Gurldoggie

In the Mail

2012-01-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

Despite a life-long love for the mail, I don't send or receive too many letters these days. You? I thought not. Puppeteer and sci-fi author, Mary Robinette Kowal has an excellent suggestion for folks like us.

Kowal is challenging all of us to mail at least one item every day for the entire month of February. It can be a postcard, a letter, a picture, a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch. Additionally, she asks us to promise that we will write back to everyone who writes to us. Participants willing to make a public commitment on her website can enter their names on her ad-hoc website, A Month of Letters, where you can also track your epistolary month via a calendar and request new pen pals - an old and lovely idea which is still clinging to life. Of course, you don't really need any kind of website to chat slow and old-school - surprise a friend by dropping a letter in the mail today.

Flicks for the Kids

2012-01-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

Winter's dragging on, but the snow holiday is long over. Perfect timing for the annual Children's Film Festival Seattle, starting tonight and running through February 5 at the Northwest Film Forum.

This year's festival boasts as strong a line-up as ever, opening with the Seattle premiere of famed French animator Michel Ocelot's new film "Tales of the Night." The festival also features a music and movie pajama party for ages 3 and older this Friday night, a retrospective of animation from Russia's famed SHAR Studio and Animation School, founded in 1993 by a group of top Russian animators, and of course the awesome Pancake Breakfast this Saturday morning, with short films from around the world. I don't know who's more excited - me or my 3-year old. Full info on the Children's Film Fest right here.

I have no idea if this film, by Argentine illustrator and animator Santiago Grasso, will be in the festival. But it's winning all kinds of awards at recent festivals, I like it, and my kid does too. What else you want? A pancake? Enjoy.

Václav Havel

2012-01-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

By Václav Havel in his 2005 memoir "To the Castle and Back":

I’m running away. I’m running away more and more. I find various excuses to run from my study, downstairs into the kitchen where I tidy up, listen to the radio, wash the dishes, cook a meal, think something over, or simply sit in my old place by the window and stare out…What am I actually afraid of? Hard to say. What’s interesting is that although I am here alone-and will continue to be here alone because no one that I know of has plans to visit – I keep the house tidy; I have everything in its place, everything has to be aligned with everything else, nothing can be left hanging over the edge of a table or be crooked…

I have only one explanation: I am constantly preparing for the last judgment, for the highest court from which nothing can be hidden, which will appreciate everything that should be appreciated, and which will, of course, notice anything that is not in its place. I’m obviously assuming that the supreme judge is a stickler like me. But why does this final evaluation matter so much to me? After all, at that point, I shouldn’t care. But I do care, because I’m convinced that my existence—like everything that has ever happened—has ruffled the surface of Being, and that after my little ripple, however marginal, insignificant and ephemeral it may have been, Being is and always will be different from what it was before.

All my life...I have simply believed that what is once done can never be undone and that, in fact, everything remains forever. In short, Being has a memory. And thus, even my insignificance—as a bourgeois child, a laboratory assistant, a soldier, a stagehand, a playwright, a dissident, a prisoner, a president, a pensioner, a public phenomenon, and a hermit, an alleged hero but secretly a bundle of nerves—will remain here forever, or rather not here, but somewhere. But not, however, elsewhere. Somewhere here.

There's a beautiful remembrance of Havel by Paul Wilson in the recent New York Review of Books.

Documentos

2012-01-24T22:12:00.000-08:00

Astounding. Whether or not you speak Spanish, you must spend some time at the incredible new website for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. It's a growing treasure trove of remarkable documents tracing the vast history of Latin American and Latino Art. Thousands upon thousands of scanned pages and recovered texts create a massive source of art and criticism from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Latino USA. It's a simply monumental digitization project, being created by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, available free of charge to researchers, teachers, and you and me.

Inventory

2012-01-19T14:26:00.000-08:00

by Richard Hoffman

What I have given to sorrow,
though I have poured out
all I am again and again,
does not amount to much.

One winter’s snows.
Two loves I could not welcome.
A year of mostly silence.
Another man I might have been.

Manage Workflow

2011-12-30T09:31:00.000-08:00

Remarkable new work from New York artist Specter. This is part of his "Manage Workflow" series that celebrates New York's marginalized workforce. These highly detailed hand-painted portraits started appearing around NYC in 2009. More here.

Wain Cats

2011-12-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

Weird and compelling short article in Scientific American about artist and psychiatric patient Louis Wain, who lived and painted in England between 1860 and 1939.

Wain was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1924. Though the diagnosis is still debated, what's fascinating is that Wain retained his interest in cats as his subject of choice, and his skill as a draftsman remained obvious. As his condition worsened his pictures of cats became more abstract until, towards the end of his life, they were barely recognisable as cats at all, instead becoming intricately detailed, fractal shapes full of bright colours. The foreknowledge that they are images of kitties allows the viewer to pick up on certain shapes – the pointy ears and some features – but without it, you would be hard-pressed to realise these are cats.

The story ends somewhat happily with Wain in a London hospital surrounded by a colony of cats. Check out his early cute and relatively realistic work here and his spectacular and terrifying later work here.

The End is Beer

2011-12-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

It's widely known that the Mayan calendar marks 2012 as the last year for humanity’s existence. In honor of the end of the world, Seattle's Elysian Brewing Company has teamed up with Fantagraphics Books, and apocalyptic cartoonist Charles Burns to release “Twelve Beers of the Apocalypse” over the course of the year.

First up in January is "Niburu," named for the planet supposedly on a collision course toward Earth. February 21 introduces "Rapture," fallowed by "Fallout" in March. Each beer will be available in a limited edition bottle with labels by Burns at Fantagraphics' bookstore in Georgetown. Once the bottles are gone, these beers will never be brewed again. Of course by the end of 2012 that will be the least of our worries. More on the endeavor here.

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

2011-12-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

by Robert Graves

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

Punk Rock Flea Market

2011-12-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

The 11th Punk Rock Flea Market has come and gone, wrapping up the 5th full year of this underground Seattle institution. Was it fun? Hell yes. Ten hours of booze-fueled shopping with non-stop music from our beloved DJ Port-a-Party. More than 700 people came through the doors - not even including the clowns who sneaked in to avoid paying their $1 entry fee - and we made a donation of about $1000 to our friends and benefactors at the Low Income Housing Institute. If you made it, we were happy to have you there. If you missed it, there's always next time.

Incidentally, our awesome poster for this market was created by Seattle artist Narboo, well known around these parts for his cartoony owls, pigeons, cats & raccoons who appear like magic on stop signs and bathroom walls everywhere between Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR. He still has some limited edition prints left, available right here. The next Punk Rock Flea Market should take place sometime around midsummer. Make a date, mark your calendars and start saving your pennies. And of course, keep and eye on Gurldoggie for details.

Stasia Burrington

2011-12-12T11:37:00.000-08:00

The Punk Rock Flea Market happened over the weekend, and it was a hell of a thing. I'll post a full update in a minute, but I first want to highlight one of the vendors who was selling work there. Stasia Burrington is an illustrator here in Seattle, and I just love her work. There's so much to enjoy here - The super cute figures have feelings that run very deep. Her clean clean lines reveal wonderfully complicated ambiguities. And the characters somehow maintain their innocence despite living in a sexy and violent world. Punk rock? Maybe not. Hopelessly romantic? Without question.

Baby Nico really liked this one. For myself, I picked up a pocket-size 2012 calendar with an illustration for each month. Lovely. See more of her work here, and go shopping on her Etsy site right here.

Chromatic Typewriter

2011-12-07T06:24:00.000-08:00

Painter Tyree Callahan out of Bellingham modified a 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter, replacing the letters and keys with color pads and hued labels to create a functional “painting” device called the Chromatic Typewriter. The lovely machine was Callahan's entry to the 2012 West Prize competition, an annual art prize that’s determined by popular vote. If you like it, there's still time to vote, right here.

Theaster Gates

2011-12-05T16:23:00.000-08:00

Theaster Gates is a Renaissance man on a mission.

Gates grew up in Chicago and graduated from Iowa State University as an urban planning major. While there he took a course in ceramics that got him hooked on clay and made him think he could be an artist. He studied religion in South Africa, sojourned in Japan, and earned the first of two masters degrees. In the process, Gates went from throwing pots to mounting emotionally charged installations and performances, including multiple events based on a faux biographical story that Gates created. In his tale, a master Japanese potter, Yamaguchi, had fled Hiroshima and landed in Mississippi, where he married a black woman, combined Japanese and black southern cultures, mentored Gates, and then died, leaving Gates to continue his mission of "fostering social transformation."

