Image found here.

John Franzen

John Franzen

"Don’t be nervous, work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand."

-- Henry Miller

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg

“That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.”

― Susan Vreeland

(Found here)

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

Because

woman's work is never done
and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or
repetitious and we're the first to get fired
and what we look like is more important
than what we do and if we get raped it's
our fault and if we get beaten we must have
provoked it and if we raise our voices we're
nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're
nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if
we love women it's because we can't get a
"real" man and if we ask our doctor too many
questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and
if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we
stand up for our rights we're aggressive and
"unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical
weak females and if we want to get married
we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're
unnatural and because we still can't get an
adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk
on the moon and if we can't cope or don't
want a pregnancy we're made to feel
guilty about abortion and...for lots and lots
of other reasons we are part of the
women's liberation movement.

Happy International Womens Day!!

Don’t be afraid to bloom...it's natural.

Friday!

Have a lovely weekend!
Go exchange stardust with someone.

(source: therumpus)

Found here

transit of Venus

"A "transit of Venus" happens when the sun, Venus and Earth are in perfect alignment. From Earth, you can observe a small black disc – Venus – slowly wandering over the sun over the course of several hours. This happens in a pattern that repeats every 243 years: there's a gap of 122 years, then a pair of transits spaced eight years apart, then a gap of 105 years, then another pair. On 8 June 2004 the most recent transit happened – the first time any human being then alive could have seen it.

In the 18th and 19th century the phenomenon had huge importance. Scientists would time the passage of Venus from several vantage points on Earth. It was the only way to establish our own exact position in relation to the sun, and hence the universe around us.

Observing the 2004 transit through my telescope, which I still have from my astronomy-obsessed teenage days, had no scientific value, but it was moving to see the mechanics of the sky. To see a planet actually move in front of another gave me a visual sense of my location in space."

-- Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans

From Wolfgang Tillmans’s book, Neue Welt.

(found here)

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Kiki Smith (good use of stars!) and an interview with her from a  sky filled with shooting stars.

Space Exploration

By Yumi Sakugawa
From therumpus

Libra: This week, do whatever you can to not get bored, to keep yourself busy, to keep your brain moving and your heart beating. This week, go places you’ve never been before. Use the muscles you didn’t know you had. Read books that open up new caverns of feeling inside of you, read books that make you feel braver than you’ve ever been. This week is for sleeping well and entering the world every morning with energy, with fire, with a light in your eyes, with a voice as clear as a bell.

Madame Clairevoyant's latest dispatch from the stars from The Rumpus
Image by Jen May.

Vija Clemins

Vija Clemins Star Fields

“I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...”

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

pretty

(via boheme)

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter
Atlas Sheet 80 and 79, 1968

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
 
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Star Fish

Star fish fossils

Sunday Tune

best outfit ever.

Saturday Poem

Kiki

Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn’t, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one’s own vision. 

- kiki smith

ink

1. Algeria c1880-1900
2. Illustration of a tattooed Muslim Egyptian women.