Because of Lorinda. She had mentioned
Chinese lanterns and this painting immediately came to mind; once
one sees it one will never forget it (the image does not do justice
to the painting which I saw five or six years ago at the
Clark Art Institute):
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
1885-6
174 x 153.7 cm
oil on canvas
This painting was completed over two months of autumn
evenings in 1885 and then again in 1886. The two girls -
Polly and Dolly - were the daughters of friends with
whom John Singer Sargent was staying in the Cotswold
village of Broadway.
The fact that Singer Sargent would only paint at
twilight when the light was absolutely perfect accounts
for the length of time it took to complete the piece.
Every afternoon he would play tennis until twilight when
the game was stopped. Polly and Dolly took their
positions, and Singer Sargent would paint furiously for
ten minutes or so until the light changed. The game
would then be resumed.
The painting is from a small persons perspective. The
lilies are outsized as if we're seeing them through the
eyes of a child and the light from the Chinese lanterns
casts a magical glow over the scene.
The production
of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of
humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the
world. It is the result or expression of nature, in
miniature. For although the works of nature are
innumerable and all different, the result or the
expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is
a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf,
a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous
impression on the mind. What is common to them all--that
perfectness and harmony, is beauty.
Today I was reminded of the time I joined Alec
Baldwin for breakfast.
A friend writes:
Let us not write all things as dissertation
snippets, but......emulate the
Chaji: one small act at a time, each executed
with concentration and grace.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote:
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste
that they hurry past it.
In Italy, the Citta Slow (Slow
Cities) movement encourages cities to reduce noise,
pollution and traffic; increase green spaces; foster
local farmers and artisans; and adopt other measures
designed to decrease the stress of urban life, making it
more leisurely and satisfying. Carlo Petrini's Slow Food
movement, boasting 78,000 members in more than 50
countries, is predicated on the idea that wholesome
meals incorporating local artisanal specialties and
agricultural products of sustainable farming go hand in
hand with the larger aim of protecting the environment.
Memorial Day. I woke early this morning
as I have been for the past few months; between 5:00 and 5:30. I
wrote and then went for a long walk. I met a woman walking her
Border Collie; it was timid and took what seemed like a long time to
walk toward me, slinking behind me and sniffing the bottom of my
pants. She told me how she cried when she saw the old men in
uniform, the veterans, in church yesterday. And I met this man in the photo who was charming and gracious
and asked me what kind of photos had I taken this morning and if I
was happy with what I saw. I was and I wished him a good day.
My portrait show is now hung:
Note to self: yesterday's mail brings news
from MASSMoCA:
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes with Pere Ubu
An evening of terrifying sights and
sounds! Cult director Roger Corman's
brilliant nightmare about a scientist
whose hubris leads to a frightening
extra-human transformation, becomes a
canvas for the legendary underground
band Pere Ubu's performance. Ubu's
founder David Thomas, a dark god of the
avant-rock world, conducts the
proceedings with menacing intensity.
"David Thomas' exuberant, caterwauling
vocals and cheeky banter and the band's
patently unorthodox numbers ... It all
adds up to high art, and more
importantly, great fun." -Alternative
Press
Pere Ubu were the most original and important of the
new wave bands. They were to the new wave what Jefferson
Airplane had been to San Francisco acid rock and Pink
Floyd to British psychedelic music. The eccentric
personality of David Thomas dominates their career from
beginning to end, although the group has also featured
other musicians of great stature.
I know, I should probably be reading some
Milan Kundera right now; and I shall--later. But first I want to
listen to The
Modern Dance.
And I want to address a thought a friend
expressed to me today: "I think the internet allows us to explore
friendships and interests beyond the normal realm of our scope yet
it also leads to a false sense of intimacy due to its anonymity."
Holidays are the hardest days.
Sunday 29
Odds and Ends. Remember that story
about the Pollock paintings?
...in the two weeks since the news of the
works' existence - delivered with the
help of a Web site and a flurry of press
releases - an intense and at times
personal battle over who really painted
them has been shaping up within a small,
once unified group of the world's
leading Pollock experts.
The case -
evoking the inevitable images of the
Cedar Bar and the heyday of the New York
School - has cast a new spotlight on the
contentious field of art authentication,
in which paper trails can remain
shadowy, doubts can linger for decades
and even experts sure of their findings
are often afraid to speak because of the
threat of lawsuits. Within this world,
the work of authenticating Pollocks has
been particularly divisive. This is
partly because of the sheer quantity of
paintings that have surfaced since the
artist died in 1956; forgers apparently
feel that faking his frenetic drips is
easier than, say, faking a Raphael. And
because of the seven-figure prices that
real Pollocks command, fights over
authenticity nearly always end up in the
courts and in the news. (Some experts
have speculated that if real, the newly
discovered works could collectively
fetch as much as $10 million.)
Are they really Pollocks? In the end, unfortunately,
even after the foundation renders its opinion and the
works go on view for a curious public, the answer may
end up being no more than a definite maybe - leaving
them in a limbo that perhaps only disputed works by Andy
Warhol and Salvador Dalí can rival in modern art.
Continuing to think. Early this morning
I saw this:
I looked through some older journal
entries and came across the following:
I have been thinking a great deal
recently of Jouke and
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiller (1884-1979). Jouke, because he continues
to inspire me to think more deeply about the vision for BirchLane
and Kahnweiler because he was one of the major gallery owners of the
20th century. An artist (Alaina Burri-Stone) recently asked me if she could trust my eye
so here are a few words to address this topic--my eye. I have been
thinking about Kahnweiler, the German-born French art dealer,
collertor, writer and art publisher--a key figure to modern art
because the internet, BirchLane has opened a new world of
possibilities for me; the site, the magazine, and assorted other
printed material. Kahnweiler's first gallery opened in 1907 when he
bought works by the completely unknown artists Derain and Vlaminck
at the Salon des Independants, and by Van Dongen and Braque. In the
same year he met Picasso, in 1908 Gris and 1910 Leger. 1912-14 he
contracted the 4 great Cubists: Braque, Gris, Leger and Picasso.
Kahnweiler was one of the earliest supporters of Cubism and its most
effective spokeman (through his Der Weg sum Kubismus, 1912-20). He
wrote the major monograph on J. Gris (1943) and was also an
important art publisher, the 1st to published the writings of
Apollinaire, Jocob, Masson, among more than 40 titles.
Continuing to think this makes sense; if not
BirchLane, Studio 19 as incubator and publisher. This past year I
have shown some interesting, if not powerful art. What next?
Good Things. Today: received my first
paycheck from Greniers; I was hired to shoot a wedding in August; (kt, ph)
Thursday 26
Reminders to Self.
1. I'm not responsible for my photographs.
Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic
experience. It's drowning yourself and then sniff,
sniff, sniff--being sensitive to coincidence. You can't
go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get
it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.
3. I think I can work around 60 hours per week at
Greniers taking
portraits starting in about one week; this is good.
Wednesday 25
Out to Pasture. Is there information in
my resume that might suggest I would enjoy telemarketing? No, there
is not. So why have the last two interviews I have had have been for
telemarketing positions? The posted advertisements did not speak of
telemarketing; if they had, I would not applied. In fact, the
information in my resume suggests major account sales, face-to-face
consultations, and public speaking. I am going out to pasture.
Tuesday 24
A Conversation. Tomorrow I have an
interview at The Option Institute.
I had applied to be its marketing director two years ago and was
never called in for an interview. Tomorrow's interview (I like to
think of these as conversations) is for its sales manager spot.
Monday 23
The Big Project. What began as a
small painting project (the bathroom) has blossomed into a big
painting project; loft walls are large.
Today I worked on the photos for the Windows
Easthampton project. Four images of Mt. Tom: Spring, Summer, Winter,
Fall. Come Friday--on display at Easthampton Savings Bank.
A friend writes to me today about my
photographs:
capturing what's beyond vision. not all are aware or able.
And another:
Thank you for sharing your beauty with us every day.......I
look forward to your posts each day. You've taught me to search
for the sublime in everything I see.
I looked at photos of the house on Birch Lane
today. I felt sad. I miss the front porch. I miss family. I miss the
rituals of that life. I wonder if I suffer from nostalgia.
Sunday 22
Katharine. One of my first internet
friends and the very first (besides
Jouke) to show an interest in
my art and search for truth and beauty. She was
Saturday 21
Painting.
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience
is the mysterious; it is the source
of all true art and science."
~Albert Einstein
Friday 20
The Prom. Not a Starling pictured
but:
all day from sunrise to sunset the Starling out my window comes and
goes; a worm held in her beak she swoops under the roof and the baby
birds chirp--I hear them every five or ten minutes. This is the
music of the day. All day.
Thursday 19
Poetry. I am thinking of Clarissa; not
the woman (I don't think I know a Clarissa.) but the novel by Samuel
Richardson. Tennyson affectionately called the novel a "large still
book." And I am thinking of it today not so much as a series of
letters that convey moral instructions that tell a story; rather I
am reminded tonight how e-mail/internet communications tell a story.
Last night, for example, a new internet friend called and left a
message on my answering machine; a beautiful poem. A few lines:
the glowing sting of a cold day
to pull away the heavy wet layers
while reading her favorite book
as the winter landscape turned
electric blue in the fading day
Wednesday 18
Lighting. I have learned more about
lighting techniques the past few days in training to shoot portraits
at the studio than I have in the past year.
Tuesday 17
I am happy with this:
Monday 16
Friday's Upcoming Prom. I will be
shooting this by myself.
Katharine:
Sunday 15
Discovery. In today's news:
A trove of 32 previously unknown
works by abstract art icon
Jackson Pollock has been
discovered by a family friend,
who said on Friday he would like
them to tour internationally and
be studied by art historians.
Alex Matter, a filmmaker who
knew Pollock from childhood,
said the collection was among
the possessions of his late
parents, who were long
associated with Pollock and his
wife Lee Krasner.
Matter said that about two
years ago he stumbled upon the
soot-covered artworks wrapped in
brown paper since 1958. They had
been first stored in a Manhattan
boiler room and then, he said,
for nearly three decades in a
warehouse in East Hampton, Long
Island, not far from where
Pollock had his studio and was
killed in car crash in 1956.
The works included 22 of the
artist's drip paintings and two
enamels on paper, he said. The
rest, all on board, are
unfinished and experimental
works that might show how
Pollock explored the order of
laying down colors.
Pollock created the works
from 1946 and 1949 when he was
largely unknown. It was about
1946 when the artist decided to
abandon the uses of paint
brushes, focusing instead on his
emerging technique of dripping
and pouring paint.
Matter, 63, declined to
estimate the value of the works,
saying that could only be
determined by the market. Last
May a painting by Pollock sold
for a record $11.65 million at
an auction by Christie's in New
York.
According to a note placed
with the works by Matter's
father, Pollock created the art
in the elder Matter's studio
near the present-day
United
Nations.
Matter said he wanted the
works to tour museums
internationally next year, the
50th anniversary of Pollock's
death, but then mostly remain in
his family's possession. They
would be available for art
historians to study.
"I just think very few (of
Pollock's) paintings of that
period are being shown," he said
in the Mark Borghi gallery in
Manhattan where three of the
paintings, all multicolored
swirls, were being shown to the
media.
"They are right before his
prolific period between 1950 and
1953. And what paintings there
are in 1947, 1948 and 1949, the
collections and the museums tend
to hold onto because they are so
rare," he said.
Pollock burst onto the art
scene in an early 1950s Life
magazine spread showing him
pouring and dripping paint on a
canvas on a floor. The new works
could shed light on Pollock's
working process, including
perhaps insight into the order
in which he laid down colors.
Matter said he announced the
discovery this week after an
authentication process had been
completed.
Three of the paintings have
the initials JP. The works were
authenticated by Ellen Landau, a
Pollock art historian who has
curated exhibits of his work.
And in today's New York Times:
Rule No. 1: Avoid the Same Old Song and Dance
THE opening night of last month's "Masters of
African-American Choreography" festival sold out at the
1,132-seat Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center. And
only one ticket went unsold for the remaining four
performances, said Michael Kaiser, the president of the
center. Even Mr. Kaiser, who will be honored tomorrow by
the Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church in New York
for his long service to dance, admits to astonishment.