With former Wilco member LeRoy Bach, Gates formed an experimental music ensemble, the Black Monks of Mississippi, making performance art out of a blend of Eastern chants, gospel, and the blues. By 2010 Gates was a hot ticket on the museum circuit, with a schedule that included on-site projects or residencies at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum, and New York's Armory Show and the Whitney Art Museum.

But in the summer of 2009, while his career was thriving, his Chicago neighborhood had emptied out due to assorted consequences of poverty and economic collapse. The house next door to Gates — bigger than his and bustling with three tenant families when he moved in — was abandoned and bank-owned, and had been on the market for a year. Gates bought the forlorn frame house for $16,000, and the extra house became a library and archive housing Gates' 60,000 glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago's art history department, 14,000 books from Prairie Avenue Bookshop, which was closing, and the 8,000 LPs that the Dr. Wax record store still owned when it also shut down.

In 2010, Gates launched a series of artists' residencies, featuring public performances in his house promoted by word of mouth. After a tremendously successful year, Gates formed his own nonprofit, the Rebuild Foundation, which acquires property in blighted neighborhoods in other cities including Saint Louis, Detroit and Omaha, all of which he intends to converted into grassroots cultural use.

In late April, the Rebuild Foundation acquired a much bigger project: the Dante Harper Townhomes, a shuttered 36-unit Section-8 property a couple of blocks from Gates's home. The plan is to redevelop the building into mixed-income housing for people with an interest in the arts.

It's all of a piece, Gates says. "A big part of my art practice has been creatively investigating what happens in neighborhoods. That also includes playing in the real market, not just gesturing at it. We're at a moment where the interventions that artists make are not just in museums and galleries."

A new installation by Gates opens at the Seattle Art Museum on December 8, and runs through July 1. Theaster Gates speaks at Town Hall Seattle on Tuesday December 6 at 6:30 p.m.

Paul Goodman Changed My Life

2011-11-30T06:51:00.000-08:00

The film “Paul Goodman Changed My Life” pays tribute to a man — poet, teacher, social critic, and guru - who was once widely read, but has since fallen into an unmerited obscurity. It is that fall from public awareness that this documentary seeks to overcome.

Goodman was a member of the generation of Jewish intellectuals who made their way from the margins to the center of American cultural life. Born and raised in New York, he was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, a founder of Gestalt therapy and a member of the faculty of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, the institution that was home to such thinkers and artists as Ed Dorn, Robert Creeley and Robert Rauschenberg, and birthed the American avant-garde. Not only a public intellectual, Goodman was also an active participant in the movements that aimed to change society and not just reflect upon it.

Though married twice and the father of three children, Goodman was open and unapologetic about his sexual attraction to both men and women. “Paul Goodman Changed My Life” is a fascinating film that paints a composite portrait of a complex man who never stopped thinking and who was incapable of anything but honesty in thought and deed.

At the SIFF Cinema from December 2 through December 8, 2011.

Makin' it Last

2011-11-17T14:36:00.000-08:00

Part of what makes graffiti so compelling is it's incredibly contradictory nature. Whatever manic and aggressive aspects an individual piece of graffiti can posses, its impermanence gives it an inherently fragile quality. Graffiti is all about the moment that you happen to see it - one day it's a blank wall, the next day it's a masterpiece, and the day after that it's gone again. Bam.

Despite that here-today gone-tomorrow quality, graffiti- and hip hop in general - has attained a cultural longevity that no one would have predicted 35 years ago. Some of the artists who appeared like bursts of flame, and may have been expected to disappear just as quickly, are now revered as elder statesmen. Photos of their pieces have become cultural icons, and in the rare situation where an original piece has survived, they have become pilgrimage sites.

So it's only natural that a number of thoughtful projects have surfaced that mean to preserve some international graffiti landmarks.

Photographer and film director Henry Chalfant is spearheading the restoration of the 30 hours of unseen outtakes from the classic graffiti and hip-hop culture documentary Style Wars. The film is an indispensable document of New York Street culture from the early '80s, and there are about 30 hours of film shot between 1981 and 1982 that have almost never been seen. Chalfant, who co-produced the original film, is trying to preserve that footage and re-edit it into a second full length DVD. Here’s a great little video from Chalfant about the project.

While Style Wars was screening for the first time in NYC, Keith Haring was being flown over to Australia to paint a mural on an outdoor wall of the Collingwood Technical College in Melbourne. The mural is one of the few remaining outdoor murals by this influential and brilliant artist who died in 1990, and it's been sitting exposed to the sun and rain for the last 27 years. Finally there's effort underway to save it, going on right here.

Giving a little cash to a project like these is a personal choice - what's more interesting is the growing awareness that these ephemeral works form a part of our culture that is worth keeping.

Aono Jikken from the Gimli Hospital

2011-11-15T22:01:00.000-08:00

Seattle’s Aono Jikken Ensemble has been in New York working with otherworldly film director Guy Maddin on a re-boot of his debut feature Tales From the Gimli Hospital. The film, originally released in 1988, tells the “true story" of Icelandic immigrants who arrive in a plague-stricken Canadian village. Already weird and imaginative beyond description, the film has been completely re-edited and dubbed with new narration and dialogue, and Aono Jikken Ensemble have spent months composing a new score featuring an all-star group of Icelandic string musicians and vocalists. AJE’s wonderful unique combination of traditional Asian, western and world instruments, combined with the Icelandic strings and voices, together with found objects, children’s toys and specially created sound devices should create a whole new sound world for Maddin’s epic film. The whole shebang appears at the Walter Reade Theater of Lincoln Center on November 18 & 19 as part of Performa 11 – New York City’s New Visual Art Performance Biennial. Who knows if this will ever tour, so for God's sake see it in New York if at all possible. If you're a supporter of AJE (and who isn't?) you get a discount if you buy online and use the discount code "member11." Full ticket details right here.

Haymarket

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe that the timing is a coincidence. Today, November 11th, marks the 123rd anniversary of the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs - eight anarchists and labor organizers who took part in the struggle for the 8 hour work day and the May Day uprising in Chicago in 1886.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (Now the AFL) began loudly calling for a great movement to win a national 8-hour workday. The plan was to spend two years urging all American employers to adopt a standard 8-hour day, instead of the 10- to 16-hour days that were then prevalent. Beginning May 1886, all workers not yet on an 8-hour schedule were to cease work in a nation-wide strike until their employers met the demand.

Accordingly, on May 1 of that year great demonstrations erupted across the country. The largest was in Chicago, where 80,000 people marched, much to the alarm of Chicago's business leaders who saw it as a foreshadowing of "revolution," and demanded a police crackdown.

A mass meeting was called for the night of May 4, 1886 in the city haymarket. A large force of police arrived to demand that the meeting disperse, and someone, unknown to this day, threw a bomb. In their confusion, the police began firing their weapons in the dark, killing at least four in the crowd and wounding many more.

In the aftermath of the event, unions were raided all across the country. The Eight-Hour Movement was derailed and it was not until passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1935 that the 8-hour workday became the national standard, as part of President Roosevelt's New Deal.

Albert Parsons and seven others associated with radical organizations were prosecuted in a show trial. None were linked to the bomb thrower, and some were not even present at the time, but the charges against them alleged that their public criticism of corporate America, the political structure, and the use of police power against the working people, inspired the bomber.

Governor John Peter Altgeld subsequently found the trial to be grossly unfair. On June 26, 1894, Altgeld pardoned those defendants still alive and in prison; but five of the martyrs had already been hanged, on November 11, 1887, and one was dead of an apparent suicide.

In July 1889, a delegate from the AFL attending an international labor conference in Paris, urged that May 1 of each year be celebrated as a day of labor solidarity. With the notable exception of the United States, workers throughout the world now celebrate May 1 as "Labor Day."

Short Run

2011-11-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this blog, you've probably got a taste for old school media - ie. beautiful handmade objects and actual printed books. The Short Run Small Press Fest is in Seattle a first-of-its-kind small press expo featuring dozens of handmade literary journals, comics, zines, and small-press books, along with a fancy bake sale and screenings of recent work from Seattle Experimental Animation Team. Uniquely beautiful handmade books are a joy unto themselves, and the kind of thing you'll never be able to download onto your Kindle. At Seattle's all-ages Vera Project this Saturday starting at 10:30 am. Admission is free free free.

And if you want more, the show continues with an party and exhibit at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle. The party begins on Saturday after the Short Run show and the display continues through December 10.

Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner

2011-11-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

A new radio play about composer Julius Eastman will premiere this Saturday, November 12, at the Performa Biennial in New York.

Eastman is a compelling though little-known figure in American composition. He was a gay African-American composer, hailed as an incredible vocalist and pianist. Eastman is probably best known for singing on the 1973 Grammy-nominated Nonesuch recording of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King. Raised in Ithaca, New York, he started studying piano at fourteen and was playing Beethoven after only six months of lessons. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music as a piano major under Mieczyslaw Horzowski but soon switched to composition. In 1968 he moved to Buffalo where he was a member of the Creative Associates, under the leadership of Lukas Foss and later Morton Feldman.

While in Buffalo, he performed and toured music by many prominent contemporary composers, as well as had his own music performed. He eventually moved to New York City, where he was associated with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and worked with downtown composers like Meredith Monk, Peter Gordon, Arthur Russell and Evan Lurie. Once he left Buffalo, the titles of his pieces started to change, from poetic and evocative titles like "The Moon's Silent Modulation" to much more confrontational themes like "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich," and "Evil Nigger."

A 1980 piece for Eastman's voice and cello ensemble, The Holy Presence of Jeanne d'Arc, was performed to wide acclaim at The Kitchen in New York City, and in 1981 Eastman recorded with Meredith Monk's ensemble for her influential album Dolmen Music.

However, success was fleeting. Desperate for paid work and despondent about what he saw as a lack of professional opportunities, Eastman began using drugs heavily. At one point he was evicted from his apartment, his belongings confiscated by the sheriff, and he took up residence in Tompkins Square Park.

A job teaching music theory brought him back to SUNY Buffalo, but his music career never recovered. Eastman died alone at the age of 50 in Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo. No public notice was given to his death until an obituary by Kyle Gann appeared in the Village Voice eight months after he died.

In 2005 New World Records released a 3-CD set of Eastman’s music.

The radio show, called "Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, features several pianists and voice-actors, and will be broadcast live twice before being archived. It should be a fascinating event. Below is a recording of Eastman's piece “Evil Nigger” from 1979, here played on four pianos, including one played by Eastman himself.

Yelping with Cormac McCarthy

2011-11-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

Did you know that novelist Cormac McCarthy reviews his favorite shopping spots on Yelp? For example, here he is at the local Whole Foods:

The riders watched as the women left their station wagons and strollers and encircled the outlaw. As if some ancient instinct united them. Silent as wolves and staring intently at the broken man standing there. He saw his mistake and called out to the riders reaching toward them with his one good arm but was struck down with a savage blow from a rolled yoga mat.

Heaven help me, but this is why the internet was invented. Much more here.

Best of Henson

2011-11-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Of course pretty much everyone from my generation has a great reverence for Jim Henson. We grew up watching Sesame Street, moved on to the Muppet Show, and watched Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal so many times that huge swaths of our population have memorized the dialogue. Henson's creativity was legendary and his mastery of television has influenced everything that came afterward.

What's interesting is that in the years since his death, no one has come close to claiming his niche. I can't think of a single popular artist today who speaks to children and adults with such equal fluency, and whose work has such huge commercial appeal without ever being trite, saccharine or downright mercenary. We all knew Henson was unique at the time - it's looking more and more like he was true genius.

Starting tomorrow, November 5, the new SIFF Cinema at the Uptown is celebrating the work of Jim Henson by screening including the three original Muppet films, the fantasy classics The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and eight different collections of classic shorts featuring from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and rarities from the Henson vaults.

The series runs through November 22, and the full schedule is available here.

And if you haven't seen this in a while, it's a perfect moment to re-visit Henson's 1966 short film Time Piece. Brilliant, anti-authoritarian, and not a single muppet. Enjoy.

State Route 99%

2011-11-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

Closer to home, Seattle artist No Touching Ground has pasted a series of lifesize portraits of Occupy Wall Street protesters on the columns supporting the monorail on Fifth Avenue. Good strong medicine that can't be ignored. The art police are very quick to remove ornamentation from these particular columns, if you want to see them in living color before they disappear try to make the trip to Belltown before too long. You can see them eternally on the web of course, here and here.

By the way, NTG has been doing some really powerful work all over the place. For example, check out this piece that appeared in Brooklyn, NY over the summer. Nice.

Guy Denning

2011-11-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

Guy Denning is a self-taught English artist currently living in France. Mostly known for his gritty and brooding paintings, Denning has heartily embraced various internet outlets including YouTube where he demonstrates how he paints, as well as a terrific blog and Facebook page where he posts a new drawing each day. Denning has been paying close attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests and is busily posting images inspired by the New York conflagration as well as capturing moments seen via the internet in Oakland, London and elsewhere. His uncanny ability to illustrate powerful emotion in the simplest gestural sketches is incredible, and the recent wave of protests have served as an explosive outlet for his deeply felt cynicism and world weary politics. Absolutely worth a look.

DJ/Rupture

2011-10-27T14:21:00.000-07:00

Browsing through the magazines up at Elliot Bay Book Company, I was delighted to see DJ/Rupture on the cover of The Wire. I discovered Rupture via “Mudd Up” the phenomenal radio show he hosts every Monday on WFMU. Mudd Up is must listening, either live or via podcast, for the remarkable way it creates beautiful and unexpected mixes with music that ranges from the danceable to the international to the experimental to the outlandish. In scope and attitude, the show really stands out.

Turns out he's also a hell of a writer and thinker. As his real world alter ego, Jace Clayton, he maintains a killer blog, also called Mudd Up, was part of a 2010 panel investigating the rise and fall of the contemporary hipster, has been anthologized by no less an editor than Greil Marcus, and has a book of contemporary music culture coming out from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Read. Watch. Listen.

YooouuuTuuube

2011-10-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

I've been hooked on this simple but devilishly addictive YouTube toy that is better experienced than explained. It does amazing things with videos like this classic performance by Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street, makes these great Norman Maclaren films even trippier, and also somehow manages to improve upon the already hypnotizing video for Beyonce’s Countdown. Do check it out. And be sure to hit the "flux" button.

Mourir Auprès de Toi

2011-10-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

Watch this fun new animated video called Mourir Auprès de Toi, set in the after hours world of the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Paris. The stop-motion short is a collaboration between director Spike Jonze and the French designer Olympia Le-Tan.

Unfortunately, the video can't be embedded, but you can watch it to your heart's content right here.

United Monster's Syndicate

2011-10-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

Paul Gasoi is the quintessential painter-as-mad scientist. His work represents an endless series of experiments, using all manner of materials - from standard oil paints and ink pens to postage stamps, comic books and found objects, all the way to mosses, ferns, and animal bones. Rather than use these materials to reflect the world around him, Paul turns his talents inward to create an ever-evolving map of his inner states. His work has toured around the world, and is part of the permanent collection at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

After spending two decades in Seattle, Gasoi hopped on a boat in the late 2000's and took up residence among the cypresses and blackberry brambles of Vashon Island. The fertile island landscape has been good to his imagination, and Gasoi's work has become as fantastic and organic as ever.

Paul returns to Seattle for a rare appearance and show at an exotic salon-style event titled “United Monster's Syndicate.” This is a one day only event taking place this Friday, October 22nd from noon to 10p.m.at the Underground Events Center in Belltown.

United Monster promises to be a rare showing of a vast array of the artist's old and new works, with opportunities to acquire original paintings, purchase limited edition prints of his selected works, and join Paul for a shot of absinthe - or something even stronger.

Under a Certain Little Star

2011-10-08T06:15:00.000-07:00

In honor of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a poem by Wislawa Szymborska.

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.
Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second.
My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first.
Forgive me, far-off wars, for carrying my flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss.
My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
staring, motionless, always at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me.
Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.
Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
since I am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light.

ROA in The Gambia

2011-10-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Belgian street artist ROA is in Gambia of all places, doing some astoundingly beautiful work. You must see this.

Craig Thompson

2011-10-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

Cartoonist Craig Thompson garnered widespread acclaim for his beautiful graphic novel Blankets, perhaps one of the best comics of the past decade. Six years later, Thompson has come out with his second book, Habibi, an apocalyptic love story between a prostitute and a eunuch, set in a strangely idealized Oriental landscape. It is a beautiful looking book - rich with intricate line work and lush textures, conjuring the sense of an exotic fairy tale. I haven't read it yet, but the book has already received heaps of strong reviews, and it would not surprise me if Thompson's 2nd book becomes a classic as a par with his first. Craig Thompson is in Seattle tomorrow, October 5th, speaking at the Seattle Public Library main branch and signing copies of his new book. The event is co-produced by Fantagraphics Bookstore and the Seattle Public Library Foundation, and admission is free. Thompson, based n Portland OR, recently gave a short interview to Portland Monthly mag. You can read it right here.

Matthew Curran

2011-09-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Really unusual stencil work from British-born skate punk Matthew Curran. His lines have the energy of random occurrences, but the forms they describe are so delicate and graceful. Quite nice. More here.

