De fleurs

 

One of the perks of working at the John Cleary Gallery is that I have free reign to explore drawer after drawer of the gallery’s collection.  I have mentioned in a previous post my love of Maggie Taylor’s work and when I came across “The Patient Gardener” I was reminded of a song from Claude Debussy’s Proses Lyriques entitled “De fleurs” (The Flowers).

Maggie Taylor: The Patient Gardener

 

Debussy’s lyrics, which he wrote himself, are as follows.  (Translation by Faith J. Cormier via The Lied, Art Song, and choral Texts Page)

In the desolate green boredom of pain's hothouse, flowers surround my heart with their nasty stems. When will the dear hands return to delicately untangle them from round my head? The tall purple Iris cruelly violated your eyes by seeming to reflect them. They were the pools of reverie into which my dreams softly dove, absorbed by their colour. And the lilies, white jets of water with perfumed pistils, have lost their white grace and are but poor invalids who do not know the sun. Sun! Friend of evil flowers, dream-killer, illusion-killer, holy bread of miserable souls! Come! Come! Saving hands! Smash the windows of lies, smash the windows of evil spells, my soul is dying from too much sun! Mirages! Joy will never flower again in my eyes and my hands are tired of praying, my eyes tired of crying! In an eternal crazed noise, the black petals of boredom drip constantly on my head in pain's green hothouse!

But really… why reference a Debussy song and post the poetry without also putting up a stunning performance?  My friend Janai, whom I have mentioned here before, sang the set on her master’s recital at the University of Michigan a couple of years ago and her performance of this song in particular has managed to stay buried in my sub-conscience.  Pianist (and dear friend) Jeremy Reger also brings the requisite foggy lushness to Debussy’s accompaniment.

And as always I’ll add my caveat that the image above is only a representation of what it really looks like up close.  So come in the gallery and check out this piece or any others in our collection!

Artist: Janai Brugger-Orman, Jeremy Reger

Dandelion

[via GawkerTV]

It’s such a pretty day outside here in Texas and I thought I’d post a video I saw a while back… you know I’m always up for some time-lapse goodness!

Check out Neil Bromhall’s Youtube page for more!

 

Artist: The Rolling Stones/ Album: Big Hits

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

 

Next on my “Documentaries via Netflix” series is Proetus, an utterly fascinating look at the life of 19th century German biologist/artist Ernst Haeckel.  While at the Hirschorn recently I saw this DVD on sale in the gift shop and it immediately piqued my interest.

As Netflix summarizes, the film “examines the work of Ernst Haeckel, the German biologist-artist who dedicated his life to finding and documenting the connection between the disparate worlds of art and science. Drawing on Haeckel's fascinating lithographs of the tiny undersea organisms called radiolarian, Lebrun's poetic film brings the biologist's visions to life and further explores the artistry of the natural world.”

Well just what the heck are radiolarian?!?!, you might be asking yourself.  I Marian Seldes, the film’s narrator, sums it up pretty nicely:

The microscopic radiolarian is part of the floating oceanic plankton, a frothy, ameba like drop of protoplasm with a network of branching pseudopods to engulf and absorb tiny pray. But, the radiolarian also absorbs silica from seawater then excretes it to construct a glasslike skeleton.  In each species this translucent cage assumes a unique form. The radiolaria are over 500 million years old—among the earliest skeletonized life forms. They are like an alphabet of possibilities, as if the ancient sea were dreaming in its depths all the future permutation of organic and invented form, from back bones to bridges and from the earth to the stars.

According to Proteus, there are over 5,000 species of radiolarian in existence, and Haeckel documented and drew just under 4,000 of them in his life time, culminating in his work Art Forms from the Ocean: The Radiolarian Atlas of 1862. 

  

Director David Lebrun photographed thousands of individual drawings and compiled them into several animation sequences interspersed throughout the film, a process that took just over two decades (he began in the early 80’s, waaaaay before the advent of the necessary computer generated effects).

 

BUT WAIT!!! Purchase now and we’ll throw in a copy of Haeckel’s other magnum opus, Art Forms in Nature, which translates his boring ol’ radiolarian doodles into birds *gasp* fish *ooooooooh* and plantlife *aaaaaahh* (Click to enlarge)

   

Take THAT James Audubon!!

 

As an astonishing amalgam of art, science and religion, Proteus also successfully interweaves the history of the 19th century Challenger naval expedition, Greek mythology, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the philosophy and poetry of Goethe as well as the effects of Haeckel’s ideas on mind’s like Sigmund Freud and Thomas Edison.  It’s quite a conceit to pull off but, even clocking in at 60 minutes, it’s one that pays off.

You must, when contemplating nature,
Attend to this, in each and every feature:
There’s nought outside and nought within,
For she is inside out and outside in.
Thus will you grasp, with no delay,
The holy secret, clear as day.

~Goethe (translated by Christopher Middleton)

from Epirrhema (c. 1819)

Artist: Iron Maiden/ Album: Powerslave

Knock On Wood

 

So… I normally don’t do birthday “shout-out” posts on here—I  can only remember a scant few in the past year and most of those were for random already dead folk (see: Edison, Bach).  The reason? It sets an awful precedent to do one for aaaaaaallllllllllllllll you biscuits!!

That being said, though, as I was driving home from works tonight Amii (two i’s!!!) Stewart’s “Knock on Wood” came on the radio and I knew I had to make a HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMISON!!!! post.  We were out one night in Chicago and this music video came on at the bar and neither of us had ever seen it before.  As you will see, it’s unsurprising that we were simultaneously in awe and bewildered.  Behold the crazy:

 

Artist: Amii Stewart

You’re So Vain

 

Catherine is a huuuuge fan of Twitter here at the gallery and as such can be found tweeting blips of our conversations every now and then.  I find most of these the next morning when checking the email and her feed shows up in a Google Alert—it’s like a little present!  I got a shout out yesterday that reminded me of a picture my friend Jamie drew way back when I was still JD!

OF COURSE I don’t actually mean that by any stretch of the imagination.  I know I’m not better than everyone… just mostones.  ;)

 

Artist: Carly Simon/ Album: The Best of Carly Simon

Dancing Queen

 

Due to last week’s opening at the gallery I completely failed to get up a post last Friday.  Don’t worry, though, I haven’t forgotten that…

IT’S

DANCE PARTY

FRIDAY!!!!

 

I came across these pictures while doing a bit of blog trolling on the way to work yesterday morning (Houston traffic is rife with opportunities to get off a quick text or sneak a peak at websites like Fark, where this comes from).  Terry Border’s Bent Objects is a collection of complex vignettes made from everyday items that range from humorous to dark, parody to social commentary and quite frankly I LOVE THEM. 

(For a different look at the artist, check out my completely different blog post appropriately entitled “Gentlemen Prefer Buttercreams” at the John Cleary Gallery blog!)

“Dancing Queens”

 

For Jeremy:

  

             “So Many Books, So Little Time”                     “How to Get Ahead Without Even Trying, or ‘Salome’ “

 

“Literary Interpretations”

 

   

“Fruit with Life Experience”                                                   “Adverse Side Effects”

 

For Will, our blog’s resident entomologist (sorry, Luke, but he actually has a master in bug-ology [seriously]):

“Office Supplies in the Jungle”

Artist: ABBA/ Album: Greatest Hits

Big Balls

 

You guys all know how much I’m into sports games, right?  *pause for laughs* So of course I was thrilled when leaving the Galleria yesterday to see preparations for the Final Four, happening in our dear, smoggy, overpass laden city of Houston.

If I knew ladders were permissible I totally would have played in high school *pause again for laughs*

 

Artist: AC/DC /Album: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap