Francesca Woodman

"Francesca Woodman is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s brief but extraordinary career to be seen in North America. More than thirty years after her death, the moment is ripe for a historical reconsideration of her work and its reception. Woodman’s oeuvre represents a remarkably rich and singular exploration of the human body in space and of the genre of self-portraiture in particular. Her interest in female subjectivity, seriality, Conceptualist practice, and photography’s relationship to both literature and performance are also hallmarks of the heady moment in American photography during which she came of age." - source is Guggenheim. Link here.

Wild Color by Jenny Dean

The author has a blog.  Link here.

Round and Pink

PAINT AND PAINT NAMES

"With the rise of cities, the wall's real enemy is not nature but other human beings who lead secretive lives on the opposite side, lives that are contiguous with ours but that we seldom see, that make their presence felt only by means of late-night quarrels, the distasteful smells of cooking, creaking box springs, and the constant murmur of flushing toilets. Overcrowding and urbanization have given the wall new meaning. Ever since the first loose stone was piled on top of another, crude partitions have delineated property and thus served as architectural extensions of our sense of identity, a way of saying to our enemies "mine," a deed of ownership we sign in bricks and mortar. As we are herded together by overpopulation and are forced to abandon the luxury of detached dwellings for small apartments, the architectural ramparts of our identities are besieged by the madding crowd, which would claim its share of the ever-dwindling space available in which to lead lives that have become more and more solitary the closer we live to each other. The poetry of paint names is based on a misanthropic aesthetic, one that pretends that our walls are not communal property, are not shared, that there is nothing behind them but the green sward, wide open spaces devoid of other people, vast horizons of Island Dawns, Arizona Sunsets, Big Skies, Mountain Forests, Pink Mesas, and Burning Sands. Paint provides us with a psychological barrier from our neighbors, a way of achieving a sense of self-containment and allowing our imaginations to revel in that most pressing desideratum of urban life—space, the empty clearings available for a song on the color preview palette." -an excerpt from the article Paint and Paint Names by Daniel Harris, Cabinet Magazine, Issue 7, Failure, Summer 2002. Link here to read full article.

Sampling of Benjamin Moore's "white" paint chips.  Image source is from the article Paint and Paint Names, link above.

Source is Cabinet Magazine

Anatomical Teaching Model of a Pregnant Woman

1639-1715 Wood and ivory. Source is Bioephemera. Link here.

Storing The Collection

In and Out of the Martial Bed by Diane Wolfthal

Well, a sick child and piled up grading cut my endeavor of making something for 30 days short. I made it further than I thought I would, so maybe that is worth something. Anyway, back in the studio today.

I have been interested in the history of the bed for a long time - finally found a book that is a wonderful read and great source of information.

"This book explores images whose sexual content has all too often been either ignored or denied. Each chapter is devoted to a place that artists associated with sexual activity or desire: the bed, the dressing area of the home, the window and doorway, the bath, and the street. By examining both canonical works, such as Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait and Petrus Christus’ Goldsmith’s Shop and long-neglected objects, such as combs, badges, and bathhouse murals, and by investigating a wide range of sexualities—same-sex desire, adultery, marriage, courtship, and prostitution—Wolfthal demonstrates how illicit forms of sexuality were linked to the “chaste sexuality” of marriage." - source is Yale University Press.

From the book, "...combs were personal objects that came in intimate contact with the beloved during the process of beautification."  The book offers several visuals combs and discusses how the act of combing ones hair was considered seductive.  I am interested in how objects become a significant part of a culture.  Combs "...designed to serve as love tokens."  The above image is by an anonymous English artist, around 1600, entitled Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southhampton and is discussed in the book.