Raised by Woods

A perfect little documentary about Seattle artist No Touching Ground, aka. NTG, who recently returned to Seattle after an extended stay in Argentina. NTG has long explored the spaces within our urban environments that play host to wildlife, and this film is as direct a statement as you will ever see about his vision of the coyotes, wolves, bears and birds who once owned this land and will again.

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered

Roman Vishniac was a Jewish photographer who was born in Russian and died in New York in 1990, aged 92. The International Center for Photography in New York recently became the repository of the Vishniac archive of some 30,000 objects: negatives, prints, film footage, memorabilia and correspondence.

This trove has resulted in a well-deserved retrospective at the ICP, and has stimulated new research into his work and life. The scope of his photographic accomplishments has proven to be even greater than was previously thought - the show of photographs and objects has been widely praised as magnificent and revelatory.

Vishniac fled Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and settled in Berlin, where he studied to be a biologist. Nazi restrictions on Jews prevented him from completing his scientific education, so from 1935 to 1938 he traveled on assignment for a Jewish relief organization as a photographer, documenting the lives of poor Jews in eastern Europe. The charity sought photographic evidence of desperate need, hoping this would help raise money for these doomed villages. Instead, these images became a rare record of an extinguished way of life.

In 1940 Vishniac, his wife and their two children arrived in New York and settled on the Upper West Side, where he opened a photo studio. His subjects ranged widely from portraits of Marc Chagall to images of a single pine needle. Eventually his haunting, beautiful photographs of Eastern Europe were published as a book, “A Vanished World”, in 1983. These images are well represented in the retrospective, as are many images never before seen, including his photos of a thriving Nazi-era Berlin, images of happier Jewish communities in the Netherlands, and photos of the Jews who survived the war.

The exemplary Travel and history blog Poemas del rio Wang recently posted an appreciation of Vishniac.

The show "Roman Vishniac Rediscovered" is on view at the International Centre for Photography until May 5th 2013.

Myth & Murder

Seattle's New Mystics have grand ambitions. The polymathic group of street artists, painters, tattooists, actors and dancers has produced all manner of large scale public art - both officially approved and subterranean - including the Seattle Street Biennale 2010 at Bumbershoot, Moore: Inside Out, the TUBS Memorial Project, and an installation in the slated-for-destruction Sunny Jim Peanut Butter Factory. Their themes are an inscrutable mix of post-apocalyptic predictions and naturalistic philosophy, but their images are always strong and speak volumes even without explanations. The exact composition of the group grows and shrinks - long time members include No Touching Ground, NKO and Dan Hawkins, with ad hoc appearances from DK Pan, EGO, Specs Wizard, Baso Fibonacci and Japhy Witte the Sign Savant.

Their newest show, Myth & Murder, is billed as "a comedic tragedy or a tragic comedy" and highlights installation, handpainted signs, screenprinting, paintings, and performance. At Seattle's Vermillion Gallery, 1508 11th Ave. on Capitol Hill from April 12 to May 5. The opening reception is this Thursday, April 12 with live music by Specs Wizard, Aubrey Birdwell, Al Nightlong, and special uninvited guests.

Degenerate Art Stream

Like all of the art that comes from the Degenerate Art Ensemble, their blog is smart, sometimes grating, and always surprising. The musicians of DAE write superb pieces on their own, and often feature unexpectedly excellent and out-of-left-field guests, such as Seattle musician Beth Fleenor who grew up in a planetarium and is behind this recent series of guest posts. Check it out.

Something Out Of Something

You have three more weeks to submit a work of art inspired by the writing of by Israeli short story writer, filmmaker, and graphic novelist, Etgar Keret. The Something out of Something Design Contest, which takes its name from a passage found in Keret’s forthcoming story collection Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is currently taking place on a blog of the same name, where submissions can be viewed and commented on by other entrants, readers, and Keret fans. Some of them are very silly, and some are shockingly beautiful. The winner gets $500, inclusion of the winning piece in a short story or film by Etgar Keret, and one signed and personalized copy of the new book. The contest ends on March 2, 2012. Keret speaks at Seattle Town Hall on April 25.

Wain Cats

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.

Jacques Leonard

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

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]

10,000 Year Clock

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.

Ash

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

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.

Euthanasia Coaster

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.

John Grade

Seattle artist John Grade created a 10,000-pound ceramic sculpture that he and a crew of 150 hikers will be porting up the side of a mountain in the Cascade range later this winter. Once "Circuit" reaches the peak, the pieces of the artwork will be attached in the form of an elliptical ring around the top of the mountain, where it will spend more than a year while the wind, rain, snow and harsh temperatures elements erode it unpredictably. At the end of that period it will be taken apart and marched back down to sea level, reassembled and displayed in its weathered state. Stranger art critic Jen Graves has a story about the project here.

In the meantime, Grade has a piece called "La Chasse" or "The Hunt" slowly changing in a French forest and a nearby gallery that is well worth a look.

The Deep

A new stop motion film from world class animator PES!



...and in a related development, Sea and Spar Between is a poetry generator using words that come exclusively from Emily Dickinson’s poems and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The generator defines a space of language populated by a number of stanzas comparable to the number of fish in the sea, around 225 trillion. Each stanza is indicated by two coordinates, as with latitude and longitude. They range from 0 : 0 to 14992383 : 14992383.

For example, this is the poem at coordinates 6995, 548

One air one art one art one world
     another! dying!

how to enjoy the webjay course
     then guileless is the sun

Sound complicated? Try it!

Read All About It

I have a lot of friends who know how to make pretty things out of cardboard. But I don't know anyone who could build something like this.

Kiel Johnson has built a fully functional printing press using primarily cardboard. The press is up and running as part of a new show titled "Publish or Perish" at Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, California. The incredible machine releases sheets of poster-sized paper printed with tiny drawings of all of Johnson’s belongings, from clothes hangers to houseplants. In addition to the printing press, the show features Johnson's working cardboard camera, cardboard radio and other equally impressive objects.

On view now.

Up Up and Away

Tell me Luke Geissbühler doesn't deserve to win some kind of Father of the Year award.

This past August, Geissbühler and his young son Max attached an HD video camera to a helium-filled weather balloon that rose into the upper stratosphere. The two spent eight months developing a camera housing that would survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero and speeds of over 150 mph.

The intrepid duo then traveled from their home in Brooklyn to a remote area of Orange County, NY with their camera and a GPS system carefully wrapped in a homemade styrofoam capsule and fitted with a parachute. The balloon reached a height of nearly 20 miles above the earth before it exploded and the camera came spiraling back to Earth.

The result is an awe-inspiring video that sends the viewer into space and back again. Check it out.

Fishtown

I shared wine with sculptor, architect and draftsman Hans Nelson whose work is appearing in the show Fishtown and the Skagit River, currently showing in La Conner, WA at the Museum of Northwest Art. Hans lived in Fishtown from 1969 until 1973.


Gurldoggie: What was Fishtown?

Hans Nelson: Fishtown was a loose collection of like minded souls who lived in abandoned fishing shacks until the mid-80’s. There were poets and sculptors and some truly great painters working mostly in ink and water based medium. They were very influenced by Chinese and Japanese art, and were studying Chinese poetry, philosophy, Buddhism. People were meditating. The setting looked like a Chinese landscape and it inspired people.


Where was it?

On the Skagit River. Fishtown was a nexus of shacks on the river, with boardwalks between them, near the mouth of the Skagit. It was in the tidal zone, so at night the tide would come up.

To get into town you could walk four miles across the Skagit flats into LaConner, or take a little motor boat into town. Laconner was a dusty little fishing village. It felt abandoned and forlorn. None of the chi-chi bullshit you see now.


What was it that brought people there?

It was pretty easy to be autonomous there. A guy just could come up and set up a shack and get to work. There was no power, no phones, nothing. It was primitive man. And deep winter. We passed some deep winter up there.

I got there in 1969. More people were just starting to show up at that time. There were even some children soon after I got there. I dropped out of high school and finished my education at Fishtown, drawing and painting. I don’t even think I made a living then – I did some odd jobs and every so often my Dad would send a small check in the mail, but really I lived on nothing, barely kept body and soul together.


Who were some of the artists who came out of that time?

Charlie Krafft, you know his whole crazy, charming, bigoted thing. He was really resourceful and productive.

Paul Hanson was an amazingly gifted painter who was probably the most into Chinese culture. He learned perfect Chinese, and now he lives in China and actually teaches Chinese at Peking University. He was one of these funny looking guys who was always getting girls. That’s what keeps him in China I think, women respect old scholars there.

Robert Sund was a bard who literally lived on nothing and went around “singing light” like Dylan Thomas said. He was a true poet. He had a little shack that we called “shit creek,” but really it was a beautiful little place with homes for swallows. He called the area “Ish River Country.”

Arthur Jorgensen, a local guy, a brawler and a bohemian and a drinker and a mad dog sculptor and painter. He put so much energy into his work it was nuts. You knew at some point in the night he was going to start throwing furniture around, you had to either get the booze or the furniture away from him. He died a few years ago sailing, which was always the thing he loved the best.

There really was this constant creative thing going on. Everyone was doing something.


So what happened?

By the 1980’s the family who owned the land that Fishtown was on decided that they wanted to log the entire property and chase the artists off. People weren’t exactly squatting at that time, they were paying rent of $10 a month, so they felt they had some rights.

