Liquid sculptures by Floto + Warner.

Ooh, ahh! Liquid sculptures by architectural photography team Floto + Warner.

Inspiring Artist: Bronwyn Oliver

Bronwyn Oliver was an Australian #sculptor. Her lovely, intricate globes and organic shapes make me want to get back in the shop! #metal sculpture inspiring artist art

Inspiring Artist: Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa's delicate-looking metal #sculptures are tugging at my heart-strings today. I love this dichotomy between a material as seemingly immutable as metal and her intricate, lacy forms that exude a sense of fragility. #Ruth Asawa #art #metal #sculpture #inspiring artist

Inspiring Artist: Danae Stratou

Desert Breath is a stunning earth work in Egypt, completed in 1997 by artist @DanaeStratou and her team. It’s pretty much just displaced sand piled into a spiraling pattern on the desert floor. What’s fascinating and surprising is that it has remained intact almost 20 years after it’s completion. I’ve lived in the American Southwest and also in the Northwest — one desert environment, and one mostly forest and water. It’s interesting how time affects each of these types of landscapes differently. It moves so much slower in the desert. Human marks can last decades, even centuries. But in the forest, all that extra water allows nature’s processes of decay and growth to happen much faster. Human imprints can be wiped out in a much shorter timeframe. #Danae Stratou #Land Art #Landscape #Art #Environment #Inspiring Artist

Inspiring Artist: Jang Yong Sun

Sometimes you’re just working away on your own stuff, and all of a sudden you come upon another artist who is doing exactly what you’ve got in your head. I spent a bunch of hours earlier this week slicing pipe so that I could create a honeycomb-like pattern and weld together a hollow, steel sphere. And then this morning, I came across Jang Yong Sun's work. Un-flipping-believable! It's so fantastic, I think my eyes might just tear up a bit. You’ll find me in working at my welding table this weekend! #art #welding #steel #sculpture #metal #contemporary art #inspiring artist

Clare Leighton. Depression Era Wood Engraver and Printer

Clare Leighton. Depression era wood engraver and printer. Her depictions of urban poverty and desperation are contrasted by other images that reflect a nostalgia for farm life. #Clare Leighton #Engraving #landscape #art #depression era

Grant Mudford’s American Landscapes

Grant Mudford's #photographs of the #American #landscape have captured my attention today. These images illustrate the residue of human intervention on the land. In some ways its as if the native landscape ceases to exist. If there's nature in the photo at all, it's relegated to the margins and the background. These images aren’t joyous — I get a sense of melancholy, maybe a touch of nihilism. I think the symmetry and geometric formal qualities in these three photographs enhance those feelings. The artifacts depicted in these landscapes are monumental, almost bigger than life, but they seem deserted, unloved, left behind. I always say that people are like rats. We populate a space and make huge messes; in a way we’re nesting I guess. Then, when the mess becomes intolerable, we move on to someplace else. Now that we’ve pretty-much taken over any habitable place on the planet (and some uninhabitable ones too), we don’t have anywhere else to go. What happens now? I don’t know. #photography #landscape #grant mudford #America 1 note

Rain at Night

This is what I have heard at last the wind in December lashing the old trees with rain unseen rain racing along the tiles under the moon wind rising and falling wind with many clouds trees in the night wind after an age of leaves and feathers someone dead thought of this mountain as money and cut the trees that were here in the wind in the rain at night it is hard to say it but they cut the sacred 'ohias then the sacred koas then the sandalwood and the halas holding aloft their green fires and somebody dead turned cattle loose among the stumps until killing time but the trees have risen one more time and the night wind makes them sound like the sea that is yet unknown the black clouds race over the moon the rain is falling on the last place —W.S. Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees, 1988 1 note

American Landscape Painting in the 1800s

I’ve been reading a lot about Americans’ attitudes towards landscape/nature over the past 200-ish years. In the 1700’s it seems that painting landscape just wasn’t something that was considered acceptable. It wasn’t until the very late 1700’s that Americans realized that they had something uniquely different from Europe, and they began to (sort-of) celebrate it. Romanticism was in its heyday during the first half of the 19th Century, and the paintings pictured above were created during this time. Many artists during this time wanted to celebrate pastoral nature, the agrarian landscape, evidence of the people’s control over the land for production purposes. They weren’t quite ready, it seems, to depict full-blown wilderness in a positive light, as it was still dangerous and frightening. In these images, we see lots of human activity on the fringes between wilderness and civilization. Urban development was looked down upon as well as wilderness. The rural farm life was seen as the most virtuous. Cities and industry were depicted far in the distance, with these pastoral and leisurely images in the foregrounds. Picnics and farms were common subjects during this era. #landscape #painting #art #America #Thomas Cole #Winslow Homer #Alvan Fisher #PNCAmfa

Ellen Sollod: Studio Visit

Ellen Sollod is an amazing, thoughtful, and generous Seattle #artist. I had a fantastic studio visit and lunch with her today! Learned all about the trials and tribulations of working in the world of public art. #publicart #studiovisit

What I’m Reading Now

The stack of books I’m sifting through these days. #art #landscape #nature

Harry Dodge at Henry Art Museum

Last night Matt and I went to see an art talk with Harriet “Harry” Dodge at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. I was super inspired!

Still shot from the video.

We saw a hilarious video called The Ass and the Lapdog that tackled issues of language — the ways we describe images with words to create materiality in the minds of others. And body language is so essential. The stories each character describes are so vivid and funny, so strange and surreal. Imagination is key for both the story teller and the listener.

I would love to have Harry come as a visiting artist at PNCA next summer... So smart, thoughtful, funny, and insightful. I love all the different media at play in these explorations of language and imagination.