through the activities of some of the simplest of their kind, cells gradually terraformed the planet over the past 3,000 million years, generating oxygen via photosynthesis and releasing its energizing powers for all the higher life forms. They are the universal constructor set of life on Earth. In short, they can do almost anything, adopt almost any shape, and obey any order. They appear, in every sense, perfectly adapted to their assigned task of creating a biosphere replete with multicellular organisms like ourselves. This photo is the most detailed model of a human cell to date, obtained using X-ray, NMR, and cryo-electron microscopy data sets .
"Cellular landscape diameter through an eucaryote cell. " - by Evan Ingersoll and Gael McGill .
5. This painting is constructed from three previous paintings I made, which are attached.
"Echo" 24"x48" Oil/Paper/Panel 2004 "Seduced Again" 45" x 80" Oil/Paper/Panel 2005 "Compressed" 40" x 60" Oil/Paper/Panel 2017
"Compressed" 40" x 60" Oil/Paper/panel 2017
Reference Material “Compressed" - "Black Eye Galaxy" M64: . Majestic Sombrero Galaxy M104: . Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300:
Hoag's Object Galaxy: . Starburst Galaxy M82: . Dusty Spiral Galaxy NGC 4414:
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1512: . Warped Edge-On Galaxy ESO 510-G13:
Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038-4039: .Galaxy NGC 3079: Overlapping spiral galaxies, 2MASX J00482185-2507365: . Earth
An artwork included from Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Obsession” exhibition.
Hoag's Object Galaxy: . Starburst Galaxy M82: . Dusty Spiral Galaxy NGC 4414:
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1512: . Warped Edge-On Galaxy ESO 510-G13:
Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038-4039: .Galaxy NGC 3079: Overlapping spiral galaxies, 2MASX J00482185-2507365: . Earth
An artwork included from Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Obsession” exhibition.
"Time Enough at Last" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
Reference Material "Time Enough at Last" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
1- The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 1) Wikipedia List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes - Original air date November 20, 1959
"Time Enough at Last" is the eighth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.[1] The episode was adapted from a short story written by Lynn Venable.[2] The short story appeared in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction[3][4] about seven years before the television episode first aired. "Time Enough at Last" became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone. It is "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world"[5] and tells of Henry Bemis (/ˈbiːmɪs/), played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. The episode follows Bemis through the post-apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, and the difference between solitude and loneliness.
2 - A look inside the Human Library, where you check out people instead of books "I figured that if we could make people sit down with a group attached to a certain stigma they don't like, we could diminish violence." March 9, 2016, 11:48 AM PST / Source: TODAY
By Alexandra Zaslow
With all the violence and conflict in the world, it's refreshing to know that people from all different demographics are able to sit down together around the world to have an open conversation. That's what Ronni Abergel, 42, has achieved since launching the Human Library in Copenhagen in 2000. Just as you would at a library, you can check out a "book" on a certain topic for an allotted period of time. The only difference is that the "book" is actually a person who you can have a conversation with — and learn from. "I figured that if we could make people sit down with a group attached to a certain stigma they don't like or even know about for that matter, we could diminish violence," Abergel told TODAY.com. The type of books you can borrow range from someone who is transgender, deaf, blind, obese or homeless to a person with autism or even a refugee. In the 16 years since its inception, Abergel brought the concept to more than 70 countries, including the U.S. Growing up in Copenhagen, Abergel said he got involved with the wrong crowd. He would get into fights both in school and on the streets. In 1989, when he was 15, Abergel decided to escape and he moved to New Milford, Connecticut for a year as a foreign exchange student. "I had enough common sense to realize that if I continued in this direction, my life would end poorly," Abergel said. "That experience changed my life because it forced me to leave the circles that were negatively influencing me."
He returned to Copenhagen in 1990 feeling a greater respect for those different than him. After finishing school in 1993, he and his friends started Stop The Violence, an organization that raised violence awareness. His work eventually led him to create the Human Library Organization. "Sometimes you see someone in the supermarket and think things about them, but you don't dare go ask them questions," Abergel said. "I wanted to build a space where you can ask them anything because they volunteered to answer." When the Human Library came to St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, on Feb. 25, Sarah Griffiths, who works at the college's Center for International Education, brought her two sons, ages 11 and 13, to check out a book titled "International Woman, Leader of Color, Gender Justice." It's set up just like a normal library: You check out a "book" on a certain topic and have an allotted amount of time with it. Only at the Human Library, the book is, well, a human. People who volunteer to become "books" make their experiences open and available, usually on issues that people tend to have a difficult time discussing. "Readers" are encouraged to ask questions freely, and they'll get honest answers in return. It's brilliant.
3 - US photographer Eric Pickersgill has created “Removed,” a series of photos to remind us of how strange that pose actually is. US photographer. In each portrait, electronic devices have been “edited out” (removed before the photo was taken, from people who’d been using them) so that people stare at their hands, or the empty space between their hands, often ignoring beautiful surroundings or opportunities for human connection. The results are a bit sad and eerie—and a reminder, perhaps, to put our phones away. By Steve Mollman, Weekend editor, Published August 28, 2019Last updated on September 18, 2019
4 - The new Apple Store on the Upper West Side is a splendid oddity amid the retail recession, all steel, marble, and glass. 2010
Peter Aaron/ESTO At 67th Street and Broadway, a pavilion of marble and sheer glass walls opened in November, a composition as austerely purposeful as a classic Greek temple. Is this elegant glass-roofed room the home of a cash-flush hedge fund? The new store nestles snugly into a corner lot along Broadway. Clutter has been banished from inside the store—making room for the crowds.It’s an Apple Store. As retail reels in the recession and even established stores look like temporary pop-ups, Apple lavished expanses of Tennessee marble with end-matched vein patterns as soft as wisps of smoke. Because the store is that Manhattan rarity, a freestanding building, it is an even more alluring display of costly investment than the famous glass cube that tops the computer company’s underground store on Fifth Avenue. According to Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, these stores merit lavish outlays because “they are the most profitable.”
