Archives for December 2009

Two unprovoked attacks on Washington state police officers left five dead, four in Tacoma and one in Seattle. In their honor, it’s a good time to read Joseph Wambaugh‘s latest, Hollywood Moon. Like Ed McBain‘s 87th Precinct series but much more freewheeling and comic, Wambaugh turns not a single cop but an entire division into his hero: Semper Cop. Wambaugh is surely the best police detective turned writer who ever lived.

In visual art, following Wambaugh, I note their passing with donuts.

Claire Johnson

Spike Mafford

Kenny Scharf

Emily Eveleth (Via Olive Oil)

Just in time for the holidays, Chris Crites is having a fire sale on on his drawings of miscreants and victims. If you long to darken the sunny side of someone’s street, you could give one as a present.

I somehow screwed up my blogroll. Two-thirds of the NW artist blogs disappeared and all of the national/international ones, not to mention the order of comments and images. I’ll restore them, but not right now. For those who use them, thank you for your patience. They’ll be back. 

Aubrey Nehring at Some Space through Dec. 31.

Lead Pencil

Sequoia Miller is a functional potter living in Olympia.  He’s having a studio sale on Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., 7631 Brown Rd SW, 98512.

By the rules of the art road, he has nothing in common with Todd Simeone, a Chicago photographer and video artist who shows in Seattle at James Harris. And yet….

Miller:

Ford Crull

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Pope’s point man on culture, is considered by conservatives to be a dangerous progressive, which makes him a rarity in the Pope’s inner circle.

From BNET:

A consummate communicator, Archbishop Ravasi has written, always by longhand, 150 books as well as countless articles and is an accomplished television and radio performer. Usually, his subject is the Bible, but he has also commented both on current affairs and cultural issues for several Italian dailies. His range and clarity are exceptional. He links the Bible with figures such as the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, with Hindu holy books, with the controversial Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, with the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, with the modern folk singer Fabrizio D’Andrea.

Archbishop Ravasi is behind the Pope’s call for a reengagement between artists and the Catholic Church. (New York Times story here.)

Five hundred years ago, when the Church was responsible for commissioning the greatest work in the Western World, top artists had few choices in patrons. Today, in a wider world, it might be hard to attract their contemporary equivalents.

Christopher Hitchens offers reasons why as well as a potential solution. This is Hitchens at his best. Raised Catholic, no, boiled in it like leaves of tea, I watched both videos alone and clapped when each was over, the sound echoing in my empty room.

Let’s hear it for the solid.

August Sander: from Peasant Children, Westerwald 1926-31 (Image via)

Claudette Schreuders, Anna,
Yelutang wood and enamel paint, 2008

The famous and/or fabulously wealthy are buried in altars lining the walls of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, concentrated in 1492. Those who were wealthy but not extraordinary so could pay to be buried in the floor under prone marble statues. Over the centuries as people walked on those statues and wore them down, they began to look as if they were floating off the ground.

In late 1960s, Carl Andre claimed the space (from floor to ceiling) over his lead and copper squares. When you walked on them, you were in and on his art.

More recently in flooring:

Do-Ho Suh

Christian Marclay

Leo Saul Berk

Julianna Heyne at Francine Seders through Sunday.

Scott Foldesi, Safety Net, 2007