New Spanish Cinema

2011-09-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

This week brings the third edition of the Festival of New Spanish Cinema to the SIFF Cinema in downtown Seattle. This traveling series, both more beautiful and more popular than anyone expected, brings a dozen recent films by Spanish filmmakers both new and renowned. Every film looks to be a highlight, though I'm particularly drawn by La Mitad De Oscar - a drama set on the windswept landscape of Almeria - and a revival of the creepy 1976 classic ¿Quien Puede Matar Un Nino? or "Who can kill a Child? - a tale of a remote island full of only giggling children who seem to have murdered all the adults.

And I'm fascinated to see Bicycle, Spoon, Apple, a documentary on the immensely popular Catalan politican Pasqual Maragall. Maragall is the Grandson of renowned Catalan poet Joan Maragall, was the Mayor of Barcelona who brought the 1992 Olympic games that forever changed the city, and stepped down from his position as President of the Catalunya upon his announcement that he had Alzheimer's Disease. He is still a beloved figure among left-leaning Catalans, and this should be a remarkable portrait.

The series runs from September 21 to 25 and series passes are available here.

To Autumn

2011-09-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

On this day, September 19 in 1819, English poet John Keats wrote "To Autumn," a three-stanza ode to the bounty and melancholy of fall.

Keats's odes are considered his greatest poetic accomplishments and with the exception of "To Autumn," the odes were composed between March and June of 1819, a period during which which he struggled with his own fatal illness, while mourning his brother's recent death, and engaging in an intense love affair with Fanny Brawne.

Keats died of tuberculosis on February 23, 1821, just twenty-five years old.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Johan Rijpma

2011-09-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

Completely unexpected and wildly creative animations by Dutch animator Johan Rijpma. Up above, he organizes thousands of photographs of sidewalk tiles and street cracks to create the illusion of motion. Down below he arranges rolls of scotch tape - yes, scotch tape - to an utterly hypnotic effect. Don't take my word for it, you just gotta see this.

Portable Sanctuary

2011-09-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

At a one-time-only performance on September 18, percussionist, composer and percussionist Paul Kikuchi is will fill Seattle's Union Station with music composed specifically for the unique acoustics of that unusual colosseum. The performance is the culmination of the artist's residency in the Great Hall at the station, which included open rehearsals and a work-in-progress performance on April 5. Kikuchi's long gestating site-specific work has also included recording sessions and performances in abandoned train tunnels, underground cisterns, and nuclear cooling towers around Washington state. The concert on September 18 features Kikuchi and his ensemble Portable Sanctuary, and coincides with the release of their first album. The performance runs from 1pm to 3pm in Union Station, 401 South Jackson Street. Admission is based on a sliding scale - no more than $15 - and the first 30 guests receive a free copy of the new Portable Sanctuary album.

Nice profile of Paul on the Earshot Jazz website.

Hobo Nickels

2011-09-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

Since at least the 18th century unknown and uncelebrated artists have carved miniature bas relief sculptures into the surfaces of coins. In the early 20th century the Buffalo nickel was introduced in the U.S., and this particular coin, which featured the portrait of an Indian with bold features, was minted using soft metal making it easier to deface and transform. With the flood of idle hands and unemployed artists resulting from the depression, the phenomenon of the Hobo Nickels was born. Here's a great series of images of nickels carved to reveal skulls - a particular sub genre of the art form. Hobo nickel carving remains a popular hobby today and it even has its own society.

Via Colossal Art & design.

George Kuchar

2011-09-09T07:09:00.000-07:00

Legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar died on Tuesday in San Francisco.

Kuchar and his twin brother Mike made films together from childhood, using an eight-millimeter camera, props from their family’s New York apartment, and actors enlisted among friends and neighbors. Their entire career was spent making beautiful and heartfelt movies on a shoestring budget, inspiring hundreds of self taught film makers, not to mention the many thousands of amateur directors who post their work on Youtube, Vimeo and other sites.

The Kuchar brothers began receiving outside attention in the early ’60s with cheaply made and riotous films like “I Was a Teenage Rumpot.” Their film "Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof" caused a scandal at the New York Eight Millimeter Club, which brought the Kuchars to the attention of underground filmmaker Ken Jacob and Village Voice film critic Jonas Mekas. In 1964, at 22 years old, they had their first retrospective at the New Bowery Theater.

Kuchar had something of a popular breakthrough with his 1966 film short “Hold Me While I’m Naked,” a semi-autobiographical rumination on the frustrations of a maker of soft-core pornographic films. That film, along with a series of films he made on annual visits to a trailer park in Oklahoma during tornado season, became his best-known work. There is a terrific selection of Kuchar's work right here on UbuWeb.

In 1971 he was invited to teach filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he remained on the faculty until earlier this year. Teaching provided him with a steady income as well as hundreds of amateur actors — his students — willing to be cast in some of his movies. After a long career, during which he made hundreds of movies, Kuchar died in San Francisco at the age of 69.

Alfred Jarry

2011-09-08T00:34:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of Alfred Jarry, born September 8 1873.

Jarry was a novelist, playwright and philosopher whose work prefigured Dada, Surrealism, Futurism and the Theater of the Absurd. He is best known for his anti-authoritarian satire Ubu Roi, which premiered in 1896 and immediately ignited a scandal with its scatology and it's relentless absurdity. It has been a theatrical cult classic ever since.

Jarry was vehemently eccentric, riding a bicycle everywhere - into restaurants, the theatre and his apartment - always armed with pistols, and perpetually intoxicated. He ate his meals backwards, dessert first, and adopted the nasal, monotone speaking style he invented for Ubu, enunciating every syllable equally and referring to himself in the royal "we."

His work veered from the bizarre to the disturbing. His book Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician describes the exploits and teachings of a sort of philosopher who, born at age 63, travels through Paris in a sieve and teaches all who will listen about "pataphysics" - a science invented by Jarry in which "every event in the universe is accepted as an extraordinary event." Jarry also wrote what is often called "the first cyborg sex novel," Le Surmâle. Jarry was also very involved in the world of printed images, making woodcuts and drawings to ornament his own books.

In his final years, he was a legendary and heroic figure to some of the young writers and artists in Paris, including Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon, and Max Jacob. After his death, Pablo Picasso acquired his pistol, and later owned many of his manuscripts.

Jarry lived in Paris until his death at 34 years old from tuberculosis aggravated by drug and alcohol use. Per his request, he was buried upright, bestride a bicycle.

Right here you can read Jarry's prose poem The Passion Considered As An Uphill Bicycle Race alongside J.G. Ballard's parody/homage The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race .

From the poem:

Jesus, though carrying nothing, perspired heavily. It is not certain whether a female spectator wiped his brow, but we know that Veronica, a girl reporter, got a good shot of him with her Kodak.

The second spill came at the seventh turn on some slippery pavement. Jesus went down for the third time at the eleventh turn, skidding on a rail.

...

The deplorable accident familiar to us all took place at the twelfth turn. Jesus was in a dead heat at the time with the thieves. We know that he continued the race airborne -- but that is another story.

Rochester Gets Faith

2011-09-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Artist Faith47 out of South Africa was in Rochester, NY recently to work with local artists in transforming a large concrete wall in Troup Street Park into a message of hope, with a second location on North Union Street by the Rochester Public Market. The Synthesis Collaborative, a Rochester nonprofit organization, sponsored the multi-site mural project. Faith47 joined other South African artists including Mak1one, Freddy Sam and Dal along with the FUA Krew out of Rochester, and while there she found time to hit up this underpass deep with the network of Rochester roads. Pretty.

Wild Animals

2011-09-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

Wild Animals - a beautiful self-published book by Dutch illustrator Rop van Mierlo — is already in its second printing. They're pretty tough to find around here, but you can buy one direct from the illustrator. Rop's biography states that "He is a man" who "once had a dog that bit off the tip of his ear." The rest, apparently, is history. More here.

Puss

2011-08-31T23:32:00.000-07:00

From 1968 to 1974, a group of underground Swedish artists published twenty-four issues of "Puss" magazine — which translates as "Kiss," though the double meaning is unmistakeable - in English. Puss was an in-your-face explosion of irreverence with heaping helpings of body parts and burning flags which pissed on and pissed off just about everyone with their unrelenting satire.

The Puss crew included Lars Hillersberg, Lena Svedberg, Carl Johan De Geer, Leif Katz, Ulf Rahmberg, and "US correspondent" Oyvind Fahlstrom. Here's a google-translation of a 2007 Swedish interview with some of the surviving members.

I stumbled on Puss Magazine through the redoubtable 50 Watts, which then brought me to an extensive exhibit on extensive exhibit on Puss and Carl Johan de Geer at Boo-Hooray Gallery in New York. You can see much more here and read more about the magazine and artists here.