1- The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 1) Wikipedia List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes - Original air date November 20, 1959
"Time Enough at Last" is the eighth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.[1] The episode was adapted from a short story written by Lynn Venable.[2] The short story appeared in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction[3][4] about seven years before the television episode first aired. "Time Enough at Last" became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone. It is "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world"[5] and tells of Henry Bemis (/ˈbiːmɪs/), played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. The episode follows Bemis through the post-apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, and the difference between solitude and loneliness.
2 - A look inside the Human Library, where you check out people instead of books "I figured that if we could make people sit down with a group attached to a certain stigma they don't like, we could diminish violence." March 9, 2016, 11:48 AM PST / Source: TODAY
By Alexandra Zaslow
With all the violence and conflict in the world, it's refreshing to know that people from all different demographics are able to sit down together around the world to have an open conversation. That's what Ronni Abergel, 42, has achieved since launching the Human Library in Copenhagen in 2000. Just as you would at a library, you can check out a "book" on a certain topic for an allotted period of time. The only difference is that the "book" is actually a person who you can have a conversation with — and learn from. "I figured that if we could make people sit down with a group attached to a certain stigma they don't like or even know about for that matter, we could diminish violence," Abergel told TODAY.com. The type of books you can borrow range from someone who is transgender, deaf, blind, obese or homeless to a person with autism or even a refugee. In the 16 years since its inception, Abergel brought the concept to more than 70 countries, including the U.S. Growing up in Copenhagen, Abergel said he got involved with the wrong crowd. He would get into fights both in school and on the streets. In 1989, when he was 15, Abergel decided to escape and he moved to New Milford, Connecticut for a year as a foreign exchange student. "I had enough common sense to realize that if I continued in this direction, my life would end poorly," Abergel said. "That experience changed my life because it forced me to leave the circles that were negatively influencing me."
He returned to Copenhagen in 1990 feeling a greater respect for those different than him. After finishing school in 1993, he and his friends started Stop The Violence, an organization that raised violence awareness. His work eventually led him to create the Human Library Organization. "Sometimes you see someone in the supermarket and think things about them, but you don't dare go ask them questions," Abergel said. "I wanted to build a space where you can ask them anything because they volunteered to answer." When the Human Library came to St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, on Feb. 25, Sarah Griffiths, who works at the college's Center for International Education, brought her two sons, ages 11 and 13, to check out a book titled "International Woman, Leader of Color, Gender Justice." It's set up just like a normal library: You check out a "book" on a certain topic and have an allotted amount of time with it. Only at the Human Library, the book is, well, a human. People who volunteer to become "books" make their experiences open and available, usually on issues that people tend to have a difficult time discussing. "Readers" are encouraged to ask questions freely, and they'll get honest answers in return. It's brilliant.
3 - US photographer Eric Pickersgill has created “Removed,” a series of photos to remind us of how strange that pose actually is. US photographer. In each portrait, electronic devices have been “edited out” (removed before the photo was taken, from people who’d been using them) so that people stare at their hands, or the empty space between their hands, often ignoring beautiful surroundings or opportunities for human connection. The results are a bit sad and eerie—and a reminder, perhaps, to put our phones away. By Steve Mollman, Weekend editor, Published August 28, 2019Last updated on September 18, 2019
4 - The new Apple Store on the Upper West Side is a splendid oddity amid the retail recession, all steel, marble, and glass. 2010
Peter Aaron/ESTO At 67th Street and Broadway, a pavilion of marble and sheer glass walls opened in November, a composition as austerely purposeful as a classic Greek temple. Is this elegant glass-roofed room the home of a cash-flush hedge fund? The new store nestles snugly into a corner lot along Broadway. Clutter has been banished from inside the store—making room for the crowds.It’s an Apple Store. As retail reels in the recession and even established stores look like temporary pop-ups, Apple lavished expanses of Tennessee marble with end-matched vein patterns as soft as wisps of smoke. Because the store is that Manhattan rarity, a freestanding building, it is an even more alluring display of costly investment than the famous glass cube that tops the computer company’s underground store on Fifth Avenue. According to Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, these stores merit lavish outlays because “they are the most profitable.”
"Fabrication of an Illusion" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
Reference Material1 “Fabrication of an Illusion” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
Last Thursday I went up the street to have coffee with a friend. We had visited this café a number of times before the pandemic. Both of us are vaccinated, and sat at a table far enough away from others, so no need to wear masks. It was enjoyable hanging out like this, after about fourteen months of being by myself, other than to shop for food. Initially, having coffee with my friend had a newness in feeling. But after a bit of time had elapsed, I began to feel a bit like I had been doing this same thing a week or two earlier. This strange collapse of time I experienced has a lot to do with my most recent painting. This painting is my investigation into how I, and I suspect many others perceive time, how previous months or decades of my life can collapse into a shorter time frame in an instant. Those of my generation, can remember exactly where they were, and what they were doing, when hearing the news of John Kennedy’s assassination. In a similar way as above, I can go back to that afternoon in 1963, collapsing fifty-eight years of events, and be there again. It’s strangely more than just memory, or so I feel.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza.[1] Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald, firing in ambush from a nearby building. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered. My painting includes frame 313 of the Abraham Zapruder film. the frame which shows Kennedy being shot in the head, while his wife Jacqueline turns fully towards him. Zapruder’s film, taken with the intent of have a wonderful memory of the Kennedy’s visit, was not shown to the public until 1975, although a few tasteful frames were reproduced in Life magazine in December of 1963.
And now for a taste of the real stuff! “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer,” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in contemplating our paradoxical experience of time in the early 1930s. “It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change … into time as we know it,” Hannah Arendt wrote half a century later in her brilliant inquiry into time, space, and our thinking ego. Time, in other words — particularly our experience of it as a continuity of successive moments — is a cognitive illusion rather than an inherent feature of the universe, a construction of human consciousness and perhaps the very hallmark of human consciousness. Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”By Maria PopovaIn Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.
But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as The Life of the Mind (public library) — the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning. In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand: Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego — summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s — is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls — and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them — does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.
