My Rifle, My Pony and Me - Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson

http://www.heliotown.com/Owl_visitation_Ashcraft.mp4

Thursday Video

Always looking for new ways to be inspired. And to keep myself motivated. The end of this video is great, with movements for several words throughout the 'performance', the movement associated with 'MOTIVATED' is a little leprechaun kick.
Maybe that's what you should do to kick yourself back into action, no?


This "life advice" video is kind of awesome
follow the above link to the vimeo location, or this one for the videoart.net website for some more exploring

Wednesday Article

The Thoreau Problem | Rebecca Solnit | Orion Magazine

This article has articulated the dilemma that I have encountered when discussing the book with friends and peers. I want to lift one extract that I found the most helpful in my argument supporting the wide reach of the book and why it applies to so many more scenarios than seclusion in nature.
Walden led me to the consciousness that every day and every thing can inspire advancement and discovery beyond the surface value.
I am a true believer in the inspiration of the everyday nothing
"Those who deny that nature and culture, landscape and politics, the city and the country are inextricably interfused have undermined the connections for all of us (so few have been able to find Thoreau’s short, direct route between them since)."


image via wikipedia: original title page drawn by sophie, Henry David Thoreau's sister

I am also learning more about the author Rebecca Solnit
this portrait was taken by Jim Herrington
his photography is pretty amazing and bold- not afraid of contrast, he is able to make a really striking image of a moment that he captures and then pushes to it's extreme in the qualities that he wants to emphasize. Here are some of my favorites:

look into his work on his blog where you get some great back stories and his flickr for tons of work (his website -linked above- is my favorite to look at- very cool site and well edited so you get a real feeling of his strongest work)

Superman choosing his outfit
Dean Cain in the New Adventures of Superman

Tuesday Person

Tommy Dippel: cowboy model, actor, and hero (I added that credential)
image via gbmcinephoto
image via JaybSauceda

Monday Image

The thumbnail notebooks that were hard to photograph through their glass cases- I was thinking about how cool they would look on the wall- blown up- without the hand shadows and the glare




And some of the shots from the magazine editorials

Fashion Photographer Sascha at the Institut Néerlandais

Monday Image

Traci Lords, Los Angeles, 1988 a photo by Jim Herrington ˚ on Flickr.

Hiawatha + discoveries

At Shakespeare & co. in Paris yesterday I sat with a friend for a half an hour reading in the library upstairs (there were a million people milling the bottom retail floor but very few people in the quiet reading room in the front of the top floor).
I picked up a copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha, being an avid Native American Explorer, it is one of my simple pleasures to read or look at anything / interpretation of their magical (in my romantic vision of things) existence.
this particular edition was illustrated in black line drawings accented by red or blue (depending on the page) marks on the illustrations.
This cover is the most colorful illustration in the entire work by Illustrator Joan Kiddell Monroe:I'd like to share some or her other fantastical illustrations from other works:
Scandinavian Folk tales 1956

India Folk Tales: via a journey round my skull

And also some other covers for different editions of The Song of Hiawatha

by Frederic Remington via LakeSuperior

by john Gilhart via Minnesota Historical Society

illustrator unknown via cover browser

Note to self

research explorers

Michel Gaubert- DJ - music man

Hiawatha by H W Longfellow

Michael Mott poetry: Counting the Grass, In the Absence of Unicorns

Stephane Olivier: Object and Antique store on rue de l'Université
+ ancient Japanese garment store at #45 rue de l'université

Photo essay: Dead Eagle Trail by Jane hilton

On Kismet and Karma a photo by Terra Kate on Flickr.

On Kismet and Karma
exploring flickr I'll try to make a kind of archive of inspiring color stories and moods that I find. These posts may morph so as to keep myself organized.

This picture makes the city seem like a mirage in the distance, even the sand is secondary to that thin layer of water where the photographer stands which becomes the anchor - feeling the water moving in and out, and the sand molding itself around your feet as your weight pushes you further and further in

John stezaker

and last but not least: My favorite:

Marco Godinho Instalation

I have been thinking a lot about how to put on a stellar fashion show that makes people want to come back for more season after season. I stand by the statement that, at the show, it is not about the clothes as much as it is about the energy and the idea and the story and the show.
Come to the show room after

So installation art becomes a really interesting resource for information:

Timeless, 2009 | Two MDF walls, white acrylic paint, 2000 m of black elastic rope | Variable dimensions

Check out his website and more images from this installation: Here

A view of fashion

I loved reading this view / summarized history of fashion from Japanese photographer: Hiroshi Sigumoto
With accompanying images form Yohji, Comme des Garçons, and Balenciaga (Mr. Balenciaga, not Ghesquière) it is about a bestial superiority- which art might also be. And here art and fashion find each other once again on common ground. And then as human societies became more complex, fashion became a status symbol (which might be another common ground shared with the art world these days). And so maybe the two are always paralleled but not always integrated directly. Anyway, please check out his work and please read the article

More soon

	Voila le lien to the real article and the artist's website Stylized Sculpture The history of clothing is as old as that of humanity itself. From the time human consciousness first awakened from animal nature, we humans have wrapped our bareness in clothing, very much the way Adam and Eve did with fig leaves. The first human clothes were animal pelts, a sign of supremacy over other animals by virtue of our superior physical skills and intelligence. Humans used weapons and tools to kill animals, skin their hides, and eat their meat. Fur served to help humans conserve body heat and survive the ice ages, but conversely led to the devolution of body hair. The ability to maintain a constant body temperature, whatever the climate, is thought to have contributed to making human estrus, or sexual “heat,” constant as well, this permanent mating season greatly strengthening the human capacity to propagate. Likewise, clothing came to conceal our genitalia while enhancing physical measures of attraction, enabling us to consciously control our reproductive activities. These added, interrelated dimensions of clothed body expression must have played a major role in the socializing process and the rise of civilization. By the age of the earliest civilizations, humans had gained the knowledge of how to weave and dye plant fibers, and as primitive communal society stratified into classes, clothing came to symbolize rank and status. Figures of authority in particular made extra display of their power and wealth by means of special clothing and adornment. In India, China, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia—as in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome—ancient civilizations each developed a unique culture of attire. In the early fifteenth century, Europe entered the age of seafaring and exploration, while scientific advancements led to an ever more logical mindset and with it a rational worldview of a spherical planet—which grew “smaller” with every new discovery. Thereafter, European imperialist expansion encompassed almost the entire world, this overwhelming rule establishing a primacy of Eurocentric standards of dress that became synonymous with modernization. Gender awareness again came to the fore in the 1920s—after World War I—and the progressive emancipation and elevation of women earned fashion an important place in modern life, thanks especially to the pioneering efforts of Madeleine Vionnet and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. The Dada, surrealist, and futurist avant-garde art movements further influenced fashion, and this fusion of fashion and art has continued into the present day. Stylized Sculpture looks at the post-Vionnet history of fashion with a view toward the human body clothed in “artificial skin” as modern sculpture. - Hiroshi Sugimoto