We staged the biggest protest we could, and called Earth First and hired a totally rinky-dink lawyer whose car would never start and we had to push it. We lost that fight of course and they “won” the right to destroy this old Indian land that was in a pristine state. And they came and destroyed all the cabins and chased everyone out. There was nothing left.


Nothing at all?

There’s ONE holdout artist who’s still living there, Maggie Wilder. She’s an amazing painter too, and really private. They didn’t destroy her cabin for one reason or another, so she stayed on. She has this fear that Fishtown is going to be “discovered” one day and popularized, but it’s gone man.

The show Artists, Poets Scholars: Fishtown and the Skagit River is up now at the Museum of Northwest Art at 121 South First Street in La Conner, WA. The show runs until October 3.

The Anosognosic's Dilemma

Filmmaker Errol Morris continues to use his periodic New York Times blog to dramatic effect. His current 5-part series, of which the first 2 installments have now been published, is titled "The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong But You'll Never Know What It Is." The essay is shaping up as a treatise on how ignorance - deep and profound ignorance of self, of others, and of the world - has a powerful impact on the course of our lives.

"There have been many psychological studies that tell us what we see and what we hear is shaped by our preferences, our wishes, our fears, our desires and so forth. We literally see the world the way we want to see it. But... there is a problem beyond that. Even if you are just the most honest, impartial person that you could be, you would still have a problem — namely, when your knowledge or expertise is imperfect, you really don’t know it. Left to your own devices, you just don’t know it. We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know."

It is fascinating reading. I know how busy you are, but really - take the time. Morris' new book of essays, tentatively titled “The Cow is Thinking Nothing: My Insane Preoccupation with Seemingly Irrelevant Details,” is scheduled to be published in 2011.

Sun Ra

Today is the birthday of Sun Ra, born on May 22, 1914. Named Sonny Blount by his parents, Sun Ra was an internationally acclaimed source of breath-taking musical creativity.

Sun Ra believed in eternal being, and was deliberately obscure about his origins. However, a common story is that he grew up in Birmingham, Alambama and played piano by ear almost from infancy. He played local concerts as a child and became a student of famed music teacher John T. "Fess" Whatley while in high school. Before he graduated, Blount was playing piano professionally at society dances and in nightclubs.

In 1936 Blount was awarded a scholarship to Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, where he had a visionary experience that was to have a major long-term influence. He claimed that a bright light appeared around him, and

...my whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up ... I wasn't in human form ... I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn ... They talked to me. They told me to stop attending college because there was going to be great trouble in schools ... the world was going into complete chaos ... I would speak through music, and the world would listen. That's what they told me.

Blount left college and from that point on he became a devoted musician. He rarely slept, and transformed the first floor of his family's home into a conservatory-workshop where he wrote songs, transcribed recordings, rehearsed with the many musicians who were nearly constantly drifting in and out, and discussed Biblical and esoteric concepts with whoever was interested.

In October 1942 Sun Ra was drafted but declared himself a Conscientious Objector, citing religious objections to war and killing, and refused to serve. At his hearing, Blount declared that if he were inducted, he would use his military weapons and training to kill the first high-ranking military officer he could. He spent five weeks in jail in Jasper, Alabama, then was sent to a Civilian Public Service Camp in Northwestern Pennsylvania. He was classified as 4-F due to a hernia and briefly returned to Birmingham before leaving for good. Blount legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra in 1952.

Over his life, Sun Ra's collaborators ranged from tight swing trios to his massive Arkestra, which could include more than 30 musicians, dancers, singers, fire-eaters, and special effects. Over all, he led bands for nearly 60 years, made at least 125 records, and performed every kind of music from hotel-band schmaltz to massive percussion suites to synthesizer pieces that twittered and clunked like a demented video game. He played free regular gigs in a park near his Philadelphia home, and traveled to Egypt several times with the Arkestra to play before the pyramids. Even after a stroke in 1990, Sun Ra kept composing and performing, ending his career on double-bill concerts with Sonic Youth.

Sun Ra left this world permanently in 1993. More of his epic biography here. Below is a fun video collage set to an Arkestra recording from the late 1960's. Many more such things to be found on the Youtube.

Queen Shmooquan: Plugged

Queen Shmooquan - the quasi-religious ultra-bizarre high priestess of junk culture - was all set to become the brightest star in Seattle's absurdist firmament. She wowed the crowds at Northwest New Works, blew them away at the Erotic Art Festival, unexpectedly opened for a Stone Gossard side project...and then she went and got herself knocked up.

Two upcoming "UnPlugged" shows (at the Rendezvous on May 6 & at the Can Can on May 13th) are our last two chances see Queen Shmooquan in pre-natal action before she goes on an indefinite hiatus. Parenthood changes everyone, and there's no telling what sort of effect it will have on the psyche of the preposterously political, riotously scatological, preciously sexual wild-child we call Queen Shmooquan. See her while you can.