The Order of Time - Carlo Rovelli Allen Lane (2018) According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein’s relativistic space-time — an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one’s relative speed or proximity to a mass — is just an effective simplification.
Artem Boytsov “Time is not an illusion. It is no more illusory than space is. But it is also true, that you can never experience time directly. Whether you think of the past, or you think of the future, neither actually exist - these are just thoughts happening at the present moment. Notice that the same can be said about space - you perceive space, but you are always right here. But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. You can move in space and you’re constantly moving in time. You could also look at the universe as one indivisible space-time object, and from that perspective, both past and future already exist, and your present moment and position is a dot moving along your individual trajectory. Saying that both past and future already exist and predetermined and saying neither exist are different ways of saying the same thing. As far as spirituality is concerned, things get somewhat more complicated. The process of spiritual enlightenment is basically the process of moving towards imperceptibility of time. That’s why “time doesn’t exist” is such a well-known spiritual cliché.”
Last Thursday I went up the street to have coffee with a friend. We had visited this café a number of times before the pandemic. Both of us are vaccinated, and sat at a table far enough away from others, so no need to wear masks. It was enjoyable hanging out like this, after about fourteen months of being by myself, other than to shop for food. Initially, having coffee with my friend had a newness in feeling. But after a bit of time had elapsed, I began to feel a bit like I had been doing this same thing a week or two earlier. This strange collapse of time I experienced has a lot to do with my most recent painting. This painting is my investigation into how I, and I suspect many others perceive time, how previous months or decades of my life can collapse into a shorter time frame in an instant. Those of my generation, can remember exactly where they were, and what they were doing, when hearing the news of John Kennedy’s assassination. In a similar way as above, I can go back to that afternoon in 1963, collapsing fifty-eight years of events, and be there again. It’s strangely more than just memory, or so I feel.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza.[1] Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald, firing in ambush from a nearby building. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered. My painting includes frame 313 of the Abraham Zapruder film. the frame which shows Kennedy being shot in the head, while his wife Jacqueline turns fully towards him. Zapruder’s film, taken with the intent of have a wonderful memory of the Kennedy’s visit, was not shown to the public until 1975, although a few tasteful frames were reproduced in Life magazine in December of 1963.
And now for a taste of the real stuff! “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer,” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in contemplating our paradoxical experience of time in the early 1930s. “It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change … into time as we know it,” Hannah Arendt wrote half a century later in her brilliant inquiry into time, space, and our thinking ego. Time, in other words — particularly our experience of it as a continuity of successive moments — is a cognitive illusion rather than an inherent feature of the universe, a construction of human consciousness and perhaps the very hallmark of human consciousness. Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”By Maria PopovaIn Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.
But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as The Life of the Mind (public library) — the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning. In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand: Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego — summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s — is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls — and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them — does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.
The Order of Time - Carlo Rovelli Allen Lane (2018) According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein’s relativistic space-time — an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one’s relative speed or proximity to a mass — is just an effective simplification.
Artem Boytsov “Time is not an illusion. It is no more illusory than space is. But it is also true, that you can never experience time directly. Whether you think of the past, or you think of the future, neither actually exist - these are just thoughts happening at the present moment. Notice that the same can be said about space - you perceive space, but you are always right here. But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. You can move in space and you’re constantly moving in time. You could also look at the universe as one indivisible space-time object, and from that perspective, both past and future already exist, and your present moment and position is a dot moving along your individual trajectory. Saying that both past and future already exist and predetermined and saying neither exist are different ways of saying the same thing. As far as spirituality is concerned, things get somewhat more complicated. The process of spiritual enlightenment is basically the process of moving towards imperceptibility of time. That’s why “time doesn’t exist” is such a well-known spiritual cliché.”
"Painters of the Past 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
Reference Material - “Painters of the Past” 24” x 30” O/P/P 2020
The figures in this painting were taken from a photograph by Aaron Chang, sometime in the mid 1980’s. It appears that Chang came upon the young men in his travels, in the evening, near Highway 17, Charleston, South Carolina. Eventually a wide range of images by various photographers, was used to make a book. This book covered a number of topics in various U. S. States. Unfortunately, I don’t have the book anymore. The heading for Chang’s photograph read: “In Charleston, Coming to Terms With the Past: The compulsion to engage the Charleston area’s history as a slave-trading center was, for the writer, a visceral thing, akin to the urge to revisit a crime scene.” I’ve had the young men’s image for some time. What drew me to the image initially, was the way in which this group of guys appeared to be relating to each other. I felt they had worked together for a while, and had a connection to one another, a comfortableness, a friendship. Of course, photographs are fictions in way or another, and realizing that, I couldn’t really know them.
The figures in this painting were taken from a photograph by Aaron Chang, sometime in the mid 1980’s. It appears that Chang came upon the young men in his travels, in the evening, near Highway 17, Charleston, South Carolina. Eventually a wide range of images by various photographers, was used to make a book. This book covered a number of topics in various U. S. States. Unfortunately, I don’t have the book anymore. The heading for Chang’s photograph read: “In Charleston, Coming to Terms With the Past: The compulsion to engage the Charleston area’s history as a slave-trading center was, for the writer, a visceral thing, akin to the urge to revisit a crime scene.” I’ve had the young men’s image for some time. What drew me to the image initially, was the way in which this group of guys appeared to be relating to each other. I felt they had worked together for a while, and had a connection to one another, a comfortableness, a friendship. Of course, photographs are fictions in way or another, and realizing that, I couldn’t really know them.
"The Scale of Expectation: The Value of Intent" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
Reference Material “The Scale of Expectation: The Value of Intent” 24” x 36” Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
The men you see are the Mercury astronauts getting their space suits fitted in 1961. Mercury was the US initial space program. The woman in back is eating, in a room that is totally covered/insulated with foil. The title is "The Scale of Expectation: The Value of Intent. It's a kind of thought experiment around what constitutes a "meaningful idea."
The men you see are the Mercury astronauts getting their space suits fitted in 1961. Mercury was the US initial space program. The woman in back is eating, in a room that is totally covered/insulated with foil. The title is "The Scale of Expectation: The Value of Intent. It's a kind of thought experiment around what constitutes a "meaningful idea."
