November 26, 2005
November 25, 2005
November 24, 2005
November 23, 2005
November 22, 2005
Joy Garnett
Joy Garnett emails that paintings from her new series Strange Weather will be published in Harper's January '06 issue (view images of the paintings).
One image is below. In this painting everything feels fast and distorted; there is speed in this painting, something split-second and about to happen, ominous and impending. As the viewer, we not only look at this scene but are caught up as part of it, only now and suddenly becoming aware of what is coming our way. Perhaps just about to enter reaction mode, we're still considering the weather, wondering what kind of threat approaches, only peripherally seeing the car speeding away from whatever is happening in the sky, mostly just feeling and hearing it as a blur. What should we do?
I can't help but think of the storm early in The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy encounters others trying to escape the tornado, and it's the tornado that sends her on her journey. Do we enter the storm or run from it? Those with resources can flee; in post-Katrina days, a storm is more than something to get through- it's also potentially a political divide. In our day it's the car that takes the place of one of Turner's ships in a storm. We can't forget that nature is bigger than us.
Look at more of these paintings- there's some nice painting going on, and lots more strange weather.
I must also mention Joy's weblog NEWSgrist, an excellent, consistent, and serious place for art news, links, politics, analysis, culture, etc.
Joy Garnett, Strange Weather (3), 2005, 20 x 26 inches, Oil on canvas
Sally McKay
Someone I regretfully neglected to my include in "Weblogs of Note" post a few days ago is Sally McKay, so I want to make up for that now.
Sally is based in Toronto. Her weblog is part of the Digital Media Tree collective, and a number of her projects are accessible on her web site.
The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) defines ecotourism as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people." And I think of all of Sally's work- her art, writing, weblogging, bicycle activism, and humor(!)- as a kind of example and a guide to the world as a social and creative place. Her blend of science, nature, and art practice is maybe a kind of eco-art, or maybe an eco-aesthetic. 
Sally's lecture The Trouble with Oscillation, the outline of which is online and fully illustrated with lots of nifty animated gifs, takes off from this:
Philosophy asks the question: How do we construct our perceptions of the world in a manner that can be culturally shared? Science provides one model, and art provides another. This lecture oscillates between the two.
Nephew
My new nephew, so far unnamed, all 9lbs 2.3oz of him about 25 minutes after being born this morning at around 8:30 in Berkeley to my brother Mitch and his wife Jane:
