Early Anatomy Graphics

The Graphics Fairy. Source link here.

Air Dry Porcelain Clay

I challenged myself to make something every day for 30 days and post on my blog. Here is what I made today. I only had about 20 minutes to myself today. I have an idea about two vessel like forms joined together - similar to lungs. These are too round for me. Will have to try it again tomorrow. Each one about 2.5 inches in length. Each one fits in the palm of your hand. This part I like.

Spell of the Sensuous

I just got David Abram's new book, Becoming Animal. I am a huge fan of Spell of the Sensuous. My copy is marked up and tagged with post-its notes. Ants that take rice and spiders in caves are two of my favorite memories from this book. A few years back I assigned Spell to my advanced sculpture class. Each week we read a chapter and discussed in class. In addition to discussion, students were asked to make a small, visual piece that responded to the chapter. All the work produced was reflective and thoughtful visual interpretations of the chapter. For one of my students, a love affair with using rice in her work began with this book.

"In prose at once poetic and precise, Abram demonstrates that our most cherished human attributes - from the gift of language, to the awareness of past and future, to the rational intellect itself - all emerge in interaction with the animate natural world, and remain wholly dependent upon that living world for their coherence. Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this astonishing and intensely ethical work." Source is Wild Ethics. Link here.

"The book touches on a wide range of themes, from our perception of the natural world to the way we use of language and symbols to process our experience." The Ecology of Magic: An Interview with David Abram by Scott London. Link here.

Drawings of Curiosities

"Albertus Seba's "Cabinet of Curiosities" is one of the 18th century's greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time.
Though it was common for men of his profession to collect natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665-1736) had a passion that led him far beyond the call of duty. His amazing, unprecedented collection of animals, plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned illustrations of each and every specimen and arranged the publication of a four-volume catalog detailing his entire collection-from strange and exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, insects, butterflies and more, as well as fantastic beasts, such as a hydra and a dragon.
Seba's scenic illustrations, often mixing plants and animals in a single plate, were unusual even for the time. Many of the stranger and more peculiar creatures from Seba's collection, some of which are now extinct, were as curious to those in Seba's day as they are to us now."

I have romantic notions about cabinets of curiosities. The thrill of the search and the satisfaction of the find. How each object holds a memory of when it was found. The desire to keep looking, keep collecting. And then the drawings, yet another romance. The time spent in solitude responding to marks on the paper. The layers of graphite and charcoal. The magic of an image appearing on the two-dimensional surface.

I found images and quote on BibliOdyssey. Link here.

New York Historical Society

A few pics from the my visit to the New York Historical Society. I spend long stretches of time investigating small objects in museums. I am mostly interested in those objects that can be held in the palm of a hand and I am curious as to the purpose of the object. What ideas, needs and desires led to the formation/construction of such an object? Are these ideas cultural based? Purely functional? Purely sensual? All three? The attraction to the miniature is also here as there is some sort of magic in examining small objects, protecting them with one hand and the ease at which they can be carried with you. I also like that the objects have been touched.

Small Drawings on Pink Paper and Silver Leaf on Wood and Clay

Day three of 30 day challenge.

Drawing - Wet Gesso on Canvas