David Suchet narrates latest VID: The Singer

Jericho by Jesper

Jesper Leggatt (8), a boy in my sister's class in London, loves the JSB. And he drew this fantastic picture inspired by Jago's illustration in the JSB. 

Isn't it good?

The Blind Contessa's New Machine

my friend Carey Wallace has her first novel out THE BLIND CONTESSA'S NEW MACHINE and it's getting great reviews. Today the Times listed it in newly released books (one of only 5!):

THE BLIND CONTESSA’S NEW MACHINE

By Carey Wallace

207 pages. Pamela Dorman Books/Viking. $23.95.

The Contessa Carolina Fantoni is a 19th-century Italian beauty and a loner who spends her youth in blissfully unattended reverie at a lakeside cottage on her family’s property. Carolina’s childhood friend and neighbor, the eccentric inventor Pellegrino Turri, is older by a decade, but the two are bound by their curiosity and quirks. Shortly after becoming engaged to the town’s most eligible bachelor, Carolina realizes that her eyesight is slowly slipping away. But nobody believes her except for Turri. As the real word fades, Carolina begins to see in her dreams. And when her marriage goes the way of her vision, Carolina and Turri’s long-dormant passion blossoms into something potent enough to inspire the invention of... the typewriter. If the story sounds familiar, that’s because Carey Wallace based her debut novel — it feels more like a fairy tale, really — on a true story.

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from s@lly l-j

writing is revising: painting is too--Matisse's Bathers

Matisse worked on his painting BATHERS BY THE RIVER over the course of 8 years.

The first image was painted in watercolor on paper in 1909. The final version 1917.

Now because of technology you can see the stages in between and how he revised. Take a look here.

Seems like it's a process of distilling. Like writing. Stripping away and stripping away. Someone said writing is revising. The art of simplicity--to eliminate the unnecessary that the necessary make speak.

"Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917" opens at MOMA next week.