Doing good with music, poetry, and prose
After my slightly ranty art update on Wednesday, I did receive several images depicting happy or laughing women (with faces). They are fantastic, and they were all discovered for me by the wonderful Kristina Miller. Thank you, my dear friend.
Now that is some art that’s good for the soul. Admit it, you smiled too.
This is a really lovely nude sculpture by Philippe Faraut. It is entitled “Serendipity.”
Philippe Farout has a large collection of really intriguing figural sculptures, and you should check them out on his website. I particularly admire Farout because he is actively seeking to teach his methodology to other artists. I believe this proves that he truly believes in his form and medium, and that he has a spirit of abundance and generosity. It is really wonderful to see an artist being generous with their work.
This piece is awesome just by being there and itself, but I particularly like it because it features a female figure who is smiling. The vast majority of female depictions fall into one of three categories.
1) Woman looking away. I would put any art in this category that contains part of a female form but not the face. This is extremely common.
2) Woman with blank look. The staring, glassy-eyed at the viewer with a total absence of expression that is supposed to be sexy or something.
3) Woman crying or otherwise in distress. It’s true that distress or tears can be forms of expression, but I have yet to find one single piece of artwork depicting a man crying.
Lots of these pieces of art are fantastic, and it’s possible you’ll see images like this on this blog (or have already). I’m not commenting on the quality of these artworks or on any single piece or artist in particular. I just think it’s strange as a trend, that women are so rarely depicted as happy. What’s really frightening to me is that almost all happy female images are little girls. As if joy is only lovely on the young, or women are slated for distress and tears.
If you have a work or know of a work that depicts a happy woman (with a face), please post it below or send me the link. I’d love to have the next art update be a collection of happy, smiling women.
Mindy Shapero, a mixed media sculptor who captured my heart with this lovely image.
I love the movement of this piece, and how delicate it appears. When I first found this image it was entitled simply “White,” but a little digging has revealed that it is only a piece of this sculpture
Which is entitled “It’s always happening right now even after,” a phrase that I find lovely all on its own. I love it because it’s true, that momentous events seem to have a life all their own in my experience of the present moment. I’m glad that I found this image the way I did, first with just that tiny piece. It’s like looking at an individual wave before glimpsing the entire ocean, which gives me a much better appreciation for the whole.
This is a small part of an interview with Mindy Shapero, in which she talks just a little about her process of creation and material selection. It’s kind of great.
I really wanted to post some artistic photography, but I had a harder time finding something I loved than I usually do (I love a lot of things). A quick search for “photography” on Pinterest returned a frankly shocking number of bridal and burlesque photos but not much else. But fear not, I believe that the photo below might be the best thing ever.
Again, apologies for the sidebar issues.
What I love about this photo is that it includes the baby’s smiling face and bright eyes. I think if it were cropped to show just the young and old hands, it wouldn’t have caught my eye as something special, because the implication of the photo would be too obvious and not very interesting. But that child’s face adds so much import and magic to this photo, which might be why I’ve spent so much time looking at it.
This phenomenal image was captured by Amanda Martin, a professional photographer who takes a lot of those bridal photos I mentioned before. I have no knowledge of her taking burlesque photos, but I didn’t look that hard. Amanda Martin also has a pretty great blog that you should check out, especially if you’re a mom and into to mom related blogs.
So this is two super sentimental posts in a row. I promise I’ll come up with something gritty or angsty next week. Probably. For right now, you must listen to this gorgeous song by Ray LaMontagne. It is the kind of song that makes me want sketch out a gentle romantic story, write a long lovely poem, or kiss a certain someone.
You will find this and other beautiful songs on the album God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise. Which you should buy just because that is an freakin’ awesome title for an album. But also because the music is fantastic. I’ve liked this song since I first heard it on Cities 97, but I really fell in love with it when they were playing the whole album on the patio of Chateau St. Croix while that certain someone and I were there drinking wine to celebrate our 8th anniversary.
In my now extensive travels through the artwork on Pinterest, I’ve started an entire board just for pictures, paintings, and sculptures of embrace. I honestly can go to that board, look at the pictures, and feel loved. It’s gorgeous. One of my favorite pieces from that board (although it is hard to choose a favorite) is this delicate painting by Xi Pan.
This is one of those images that make me feel I’m not alone. This image is so utterly true to my life, I can feel my daughter’s baby cheek on my shoulder when I look at it. I love that it illustrates how mothers and children are built to fit together just so, and how peaceful and comforting that one fact can be.
Xi Pan is a very impressive painter, well worth spending a few minutes exploring. She does these really lovely, slightly surreal female nudes; the painting I’ve chosen is actually not very representative of her work. So you should go check out the rest, because it’s awesome.
Metal light installations. Now, I will be the first to admit that the first time I heard the term “light installation” was on Sex and the City. Furthermore, ever since then I have periodically thought, “how can an artist possibly make a living on light installations? Who buys those? How would it even go in your house?” I’m happy to say that Valerie Boy answered all these questions to great satisfaction with her very first image, which for me, was this beauty.
This piece showed up on Apartment Therapy, where the writer described how this one piece took a rather dull apartment and made it notably beautiful. Almost all of Valerie Boy’s work that I’ve seen is both lovely with it’s intrinsic design and manipulation of white light, and practical on some level. She make lamps and pillows and other stuff you can use. I love when art can cross over into a certain pragmatism. Not that I practice that much myself; my books don’t work that well for doorstops or coasters. Trivets, maybe.
I have two artists for you today, since it is a day for a theme instead of a single showcase. I’ve run across two artists recently who make art that makes art. It seemed destined for this particular blog. The first one is…
This is a piece called a roliquery, which is (I believe) a limestone sculpture that makes these amazing artistic impressions when rolled in sand. Aside from the obvious beauty and stunning creativity of these pieces, I also love that there are so many possible imprints you can make with one roliquery, because of its extra dimension as a sphere, as opposed to a flat stamp.
Next up, Betsabee Romero
This is just one small example of what this phenomenal woman can do with a plain rubber tire. The website I’ve linked to is in Spanish, but that’s okay because you just have to look at the pictures. Look at as many of them as you can find, because just when you think she’s going to be out of ideas, WHAM! There’s something you completely new that you had no idea you could do with a tire.
These mechanical heart pendants by Frank Tjepkema are one of the more intricate pieces of art I’ve ever seen. I caught this gorgeous picture on Pinterest, and assumed this was a large (and very impressive) sculpture.
It wasn’t until I visited Tjepkema’s actual website that I realized this entire piece could nestle perfectly between my collar bones.
There is a whole series of these mechanical hearts, here is another one of my favorites.
Although I said that these pieces are by Frank Tjepkema, this is one of those annoying (to me) incidents when a successful artist has founded a company under their name (Tjep) and so it is impossible to tell if the pieces were created by the original artist or by a brilliant but invisible employee. If these pieces were made by someone other than Frank Tjepkema, I sincerely apologize for incorrectly crediting the work.
I don’t care how weird I sound, this vase is sexy. That’s right, sexy. You look at it and tell me you don’t feel that in a place where you really shouldn’t feel anything while looking at a vase.
This amazing piece is from a series called “Growth” by the lovely potter, Nancy Ross. Although I immediately felt that this was a strangely sexual vase, I feel completely vindicated in my response after learning from this article by Laura Parsons that this whole series was inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe. If anyone can make flowers sexy, it’s Gerogia O’Keeffe. If only because of my initial response, I believe that Ross has beautifully captured the spirit of O’Keeffe’s paintings in a completely new medium.