"Velvet Underground" 30" x 24" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
Reference Material "Velvet Underground" 30" x 24" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
The Velvet Underground playing for the American Society of Clinical Psychiatrists in 1966
The Velvet Underground filmed on 16mm by Jonas Mekas at the Annual Dinner of the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry, Delmonico's Hotel, New York City, January 13, 1966. Also featuring Edie Sedgewick, Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol. Originally included in the film 'Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol'. Excerpt from the book Women’s Experimental Cinema: On January 13 1966, Warhol was invited to be the evening’s entertainment at the NY society for Clinical Psychiatry’s forty third- annual dinner, held at Delmonico’s Hotel. Bursting into the room with a camera, as the Velvet Underground acoustically tortured the guests and Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick performed the ‘whip dance’ in the background, Rubin taunted the attending psychiatrists. Casting blinding lights in their faces, Rubin hurled derogatory questions at the esteemed members of the medical profession, including: ‘What does her vagina feel like? Is his penis big enough? Do you eat her out? As the horrified guests began to leave Rubin continued her interrogation: ‘Why are you getting embarrassed? You’re a psychiatrist; you’re not supposed to get embarrassed. The following day the NY Times reported on the event; their chosen headline, ‘Shock treatment for psychiatrists’, reveals the extent to which Rubin’s guerrilla tactics had inverted the sanctioned relationship between patient and doctor expert and amateur.
The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry was a psychiatric hospital located on either side of Roosevelt Boulevard (US Route 1) in Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was specifically located in the Somerton section of the city on the border with Bucks County. The name of the institution was changed several times during its history being variously named Philadelphia State Hospital, Byberry State Hospital, Byberry City Farms, and the Philadelphia Hospital for Mental Diseases. It was home to people ranging from the mentally challenged to the criminally insane.
The facility included over fifty buildings such as male and female dormitories, an infirmary, kitchens, laundry, administration, a chapel, and a morgue. The hospital's population grew rapidly, quickly exceeding its capacity; the peak patient population was over 7,000 in 1960. The hospital was turned over to the state in 1936 and was renamed the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry. Conditions in the hospital during this time were poor, with allegations of patient abuse and inhumane treatment made frequently. The situation came to national attention between 1945 and 1946, when conscientious objector Charlie Lord took covert photos of the institution and the conditions inside while serving there as an orderly. The 36 black-and-white photos documented issues including dozens of naked men huddling together and human excrement lining facility hallways. The photos were shown to a number of people, including then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who subsequently pledged her support in pursuing national mental health reforms. In May 1946, Lord's photos were published in an issue of Life, creating a national "mass uproar".[1 In his 1948 book, The Shame of the States, Albert Deutsch described the horrid conditions he observed: "As I passed through some of Byberry's wards, I was reminded of the pictures of the Nazi concentration camps. I entered a building swarming with naked humans herded like cattle and treated with less concern, pervaded by a fetid odor so heavy, so nauseating, that the stench seemed to have almost a physical existence of its own." Reports of patient abuse were still rampant through the 1980s. One patient had reported that one of his teeth was pulled without "Novocaine".[citation needed] Another state inspection team was sent to evaluate the hospital in early 1987. By the summer of 1987, five of the Philadelphia State Hospital's top officials were promptly fired after the Byberry facility once again failed the state inspection.
Thorazine (chlorpromazine) is a phenothiazine anti-psychotic medication used to treat psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or manic-depression, and severe behavioral problems in children. Thorazine is also used to treat nausea and vomiting, anxiety before surgery, chronic hiccups, acute intermittent porphyria, and symptoms of tetanus. The brand name Thorazine is discontinued in the U.S. Generic forms may be available.
Each round, orange, coated tablet contains chlorpromazine hydrochloride as follows: 10 mg imprinted SKF and T73; 25 mg imprinted SKF and T74; 50 mg imprinted SKF and T76; 100 mg imprinted SKF and T77; 200 mg imprinted SKF and T79. 7656 (Olanzapine 15 mg)
Pill with imprint 7656 is Blue, Elliptical / Oval and has been identified as Olanzapine 15 mg. It is supplied by Prasco Laboratories.
Olanzapine is used in the treatment of agitated state; bipolar disorder; schizophrenia; major depressive disorder; agitation and belongs to the drug class atypical antipsychotics. Risk cannot be ruled out during pregnancy. Olanzapine 15 mg is not a controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
By Adrian ChoJan. 7, 2021 , 1:45 PM
While working on his doctorate in theoretical physics in the early 1970s, Saul Teukolsky solved a problem that seemed purely hypothetical. Imagine a black hole, the ghostly knot of gravity that forms when, say, a massive star burns out and collapses to an infinitesimal point. Suppose you perturb it, as you might strike a bell. How does the black hole respond? Teukolsky, then a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), attacked the problem with pencil, paper, and Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity. Like a bell, the black hole would oscillate at one main frequency and multiple overtones, he found. The oscillations would quickly fade as the black hole radiated gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space itself. It was a sweet problem, says Teukolsky, now at Cornell University. And it was completely abstract—until 5 years ago.
In February 2016, experimenters with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of huge instruments in Louisiana and Washington, reported the first observation of fleeting gravitational ripples, which had emanated from two black holes, each about 30 times as massive as the Sun, spiraling into each other 1.3 billion light-years away. LIGO even sensed the “ring down”: the shudder of the bigger black hole produced by the merger. Teukolsky’s old thesis was suddenly cutting-edge physics.
