Ornate labour

So I found these woodblocks at the Brimfield Antique Market in Massachusetts. Here's a website devoted to the sale of these blocks. It provides some information on their creation and use. The site listed above labels these blocks as having their origins in India, but the gentleman I bought them from told me these are from northern Pakistan. He also informed me that they range in age from 30- to 150- years old, the oldest generally being the more intricate pieces. The woodblocks are incredible just as objects unto themselves- gracefully and painstakingly carved treasures. I purchased them both as ornaments in this way and for their printing potentials. The first project I want to pursue with them is an illustration incorporating their patterns into the overall composition. I'll let you know when I've done something with them.

 

The Frog Prince

So anyone who's noticed my profile picture lately has seen a precursor to this photograph, but I was incredibly frustrated with the first one because it was slightly out of focus. In the case of the first shot that was fairly unavoidable given the circumstances- I was without a tripod and was forced to balance the camera on my chest while shooting.

Then tonight as I was making some tea I noticed another tree frog snacking on the window in an even better spot. I found a tripod and enlisted some help from my mom and here we have the collaborative result:

Below you'll find an even more glowing version, but I prefer the one above because you can see more detail on the frog.

Terrestrial Locomotion

I often go running in the evenings here in Granby, CT- a town some of my friends believe to be the greatest on earth. No matter how hyperbolic their beliefs, the landscapes one encounters while out can make it difficult to disagree.

 

On one such bout I stumbled onto a number of adjectives spray-painted on the road. A couple of examples follow.

It's obvious that these words are meant as encouragement to whomever regularly cycles on that route, but the idea struck me as both bizarre and inspiring.

In honor of this benevolent graffiti, I'd like to pursue my own brand of vandalized optimism. Be on the look-out.

The Peachy Cosmos

While chatting with my family after breakfast last week, my gran and I sat marveling at the complex patterning of some peaches on the table before us. I set out to document the sight to relay how much the surface resembled pictures I recalled seeing taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.

When actually comparing the universe to the fruit the resemblance isn't so impressive...go figure. As you can see below, the images of the universe appear far brighter and more intense than that of the peach and nectarine skin.

Nevertheless, the peaches continue to wow me. All images of the universe are from the Hubble Space Telescope and can be found on this site: http://hubblesite.org/

The Hermaphrodite with Nine Hearts

I stepped into the garden on Tuesday with a borrowed macro lens- an enlightening experience.

The petals of nascent daisy buds were like silk ribbons carefully woven together.

I watched with crazy clarity as bumblebees burrowed into flowers.

With this powerful new perspective I discovered a tiny tragedy on the pavement. Worms forced out of the soil by recent rain had been stranded to bake in the sun. From my regular height the worms' situation didn't seem so dire, but through the macro lens they were clearly dying.

One of the most amazing aspects of this performance were the veins that were visible beneath the skin of the earthworms. In the sequence below you can see the aortic valve propelling blood into the segment of the worm closest to the camera. To me the violence of this pumping was the surest sign of the worm's imminent demise.

Before I'm accused of animal cruelty, let me say that I did everything I could for all of the worms I could find in the parking lot after I had taken a minute or so to document them. I'm confident I saved at least a few.

This isn't the first bout of compassion I've felt for an earthworm. In high school I produced a small project to commemorate their constant solar-induced deaths. The point I guess was to focus on the microcosmic theatre that plays out all around us without our slightest knowledge.

It seems important to point out that I had a sense of humor about the whole thing. At the same time, it reminded me that death is just as much a surety for you or I as it is for an earthworm.

It seemed to make sense anthropomorphizing the worms. I made xerox transfers of their carcasses and produced a small dry-point etching (which I have since misplaced). I managed to find the sketch for the print buried in my basement- it's pictured below.

Looking back I'm not sure exactly what I wanted the xerox transfers to communicate, but as I see them now it appears as if the worms are disintegrating, or perhaps petrifying- to be remembered like mummies. I guess that's how I see a lot of my work, as a record, like a mummy or a time capsule- a way to preserve the mutable. Perhaps a fitting illustration of this concept is the self portrait I made as a mummy during a printmaking class at RISD, which can be found at my website:

Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

I don't trust as much to faith as Sir Walter Ralegh (whose "Author's Epitaph" to "Nature, That Washed Her Hands in Milk" is quoted above) did, but for me it eases the fear of the unknown to memorialize moments of my life, and that of others (and worms) through pictures.

Worms, by the way, get a bad rap in 16th century British poetry- they're always eating people in their graves. Andrew Marvell used worms as a means of convincing his mistress to part ways with her chastity in "To His Coy Mistress":

Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in they marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

That Marvell had a wild and dirty imagination, but he certainly had not studied his worm facts. He should have known better than to soil the reputation of the annelid- highly asexual creatures. Perhaps contemporary poets could learn from Marvell and pick on someone their own size when trying their game with the opposite sex.

The earthworm project was partly a response to a piece of poetry produced by a teacher I had at the time. She wrote a piece inspired by earthworm anatomy. Earthworms, she told us, possess nine hearts; hence the number of worms in the xerox print above.

I have since found that this is not entirely true- worms have aortic valves that supply oxygenated blood to their segments. It sounded too romantic anyway. As I pointed out for Andrew Marvell above, earthworms are terribly unromantic. They all possess both male and female sexual organs. And besides, a moving intestinal tract can't be expected to woo too much.

Still, the worm poem got me thinking enough to produce the project at the time. Now that worms are back in my mind I'm thinking of making a huge print of one of the earthworm shots. It could serve as a reminder of the mind-boggling diversity of infinitesimal life that carries on always and everywhere.

For those interested in other worm facts: http://urbanext.illinois.edu/worms/facts/index.html

This post is ridiculous.

Numerical elegance

As a student in Providence I developed a fascination for these ubiquitous parking stubs I'd find on the ground. The relationship between the color of font and background is beautiful in nearly all of them, and the level of deterioration of some only adds to their aesthetic value. I discovered that I'm not alone in my garbage fetishism- Maira Kalman (Artsy page here) acted as guest critic to a class I took at RISD, where she revealed her shared passion for the delicate composition of all this pragmatic refuse.

These parking stubs began ending up in my work in various forms- first in paintings and then in a few screen-printed shirts. Lately I've been hankering to make some oil paintings of them- but big. We'll see. The painting is watercolor on paper and approx. 4" x 7". The shirt is on me.