{ a wee bit of Ireland }

So I'm still going through the nearly 2,000 photos I took in Ireland, getting rid of doubles, selecting the best exposures, editing and cropping and so on. It might be a while before I do a full Ireland post, but I figured I'd go ahead and post a sample. This was taken in Wicklow National Park, just south of Dublin.

{ well-rounded }

Again, I want one. Can someone please find someway of procuring me this completely impractical wonder?! I just want to walk for miles in my living room and then rock myself asleep all the while being surrounded by stories and histories and loves and questions...


via strangely beautiful things...

{ Derick Melander }

These sculptures by New York-based artist, Derick Melander, are composed completely of second-hand clothing. The sequence of the pieces used can relate to the way we layer our clothing, or its color, or gender-specificness, or even just the order in which it was received. Together with Melander's unique medium, each particular arrangement and the shape he gives those arrangements form the meaning of the work. In general though, Melander explains his work as "a symbolic gesture that explores the conflicted space between society and the individual, between the self and the outside world." But then there is also the process of creating these sculptures (a process you can watch in the video below), which takes on and adds a depth of meaning all its own. For one, Melander comments that in repeatedly coming across personalized or repaired articles of clothing "the work starts to feel like a collective portrait." I also find it really interesting that he draws from the very population from which he gets his materials to help with the construction of his sculptures. Which is to say something like, I love how many hands and bodies and lives are part of his work.

Into The Fold, Brooklyn Borough Hall from Derick Melander on Vimeo.

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{ predestination }

Here's a great picture I found about the interwebs. I love when social criticism is done this well.


via Flickr...

{ Adam Friedman }

I'll let the artist speak for himself here:

". . . I believe that for human beings to think we have the power to completely destroy the Earth is an expression of our vanity and arrogance. . . . But the Earth will go on with or without us, and I take comfort in that fact. Through all of the damage that human beings inflict on the earth (and therefore each other), nature will recover. . . . In my work I attempt to visualize the imperceptible geologic process by compacting millions of years into a single moment. Rocks bend and grow. Entire mountains crumble in an instant. And the environmental damage that human kind has left in their wake has long since healed. I’m drawn to how geologic processes (erosion, orogeny, etc) relate to our institutions (financial, governmental, etc). I strive to present an era that defies human intervention in the landscape. An optimistic view of the natural world, post human presence."


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{ Helga Steppan }

These photographs/sculptures are part of Helga Steppan's "See Through" series, in which she meticulously sifted through all of her personal belongings, sorting them into color-specific piles, all the while documenting the entire operation. The process, then, is intended to be just as telling/communicative as her final images. How much can we see through to Steppan by her possessions? How much was she able to see through to herself? What experiences, and people, and loves, and imagination, and memories are held within these objects for her? For us? And does sorting out the spectrum of our environment help us realize how colorful our lives really are? Is there anything consistent amongst (or behind) the objects other than their color? If you can't tell, I love these images not only for their aesthetic appeal, but because they so willingly offer up a myriad of questions.


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{ Richard Estes }

American-born painter, Richard Estes, is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s. His work is just stunning in it's attention to detail, exhibiting an uncanny grasp of light, glare, reflection, and texture. And while photo-realism isn't exactly "in vogue" in the current art world, it definitely had it's place and purpose; and anyways, I think these paintings stand up just fine despite the shifting currents and trends. I especially like these first two because I think they display/manifest a certain abstractness in/by the very elements that make them so realistic.


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