The Velvet Underground playing for the American Society of Clinical Psychiatrists in 1966
The Velvet Underground filmed on 16mm by Jonas Mekas at the Annual Dinner of the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry, Delmonico's Hotel, New York City, January 13, 1966. Also featuring Edie Sedgewick, Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol. Originally included in the film 'Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol'. Excerpt from the book Women’s Experimental Cinema: On January 13 1966, Warhol was invited to be the evening’s entertainment at the NY society for Clinical Psychiatry’s forty third- annual dinner, held at Delmonico’s Hotel. Bursting into the room with a camera, as the Velvet Underground acoustically tortured the guests and Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick performed the ‘whip dance’ in the background, Rubin taunted the attending psychiatrists. Casting blinding lights in their faces, Rubin hurled derogatory questions at the esteemed members of the medical profession, including: ‘What does her vagina feel like? Is his penis big enough? Do you eat her out? As the horrified guests began to leave Rubin continued her interrogation: ‘Why are you getting embarrassed? You’re a psychiatrist; you’re not supposed to get embarrassed. The following day the NY Times reported on the event; their chosen headline, ‘Shock treatment for psychiatrists’, reveals the extent to which Rubin’s guerrilla tactics had inverted the sanctioned relationship between patient and doctor expert and amateur.
The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry was a psychiatric hospital located on either side of Roosevelt Boulevard (US Route 1) in Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was specifically located in the Somerton section of the city on the border with Bucks County. The name of the institution was changed several times during its history being variously named Philadelphia State Hospital, Byberry State Hospital, Byberry City Farms, and the Philadelphia Hospital for Mental Diseases. It was home to people ranging from the mentally challenged to the criminally insane.
The facility included over fifty buildings such as male and female dormitories, an infirmary, kitchens, laundry, administration, a chapel, and a morgue. The hospital's population grew rapidly, quickly exceeding its capacity; the peak patient population was over 7,000 in 1960. The hospital was turned over to the state in 1936 and was renamed the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry. Conditions in the hospital during this time were poor, with allegations of patient abuse and inhumane treatment made frequently. The situation came to national attention between 1945 and 1946, when conscientious objector Charlie Lord took covert photos of the institution and the conditions inside while serving there as an orderly. The 36 black-and-white photos documented issues including dozens of naked men huddling together and human excrement lining facility hallways. The photos were shown to a number of people, including then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who subsequently pledged her support in pursuing national mental health reforms. In May 1946, Lord's photos were published in an issue of Life, creating a national "mass uproar".[1 In his 1948 book, The Shame of the States, Albert Deutsch described the horrid conditions he observed: "As I passed through some of Byberry's wards, I was reminded of the pictures of the Nazi concentration camps. I entered a building swarming with naked humans herded like cattle and treated with less concern, pervaded by a fetid odor so heavy, so nauseating, that the stench seemed to have almost a physical existence of its own." Reports of patient abuse were still rampant through the 1980s. One patient had reported that one of his teeth was pulled without "Novocaine".[citation needed] Another state inspection team was sent to evaluate the hospital in early 1987. By the summer of 1987, five of the Philadelphia State Hospital's top officials were promptly fired after the Byberry facility once again failed the state inspection.
Thorazine (chlorpromazine) is a phenothiazine anti-psychotic medication used to treat psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or manic-depression, and severe behavioral problems in children. Thorazine is also used to treat nausea and vomiting, anxiety before surgery, chronic hiccups, acute intermittent porphyria, and symptoms of tetanus. The brand name Thorazine is discontinued in the U.S. Generic forms may be available.
Each round, orange, coated tablet contains chlorpromazine hydrochloride as follows: 10 mg imprinted SKF and T73; 25 mg imprinted SKF and T74; 50 mg imprinted SKF and T76; 100 mg imprinted SKF and T77; 200 mg imprinted SKF and T79. 7656 (Olanzapine 15 mg)
Pill with imprint 7656 is Blue, Elliptical / Oval and has been identified as Olanzapine 15 mg. It is supplied by Prasco Laboratories.
Olanzapine is used in the treatment of agitated state; bipolar disorder; schizophrenia; major depressive disorder; agitation and belongs to the drug class atypical antipsychotics. Risk cannot be ruled out during pregnancy. Olanzapine 15 mg is not a controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
By Adrian ChoJan. 7, 2021 , 1:45 PM
While working on his doctorate in theoretical physics in the early 1970s, Saul Teukolsky solved a problem that seemed purely hypothetical. Imagine a black hole, the ghostly knot of gravity that forms when, say, a massive star burns out and collapses to an infinitesimal point. Suppose you perturb it, as you might strike a bell. How does the black hole respond? Teukolsky, then a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), attacked the problem with pencil, paper, and Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity. Like a bell, the black hole would oscillate at one main frequency and multiple overtones, he found. The oscillations would quickly fade as the black hole radiated gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space itself. It was a sweet problem, says Teukolsky, now at Cornell University. And it was completely abstract—until 5 years ago.
In February 2016, experimenters with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of huge instruments in Louisiana and Washington, reported the first observation of fleeting gravitational ripples, which had emanated from two black holes, each about 30 times as massive as the Sun, spiraling into each other 1.3 billion light-years away. LIGO even sensed the “ring down”: the shudder of the bigger black hole produced by the merger. Teukolsky’s old thesis was suddenly cutting-edge physics.
. "The Gift of Consciousness: The Challenge to Negotiate Meaning "30" X 24" Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
Reference Material - “The Gift of Consciousness: The Challenge to Negotiate Meaning” 30” x 24” Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
My late friend Bob Reney, came from an east coast Catholic family, moved to CA in the early 1970’s, promptly taking up the study of Buddhism. I met him in the 1993, when my wife and I moved to California.
Is there a thinker behind our thoughts, as Aristotle noted, or are we, as the Buddha believed, just the summation of our aggregates/senses, that in turn give us the illusion of an individual self/ identity? Either way, consciousness is a marvel, but what follows is momentous! Carmen Wolfe Aristotle has been noted for proposing that to be conscious that we are perceiving and thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
My deceased friend Bob, a Buddhist, used to marvel that humans have a consciousness, what a gift it was, while also believing that the sense of individual self was an illusion. It seems that science has yet to find clear evidence as to what causes consciousness. That said, and not wanting to sophomorically wade into the very complex domain of this experience, I none the less acknowledge there is a weight and a price to be endured for experiencing this phenomenon. It is thinking, that comes in tandem with feelings.
My late friend Bob Reney, came from an east coast Catholic family, moved to CA in the early 1970’s, promptly taking up the study of Buddhism. I met him in the 1993, when my wife and I moved to California.