But it wasn't his first such success. He
has also helped to revitalize arts
institutions like the Kansas City
Ballet, the Royal Opera House in London,
the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
and the Dance Theater of Harlem. He
recently shared a few of the lessons
he's learned along the way and discussed
how New York dance companies - now
starting their spring season but not yet
emerged from a post-Sept. 11 slump - can
pack the house the way the Kennedy
Center did.
1. PACKAGING, PACKAGING, PACKAGING.
"I always try to think in ways that both
enlighten but also excite the audience,"
Mr. Kaiser said. "Not just say, 'O.K.,
here's a week of performances by
So-and-So.' " In the case of the Kennedy
Center festival, that approach yielded
17 modern dance companies from around
the country in programs intended to
display the contributions of black
choreographers and performers to
American dance history. "I think that
approach gets people to come," he
continued, "to this festival or our
Sondheim festival or a Tennessee
Williams festival. The sense that there
is some curation going on."
2. CREATE AN IDENTITY.
"I
don't believe that every program has to
be themed," Mr. Kaiser said. "But I
think there are two ways of helping
sell. One is to do something that's
thematic. The other, which I believe in
very strongly, is creating an overall
identity, a very strong and positive
identity, for your organization."
Most dance companies focus their
efforts on selling "next week's season,"
he said. "That's almost too late. I've
always wanted, with the organizations
that I've run, to create an excitement,
a real institutional identity, around
those organizations."
"You can do it at different levels of
volume," he went on. "When I ran the
Kansas City Ballet I couldn't get the
kind of coverage I could get for Ailey,
but I got a local TV station to cover
us. I did a series of lectures for
potential board members and donors that
got people excited. We had stories in
Dance magazine and Ballet Review. We
negotiated a tour to New York City,
which we then promoted in Kansas City. I
believe every organization can do a
better job of this. Most spend no time
focusing on that kind of marketing."
3. INVITE PEOPLE, ONE
AT A TIME. "Every
organization should make
a list of the several
hundred people they'd
like to attract to
performances," Mr.
Kaiser said, "then
periodically throughout
the year send
information to these
people, like reviews
from on tour. All this
is additive. It's about
continuing to influence
the people who you think
are potential ticket
buyers and donors."
4. FORM PARTNERSHIPS.
"Have
interesting guest
artists and
collaborations," Mr.
Kaiser said. "Small
companies can
collaborate with
museums, galleries,
educational institutions
and other kinds of
performing arts
organizations.
"Perform at
high-visibility events.
Find ways to create a
visibility in the
community. But it all
has to fall in with what
you're trying to
accomplish artistically.
It's about a relentless
conception of how to
make people excited
about what you do."
5. USE WHAT YOU HAVE.
It is also
important, Mr. Kaiser
said, to identify and
play to your strengths.
He talked of working
with one small New York
ballet company directed
by a popular teacher
whose students included
a large number of "young
middle-aged women."
"We couldn't afford
marketing," he said. "So
we brought all the
ladies together and said
if they each sold 20
tickets to the season
they'd get a free ticket
to the opening-night
gala. The 'ticket
ladies' sold out the
season, basically, and
it cost nothing. Every
organization has
something, and you try
to figure out how to use
that asset."
6. A PICTURE IS WORTH
A LOT OF WORDS.
"Dance companies do a
very bad job of picking
their images," Mr.
Kaiser said. "They
typically pick images
that speak to their core
audience and to
themselves. If I see one
more ballerina on point
in arabesque, with a
bun, it's going to kill
me."
When he was working
with American Ballet
Theater, he recalled,
the company chose a
poster photo of Vladimir
Malakhov almost bent
over himself in midair.
"I focus on people in
the air," Mr. Kaiser
said. "I typically focus
on men, because women
buy more tickets." Even
better, he said slyly,
if the men are not
wearing much and have
beautiful bodies.
"I'm not trying to
cheat or fool the
audience," he continued.
"But there's so much
excitement to dance. And
we don't communicate
that so well in our
photography. My most
loyal ticket buyer is
going to come anyway.