Jacques Leonard

2011-08-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

In 1950 French photographer Jacques Leonard - already well known for his adventures as an intrepid traveler, racehorse trainer, filmmaker, and writer - fell in love with the painters' model Rosario Amaya. Amaya was a Gypsy, and had grown up in a Romani shanty-town on the edge of Barcelona. Together they settled in the neighborhood, from where he continued his career and conducted a lifetime study of the community around him. For the rest of his life, between the 50s and 70s, Leonard had the unique opportunity to document the quotidian life and customs of the well

guarded Gypsy community who lived in the Montjuic barracks of Barcelona.

His legacy remained in storage for years, until 2009 when his children discovered thousands of negatives and handed them to the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona. The Leonard archive held nearly 18,000 negatives, including more than 3,000 studies, portraits and snapshots of the gypsy community he lived with. The Arxiu Fotogràfic opened the enlightening exhibition Jacques Leonard: Gypsy Barcelona on June 2nd. The show runs through January 2012.

Ah...Julie Doucet

2011-08-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

Did you know that French Canadian cartoonist Julie Doucet has a blog? And that she regularly posts things like disturbing collages and this lovely abstract animation? Now you know. You're welcome.

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

Artoleptic

2011-08-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

This Sunday brings the 5th Artoleptic Festival to Pioneer Square. This small but steadily growing fair highlights urban arts and music, with appearances from plenty of top tier and lesser known artists and musicians. For the first time this year, the festival invites the public to bring large box trucks, work vehicles or buses to get painted for free. If you've got such a beast, just roll your vehicle into the center of the festival at Western and Yesler and have it set upon by a team of artists that includes 179, EGO, Joey Nix, Weirdo and others. A simple clear coat over the top and it should last for years!

This Sunday only, August 21 2011, from noon to 8pm.

RIP Val Kleitz

2011-08-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I just learned that Seattle's most beloved bike mechanic, Val Kleitz, has died. He passed away on August 10th, 2011. Val was born on June 8th, 1960, and was known throughout this city for his incredible knowledge of bicycles, his sure hand with arcane technologies, his impressive handlebar moustache and his warm and generous manner. Val had been battling cancer for some time, and according to his good friends he died peacefully, surrounded by his family.

For all of his love of form and grace, Val was most devoted to the utilitarian aspect of bicycles. Aaron Goss of Aaron's Bicycle Repair in West Seattle is holding a memorial Cargo Bike Ride for Val this Labor Day, September 5th. Friends and admirers will meet at 20/20 Cycle on Capitol Hill and ride their utility bikes in honor of Val. More info here.

And I will certainly post any information I get about a more formal wake and memorial bike ride.

Cut Up Method

2011-08-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Cut Chemist arrived on this planet in 1993 as part of the Los Angeles-based hip hop crew Unity Committee, and was a key member of the terrific and under appreciated Jurassic 5, mixing tracks, contributing songs and co-producing the seminal early records. Since then he's explored the outer reaches of mixing with records from all corners of the globe, and become the DJ behind-the-scenes for L.A. superstars Ozomatli. Cut Chemist is making a short trip along the West Coast this month to kick off his first headline tour in nearly five years.

His high-concept audio-visual performance uses two traditional turntables and two DVD turntables to create a full-blown atmosphere, with the help of multi-instrumentalist Edan and MC Mr. Lif. The tour comes to Seattle on Friday Aug. 19 for a performance at Showbox and has just three additional dates in San Diego and LA before it goes back to the workshop.

Tickets here. And while there's no shortage to choose from, this is a weird and great recent track that shows something of his wide range.

Fefe Talavera

2011-08-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am back in Seattle, but I have a huge backlog of items to catch up on from my time away. For the next few weeks I'll be interspersing my usual random assortment of spectacles with a few choice tidbits from Barcelona and other points Iberic.

At the Montana Gallery - the exhibition hall connected to the retail outlet for the world's best spraypaint - I caught the first European Gallery show of Fefe Talavera, the Brazilian street artist famous for fantastic and visceral monsters. Her work has a tremendous energy - raw, hungry and tribal - and while it was a great treat to see a large collection in one place, it's always weird to try and absorb true gutter energy in a gallery. Still, the art is amazing and well worth a look.

Frankfurt El Farofillio

2011-08-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Now THIS is a taco truck!

Pepita, Baby Nico & I were in San Feliu de Guixols for the "Festas Majores," the biggest party of the year during which the entire little city takes a week off of work to play on the beach and party in the streets. It´s a wonderful Spanish concept, and like all things Spanish, food takes pride of place. This incredible food truck - aka Frankfurt el Farolillo rolls up fully contained within a trailer and unfolds to reveal dozens of seats, a well stocked grill, and a bar decked out in leather and chrome that would be the envy of most fully licensed pubs in the U.S. It´s one hell of a party.

It´s been a great 4 weeks in Spain, but all things must come to an end. We head back to the U.S. tomorrow morning, a little less rich, a little more tan, and somewhat ready to get back to the real world. But first - Camarero! One more for the road!

Mikel Jaso

2011-07-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

I keep coming across the work of Barcelona-based Graphic Artist Mikel Jaso. Pretty nice stuff. More here.

Graffiti in BCN

2011-07-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

As always, no shortage of incredible art to be found at street level in Barcelona. A few selections from the many world-class paintings I´ve already seen in just a week of ambling around.

This interesting 26-letter piece is one element in a tremendous international project by Claudia Walde in which more than 150 graffiti artists around the world are painting complete alphabets. This piece is from a series of 8 such alphabets on a single wall in Horta, designed and painted by the artists of Arteurbano. Doubtless, more soon.

“Quadraturin”

2011-07-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

The apartments here are so small! There's some beauty in all this closeness - one certainly knows one's neighbors in Barcelona - but I could use a little elbow room. Or perhaps some "Quadraturin." Quadraturin comes from Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Soviet-era short story about a mysterious substance that transforms small spaces (in this case a shared apartment) into large ones. Below is Valeriy Kozhin’s perfectly claustrophobic animated adaptation of the story. “Quadraturin” is collected in Krzhizhanovsky’s collection Memories of the Future.

Bastille Day

2011-07-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

by Ron Padgett

The first time I saw Paris
I went to see where the Bastille
had been, and though
I saw the column there
I was too aware that
the Bastille was not there:
I did not know how
to see the emptiness.
People go to see
the missing Twin Towers
and seem to like feeling
the lack of something.
I do not like knowing
that my mother no longer
exists, or the feeling
of knowing. Excuse me
for comparing my mother
to large buildings. Also
for talking about absence.
The red and gray sky
above the rooftops
is darkening and the inhabitants
are hastening home for dinner.
I hope to see you later.

Que me voy

2011-07-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm off to my annual sojourn in Barcelona and the Costa Brava. As always, I've got lots of plans to make minimal plans. I will certainly eat much seafood, spend many hours in the sea, and hope to catch up on many pages of neglected reading. Other than that, it's anyone's guess. I will check in from time to time with news and photos, but will hardly make blogging a priority. On behalf of the entire staff, thanks for another year reading Gurldoggie.

This image, of the stunning Antoñita La Singla in Barcelona, is from a 2009 exhibition at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo of Seville dedicated to flamenco. I found it at the redoubtable Poemas de Rio Wang, where it is one of several stunning images. See it. Ciao!

Pinhole Fireworks

2011-07-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

A little late perhaps, but still well worth posting.

Being an American living in Canada, and missing the July 4th fireworks, designer Sean Ohlenkamp decided to make his own with some stop motion pinhole animation.

Transformer

2011-07-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

Doc Popular found himself with some time to kill in San Francisco, so he wandered around checking out the tags and street art. Turns out the sidewalks of the city are covered with stencils of Lou Reed from the cover his Transformer album. Doc went ahead and made this sweet animated GIF from 25 photos of the stencils! So nice!

The original photos look like this:

Tales from the Unifactor

2011-06-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

Frank is an innocent but not un-knowledgeable cat mouse who inhabits the surreal and unpredictable world called the Unifactor. Brilliant cartoonist Jim Woodring began exploring Frank's world in 1990, and has continued his investigations to this day through an extraordinary series of comics and collected stories. The first full-length Frank graphic novel, Congress of the Animals, has recently hit the shelves and it features our beloved protagonist heading into hard times, falling in with bad company, getting a job and fighting the spiritual battles for which he is uniquely well prepared.

Woodring offers explanations and signs copies of his new book at Elliot Bay Book Company on June 30 at 7pm.

