Two minds

I like to think, as I browse my personal library in my leisure moments, that my fingers are touching the greatest minds in history -- both men [that's for You, Molly!] and Women.

But great minds do not live forever, do not communicate themselves, solely through the printed word. We see, we experience emotion, wisdom, genius, also through art.
So I can touch a chipped bit of rock that was once in the hands of some ancient arrow-maker and feel of his or Her intelligence. So I can let my eyes follow the curve of a ceramic piece that I bought from an artist several years ago, and contemplate Her mind.

I bring to your attention two artists of whom I know: Ela, whose works are sometimes enigmatic, sometimes astounding; and Nivi, who draws with something of an Impressionistic feel. Both these Ladies are, through Their work, sharing with us something of the genius and complexity of Their respective minds.

What I find truly wonderful is that two people can take the same medium and create completely different beauty with it.

What I find truly wonderful is that this also reveals how silly it is to put all Women [men too, I suppose -- that's for You again Molly (o:] in the same box, to believe that They all think alike, act alike, have the same likes and dislikes, etc.

Ela's a good blog friend and Nivi is someone who needs to be on my blog list -- I communicated with Her briefly when my blog was new but only rediscovered Her blog today.

Ela's work is found at timeparticular.blogspot.com. She's in a cosmic mood this week, as this painting of Hers reveals:



Nivi is at ravemyreflexions.blogspot.com.



I'm out of time to blog any more today. But if either of the above persons visits this post today, I'd like Your permission to post samples of Your work here to help make my point.

Interesting weblink for the artistic among us

http://www.elfwood.com/art/n/e/nedda/nedda.html

Connections ...

About a year ago, I discovered that our local fine arts museum had acquired one of the sculptures upon which Nathaniel Hawthorne based his novel, "The Marble Faun."

So I went to the museum and then read the book. Visiting the museum was the easy part. Finding the book wasn't. As usual, the local bookstore had never heard of it and my county library --- pfft, I've seen auto repair shops with more books in stock than that place.

There appears to be some idea that Nathaniel Hawthorne only wrote one book, "The Scarlet Letter," then was whisked off into outer space by Martians, never to write again.

But eventually, I found it. And read it. And liked it. And I recommend it. It beautifully breathes the spirit of 19th century Rome.

Fast forward to this evening, when I took my Sweetie to get Her hair done.

I picked up an odd magazine in the lobby, "Garden and Gun." I kid you not. Only in the South would one find such a combo. I'm not much into periodicals about shooting things, so I don't know why I bothered even to crack it open, especially since I had Plutarch with me, on my designated reading list.

I am so glad that I did.

Buried amongst tales of bullet-riddled waterfowl was a gem of an article about the Elizabethan Gardens of North Carolina, USA. They have been planted on the very spot where the so-called Lost Colony was founded more than 400 years ago -- the first serious attempt of the English to settle North America.

In these gardens stands a statue. If I get permission, I will post a photo of it.

From www.elizabethgardens.org:

"This graceful statue is the artist’s version of an adult Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. Sculpted of Carrara marble in Italy by American sculptor, Maria Louisa Lander in 1859, the statue spent two years at the bottom of the sea following a shipwreck off the coast of Spain. The statue was salvaged and shipped to Boston, where it survived a fire. In 1923, Miss Lander willed the statue to the State of North Carolina, where it was displayed in several buildings but was eventually sent to the basement of the old Supreme Court Building as some found her lack of clothing objectionable."

But from tonight's magazine reading, I have learned that Ms. Lander was a Salem native, who, like Her fellow Salem-ite, the aforementioned Hawthorne, left that city for the Eternal City, Rome, about the same time that he did. She stopped in London along the way and saw drawings by John White, Virginia Dare's grandfather. The story of that vanished child fascinated Her, and when She got to Rome, She created in clay Her vision of what the Girl would have looked like as an adult, then had an Italian carve it in marble. It is speculated that the statue's beautiful figure is based on Her own, of which She was justifiably proud.

Meanwhile, Lander had befriended Hawthorne and he based a character in "The Marble Faun" on Her.

What a fascinating web of connections. And to think that, for me, they came together in "Garden and Gun Magazine."

My art museum

I walked through the galleries of my local fine arts museum yesterday. I looked at Chinese pots dating back 8,ooo years and British watercolors only a century old. I gazed upon glossy silver and coins from the Byzantine Empire.

And I thought about how everything in the place was so stripped of context, trapped in those sterile glass boxes with only little placards to explain what it was.

In my art museum, it would be different. If I were going to display Medieval English stained glass from a church, you would walk into a darkened room with worn brick beneath your feet and the smell of incense in the air. The glass would be upon the wall with sunlight or at least faux sunlight shining through it. And you would sit upon a wooden pew with period church music softly playing, and thus experience it the way the artist intended.

If I were going to display Russian items, I would turn the thermostat in the room down until it was almost frigid. And you would walk a few steps through some artificial snow to get to the exhibit and you'd hear murmurs of authentic Russian conversation and maybe have to pay with a ruble to get inside.

If I were going to display ancient pots excavated from a Chinese burial chamber, I would recreate the very ambience of that chamber, as if my visitors were the archaeologists who discovered it.

What was She thinking?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070721/ap_on_re_eu/odd_france_kissed_painting

Out of France today comes this strange story of a Woman being arrested for kissing a famous painting. The kiss left a lipstick smudge behind, which was not considered an improvement to the original.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Expectorator

Weird Internet discovery of the day.

I like it. It's slightly disturbing, as is most of the artist's (Kim Simonsson) work. It's definitely not kitchsy like a Precious Moment or incomprehensible and annoying like a so-called modern art paint splatter.

It juxtaposes conflicting concepts in a bizzare fashion (cute little girl; unsettling, ghostly complexion; and decidedly uncute creation by said little girl of a long strand of saliva.)

Like Munch's Scream, it's devastatingly original and clearly not the product of a pretentious non-talent hiding behind the modern art label.