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You know, I have a particular soft spot in my heart for Nepenthes pitcher plants.
I've been working on a ripple afghan for a little while now, so I decided to join the no-end-in-sight ripple-along. Unfortunately, I've just undergone some surgery on my hand, so I have to either put the rippling on hold...
...or learn to crochet one-handed.
I'm working with some no-name cotton blend yarn I found in Chinatown. The colors reminded me of maple flowers, and the pattern recalls the tree-covered hills around my parent's house. As the project is coming together, the ripples are giving off a great seventies vibe - I'm thinking of finishing with a fringe of macramé owls. How fun would that be?
But then I realized that if someone were to replace my library with all brand-new books, I would be very sad. The wear on my books - as physical objects - holds their history and makes my relationship with their contents immediate and visceral. Many of my childhood books have bite marks on the spine, because I would hold them in my teeth while climbing up to read in a tree or on the roof. The books I carry when I travel get stained and frayed, and the damage tells a story. And I love secondhand books that have been marked up in pencil, because I can see what was important to the person who read it before me.
Su Blackwell's book-cut sculpture is beautifully crafted. In a way, it's very similar to receiving a marked-up copy of a book from a friend. Their particular interpretation of the text is privileged for your consideration, and you can re-evaluate your response to the work through the lens of their relationship.
It's like turning books into memories, I guess. I think Blackwell's work is stunning, and the little frisson of revulsion I feel at the sight of a damaged book makes it all the more interesting.
"Do not let us agitate ourselves unduly." [His father said.] "Such a life let us pray God that it may please him to enable us to pray that we may lead."
"His mother would pounce noiselessly on his remarks as a barn-owl pounces upon a mouse, and would bring them up in a pellet six months afterwards when they were no longer in harmony with their surroundings."
"The mangled bones of too many murdered confessions were lying whitening round the skirts of his mother's dress, to allow him by any possibility to trust her further."
"[The headmaster] had fallen upon him in hall like a moral landslip."
Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of a bowl from hi+lo modern. The op art movement had as its subject perception itself, and utilitarian objects with op art designs have always seemed remarkably generous to me. They are beautiful things with no meaning intended and no strings attached.
Now, to be perfectly clear, I think Diment and Prall are both amazing artists, and I find their portfolios both inspiring and intimidating. It's just that I think my friend was missing the point when she said that these other artists were better than Harper. It's cool if she prefers more realistic paintings, but that doesn't make the work she likes better than the work she doesn't like.
When I was in grade school, the "How to Draw" series of books was really popular. In theory, you would start by sketching a bunch of boxes and ovals, add details and end up with a perfectly realistic cat or racecar or horse or dinosaur. In practice, most of us ended up with a beautifully-detailed horse that looked like a sway-backed dachshund.
Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it's trivial or easy to do.
Earlier in the month, my husband and I received a flier for the Cape May Bird Observatory's Spring Weekend, and a poster went up in the ornithology department at work. That was how I connected Charley Harper's name to the wildlife art I had been inspired by for a long time. Seriously, look at this!
There are some prints of his available at theframeworkshop.com, along with a coffee table book. The water strider lithograph just blew me away. I spent a good bit of my childhood trying to catch these bugs - they're speedy little things - and I'm impressed not only by Harper's design sense, but also by his choice of detail. He really looks at the animals he paints.
There is a great selection of his prints from the 1950's at the Treadway Gallery. I think I know what my husband is getting for a present, once he defends his thesis!
Harper's bird art is featured on the packaging of Coffee for the Birds, which sells fair trade, shade grown varietals and blends. That's a great thing to support, in case you were wondering - good for birds and people, too. We used to have a bag of their Guatemalan blend in the office - it is a step up from Starbucks and a world away from the big blue tub of Folgers.
