GLITTERING SCRIVENER

MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY'S MANUSCRIPTS, ILLUMINATED
- Anouck Wipprecht, SmokeDress.  This dress, by brilliant Dutch designer Wipprecht, makes the wearer invisible. Or rather, it creates a smokescreen. Old school magic meets art. When the dress detects movement, or someone approaches the wearer, it releases smoke, enough, apparently, to create a cloud.  Rather like this wildly sexy and quite strange 1530 painting by Corregio, Jupiter and Io, but in reverse. The wearer is embraced by her own cloud in the contemporary case, and by a god in the classical. Still, though, the idea of being fucked by smoke, and accompanied by smoke throughout one’s evening, is a fascinating one. A partner made of pollution. A lover made of the lost - for is not smoke, at least, the sort of smoke that comes from fire, a visual representation of things that got away?

- Anouck Wipprecht, SmokeDress. 

This dress, by brilliant Dutch designer Wipprecht, makes the wearer invisible. Or rather, it creates a smokescreen. Old school magic meets art. When the dress detects movement, or someone approaches the wearer, it releases smoke, enough, apparently, to create a cloud. 

Rather like this wildly sexy and quite strange 1530 painting by Corregio, Jupiter and Io, but in reverse. The wearer is embraced by her own cloud in the contemporary case, and by a god in the classical. Still, though, the idea of being fucked by smoke, and accompanied by smoke throughout one’s evening, is a fascinating one. A partner made of pollution. A lover made of the lost - for is not smoke, at least, the sort of smoke that comes from fire, a visual representation of things that got away?

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CARDBOARD CITY SHIP - Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Passage (The Eighth Fleet),  transport cardboard boxes and packing tape, 2011 The artists, a married couple from the Philippines, focus on migration in their work. In this case, it’s early Austronesian ship travel and transport, particularly inspired by the migration canoes of the Maori. This gorgeous piece involving the transit of an entire culture/city/country by canoe, was constructed in the Govett-Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth, using the assistance of schoolchildren from the area.  Is it not totally amazing? This complicated city dangling upside down, the way it sways, the deceptive solidity of something that, in the water, would sink, sodden. I have an urgent desire to live aboard this ship. I’d also like to get up in there and get a whole lot of closer looks. When I was a kid, my grandfather brought my sister a refrigerator box as a present. He labeled it Molly’s House, and cut a door and window. She lived in that box inside our house, emerging for meals, for the better part of a year. It had what it needed: walls, a ceiling, a window and a door. Others in the Actual House were wildly jealous of Molly’s House.  Of course, all this - the city canoe, the refrigerator box - bring to mind other houses made of cardboard, and the way these unhomes are homes for so many. So this piece, too, is a piece about a culture that might be washed away in a wave, or in a heavy rain.  We can talk about floods. We can talk about our current culture of Atlantis. I refer you as well, with an emphatic recommendation, to William Vollman’s extraordinary Harper’s Magazine piece from a couple years ago, Homeless in Sacramento: Welcome to the New Tent Cities. I could also refer you to any number of related fantastical things, cities floating, cities collapsing, but I think the nonfiction is more relevant here. We have a cardboard civilization alongside the bricks and stones. Lots of us are out there in the dark. In some moments in the world, this was simply the nature of living. Now? Cities inside of cities. Though you might be living free, you are also living under the lights of the freeway, inside a collapsible home, under threat of dismantling by whatever city you’re inside. 

CARDBOARD CITY SHIP - Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Passage (The Eighth Fleet),  transport cardboard boxes and packing tape, 2011

The artists, a married couple from the Philippines, focus on migration in their work. In this case, it’s early Austronesian ship travel and transport, particularly inspired by the migration canoes of the Maori.

This gorgeous piece involving the transit of an entire culture/city/country by canoe, was constructed in the Govett-Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth, using the assistance of schoolchildren from the area. 

Is it not totally amazing? This complicated city dangling upside down, the way it sways, the deceptive solidity of something that, in the water, would sink, sodden. I have an urgent desire to live aboard this ship. I’d also like to get up in there and get a whole lot of closer looks. When I was a kid, my grandfather brought my sister a refrigerator box as a present. He labeled it Molly’s House, and cut a door and window. She lived in that box inside our house, emerging for meals, for the better part of a year. It had what it needed: walls, a ceiling, a window and a door. Others in the Actual House were wildly jealous of Molly’s House. 

Of course, all this - the city canoe, the refrigerator box - bring to mind other houses made of cardboard, and the way these unhomes are homes for so many. So this piece, too, is a piece about a culture that might be washed away in a wave, or in a heavy rain.  We can talk about floods. We can talk about our current culture of Atlantis.

I refer you as well, with an emphatic recommendation, to William Vollman’s extraordinary Harper’s Magazine piece from a couple years ago, Homeless in Sacramento: Welcome to the New Tent Cities. I could also refer you to any number of related fantastical things, cities floating, cities collapsing, but I think the nonfiction is more relevant here. We have a cardboard civilization alongside the bricks and stones. Lots of us are out there in the dark. In some moments in the world, this was simply the nature of living. Now? Cities inside of cities. Though you might be living free, you are also living under the lights of the freeway, inside a collapsible home, under threat of dismantling by whatever city you’re inside. 

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BEADS AND THREADS AND CREATURES - Rob Wynne, Octopus, 2008, glass beads and thread on vellum, 27 x 21 inches. - Rob Wynne, Red Eye Hornet, 2008, glass beads and thread on vellum I first encountered Rob Wynne through his collaboration with Artware: a set of dinner plates with orphaned lines scavenged both from literature and overhearings scribbled around the edges. (I seriously covet the one that says “I Marvel The Flames Do Not Wake You,” as well as the one that reads “As I Have Already Said, I Had No Real Childhood.” Something so right and wrong about that - it’s such a casual devastation, the sort of thing you’d overhear in a coffeeshop, from the mouth of someone chewing pastry.) Turns out that Wynne does lots of wonderful, and quite diverse things, including texts made of poured and mirrored glass, embroidered paintings - most of them using techniques that might be found in a Martha Stewart magazine, bent toward peculiar  home-crafted unsettlers. (Dude uses glitter.) This category, of course, is my favorite sort of thing. I love the kind of art that’s been clearly made by hands, that requires needles and thread, and threats.   As well, in the images pictured, I love the way the vellum’s transparency highlights the tangle behind the beauty. There’s something strangely moving about these creatures, the way they’re tied to screens, marionettes in motion, missing their puppeteers. Or perhaps dragging their tails behind them.  - Rob Wynne, Spider, 2010, Glass beads and thread on vellum Here is an interesting thing: AM Homes inspired by Wynne and using phrases and notions from his work in a short story. 

BEADS AND THREADS AND CREATURES - Rob Wynne, Octopus, 2008, glass beads and thread on vellum, 27 x 21 inches.

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- Rob Wynne, Red Eye Hornet, 2008, glass beads and thread on vellum

I first encountered Rob Wynne through his collaboration with Artware: a set of dinner plates with orphaned lines scavenged both from literature and overhearings scribbled around the edges. (I seriously covet the one that says “I Marvel The Flames Do Not Wake You,” as well as the one that reads “As I Have Already Said, I Had No Real Childhood.” Something so right and wrong about that - it’s such a casual devastation, the sort of thing you’d overhear in a coffeeshop, from the mouth of someone chewing pastry.)

Turns out that Wynne does lots of wonderful, and quite diverse things, including texts made of poured and mirrored glass, embroidered paintings - most of them using techniques that might be found in a Martha Stewart magazine, bent toward peculiar  home-crafted unsettlers. (Dude uses glitter.) This category, of course, is my favorite sort of thing. I love the kind of art that’s been clearly made by hands, that requires needles and thread, and threats.  

As well, in the images pictured, I love the way the vellum’s transparency highlights the tangle behind the beauty. There’s something strangely moving about these creatures, the way they’re tied to screens, marionettes in motion, missing their puppeteers. Or perhaps dragging their tails behind them. 

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- Rob Wynne, Spider, 2010, Glass beads and thread on vellum

Here is an interesting thing: AM Homes inspired by Wynne and using phrases and notions from his work in a short story. 

-JOHANNES JACOB SCHEUCHZER, from Physica Sacra, 1735.

-JOHANNES JACOB SCHEUCHZER, from Physica Sacra, 1735.

- Joyce Utting Schutter, Simulacrum, flax, wheatgrass, seedheads, cheesecloth, steel, dry pigments - Joyce Utting Schutter, Call for the Circle Dance, flax, cotton, lentils, steel, varnish, lily pollen, dried pigments.

- Joyce Utting Schutter, Simulacrum, flax, wheatgrass, seedheads, cheesecloth, steel, dry pigments

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- Joyce Utting Schutter, Call for the Circle Dance, flax, cotton, lentils, steel, varnish, lily pollen, dried pigments.

WE WALK AMONG THE DEAD:  Jane Tuckerman, Three Crosses, Mexico, from Ghosts, 2005 - Jane Tuckerman, Woman and Dog, Benaras, India, from Ghosts, 2005 The images from Tuckerman’s Ghosts are so beautiful that I can’t get rid of them. Death and longing, mourning, and the casual ends of lives depicted in infrared film. I wish I could find an online version of one of the photos on Tuckerman’s site, a huge festival day icon being dragged prone through a city, but alas, I’m not finding it online. Tuckerman isn’t as well known as she should be, but her photos are wonderful.  This interview with Tuckerman is good reading. 

WE WALK AMONG THE DEAD:  Jane Tuckerman, Three Crosses, Mexico, from Ghosts, 2005

- Jane Tuckerman, Woman and Dog, Benaras, India, from Ghosts, 2005

The images from Tuckerman’s Ghosts are so beautiful that I can’t get rid of them. Death and longing, mourning, and the casual ends of lives depicted in infrared film. I wish I could find an online version of one of the photos on Tuckerman’s site, a huge festival day icon being dragged prone through a city, but alas, I’m not finding it online. Tuckerman isn’t as well known as she should be, but her photos are wonderful. 

This interview with Tuckerman is good reading. 

AN UPTURNED AND SHAKING SHIP - BALANCE, Sue Aygarn-Kowalski, 2008, copper, sterling, steel. This piece was exhibited in a collection of pieces of art inspired by Johann Jacob Scheuchzer’s (astonishing) Physica Sacra. Metalsmith Aygarn-Kowalski’s work tends toward heaviness balanced by strange light. This piece feels perfect to me, and also peculiar. An upended kayak (or pod, or…something, fine), an amputated tentacle, or a limb rising up to snag a traveler. First day of a New Year as I post this, and balance is for me, always this kind of thing, precise, but unlikely.  Weight one side of your scales with pearls, the other with iron. 

AN UPTURNED AND SHAKING SHIP - BALANCE, Sue Aygarn-Kowalski, 2008, copper, sterling, steel.

This piece was exhibited in a collection of pieces of art inspired by Johann Jacob Scheuchzer’s (astonishing) Physica Sacra. Metalsmith Aygarn-Kowalski’s work tends toward heaviness balanced by strange light. This piece feels perfect to me, and also peculiar. An upended kayak (or pod, or…something, fine), an amputated tentacle, or a limb rising up to snag a traveler. First day of a New Year as I post this, and balance is for me, always this kind of thing, precise, but unlikely. 

Weight one side of your scales with pearls, the other with iron. 

WE’VE GOT THE BIGGEST BALLS OF THEM ALL, 1842 VERSION:  Publisher: Kazusa-ya Iwazô Tanuki no Amiuchi - i.e. A Raccoon Dog Using His Scrotum as a Throw-Net to Catch Birds & Tanuki no ôrai - i.e. Raccoon Dogs Coming and Going in the Street. Comic prints from the mid-1800’s relating to the mythic ability of the Raccoon Dog to enlarge its scrotum at will…and then do lots of things with it, some useful, some just…peculiar. I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine most men would like to use their scrotum as a  pallet to ferry home their groceries.  Nor use their scrotum this way: Tanuki no sumô - i.e. raccoon dogs as sumo wrestlers, wearing their scrotums as sumo aprons.   & Tanuki no mochi - i.e. The Night Stall More here.  Raccoon dogs have been somewhat screwed over as a species. First the above - and then a whole lot of illegal fur usage. Remember those “faux fur” jackets sold at Macy’s a few years ago under the Sean John label - which were then the root of a big scandal about fake fur? Raccoon dog.  This is a raccoon dog (neither dog nor raccoon, but more fox-wolf-dog).  Its scrotum is not visible. But who knows what hides beneath its fur?

WE’VE GOT THE BIGGEST BALLS OF THEM ALL, 1842 VERSION: 

Publisher: Kazusa-ya Iwazô

Tanuki no Amiuchi - i.e. A Raccoon Dog Using His Scrotum as a Throw-Net to Catch Birds

&

Tanuki no ôrai - i.e. Raccoon Dogs Coming and Going in the Street.

Comic prints from the mid-1800’s relating to the mythic ability of the Raccoon Dog to enlarge its scrotum at will…and then do lots of things with it, some useful, some just…peculiar.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine most men would like to use their scrotum as a  pallet to ferry home their groceries.  Nor use their scrotum this way:

Tanuki no sumô - i.e. raccoon dogs as sumo wrestlers, wearing their scrotums as sumo aprons. 

 &

Tanuki no mochi - i.e. The Night Stall

More here. 

Raccoon dogs have been somewhat screwed over as a species. First the above - and then a whole lot of illegal fur usage. Remember those “faux fur” jackets sold at Macy’s a few years ago under the Sean John label - which were then the root of a big scandal about fake fur? Raccoon dog. 

This is a raccoon dog (neither dog nor raccoon, but more fox-wolf-dog).  Its scrotum is not visible. But who knows what hides beneath its fur?

Andreas Scheiger, The Evolution of Type, Exhibit 23, Austria. Wood, gypsum, plasticine, chicken bones, water colors.  The bones of words, left buried in the ground. Unearthed, restored. and displayed. They stretch their spines and fingers.  and exhibit 24.

Andreas Scheiger, The Evolution of Type, Exhibit 23, Austria. Wood, gypsum, plasticine, chicken bones, water colors. 

The bones of words, left buried in the ground. Unearthed, restored. and displayed. They stretch their spines and fingers. 

and exhibit 24.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule –
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space – out of Time.

— Edgar Allen Poe, from Dream-Land, 1844