Is there a thinker behind our thoughts, as Aristotle noted, or are we, as the Buddha believed, just the summation of our aggregates/senses, that in turn give us the illusion of an individual self/ identity? Either way, consciousness is a marvel, but what follows is momentous! Carmen Wolfe Aristotle has been noted for proposing that to be conscious that we are perceiving and thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
My deceased friend Bob, a Buddhist, used to marvel that humans have a consciousness, what a gift it was, while also believing that the sense of individual self was an illusion. It seems that science has yet to find clear evidence as to what causes consciousness. That said, and not wanting to sophomorically wade into the very complex domain of this experience, I none the less acknowledge there is a weight and a price to be endured for experiencing this phenomenon. It is thinking, that comes in tandem with feelings.
Echoes of Remnants" 24" x 30" Oil/Paper/Panel 2021
Reference Material - “Echos of Remnants” 24” x 30” Oil/Paper/Panel 2020/21
This piece centers around one aspect of dreaming, the feeling/s we have as we traverse a dream’s narrative. These feelings can be very strong. They have a certain flavor, and at least in my experience, seem to fade when I awake in the morning. They are so much of what gave the dream it’s meaning, that without them, the events of the dream can seem like a bullet point report of what happened.
A while back, I had a dream about a friend of mine who died three and a half years ago. Meeting friends who have died in a dream isn’t necessarily unusual for me, given that I’ll soon be seventy-one. Over the past three and a half years, I’ve lost five friends, some who I’d known for fifty plus years. When I meet a deceased friend in a dream, it almost always is in a time related period of the past, when we are doing something together. It seems very normal.
The dream I had about my friend Diane, who I knew for twenty-one years, was different. To begin with, the time I was experiencing in the dream was the present moment, today. I was in San Francisco walking down a wide down town street. I was about thirty-five feet from the intersection. The light was green, and people were walking perpendicular through the crossing. All of a sudden, I see Diane walking across, talking with a person beside her. I immediately was in shock. I knew she had died over three years ago, but there she was, walking casually through the intersection. Diane had a continually worsening disability, making her unable to walk in the two years before she passed, but here she was strolling along. I called out to her, but she didn’t hear me. I began running, but I somehow lost her in the crowd. When I got back to Berkeley, I told a number of people what had happened. They looked at me quizzically not knowing what to say. The accompanying feeling during my dream, was what really made this resurrection experience impactful, but I had lost that feeling by morning.
The image references for this new painting were mostly from stock photography, which I modified. However, the image below is a piece made by an art school friend of mine, Richard Harrington. He talks about what he does below. Somehow, the description of his work, struck me as relational to what I was exploring. 5 1/2 inches top point to bottom point
Hi John,
"I want to let you know a little bit about this object and how it might be thought about, displayed, or experimented with.
The material is hardware cloth, i.e. zinc coated steel. The zinc coating is resistant to oxidation but will eventually become uniformly gray. In the ‘art’ domain it is usually used as the substrate for something rigidly moldable … covered with plaster and then made into something. You’ll also recognize it as the material used to keep deer or rabbits off the carrots. For me, the uniform grid, ductile yet rigid property, uniform grayness, and tendency to generate moiré patterns have always been attractive. Who needs to cover over this interesting stuff? In the art object world, I suppose this would be regarded as a type of minimal sculpture. There is one part of me that has that in mind all the time. But there is also a kinetic dimension created because, as you’ll see, the slightest movement of a viewer’s eyes or movement of the object itself create a moiré flickering that is characteristic of kinetic artwork. I’m especially interested in the ‘skeletal’ dimension of perception, alternately looking at, or through, the objects that I’ve been building. In the mathematical world this object is called a (star-like) stellation of a dodecahedron. The seed geometry of this object is a dodecahedron i.e., a Platonic Solid consisting of twenty equilateral pentagonal faces. Each of the twenty faces of the dodecahedron are made from five four-sided pyramids (tetrahedra.) Though the dodecahedron is an ancient form it’s usage was most recently revisited by Buckminster Fuller and others.
I’m intrigued by the ‘valencies’ that appear depending on the scale or material that the objects that I make. Some smaller ones than yours are made of aluminum screen and have a jewel-like property that some have characterized as ‘featherlike gravitas. Because of the scale and density of yours I think it has a property that is quite a bit like a medieval weapon of some kind. Some of the objects are significantly larger… About 1.5 m in diameter, and they are like wire balloons… seemingly fragile, but in fact quite rigid because of the techniques that I use to assemble them. When I exhibited some of them at the Cambridge Science Festival in April, one nerd immediately characterized them as antiballoons.
Finally, for now, but most importantly, I have to point out the significance of the ‘ecology’ of how these experiments are exhibited. Ideally they ought to be seen in a condition of focused light. Direct sunlight, tensor light, light from a projector of some kind…digital or old fashioned slide projector, or focused theater light. The objects were originally conceived to be seen with the cast shadow that they create… a circumstance where the cast shadow―penumbration is so similar to the object that it’s hard to say which is more important… the object, or its shadow. This circumstance is straight out of camouflage theory. My other installations have always included circumstances of unique light conditions. You’ll see…have fun with yours."
This piece centers around one aspect of dreaming, the feeling/s we have as we traverse a dream’s narrative. These feelings can be very strong. They have a certain flavor, and at least in my experience, seem to fade when I awake in the morning. They are so much of what gave the dream it’s meaning, that without them, the events of the dream can seem like a bullet point report of what happened.
A while back, I had a dream about a friend of mine who died three and a half years ago. Meeting friends who have died in a dream isn’t necessarily unusual for me, given that I’ll soon be seventy-one. Over the past three and a half years, I’ve lost five friends, some who I’d known for fifty plus years. When I meet a deceased friend in a dream, it almost always is in a time related period of the past, when we are doing something together. It seems very normal.
The dream I had about my friend Diane, who I knew for twenty-one years, was different. To begin with, the time I was experiencing in the dream was the present moment, today. I was in San Francisco walking down a wide down town street. I was about thirty-five feet from the intersection. The light was green, and people were walking perpendicular through the crossing. All of a sudden, I see Diane walking across, talking with a person beside her. I immediately was in shock. I knew she had died over three years ago, but there she was, walking casually through the intersection. Diane had a continually worsening disability, making her unable to walk in the two years before she passed, but here she was strolling along. I called out to her, but she didn’t hear me. I began running, but I somehow lost her in the crowd. When I got back to Berkeley, I told a number of people what had happened. They looked at me quizzically not knowing what to say. The accompanying feeling during my dream, was what really made this resurrection experience impactful, but I had lost that feeling by morning.
The image references for this new painting were mostly from stock photography, which I modified. However, the image below is a piece made by an art school friend of mine, Richard Harrington. He talks about what he does below. Somehow, the description of his work, struck me as relational to what I was exploring. 5 1/2 inches top point to bottom point
Hi John,
"I want to let you know a little bit about this object and how it might be thought about, displayed, or experimented with.
The material is hardware cloth, i.e. zinc coated steel. The zinc coating is resistant to oxidation but will eventually become uniformly gray. In the ‘art’ domain it is usually used as the substrate for something rigidly moldable … covered with plaster and then made into something. You’ll also recognize it as the material used to keep deer or rabbits off the carrots. For me, the uniform grid, ductile yet rigid property, uniform grayness, and tendency to generate moiré patterns have always been attractive. Who needs to cover over this interesting stuff? In the art object world, I suppose this would be regarded as a type of minimal sculpture. There is one part of me that has that in mind all the time. But there is also a kinetic dimension created because, as you’ll see, the slightest movement of a viewer’s eyes or movement of the object itself create a moiré flickering that is characteristic of kinetic artwork. I’m especially interested in the ‘skeletal’ dimension of perception, alternately looking at, or through, the objects that I’ve been building. In the mathematical world this object is called a (star-like) stellation of a dodecahedron. The seed geometry of this object is a dodecahedron i.e., a Platonic Solid consisting of twenty equilateral pentagonal faces. Each of the twenty faces of the dodecahedron are made from five four-sided pyramids (tetrahedra.) Though the dodecahedron is an ancient form it’s usage was most recently revisited by Buckminster Fuller and others.
I’m intrigued by the ‘valencies’ that appear depending on the scale or material that the objects that I make. Some smaller ones than yours are made of aluminum screen and have a jewel-like property that some have characterized as ‘featherlike gravitas. Because of the scale and density of yours I think it has a property that is quite a bit like a medieval weapon of some kind. Some of the objects are significantly larger… About 1.5 m in diameter, and they are like wire balloons… seemingly fragile, but in fact quite rigid because of the techniques that I use to assemble them. When I exhibited some of them at the Cambridge Science Festival in April, one nerd immediately characterized them as antiballoons.
Finally, for now, but most importantly, I have to point out the significance of the ‘ecology’ of how these experiments are exhibited. Ideally they ought to be seen in a condition of focused light. Direct sunlight, tensor light, light from a projector of some kind…digital or old fashioned slide projector, or focused theater light. The objects were originally conceived to be seen with the cast shadow that they create… a circumstance where the cast shadow―penumbration is so similar to the object that it’s hard to say which is more important… the object, or its shadow. This circumstance is straight out of camouflage theory. My other installations have always included circumstances of unique light conditions. You’ll see…have fun with yours."
"The Obsession to Feel 24"x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
Reference Material - “The Obsession to Feel" 24" x 36" Oil/Paper/Panel 2020
Rooftopping and other Extreme Actions: It’s hardly a secret that many of today’s younger generation, feel a pressure to succeed and measure up in ways that past generations didn’t. The largest amount of this contemporary pressure comes from the vast array of electronic platforms available for comparing and contrasting oneself.. Sites like Instagram, can literally cause some younger people to question their value, as they see others on the platform “killing it” with their life statuses. Even if the look of success doesn’t really mean success, it hardly matters to the person who believes it in that moment. Late teen to early 20’s, is a period of intense awareness of being alive, both exhillerating and overwhelming. Given the artificial reality of popular culture we live with today, it’s reasonable to see the current state of youth from a hyper-pumped feeling perspective/demand.
Like many photos on this list, this Instagram shot from Tianjin, China — taken by Angela Nikolau, who regularly risks her life in pursuit of a hair-raising pic — is hashtagged @DangerousSelfie.
Here's Angela Nikolau again, taking a selfie of herself taking a selfie while looking a long way down.
Daniel Lau – Hong Kong
Here we have Alexander Remnev, perched over the skyline in Hong Kong, looking extremely chilled out while gambling with his life.
I wasn’t able to get the names of everybody involved in the selfie taking.
Rooftopping and other Extreme Actions: It’s hardly a secret that many of today’s younger generation, feel a pressure to succeed and measure up in ways that past generations didn’t. The largest amount of this contemporary pressure comes from the vast array of electronic platforms available for comparing and contrasting oneself.. Sites like Instagram, can literally cause some younger people to question their value, as they see others on the platform “killing it” with their life statuses. Even if the look of success doesn’t really mean success, it hardly matters to the person who believes it in that moment. Late teen to early 20’s, is a period of intense awareness of being alive, both exhillerating and overwhelming. Given the artificial reality of popular culture we live with today, it’s reasonable to see the current state of youth from a hyper-pumped feeling perspective/demand.
Like many photos on this list, this Instagram shot from Tianjin, China — taken by Angela Nikolau, who regularly risks her life in pursuit of a hair-raising pic — is hashtagged @DangerousSelfie.
Here's Angela Nikolau again, taking a selfie of herself taking a selfie while looking a long way down.
Daniel Lau – Hong Kong
Here we have Alexander Remnev, perched over the skyline in Hong Kong, looking extremely chilled out while gambling with his life.
I wasn’t able to get the names of everybody involved in the selfie taking.