I'm trying to entice my
marginal ticket buyer,
to communicate the
aspects of dance that we
think are critical to
what we do. A lot of it
has to do with
excitement and
physicality and
remarkable movement. And
that attracts people."
7. REACH OUT.
Another Kaiser rule is
not to rely on core
audiences. New, small
companies often
overestimate their
popularity after playing
to enthusiastic friends
in small downtown studio
theaters. Even major
troupes must enlist new
audiences, as Ailey did
successfully when it
began to advertise in
New York subways.
"Not everyone," he
said teasingly, "reads
The Times."
~by Jennifer Dunning
I finished painting the bathroom:
Saturday 14
Prom Two. Frontier Regional at The
Garden House in Look Park:
Friday 13
Prom One. Gateway Regional at The
Sheraton in Springfield.
Thursday 12
Rhythm. A friend writes to me today:
I am inspired by a courageous quality
I have seen growing in you the past year: I can only
describe it as self-affirming
"The journal is a record of experience and growth,
not a preserve of things well done or said."
~ Thoreau
Tuesday 10
This Time Last Year.
"There is more treasure in books than in all the
pirates' loot on Treasure Island...
and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of
your life."
we have been are and will continue to be
participating in a holistic artistic altruistic
optimistic endeavor to express the matter fully - to
fully materialize the expression - the impression - of
what it could be like in a world of wonder peace and
plenty and how it manifests in each home and heart -
envision what it would be like - WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE -
and focus on each step towards it - commit to the
creative - commit to serve as the clear channel for
truth love and lightening.........
It is there in the clouds: the four horseman
of the apocalypse. All we can do is love the people we are with and
the people we meet; live life fully moment by moment--("Absolute
attention is prayer;" Simone Weil)--make coffee, make art, create
peace and harmony, be astonished, give give give give give ("Give,
and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken
together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the
same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you;" Luke,
6:38).
A friend from Live Journal is featured in this
week's The New Yorker:
Populated by hundreds of nameless characters, Diane Arbus’s portraits Populated by hundreds of nameless characters, Diane Arbus’s portraits conjure infinite imaginary biographies. Ever since the Metropolitan Museum opened its retrospective of Arbus’s photographs, in March, her subjects have been turning up to give their own versions of their lives, an occurrence that is as illuminating and curious as a man in a red turban surfacing at a Van Eyck exhibit. There’s the peroxided wife, for instance, in “A Family on Their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, N.Y., 1968,” who has been in touch with the museum and is planning a visit. “Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1962,” is living up to his excitable reputation: numerous people have come forward, claiming to be the boy in the picture. “Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967,” still dress alike, but their once black hair is permed and tinted strawberry blond. They’ve taken to haunting the galleries, answering questions and posing in front of the photograph that Arbus made when they were children.
“I often wonder how many of us there are,” Lorna Anton, the subject of “A Young Waitress at a Nudist Camp, N.J., 1963,” said recently, speaking from her home, in Pensacola, Florida. Anton’s portrait—which shows her wearing nothing but a silver hairband and a starched white demi-apron—was taken at Sunshine Park, a preserve run by the American Sunbathing Association on more than a hundred acres of piney woods near the township of May’s Landing. From 1961 to 1965, Anton and her parents and her younger brother lived there, in a double-wide trailer with a sign out front that her father had carved to depict four blue jays.
“Arbus came into the dining hall and had a soda,” Anton recalled. “She asked if I had a break coming up, and I said, ‘O.K.,’ not thinking anything really, not that I was destined to be hallmarked as an icon. I was almost thirteen, just at that moment of change, when I was becoming a woman, and here was somebody who was actually very interesting and took an interest in me and wanted to have a photograph, and I thought, Well, O.K., that’s cool.”