Light Fuse

2011-06-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

You've still got about a week to get your fireworks. If you're around Seattle that means heading out to the Muckleshoot Reservation just south of Auburn. For a few weeks before July 4th, tribe members make a significant portion of their annual income from the parking lot full of fireworks stands. Of course the very best bargains are to be had in the 2-3 days following the holiday. Keep in mind that it's illegal to leave the reservation with explosives.

And I've linked to this website before, but it's well worth a second visit. Crackerpacks is a compendium of artwork from hundreds of firecracker labels from around the world, from the 1950's through today. Fun for hours and clicking won't burn your fingers. Ka-BOOM!

Thank you Grg Kimball for the photo above!

10,000 Year Clock

2011-06-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

A team of Seattle-based builders, designers and engineers is currently constructing a 200-foot tall clock some 500-feet deep into a mountain in the Sierra Diablos of remote West Texas. The massive timepiece is designed to chime every day for the next 10,000 years.

The huge undertaking is the brainchild of the Long Now Foundation and is being funded by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

The father-and-son stone cutting team Stuart and James Kendall of Seattle Solstice stoneworks have created a custom robotic saw that will cut a massive spiral staircase into the mountain, and gargantuan gears 5 to 8 feet tall and weighing 1,000 pounds each are being built at Seattle's Machinists Incorporated with the help of another Seattle company, The Gear Works.

Six dials on the clock's face will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Large plates which run down the center of the clock will generate a different bell ringing order for each day of the next 10,000 years. The clock will be "self-winding" through a combination of thermal power and 20,000 pound weights.

After many years of work, the final design and engineering of the Clock is nearly complete, and fabrication of the full-size Clock parts has begun. Stuart Kendall expects to start work on the staircase in the fall, and preparatory work is already underway in West Texas where a mining company is boring the entry tunnel.

The project website is here, and Wired Magazine has a long and detailed article on the technical aspects of the project.

Papercuts

2011-06-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Lovely cut paper art from Joe Bagley of Boston. An archaeologist by training he spends a bulk of his time on intricate paper art, which he shows and sells at his online shop, Papercuts by Joe.

Impromptu

2011-06-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

by Max Aub

I

Pasa una bicicleta
por la carretera.
Parece que no es nada
una bicicleta…
Pero vista detrás de una alambrada
ese trasto de dos ruedas
le llena a uno de ideas.

Por la carretera
va que vuela,
una bicicleta.

II

¿Qué treta
me juegas,
fortuna y rueda?

De mis pies nacen andas
y surgen sedas.

Por sólo altibajar mal las rodillas
yo mismo me llevo en sillas.

Ya más que Clavileño, Clavileña
dulce, metálica, sin par sorpresa:
¡Oh noble bicicleta!

I

A bicycle passes
along the road.
It seems to be
nothing at all…
But seen from behind the barbed wire
this stuff made of two wheels
fills you with ideas.

On the road
there flies,
a bicycle.

II

What trick do
you play with me
fortune and wheel?
My feet become platforms
and emit silk.

Just by poorly spinning my knees
I turn into the carrier of my saddle.

Rather than Clavileño, Clavileña
sweet, metallic, unexpected surprise:
Oh noble bicycle!

Getting Up Underground

2011-06-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

All kinds of new work going up at the Underground Events Center. When I left on Sunday, most of the painting was still happening at street level. Were the artists waiting for me to leave before breaking out the paint-filled fire extinguishers? Not sure, but the result is stunning. Follow the work in progress by NKO, One Seven Nine, EGO and the Sign Savant right here.

Dingbat, Baby!

2011-06-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Got some empty space to fill? Spend some quality time browsing around Dingbat, baby! The dingbat inhabits the border between typography and clip art. Once reserved for serious print-related tasks like pointing, filling spaces, and exclamation, the dingbat now commands a higher level of respect and is useful for all manner of purposes. The cute and clever Dingbat, Baby sheds light on a different specimen daily. Click on the featured Dingbat to view and download its entire family. Just about all of the fonts shown are freeware or shareware and are eager to be adopted.

Audrey Hepburn Rides a Bike

2011-06-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

A long lost portrait of Audrey Hepburn on the set of "Sabrina", captured by photographer Mark Shaw for a LIFE magazine article in 1953. This entire shoot had lingered forgotten for more than fifty years in a box at the home of Mark's first wife until they were found in 2008 and re-released only recently. You can buy an original print right here.

Honor the Treaties

2011-06-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Beautiful images from the Honor the Treaties project have begun to appear around Seattle and, I assume, around the country. The project is being led by Seattle-based photographer Aaron Huey who has been documenting the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the past six years. Recently Huey came to the realization that another expensive book or a gallery show would be an inappropriate and ineffective way to conclude his heartfelt project, which ultimately seeks to give voice to a great social injustice and a forgotten history.

Huey’s photographs depict high unemployment, broken families, alcohol abuse and life expectancy lower than that in Afghanistan. But more than that, Huey’s photographs show the legacy of the lies and broken treaties of the US government stretching back over a century. If the Treaty of Fort Laramie from 1868 had been observed, for example, then the Lakota and associated Sioux tribes would own land stretching across five states.

Huey enlisted Shepard Fairey to turn selected photographs into posters, and is now calling on students, graffiti artists and assorted volunteers to take the images straight to the public — pasting them on the sides of buses, subway tunnels, bus stops and billboards. You can buy an 18×24 print here, signed by Shepard Fairey and Aaron Huey, to support the project.

Flourishing Remnants

2011-06-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Until the 1970's the Beall Greenhouses on Vashon Island was the nation’s largest grower of roses and orchids. When the business went bust, the 25 acres of greenhouses and plants were left to themselves. Today, the corroding glass and steel structures are covered with both native flora and exotic plants grown wild. The Vashon-based photographer Heather Joy and her partner the painter Matthew Olds have recorded the collapsing greenhouses and their reclamation by mother nature in a new show titled Flourishing Remnants. Learn more about the artists and their work here.

At Vermillion Gallery, 1508 11th Avenue on Capitol Hill until July 2. The opening reception is on Friday June 3 from 6-9pm.

Martyr Murals

2011-06-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

Very interesting article in The Guardian from a few weeks back about Ganzeer, an Egyptian graffiti artist. After the uprising in Egypt brought a new sense of change possibility to the street, this story surfaced about a young man who used the rare opportunity to paint unsanctioned murals on the walls of Cairo. His Martyr Murals project aims to produce public portraits of every single Egyptian killed in this year's uprising. As soon as he paints a mural, the government officials paint it over, but

"...in Tahrir and in protests all over the country, people got a taste for expressing themselves openly, and the government can't easily regain that control over public space again...Creating graffiti involves taking ownership of the streets, just like we did during the uprising. And so of course it's political, and illegal."

Read the full article here and check out Ganzeer's blog here.

as freedom is a breakfastfood

2011-06-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

by ee cummings

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
-long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald men's hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
-long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and common's rare and millstones float
-long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy's the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts and thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
-time is a tree (this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough

Ash

2011-06-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

From The Atlantic blog.

A single lightning bolt climbs the ash cloud of erupting Grímsvötn volcano, seen from nearby Vatnajökull, on May 22, 2011. By Jóhann Ingi Jónsson. More photos at In Focus.

News from Spain

2011-05-31T09:23:00.000-07:00

Fascinating developments out of Spain that you shouldn't overlook.

For more than two weeks, since before Spain’s May 22 local elections, thousands upon thousands of protesters have been gathering in the central squares of major cities to express their anger with the emptiness and disconnectedness of the election campaigns, and outrage at the failure of the political system in general. "Los indignados" — the outraged — as they have become known are still swelling in numbers.

The rage stems largely from a deep economic crisis that has left Spain struggling to emerge from recession and with an unemployment rate of more than 20 percent, the highest in the European Union. Youth unemployment is higher than 40 percent. Unable to afford basic necessities, and confronting a desperate future, the movement is both protesting against the current government and demanding larger systemic change. What's truly amazing however is that participation in the protests hasn't been limited to angry kids - there are many many people gathering in the streets from all corners of Spanish society. Los Indignatos include everyone from construction workers to doctors to lawyers to bartenders. It is still a relatively small movement, but it is developing the look and feel of a large popular revolt.

Since the elections the tone of the protests has shifted, but they haven't ceased.

The 10-minute documentary below is a short interview with Spanish economist and political philosopher Jose Luis Sampedro, interspersed with powerful scenes from the Madrid protests. Sampredo doesn't mince words, and blames Spain's troubles on a corrupt financial system combined with a complete lack of compassion for the unfortunate as reinforced by the media. He predicts that things will get far worse before they get better. The film is required viewing. Hit the CC button in the lower part of the window for English subtitles.