“The Unforeseen and the Inevitable” 24” x 36” 2020
.Reference Material - “The Unforeseen and the Inevitable” 24” x 36” 2020
Titanic – 1912 - Sinking
The first-class tickets ranged enormously in price, from $150 (about $1700 today) for a simple berth, up to $4350 ($50,000) for one of the two Parlour suites. Women Children Men
First Class Women (Servants*) Total: 141 Died: 4 (0) Survived: 113 (24) % Survived: 97% (100%)
First Class Children Total: 7 Died: 1 Survived: 6 % Survived: 86%
First Class Men (Servants*) Total: 171 Died: 105 (10) Survived: 54 (2) % Survived: 32% (17%)
39% – the percentage of First Class passengers who perished. 58% – the percentage of Second Class passengers who perished. 76% – the percentage of Third Class passengers who perished.
World Trade Center – 9.11.2001 A beautiful sky-blue morning in NY.
Indonesian Earthquake and Tsunami - December, 26, 2004 - A beautiful sky blue morning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=AUo7TloWISY
Quake in the Indian Ocean on the morning of 12.26.2004 A beautiful sky-blue morning. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred at 07:58:53 in local time on 26 December, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an undersea megathrust earthquake that registered a magnitude of 9.1–9.3 Mw, reaching a Mercalli intensity up to IX in certain areas. Wikipedia
Number of deaths: 227,898 Areas affected: Indian Ocean coastline areas Location: Banda Aceh, Indonesia
Asteroids
A comet that you could actually jog from one end to the other in less than an hour is likely more than large enough to do serious damage – like the comet that killed the dinosaurs. (Not exactly the most comforting thought, but still kind of cool nonetheless.)
To help put the size of 7P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in perspective. Artist Matt Wang took a photo of the comet taken by the Rosetta spacecraft, and paired it alongside the city of L.A. As you can see, that’s one monstrous space rock. Thankfully we don’t have to worry about any danger of the comet colliding into our planet.
On the downside, there are dozens of similar comets and asteroids whizzing by our little blue orb all the time. And if any of those rocks hit our planet we won’t even be around to compare their size. ** Correction: NASA changed to European Space Agency (ESA)
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Family photo taken in 1951 by Maurice LaClaire, Grand Rapids, Michigan Roger(43) and Beatrice(44) Warnshuis, with son Roger(21), and daughters Marcia(19) and Mary Gwen(5). Marcia Mcclimans (age 88) is a woman, born in 1932, currently listed on 3604 # St-347 Fulton St, Grand Rapids, 49546 Michigan.
This family photo interested me because of the time it was taken, just after WW 2, during the 4th phase of the Korean War, and while Harry Truman was president. The “50’s,” as we denote now, had yet to happen. But certainly, for some families, this was the beginning of the” two cars in every garage, and a nice home; the middle class was beginning its formation. I kept the lighting that was used in the photograph. The photo was taken in the living room, which at that time was quite small, say compared to what the size is in today’s homes. The Warnshuis family seems sequestered in this space, with windows covered in heavy drapes.
Architectural images
Berlin 750M – Lars Kruckeberg/Wolffram Putz/Thomas Willemeit, London . 23M . Architect - Zynk Design Consultants
Titanic – 1912 - Sinking
The first-class tickets ranged enormously in price, from $150 (about $1700 today) for a simple berth, up to $4350 ($50,000) for one of the two Parlour suites. Women Children Men
First Class Women (Servants*) Total: 141 Died: 4 (0) Survived: 113 (24) % Survived: 97% (100%)
First Class Children Total: 7 Died: 1 Survived: 6 % Survived: 86%
First Class Men (Servants*) Total: 171 Died: 105 (10) Survived: 54 (2) % Survived: 32% (17%)
39% – the percentage of First Class passengers who perished. 58% – the percentage of Second Class passengers who perished. 76% – the percentage of Third Class passengers who perished.
World Trade Center – 9.11.2001 A beautiful sky-blue morning in NY.
Indonesian Earthquake and Tsunami - December, 26, 2004 - A beautiful sky blue morning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=AUo7TloWISY
Quake in the Indian Ocean on the morning of 12.26.2004 A beautiful sky-blue morning. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred at 07:58:53 in local time on 26 December, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an undersea megathrust earthquake that registered a magnitude of 9.1–9.3 Mw, reaching a Mercalli intensity up to IX in certain areas. Wikipedia
Number of deaths: 227,898 Areas affected: Indian Ocean coastline areas Location: Banda Aceh, Indonesia
Asteroids
A comet that you could actually jog from one end to the other in less than an hour is likely more than large enough to do serious damage – like the comet that killed the dinosaurs. (Not exactly the most comforting thought, but still kind of cool nonetheless.)
To help put the size of 7P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in perspective. Artist Matt Wang took a photo of the comet taken by the Rosetta spacecraft, and paired it alongside the city of L.A. As you can see, that’s one monstrous space rock. Thankfully we don’t have to worry about any danger of the comet colliding into our planet.
On the downside, there are dozens of similar comets and asteroids whizzing by our little blue orb all the time. And if any of those rocks hit our planet we won’t even be around to compare their size. ** Correction: NASA changed to European Space Agency (ESA)
----------------------------------------------
Family photo taken in 1951 by Maurice LaClaire, Grand Rapids, Michigan Roger(43) and Beatrice(44) Warnshuis, with son Roger(21), and daughters Marcia(19) and Mary Gwen(5). Marcia Mcclimans (age 88) is a woman, born in 1932, currently listed on 3604 # St-347 Fulton St, Grand Rapids, 49546 Michigan.
This family photo interested me because of the time it was taken, just after WW 2, during the 4th phase of the Korean War, and while Harry Truman was president. The “50’s,” as we denote now, had yet to happen. But certainly, for some families, this was the beginning of the” two cars in every garage, and a nice home; the middle class was beginning its formation. I kept the lighting that was used in the photograph. The photo was taken in the living room, which at that time was quite small, say compared to what the size is in today’s homes. The Warnshuis family seems sequestered in this space, with windows covered in heavy drapes.
Architectural images
Berlin 750M – Lars Kruckeberg/Wolffram Putz/Thomas Willemeit, London . 23M . Architect - Zynk Design Consultants
Minimalism's Maximalism 36" x 48" oil/paper/panel 2018