It was July, a hot day, so the two walked outside. Lore has it that Arbus often went naked with her nudist subjects, but in Sunshine Park she did not do as the Sunshine Parkers did. (As Anton remembered it, Arbus remained in a tank top and shorts, escaping the sobriquet “cottontail.”) “I said, ‘Well, how do you want me?’ ”Anton recalled. “And she said, ‘Just put your weight on your right leg and put your other leg forward a bit’ ”—a stance that, in the resulting image, emphasizes a nasty cut on Anton’s front shin. “Then she said, ‘Just kind of look over my shoulder,’ which I did. She took maybe one or two shots, and then she said thank you and we smiled and off she went.” The print that Arbus chose shows the dining hall and, in the middle of the frame, Anton—a Kritios boy with blond, teased hair and nubby breasts. Her restive expression seems to issue a challenge. “There were so many things that interested me in life, and so many things that I wanted to do,” Anton explained. “I really was feeling, I think, that I was about to enter on a quest.”
Anton made little of the encounter until, several years later, she and her parents received a large manila envelope with a typewritten letter. “The Museum of Modern Art in New York City is arranging a show of my work and I would like to ask your permission to display a photograph of Lorna which I took of her in Sunshine Park in 1963,” Arbus wrote. “I am enclosing a print of the photo for you to keep. This is a great honor for me and would be a great honor for Lorna as well.” (Anton reread the letter so many times that she committed it to memory.)
By then, the nudist idyll was coming to an end. SPF was replacing baby oil and iodine, and Anton and her family had moved to a split-level house in May’s Landing proper. “With puberty comes modesty,” Anton said. Furthermore, the family-centered postwar ethos of nudism had given way to a more libertine strain. (In 1948, the New York Post columnist Earl Wilson wrote, of a visit to Sunshine Park, “If your wife wears a nightgown at breakfast, don’t cuss her. Congratulate her. I looked rather thoroughly at these nude women and believe me . . .”; in 1963, the film “Have Figure, Will Travel” chronicled the exploits of three bachelorettes on a yacht tour of the Eastern Seaboard’s clothing-optional camps.) Together, Anton and her parents discussed the merits of participating. “My father said, ‘Well, there will be a certain amount of notoriety. Do you want to do this?’ ” Anton said. “I slept on it and woke up and said yes.”
The ensuing years of Anton’s life have been, like anyone’s, mundane and extraordinary: war protests, marriage, parenthood; pottery, medieval reënactments, health problems. For years, Anton kept her Arbus in a safe-deposit box, but when business debts mounted, in the nineties, she sold the print to a broker in San Francisco. (Last month, a print of the Anton portrait went for a hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars at Sotheby’s.) The Met show has got her thinking about the golden days of May’s Landing. “I miss the wonderful environs of the park,” she said. “It ran along the Great Egg Harbor River, a tidal river. The water was the color of root beer, from the cedar trees, and we were always finding arrowheads and axe heads and chips of flint, because the Lenni-Lenape Indians had lived along those banks. There was black clay along the banks. We used to goof around and rub our legs in it and say, ‘Oh, I’m having a mud bath!’ ”
"Where Are They Now"
By Lauren Collins
I love Live Journal: today I received two
paintings from an LJ friend--gifts!--and then read this:
Mom. Mommy. Mother. Today is Mother's
Day. I woke early again; five or a few minutes after five and I
could see a car or two driving down Rt. 141 in the early morning
gray paleness. I wanted to sleep; last night included an art opening
here in Eastworks at
Luke's studio and
then poetry and Kim Gordon and
Thurston Moore at The
Apollo Grill; and people from the opening wanting to see my loft
and me showing it to them. I didn't go to church and felt guilty for
not going; I cherish the hour spent there every Sunday but I woke
tired--and early--and spent the morning editing the photos for my
exhibition at Easthampton Savings Bank and here at Studio 19.
Craving bacon with my eggs, I was at Big E's as soon as it opened,
hurried home, fried five slices and made home-fries, an English
Muffin and two scrambled eggs---and then after finishing with
breakfast I felt like a stuffed pig.
I always miss my mother. And I always miss her
more on Mother's Day. And today, I miss Betsy, too; family. Things change.
Every Mother's Day I look back at today I see the kids and I buying
a plant at Ryan Road School for Betsy. And we would hide it next to
the garage and then on Sunday morning place it on the front porch;
sometimes we would hang it; some years it lived well into the autumn
and some years it died; some years we would find a hummingbird at
its flowers.