From Memorial Day 1950

2011-05-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

by Frank O'Hara
Look at my room.
Guitar strings hold up pictures. I don’t need
a piano to sing, and naming things is only the intention
to make things. A locomotive is more melodious
than a cello. I dress in oil cloth and read music
by Guillaume Apollinaire’s clay candelabra. Now
my father is dead and has found out you must look things
in the belly, not in the eye. If only he had listened
to the men who made us, hollering like stuck pigs!

Peace Go With You, Brother

2011-05-29T01:07:00.000-07:00

So long, Gil Scott Heron.

Punk Rock Flea Market

2011-05-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

How ya'll been?

Did I mention that that the TENTH Punk Rock Flea Market is coming up? It's the 4th anniversary of Seattle's favorite 12-hour mall, still selling the weirdest objects and most beautiful objets d'art loaded out of basements across the region. We've got some great stalwarts coming back like Adria Garcia and Miss Oblivious, and awesome newbies like Stuff You'll Love and Half Pint Ice Cream.

Plus live music throughout the day by the likes of the Rabbit Stew String Band, the Bucharest Drinking Team, and Ana Bender. And of course the man who brings the party on 45, DJ Port-A-Party. Should be a damn good day. Next Saturday, June, at the Underground Events Center. Where else? Come early and get the pick of the lot, come late and get bargains.

And for Pete's sake it's still just ONE DOLLAR to get in. How the hell do we do it?

Speaking of bargains, I have some beautiful posters for the event, designed and hand-screened in an edition of 50 by Seattle artist NKO. These posters are truly splendid, and I want to mail you one. Just tell me if you want one in comments or send me a note.

Kids' Bike Swap

2011-05-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

The terrific Kid's Bike Swap takes place this Saturday, May 7 at Genesee Playfield in Columbia City.

The Bike Swap is a yearly component of Bike Works’ non-profit mission to facilitate the flow of affordable bicycles within the community while preventing good bikes from ending up in landfills. Old bikes brought to the swap are assigned a trade value, which can then be applied towards a “new” bike. As a rule, children leave with a new bike costing no more $12. Families looking to buy a bike without a trade-in are welcome at noon.

About 120 families come out for the swap each year, many of them regulars who return every spring. Genesee Playfield is at 43rd Ave. S. and South Genesee Street. Get there early!

New Camera

2011-05-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've been obsessing about a new camera. I would like a good one that fits in my pocket, and that I can use easily while riding my bike. Maybe you have an idea?

To save a few bucks I supposed I could try to make a camera out of an egg. Francesco Capponi did exactly that, converting an egg into a single-use pinhole camera. Capponi shared his photos in the MAKE Flickr pool and posted full instructions on how to make one, but it’s not an easy process. In order to create four good photographs, Francesco destroyed fifty eggs.

If I want the thing to last, perhaps I should build one out of Legos? After more than a year of experimentation, Alabama-based photographer Cary Norton recently completed the Legotron, Mark I a working camera made entirely from Lego bricks. The lens is a 127mm ƒ4.7 he got on ebay for 40 bucks, and it's focused by sliding a box-inside-a-box forward and backward.

I'm open to all ideas.

Symmetry

2011-04-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

Just a pretty little film to share on a Friday afternoon, created by the filmmakers at Everynone to accompany a recent episode of the public radio show Radiolab. A simple and well-made split-screen take on our need for balance. More films from Everynone here.

Euthanasia Coaster

2011-04-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

The “Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetical euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster engineered to humanely and elegantly take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. This ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, the former president of the famed roller coaster builders Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once said that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead. This could be done, you know." From Design Interactions Research. More here.

Nests and the Birds That Built Them

2011-04-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

Photographer Sharon Beals recently published Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them, a book of 50 exquisitely observed nests built by different species of birds. The photos are remarkable, revealing a wide range of techniques and materials including from mud, branches, and sticks to spiderwebs, moss, saliva, fur and bones. Above, a housewren's nest. Below, a Spotted Nightingale Thrush. More here.

St. Jordi's Day

2011-04-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

Today Catalunya celebrates Sant Jordi's Day, among my favorite of all holidays. It is the feast day of the dragon slayer Saint George, and also the birthday of both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. In Catalunya it is known as "El dia del llibre" or "The Day of the Book," during which all women receive roses and all men receive books, although it has become ever more common to give books to everybody. In honor of the beloved book makers of that region, an image from Galeria d'Imatges, a Catalan group blog which consists of book hounds Galderich of Piscolabis Librorum, Carlos Hernandez of El Gabinet Negre, Leblansky of Enceneu els Llums, and others.

Found at the redoubtable 50 Watts.

Billy Bang

2011-04-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

Quite sad to learn that violinist Billy Bang died yesterday, April 11. Bang was a remarkable musician and a unique person. He studied violin as a child and was granted a scholarship to study music at a performing arts high school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, but was drafted into the U.S. Army before receiving his high school diploma. Bang arrived at Vietnam during the onset of the Tet Offensive and did a tour of duty there.

Back at home, Bang struggled to find his place in society. He turned to drugs and got caught up in a group of militants, where he put his knowledge of weapons to work helping to buy guns. It was supposedly during a gun-buying trip, in a Baltimore pawnshop, that he heard a sound calling him to a back room. "I don't know if it was on the radio or in my head, but I heard it. I walked back there and there were these old, used violins hanging up on a rope." Bang bought a $25 violin and began playing seriously again. He studied with jazz violist Leroy Jenkins, joined Sun Ra’s Arkestra, and worked with avant garde luminaries Don Cherry, William Parker, David Murray, and many others. In 1977 he formed the remarkable String Trio of New York which he led until leaving the group in the late 1980's.

In the early 2000's, Bang decided that it was time to confront his personal demons head-on and recorded two astonishing albums about his experience in Vietnam, Vietnam: The Aftermath in 2001 and Vietnam: Reflections in 2004. These records are both absolutely beautiful - simultaneously melancholy and angry, melodic and dissonant, and are often considered the crowning achievements of his career. His final record was the haunting Prayer for Peace, release in July 2010.

Bang died of lung cancer at the age of 63.

Bikes at War

2011-04-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Rather than display her considerable ignorance, Gurldoggie stays clear of anything resembling contemporary politics. That being said, it's hard to resist this image of the rebellion in Libya, courtesy of Photo District News. Do I think good things are happening in Libya? Do I support one side or another? Is military action ever justified? By anyone? Hell if I know. But I will always support the creative use of bicycles. And this guy is welcome on my Critical Mass ride. Ka-Boom.

Thanks to The Corey for the photo tip.

Unintended Calculations

2011-03-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

Nice new walls on the streets of Vancouver, BC from Remi Rough, Augustine Kofie, Jerry Inscoen and Scott Sueme. The murals, on the walls of the Moda Hotel, were the opening salvo in the foursome's group show Unintended Calculations at Becker Galleries. See it now, it's not up for long.

Two Today

2011-03-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

Little Nico turns a beautiful two years old today. And while it may not be QUITE like this, there are certainly moments when this is EXACTLY what it feels like.

Lexier vs Bok

2011-03-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

Smart and simple collaboration between Micah Lexier and poet Christian Bok. Found on the streets of San Francisco by Jacklyn Atlas.

Femme nu a Seattle

2011-03-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

A lovely photo from French photographer Lucien Clergue, with 1980's era Seattle in the background. Discovered on the luscious photostream Melisaki. Also not to be missed, this photo of cartoonist Saul Steinberg, with himself as a Little Boy, on Long Island in 1978. "Pulse Pause Repeat."

Blödes Orchester

2011-03-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

The Blödes Orchester (or "stupid orchestra) is comprised of more than 200 vacuum cleaners, blenders, washing machines and electric razors arranged like a symphony orchestra. You can't make this shit up. By the Hamburg-based composer and theater director Michael Petermann. You can see the full 35 minute-long performance every hour at the MKG Hamburg until April 30th.

Beware the Ides of March

2011-03-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

— Cæs. The ides of March are come.
Sooth. Ay, Cæsar; but not gone. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Cycling In The Netherlands In The 1950s

2011-03-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

At the same time that the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system was being built in the United States in 1956, sounding the death knell of all reasonable and human scaled forms of transportation in this country, nearly 85 percent of the population in the Netherlands were getting from point A to point B by bicycle. Today there are about 16 million bicycles in Holland, slightly more than one for every inhabitant. About 1.3 million new bicycles are sold every year.

This charming video, discovered on the ever useful youtube, is a great collection of images of Dutch cycling in the 1950s. Makes one yearn for civilization.

