pas de deux

31Jan08

this is a great animation done in the ’60’s by one of the best animators of all time, norman mclaren. he did this in the days before any type of digital editing, which is pretty crazy. i could watch this over and over and over.

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Tags: animation, norman mclaren, pas de deux

lightning field

31Jan08

so many artists move to new mexico because it is vast and sublime and awesome. that little plug for my home state out of the way, this is an installation walter de maria did in the seventies in a field in new mexico. the piece consists of a ton of metal rods spread out in the field, hence the name. you’re supposed to stay in the field as long as possible to get a feel for it at different times of day, in different weather, etc. and may through october visitors can stay overnight. as you can see in the photo, it is so intense and beautiful. what are you waiting for?

Filed under: installation, light art, nature 'n' art, sculpture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: de maria, land art, lightning, new mexico

cai guo-qiang

30Jan08

cai guo-qiang mostly does incredible transient work with fireworks, but this drawing he made by exploding gunpowder is gorgeous. he has a retrospective coming up at the guggenheim on the 22nd if you’re going to be in ny.

update: i forgot to put its awesome and lovely name – “drawing for transient rainbow”

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Tags: cai guo-qiang, drawing, gunpowder

henon map

29Jan08

above is a bifurcation diagram for a henon map. isn’t it beautiful? it describes “a dynamical system that exhibits chaotic behavior”. basically this thing is derived from equations created to mathmatically describe things like convection rolls in the atmosphere, which seem completely random, but actually aren’t. everything that happens in those systems is determined by their initial conditions, even if they look crazy. they call this deterministic chaos. i like that a lot.

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olafur elaisson waterfalls

24Jan08

this summer olafur elaisson is putting waterfalls off of the brooklyn bridge & three towers in the new york harbor. i saw his show at the sfmoma last week the same night amy and i went to that bar, so it’s funny that i ended up just writing about smudges on a glass door, but i have nothing to say other than you need to go see his stuff for yourself, which is really the highest accolade, if you think about it. on another note, anyone up for a summer bicoastal road trip?

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Tags: installation, new york, olafur elaisson, sculpture, sfmoma

i never have my camera when i need it

19Jan08

lately a lot of what i want to create seems related to the idea of randomness or an unintentional wearing-down. amy and i were at a bar last night in sf and the light was pouring through these wood and glass doors and they were all beat up and the glass smudgy with years and years of greasy fingers but it was gorgeous. i keep finding myself wondering how to emulate the effect these chance doors and puddles and splatters have. i’m not sure how much i can. robert hass talks in one of his poems about things “lustered by the steady thoughtlessness of human use” and i think that’s where a lot of their beauty comes from, that thoughtless use. still going to try, though.

Filed under: observed awesomeness, poetry, ponderings   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: robert hass, bar, randomness

joel shapiro

19Jan08

i don’t like his sculpture very much, but i love this drawing he did. which is interesting, because it’s very clear how they’re related, but this just grabs me so much more.

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Tags: drawing, joel shapiro, sculptor

balloon lamps

18Jan08

imagine having a bunch of these balloon lamps just floating around your house. so cool.

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Tags: balloon, design, lamps, lighting

sea=dancer (gino severini)

16Jan08

this was the first painting i ever loved. i saw it at the guggenheim when i was 13. i don’t know if i would have the same reaction to it today but looking at what caused those ‘aha’ moments when you were younger can be a strange and cool way to watch how you’ve grown and changed. severini’s interesting because he started out working with the italian futurists doing “divisionism” ( the pointillist style of this painting) and then he had this weird brain change and started doing more traditional representative work. i always wonder what made him suddenly switch.

Filed under: painting, way back in the day   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: futurists, painting, severini

the enchanted drawing

16Jan08

writing about robin rhode got me to thinking: i should post this too. the enchanted drawing is a movie from when dinosaurs roamed the cinematic earth done by a dude named blackton and thomas edison. it was one of the first animations ever made, before disney or betty boop or even gertie the dinosaur, and the 2-d/3-d interaction and the way objects transform from drawing to real is awesome. magical, even. edison may have been a jerk who tried to drive all his competitors out of business, but this movie’s great, so thanks for that, tom.

Filed under: animation, how'd they think of that?, video art, way back in the day   |  1 Comment
Tags: animation, history