some things to share...

in case you haven't noticed, things have been somewhat crazy here with activity for the past few months or so, and now i've got another week before all should calm down. this afternoon i was trying to deal with an incredibly messy desktop and found some image files that have been hanging around like little magnets of attraction... so i figured i'd post them (and since they are all without reference to where i got them, if i cribbed them from your blog please forgive the lack of credit).

i hope they will suffice for the week, and perhaps by next week airforms will become a bit more active again...

this 7" record sleeve is one of my all time favorites, and the only thing here that i own. unfortunately the music isn't too exciting (sounding a bit like the theme to the early 70's tv show the dating game), but the image of the band standing upon a giant floating upside down starfish kills me.

this is an image of agnes martin's last drawing, sent to me by michael ned holte, whom i will be collaborating with on a public talk on october 7th at 8 pm in conjunction with my exhibition at the pomona college museum of art. (and i do wish i owned this drawing, very much...)

this is a still image from gary beydler's hand held day. one of my absolute favorite films i've seen in a long time. the ucla film and television recently showed some 60's and 70's experimental films that had been recently restored, and beydler's film was a revelation. it's a deceptively simple work, made by shooting still frames over a single day of beydler's hand holding a mirror reflecting the opposite view. over the 6 minutes of the film, the images move from dusk to dawn, and it is incredible beautiful. there is a wonderful contrast in the light movement, the slight jittery finger tips and mirror movement stutters. it also reminded me of some of dennis oppenheim's films using his hands, as well as a kind of secret companion to early land art and earthworks.

a 1940's linen postcard of a bandstand looking like a rainbow with eyes.

one of the best record labels i've seen, from a mexican 45, probably 1970's, certainly influenced by rat fink, weird-ohs, nutty mads, etc.

a small cardboard and paint sculpture by lygia clark... no words necessary...

a 1971 japanese woodblock print by joichi hoshi called snowball. it is one of a series of prints all related to the snowball motif, but this is by far the nicest, particularly because it looks so much like an audio speaker...

wordless and silent experience...

"my interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art work which is also wordless and silent.

...those who depend upon the intellect are many. those who depend upon perception alone are the few.

we perceive - we see. we see with our eyes and we see see with our minds. we want to see the truth about life and all of beauty.

both are a great mystery to us.

perceiving is the same as receiving and it the same as responding. perception means all of them. it goes on all the time whether we are awake or asleep...

perception is a function. a function is part of a process. it does not identify. we are not identified by perception.

we also think. perception is a primary experience. thinking; we consider that which we have perceived. it is a secondary experience. thinking compares everything that we have perceived with everything that we are perceiving at the moment.

...thinking leads to pride, identification, confusion, and fear...

agnes martin, the still and silent in art, in 'writings'.

eight symbols...

beautiful little image depicting 8 symbols invented by fo-hi circa 2800 BC. from the story of the alphabet by edward clodd 1928.

the lines are pictorial representations of knotted cords that were used before the invention of writing. "the number and distances of the knots served as conventional mnemonics, and also as imperial records until written characters replaced them". these were the first characters to symbolize words based on the cord knot system.

of course, this little op art box represents some very serious words. i really love how the various arrangements of continuous and broken lines feel like an agnes martin painting - particularly as these simple lines are connected to both landscape and belief.

the lines are also reminiscent of graphic notational music scores, almost like a key of permutations for a lengthier work.

lastly, both the words and the lines remind me a bit of ian hamilton finlay's text works. like finlay's best concrete poetry, if one reads the list outloud there are all kinds of spoken sounds the words share, and there is a hint of narrative (from heaven to earth). there is also an added dimension to the fact that even though the line sequences are based on abstract notational knots in string; they somehow begin to feel "representational" in relation to the words connected to them.

it's nice when an illustration ceases to illustrate and becomes it's own path of various references and wanderings...