It is evening now. Mozart is on the radio.
Arise, then, women of
this day! Arise all
women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be
that of water or of
fears!
Say firmly: "We will not
have great questions
decided by irrelevant
agencies. Our husbands
shall not come to us,
reeking with carnage,
for caresses and
applause. Our sons shall
not be taken from us to
unlearn all that we have
been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and
patience."
We women of one country
will be too tender of
those of another country
to allow our sons to be
trained to injure
theirs. From the bosom
of the devastated earth
a voice goes up with our
own. It says "Disarm,
Disarm! The sword of
murder is not the
balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our
dishonor nor violence
indicate possession. As
men have often forsaken
the plow and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all
that may be left of home
for a great and earnest
day of counsel. Let them
meet first, as women, to
bewail and commemorate
the dead.
Let them then solemnly
take counsel with each
other as to the means
whereby the great human
family can live in
peace, each bearing
after their own time the
sacred impress, not of
Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood
and of humanity, I
earnestly ask that a
general congress of
women without limit of
nationality may be
appointed and held at
some place deemed most
convenient and at the
earliest period
consistent with its
objects, to promote the
alliance of the
different nationalities,
the amicable settlement
of international
questions, the great and
general interests of
peace.
Julia Ward Howe wrote this in Boston in 1870, as a
response to the devastation of the American Civil War.
The goal was the creation of an international mother's
day of activism for peace, to draw mothers together from
every around a common purpose -- refusing to allow their
sons and husbands to be ripped away to serve in the war
machine. For three decades, rallies were held on
Mother's Day for Peace. In the early 20th century, the
florist industry waged a successful campaign to have the
meaning of Mother's Day changed, so that it became a day
where we show our appreciation for our mothers with a
bouquet of flowers.
Saturday 07
It is
completed. I have an appointment on Monday at Greniers. And looking
at files and files of photos trying to determine what images to
exhibit at Easthampton Savings and what images to show here at
Studio 19.
Friday 06
"And Then What Happened?"
Today I remembered how I loved science fiction
when I was a child and thus this image below. I also thought to
myself (what with Mother's Day right around the corner) what a great
mom Betsy is and saw her out on the front lawn helping Danielle to
become a better softball pitcher.
Sometimes in their chanting, monks will land upon
a note and sing it in florid fashion, one syllable of
text for fifty notes of chant. Mellisma, they call it.
Living a melismatic life in imitation of plain chant we
may stop on an experience, a place, a person, or a
memory and rhapsodize in imagination. Some like to
meditate or contemplate melismatically, while others
prefer to draw, build, paint, or dance whatever their
eye has fallen upon.
Living one point after another is one form of experience
and it can be emphatically productive but stopping for
melisma gives the soul its reason for being
~Thomas Moore
Thursday 05
Missing.
Wednesday 04
MASSMoCA.
Tuesday 03
News. My photographs are going to be
featured and on display at Easthampton Savings Bank; more about this
as I learn more.
Soon after I photographed the sunrise this
morning, I discovered Lulu.
I came upon the great work of a
Karen Kuehn
today.
Monday 02
An Idea. Why not? Jennifer, of "For the
Health of It," could be the chef for private parties for which I
rent my space.
MASS MoCAStudio 19 offers some
of the most dramatic and creative spaces in
Berkshire County Hampshire County to host
receptions or other special events. Selecting
MASS MoCAStudio 19 as a special event
site for your party, celebration, or business dinner is
a unique way to support MASS MoCA
Studio 19 while ensuring that your event has a
distinctive cultural dimension. MASS MoCAStudio 19 provides a seasoned professional
support staff who ensure that every detail reflects your
own unique style and personality.
One Year Later. I still hang my hat (s)
at Studio 19 in Eastworks
in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
When I look out the windows, I still see the
mountain range.
When I walk on The Manhan Rail Trail, I still
find beauty.
When I stop to see, I discover dream worlds.
Tesia, of Suze Co here
in Eastworks, is making a small book of my photographs for the
upcoming Stationary Show in NYC. Holding the images in her hands,
she said, "Bruce, your work is very beautiful and surreal."
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