invisible, incredible, impossible

(Doris Lee: The Violinist, Woodstock)

"Faith sees the invisible,
Believes the incredible,
And receives the impossible."
- Anonymous

Summer Reading List

Yes. The Miami Herald is a very smart paper indeed.

The Ultimate Guide To Grandmas and Grandpas is on their Summer Reading List (under picture books--they didn't have an "instruction manual/operating manual" heading).

The Handbag Song

it's live! (WARNING: don't let a five year old watch this or you won't ever get your computer back)

clarity and insincerity

Orwell said, "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns ... instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

And he said, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

George Orwell (1903-1950)

happy quilt

("Wendy's Dresses" by Denyse Schmidt.)

waterfalls in manhattan!

It's true. The "Waterfalls" are coming! The $15 million public art project by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, is New York’s biggest art installation since “The Gates” and seen here in top secret, clandestine preview photos shot in the pre-dawn light yesterday. Opens tomorrow and runs through Oct 13th. How cool.


Read more here.

Mako Fujimura: Beauty and Brokenness

Destruction and Light. Grace through Suffering. Art as Prayer. Just some of the words people use to describe the powerful work of New York City painter, Mako Fujimura.

Mako uses extravagant materials: precious metals, handmade paper, pigments made by hand by grinding minerals with stone.

Mako says: "I spent six-and-a-half years studying the art of Nihonga in Tokyo, which is a thousand year tradition that uses minerals, gold, silver and sumi ink on Japanese paper or silk. I discovered, though, as a Japanese American, I could meld these influences into what I had experienced in 20th century art of Rothko, Gorky and the abstract expressionists. So I hope to create works that are new and old at the same time.

"I became interested in creating space that is both flat and spatial at the same time. Gold is that paradox: it creates space (by being semi-transparent) and remains flat (by being mirror-like) at the same time. Perhaps the only way that an "essential flatness" can be full of created space is by using gold.

"Gold, in all civilizations, symbolizes divinity. The act of layering gold, to me, is to pray for the divine New Reality (multi-dimensionality) to break into our broken (flat) reality. Charis, the Greek word that St. Paul used for "grace," is shorthand for the word "charisma," which means gift. Art is a gift, and essentially, art is grace. A "grace arena" is created in the layered gold and minerals. The more I journey deeply into the effects of gold and mineral pigments, the more I am taken by the refractive possibilities of the materials, while at the same time unable to contain, and control, the glory built into them. Glory spills out, like the golden aura we stand under - a tabernacle of hope."

Charis Exhibit to open at Dillon Gallery (555.W.25th Street, between 10th and 11th Ave.) July 2nd (opening from 6-8:30pm) to August 2nd (closed on Mondays)

writing the best that you can

"For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can."
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)