“At this very moment, some imagination is spawning something wonderful that might make us tremble.”

— Edna O’Brien

Heroines

Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001) discusses the female figures she incorporated into many of her paintings and graffiti tags. Loosely based on women she discovered while listening to folk records, watching buck dance videos, or reading about the history of swimming, Kilgallen painted her heroines to inspire others and to change how society looks at women. Three of Kilgallen's heroines—Matokie Slaughter, Algia Mae Hinton, and Fanny Durack—are shown and heard through archival video, images, and audio recordings.

Beautiful.

(Found via goldlionaz)

Ambera Wellmann

Ambera Wellmann, Intaglio Chine-collé, 2010

“I am an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I’m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse’s mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, maneuvering in the chaotic movements, recording one moment after another in the most complex combinations.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space. I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you. "

-- Dziga Vertov, 1923

Wall hangings by Heather Levine
(Image source)

(Source: amber awellmann)

Gianni Caravaggio

Gianni Caravaggio.
My current obsession.

“Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?”

― Pete Seeger

Kiki Smith
2010

Collage drawing with Nepalese paper, pencil, and red ink.

Ubi sunt

Ubi sunt (literally "where are... [they]") is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?" Ubi nunc...? ("Where now?") is a common variant.
Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience.

Sunday Tune

"She instilled in me that you don’t have to apologise for being a women. There’s no apology in my femininity."

 

— Lupita Nyong’o in Dazed & Confused magazine, talking about what she learned from her mother. (via miss-rumphius)

(image via here)

Have a LOVELY weekend!

(Found here)

James Turrell

If you don't use your creative energy it ends up using you.

 James Turrell lithographs

Found here

Katie Paterson

‘Fossil Necklace is a string of worlds, with each bead modestly representing a major event in the evolution of life through a vast expanse of geological time. From the mono-cellular origins of life on earth to the shifting of the continents, the extinction of the Cretaceous period triggered by a falling meteorite, to the first flowering of flowers, it charts the development of our species and affirms our intimate connection to the evolution of those alongside us. Each fossil has been individually selected from all corners of the globe, and then carved into spherical beads in a secondary process of excavation.’

--Guy Haywood, Kettle’s Yard.

Katie Paterson's Fossil Necklace is one of the most beautiful things i've seen in a while. 
It is currently on show at The Welcome Collection (London) as part of the Foreign Bodies Common Ground exhibition.

from kettlesyard

Andy Goldsworthy

Ice sculptures

(from here, here and here)

Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance. 

 --Margaret Mead

Chalcopyrite on Calcite

Rock Crystal

But hers through which the crystal tears gave light,
Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

-- Shakespear
Venus and Adonis 1.491. D iii, 1. 16, 17.

(photo credit: Noé Sendas)

Sunday Tune

Miso

Miso

PHANTASIA FOR ELVIRA SHATAYEV

(leader of a women’s climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev’s husband found and burned the bodies.)



The cold felt cold until our blood
grew colder      then the wind
died down and we slept

If in this sleep I speak
it’s with a voice no longer personal
(I want to say      with voices)
When the wind tore      our breath from us at last
we had no need of words
For months      for years      each one of us
had felt her own yes      growing in her
slowly forming      as she stood at windows      waited
for trains      mended her rucksack      combed her hair
What we were to learn      was simply      what we had
up here      as out of all words      that yes      gathered
to meet a No of no degrees
the black hole      sucking the world in

I feel you climbing toward me
your cleated bootsoles leaving      their geometric bite
colossally embossed      on microscopic crystals
as when I trailed you in the Caucasus
Now I am further
ahead      than either of us dreamed      anyone would be
I have become
the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind
the women I love      lightly flung      against the mountain
that blue sky
our frozen eyes unribboned      through the storm
we could have stitched that blueness      together      like a quilt

You come (I know this)      with your love      your loss
strapped to your body      with your tape-recorder      camera
ice pick      against advisement
to give us burial in the snow      and in your mind
While my body lies out here
flashing like a prism      into your eyes
how could you sleep      You climbed here for yourself
we climbed for ourselves

When you have buried us      told your story
ours does not end      we stream
into the unfinished      the unbegun
the possible
Every cell’s core of heat      pulsed out of us
into the thin air      of the universe
the armature of rock beneath these snows
this mountain      which has taken     the imprint of our minds
through changes elemental and minute
as those we underwent
to bring each other here
choosing ourselves      each other      and this life
whose every breath      and grasp      and further foothold
is somewhere      still enacted      and continuing

In the diary I wrote:  
Now we are ready
and each of us knows it      I have never loved
like this      I have never seen
my own forces so taken up and shared
and given back
After the long training      the early sieges
we are moving almost effortlessly in our love

In the diary as the wind      began to tear
all the tents over us      I wrote:
We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together      but till now
we had not touched our strength

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:
What does love mean
what does it mean      ”to survive”
A cable blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow      We will not live
to settle for less      We have dreamed of this
all of our lives

-- Adrienne Rich (1974)

Friday!

Mar Seck

This album has accompanied me on my travels around London this week. Mar Secks voice is so delicate. Beautiful.

(Found here)

N. Dash

N. Dash creates works across mediums that emphasize the hand-working of materials. Beautiful.

1. Untitled, 2012. Fiber, silver gelatin print
2.  Groundings (4), 2012. Linen, rabbit skin glue, wood support
3.  Healer (1000), 2011. Indigo, linen, wood support
4.  August 11, 2010. Indigo pigment, paper
5.  Commuter, 2011. Graphite on paper

See more here.

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant
Success in circuit lies

  -- Emily Dickinson

Joan