Hans Bellmer

2011-03-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of Hans Bellmer, born March 13, 1902. Bellmer was born in Kattowitz, Germany and at his father's insistence worked in a steel factory and a coal mine until entering Berlin Polytechnic to study engineering. While in Berlin Bellmer met the artists John Heartfield, Rudolf Schlichter and George Grosz and their friendship and inspiration led him to drop out of college in 1924 to work as a book printer and then as a commercial illustrator.

In 1933, as the Nazi party assumed power, Bellmer resigned his position and refused to continue working as a sign of resistance. He began to construct deliberately provocative sculptures using girlish three-dimensional dolls, which he photographed in erotic poses. Some of these works were published by Bellmer at his own expense in 1934, and others appeared in the Surrealist journal "Le Minotaure," signaling a long association with the European surrealists. In 1938 Bellmer fled Germany for Paris and on the outbreak of the second world war was interned with Max Ernst in a camp near Aix-en-Provence. On being discharged from the camp in 1941, Bellmer renounced his German nationality and fled to Castres. In 1943 Bellmer had his first one-man show at the "Librairie Trentin", a bookshop in Toulouse. It was followed by numerous international Surrealist group shows.

Over the course of his career Bellmer continually explored the subconscious aspect of sexuality by creating hallucinatory sculptural objects, photographs, drawings, prints and paintings. Bellmer never stopped creating evocative and arguably obscene images with which he expressed a rebellion against society, conventional rationality and the dangerously conformist times and places in which he lived.

Hans Bellmer died in Paris in February 1975.

A show of his work is on display in Los Angeles at Galerie Anais through March 31.

Maybe Alone on My Bike

2011-03-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

by William Stafford

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!--
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

Photograph by Josef Koudelka.

Os Gémeos & Blu in Lisbon

2011-03-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

Absolutely extraordinary art from Blu and Os Gémeos in Lisbon. A five-story collaboration across three walls of an apartment building. And the eyes of the fat man are suspended from the roof so that they move in the wind. So good. Check out Unurth for closeups and details.

Motion

2011-03-08T16:07:00.000-08:00

Nothing but busy. Where does the time go?

I can't pretend I have time to get out and see or do much that's social these days. So maybe I'll just post a few days worth of true distractions. As a case in point ... you've seen parkour. You've seen flip-books. But I'm guessing you still haven't seen this inventive painstakingly hand-made film by Singapore-based designer Serene Teh. Only 45 seconds! Watch it twice!

Shipping Out

2011-02-28T13:13:00.000-08:00

Illustrator and blogger Tessa Hulls leaves Seattle tomorrow for a bike ride across the country. As far as art is concerned she'll be out of internet range until at least July, though she has hinted that she'll periodically post travel updates on her blog. Tessa has a show up at Bherd Studios in Greenwood at the moment, part of a terrific series that she has been creating on migration and memory. Nomads and wanderers are well represented in Hulls' lovely visual repertoire, and one hopes that she finds hosts across the country who are equally receptive to her travels. Good luck and godspeed! You can see the show until March 9th, and which point Hulls will be in...Coeur d'Alene?

Let's Ride

2011-02-24T14:52:00.000-08:00

A beautiful and timely cover adorns the latest issue of The Ride, a journal of writing, art and bicycling out of the United Kingdom. The image is by I Love Dust, and you can see their gorgeous covers for issues 1 through 4 right here. As always, the new issue is a stunning combination of fine writing, lush photography, and brilliant illustration, all themed around bicycles of every conceivable form and style. A must-read for us literary biker types. The Ride #5 is available on their website or at a small handful of American cycle shops. You can download pdfs of issues 1 and 2 if you want to take a look before spending your hard earned dosh. Or you can just take my word for it.

Here Comes The Story of the Hurricane

2011-02-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

In October 1966 Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a successful boxer, in training for a shot at the world middleweight title. He was arrested for the murder of three patrons at the Lafayette Bar & Grill in Paterson, New Jersey based on a description of the killers as "two Negroes in a white car." Carter was cleared by a grand jury when the one surviving victim failed to identify him. Regardless, the State produced two new eyewitnesses who made positive identifications, a sham of a trial followed, and Carter was convicted and sentenced to three life prison terms.

During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celébrè for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. He was ultimately exonerated, in 1985, after a United States district court judge declared the convictions to be based on racial prejudice. After serving 19 years in prison – 10 of them in solitary confinement – Carter has become a tireless advocate for the wrongfully incarcerated. He serves as director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, headquartered in his house in Toronto and also serves as a member of the board of directors of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the Alliance for Prison Justice in Boston. Carter recently published a new memoir Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom billed as "a document of his spiritual and factual history." Carter reads from and signs his new book in Seattle, at the University Bookstore, on Thursday February 24 at 7pm.

Back to The Future

2011-02-19T21:24:00.000-08:00

A beautiful ongoing project by Argentine photographer Irina Werning. She is mining the photo albums of friends and family, and working with them to revisit the scenes of childhood photographs. The resulting series, Back to the Future, is a fascinating look at how people change as they age, and how they stay the same.

Hobo Grunt

2011-02-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Puppeteer Kevin Augustine is a brutal and poetic puppeteer who's New York-based company, Lone Wolf Tribe, has won all manner of accolades for their blend of puppets and actors, and for their uncompromising look at difficult subject matter. His current show, Hobo Grunt Cycle, looks at the trauma of damaged war veterans through the experience of a severely injured fight-ring pit bull.

Written and developed by Augustine, the show is touring with a traveling cast that includes one of Seattle's most beloved and most wayward puppeteers Adam Ende. The show has already passed through festivals in Holland and Brazil, won a prestigious UNIMA Award for Excellence in Puppet Theatre, and now lands in San Francisco for a 3 week run at the EXIT Theatre. The show opens tonight, February 17, and runs through March 5. Tickets availablehere.

Landscape Permutations

2011-02-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

Vancouver, BC photographer David Semeniuk asks "What does it mean when different sites, at particular points in time, can easily substitute for the same place?" We may not recognize a place we've seen many times before. A place we've never visited seems strangely familiar. Semeniuk pastes a photo from one location atop a photo from somewhere else, and in the resulting image the two places are almost indistinguishable. His series Landscape Permutations is a lovely - and somewhat creepy - meditation on the way that contemporary urban landscapes have lost their specificity.

Hi. Just a Note

2011-02-13T02:19:00.000-08:00

hi. just a note to say that ever
since the robbery, things've
kinda quiet down. altho theo's
kidnappers haven't returned him
yet, dad got promoted to den
mother, so things are not all
going downhill / mom joined the
future fathers of alaska. really
likes it / you oughta see little
dumbbell. he's nearly two now.
talks like a fish & is already
starting to look like a cigar /
see you on your birthday
big brother
Dunk

Bob Dylan
-From Tarantula

The Taqwacores

2011-02-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

In an unusual blast of historical synchronicity, the documentary The Taqwacores opens tonight at the Northwest Film Forum. The film, which documents the rising political and creative force of young Muslims, follows the unlikely birth of Muslim Punk Rock around the world.

The film took its inspiration from the influential novel of the same name by the Rochester, NY-born Islamic convert Michael Muhammad Knight. The riotous and revolutionary book invents a fictional Muslim punk scene in Rochester, and the story unexpectedly catalyzed the creation of a full fledged hardcore movement among the Muslim faithful in Islamic communities around the world. The film, which took more than 3 years to make, follows a band of Muslim misfits across three continents from the United States to Pakistan to track the uncompromisingly brave actions and attitudes of these rebellious musicians, and their impact on the young people who come to see them.

The film opens tonight, February 11, the day that a surprisingly strong youth movement forced Hosni Mubarak from power, and runs through the 17th.

Shadows of a Fleeting World

2011-02-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

"I think photography should not be an imitation of paintings, but it should contain a feeling similar to that of poems." Dr. Kyo Koike, Seattle Camera Club

In 1924 the Seattle Camera Club was founded by a group of Japanese immigrants to the Pacific Northwest. While camera clubs were a popular phenomenon at the time, the work of the Seattle Camera Club stood apart for its stunning quality and unique sense of poetry. The group deliberately practiced pictorialism, a style of fine art photography interested in the effects of transient light and Japanese compositional elements. They developed innovative darkroom techniques to create unique soft-focus photographs that reflected contemporary painting styles, especially Impressionism. The records of most camera clubs have long disappeared, but the Seattle Camera Club’s works were saved thanks to the foresight of the late Robert Monroe, who for 17 years was the director of Special Collections in the University of Washington Libraries and a founder of the Book Club of Washington.

The show Shadows of a Fleeting World at the Henry Art Gallery presents over 100 works by Seattle Camera Club photographers and others in the Seattle area who worked who worked side by side with the SCC during the movement’s heyday in the 1920's, including prominent Seattle photographers like Imogen Cunningham. The show opens with a panel presentation on February 11 and runs through May 8.