Say Whaaaa Wednesday... Art in Action

I am not one to be a fan of "pop culture" art but this creative venture truly is amazing. I am aware it is possible to have constructed this film through animation, but the source where I retrieved the video claims it was all done in brief seconds of film and continual painting and repainting the figures. Some incredibly impressive radical fusion going on in this video!

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

The Stone of a Poet- By Jenna Reimer

What should I know of death?
Drawing in a light breath,
Feeling life in all my limbs,
I stand single.
In the midst of greater shadows
I become a form beyond my solemn;
My fingers birth twisted fibers
Of coiling vines that threaten
The green-blue grassland I stand upon.
Shedding dead bark from my lips,
Red hued leaves from my hair,
My pillared body becomes a purposed bough.
Fear and forgotten trust, silence and solace
Skulls and death becomes an altar
Within my undisturbed mossy roots.

Serene Saturday... The Art of Slumber

How fascinating it is that what one may find most intriguing is the very thing that is the farthest from that individual’s own being. Perhaps fascinating is not the correct word, as that very concept, essentially reverse psychology, is a human’s instinctive behavior; what one may see as unfamiliar, generally, becomes utterly captivating to him or her.

I have always been mesmerized by the act of sleeping; ironically, sleep is a luxury I have been unable to attain. How glorious it is to have a period where the thousands of unrelated and minuscule actions experienced throughout the day are blended into a cohesive vision. It is a brief moment where reality and reverie collide, diving into a brilliant world of unimaginable world where everything is upside down and backwards in a strikingly beautiful way.

Being lost in such a meditative thought, I had to look towards the Romantic poets for answers. William Wordsworth poem “To Sleep” (one of three of the poems titled “To Sleep”) encapsulates a contemplative thought where the speaker unearths his or her own uneasiness towards the calm and serene act of sleeping.


"To Sleep" (1806)
- William Wordsworth

O GENTLE SLEEP! do they belong to thee,
These twinklings of oblivion? Thou dost love
To sit in meekness, like the brooding Dove,
A captive never wishing to be free.
This tiresome night, O Sleep! thou art to me
A Fly, that up and down himself doth shove
Upon a fretful rivulet, now above
Now on the water vexed with mockery.
I have no pain that calls for patience, no;
Hence am I cross and peevish as a child:
Am pleased by fits to have thee for my foe,
Yet ever willing to be reconciled:
O gentle Creature! do not use me so,
But once and deeply let me be beguiled.

(Oil Painting: The Mask By Kathy Ostman-Magnusen)

F*ck It Friday! Thoughts on "Nothingness"

Hmmm… how mundane our lives are. For F*ck It Friday I decided to post a novel written by the brilliant Jean-Paul Sartre as this work seems to reflect the idea of life being extremely dull, which in turn causes us to get a bad case of the “F*ck Its.”

Nausea has been one of Sartre’s most notable and intriguing novels. Chronicling the life of a Historian, Sartre depicts human life as a trivial existence that misappropriates the gravity expressed towards petty issues. The novel illustrates our humdrum lives as simply being a meaningless existence; this concept reflects his existentialist philosophical perception on the art of “being.” The Main character experiences a strange and sickening sensation he is unable to identify which seems to be Sartre’s way of illustrating the pain we feel after discovering our lives are essentially worthless.

Depressing isn’t it? It appears we are afraid to acknowledge we exist in an essence that is separate from other people and material objects: “existence precedes essence.” Ultimately, there is this bare existence that is utterly tragic. Human life is incredibly isolating and meaningless, and in order to “get by” if you will, we must assert our own existence and escape into the nothingness that our insignificant lives offer.

Say Whaaaa? Wednesday!

Just when you thought fashion could not get any more eccentric someone like Isabel Mastache comes along and knocks down the wall of conventional style.

At Cibeles Madrid Fashion Week for fall 2010, Isabel appears to have pulled off a… creative isn’t quite the word I’m looking for… “exciting” show for the male fashion fanatic with a pair of penis pants. Get it? “Excited”… like when a man is… well you get it; sorry, I suck at puns. She also took influence from famed movies and story books such as The Wizard of Oz and Where the Wild Things. Isabel’s frivolity towards fashion is a breath of sexual promiscuity mixed with the reverie of childhood innocence… strange combination but it makes for a good show! She has truly created an illustrative line that restores the much needed risk that is essential to artistic growth and creativity.

Stay Tuned...

I will be having three theme days...

"Say Whaaaaaa? Wednesday"
"Fuck it Friday"
"Serene Saturday"

You all will see what each theme day will entail, however, I'm guessing the names are self explanatory... sort of. They will be fab and fun and, as per usual, stick to the themes of art, poetry and fashion!

The Body and Blood of Art... really.

The spectrum of artistic creativity has an extremely long and winding plane that seems to be warping in and out of consciousness every minute. Does that even make sense?
An artist by the name of Gunther von Hagen has created a controversial form of art that has ruffled a lot of the tight wads feathers. His art is a display of partially dissected corpses in varying poses, mostly sporting positions. Von Hagen’s exhibit will be arriving in my city, Calgary, in May 2010 at the Science Center.

I am utterly fascinated by such a brilliant way to expose the bleak reality of the human body’s inevitable demise. Not only is von Hagen unearthing the complex beauty of our biological inner workings, his art reflects a notion that the conventional world seems to cast as arrogant: Our bodies do not hold any type of significant substance, our physical selves are ultimately flesh and bone which will whittle away into the nothingness of our world. He is elevating the concept of self identity by illustrating the misappropriation of value that is placed onto our physical bodies.

Am I going out on a far out limb here? Is von Hagen taking his anatomist background and simply experimenting with art? Maybe… all I know is the radical fusion he is creating sure made my mind go to a tea party with Charles Darwin and Jean-Paul Sartre.