Artwork: Wall mural by Nate Frizzell, Long Beach California, 2017
I love these two stanzas from American poet Stephen Dunn’s poem Mon Semblable:
Anonymous among strangers
I look for those
with hidden wings,
and for the scars
that those who once had wings
can’t hide.
Artwork: Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1973-6, Great Basin Desert, Utah
I recently published an art story for Nancy Holt’s installation Starfire, which was originally created in 1986 and recreated for the exhibition Ecstatic Land at Ballroom Marfa in Texas this year. I was initially drawn to Holt’s permanent land art installation constructed between 1973-6 in the Great Basin Desert in northern Utah, where she bought forty acres of land to create Sun Tunnels.
Holt said this about the land and how it inspired her:
“In the surrounding area are old trails, crystal caves, disused turquoise, copper, and tungsten mines, old oil wells and windmills, hidden springs, and ancient caves. A nearby cave, coated with centuries of charcoal and grease, is filled with at least ten feet of residue—mostly dirt, bones, and artefacts. Out there a “lifetime” seems very minute. After camping alone in the desert awhile, I had a strong sense that I was linked through thousands of years of human time with the people who had lived in the caves around there for so long. I was sharing the same landscape with them. From the site, they would have seen the sun rising and setting over the same mountains and ridges.”
Sun Tunnels is currently owned and under the stewardship of DIA Art Foundation, who oversee Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Holt consulted with numerous people such as astrophysicists, engineers, astronomers, surveyors, road graders, carpenters, construction workers, and photographers to create the large cement tunnels that are positioned in alignment with the rising and setting sun on the days of the solstices around June 21st and December 21st. On these days the sun is centred through these tunnels, and nearly centre for about ten days either side of the solstice.
Artwork: Nancy Holt Sun Tunnels, 1973-6, Great Basin Desert, Utah
The four tunnels are positioned in an X configuration eighty-six feet long on the diagonal, and each tunnel is eighteen feet in length. If you go inside the tunnels, there are holes cut out in the upper half of the tunnels, each pattern of holes is different to align with the constellations Draco, Perseus, Columba and Capricorn.
Holt speaks eloquently of how the concept of time is intrinsic to the installation:
“’Time’ is not just a mental concept or a mathematical abstraction in the desert. The rocks in the distance are ageless; they have been deposited in layers over hundreds of thousands of year. “Time” takes on a physical presence. Only ten miles south of Sun Tunnels are the Bonneville Salt Flats, one of the few areas in the world where you can actually see the curvature of the earth. Being part of that kind of landscape, and walking on earth that has surely never been walked on before, evokes a sense of being on this planet, rotating in space, in universal time.”
Like with Starfire, the Sun Tunnels installation connects the artwork with the cosmos, the stars, the seasons and brings awareness of this to the viewer, bringing the vastness of space back to the human scale, to bring the heavens that much closer to earth.
[source quotes: https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/sun-tunnels-0]
Artwork: Vong Phaophanit, Neon Rice Field, 1993, Tate Britain, London
The Tate Britain has rehung its collection to mixed reviews, yet Vong Phaophanit’s installation Neon Rice Field (1993) in the Duveen space, has a meditative strangeness and quiet beauty that stands out.
Phaophanit was born in Laos, educated in France and now resides in London. Such cultural dislocations have had a profound influence on his work. Neon Rice Field is created with seven tons of dry, white long-grain rice with six parallel tubes of red neon light nestling in the furrows of what appears as a ploughed field. The juxtapositions of natural and unnatural substances; the connotation of the East (rice/agriculture) and West (neon/industry) is simplistic and not what Phaophanit intends. Instead there is a subtle subversion to such dichotomies, as in the past he’s used American sponsorship to supply the rice, while industrial production and its commercial associations is most often offshored to Asian countries such as China.
Phaophanit is more interested in opening up the potential for “possibilities of meanings”, and says: “Once you name all the meanings, something still remains, something left over. That’s how I work. For instance, I use rice not only as a material, a substance, a smell or a symbol of food in the East, but I want to shake things – see what falls down.”
Artwork: Mural by NEAN, Adrift, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2023
Alone in the woods, wondering which way to go next…
This incredible mural by NEAN (@nean_kingdom) titled Adrift, kind of sums up how I was feeling today.
Artwork: Paste-up and wall drawing by seiLeise, somewhere in Paris
Just a boy reaching for the stars…with a small cat-friend watching as well. Lovely paste-up and wall drawing from seiLeise (@seileise & seiLeise.com) somewhere in Paris.
Nick Cave wrote this in his recent The Red Hand Files letter:
“Art is the agent best equipped to bring light to the world. That is its purpose. That is its promise.”
So, I thought I’d share a Nick Cave and Warren Ellis track, A Rather Lovely Thing, from the film, The Assassination of Jesse James. Music that brings some light into the world.
Photograph: Jacques Brel, 1963, by Joop Van Bilsen
I read these words by Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel today and they felt like a prayer or blessing, and I was immediately uplifted by them:
“I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to realize some of them. I wish you to love what must be loved, and to forget what must be forgotten. I wish you passions. I wish you silences. I wish you birdsongs as you wake up and children’s laughter. I wish you to respect the differences of others, because the worth and virtues of each person often remain to be discovered. I wish you to resist the stagnation, the indifference, and the negative values of our time. I wish you at last to never give up the search, for adventure, life, love. For life is a wonderful adventure and no reasonable person should give it up without a tough fight. I wish you above all to be yourself, proud of being and happy, for happiness is our true destiny.”
For anyone who needs to hear this.
(source: @_nitch)
Artwork: Andrew Rovenko, The Shuttle, from the Rocketgirl Chronicles, Melbourne, Australia
In Melbourne during the crazy lockdowns a truly wonderful and poetic project was born. Photographer Andrew Rovenko and his daughter decided to explore this “new” world that we found ourselves in, and so began the Rocketgirl Chronicles. Rovenko wrote this about the photographic project:
“An unintended photography project, born out of the intended family time in Melbourne’s 6th lockdown.
With no more rainbows on the pavements, stuffed animals away from the windows and once vibrant spoonvilles turned sad ghost towns – everyone needed to figure out their own way to keep going. Small things. Small wins. Like making a space helmet for your child fascinated by the night sky. And a suit.
Too bad that the novelty of a costume doesn’t last. Stories however, seem to have worked since forever. So we took the costume and went looking for stories. The good thing is that stories can be found anywhere, be it 5km travel limit or your bedroom. The bus stop or a laundry.
These photographs are the memories from the stories we found. The lockdown has now ended. We’ll outgrow the costume. But the time spent together exploring and imagining is one special gift to keep.”
Rovenko intends to make the Rocketgirl Chronicles into a photo book that will be crowdfunded through Kickstarter. If you wish to explore the beautiful and otherworldly photographs of a small astronaut stranded in Planet Lockdown, check out Rovenko’s Instagram @rovenko and website, https://rovenko.com.
Artwork: Mural by Seth, Migration, Rennes-Saint Malo, 2023 (middle section of wall)
Artist Seth (@seth_globepainter) painted this recent mural, Migration, for the Teenage Kicks Biennale at Rennes-Saint Malo in France. Seth is one of my favourite mural painters and artists for his depiction of children, whether they’re daydreaming, trying to connect and play, travelling through portals into alternate dimensions, hanging out reading books and discovering new worlds, or in this case, flying like birds.
Artwork: Pipsqueak was here!!!, Walk around with your head in the clouds, oil painting, 2023
Amsterdam based artist duo Pipsqueak was here!!! (@pipsqueakwashere) always feature a girl and her “deamon” or soul companion (the idea of a “deamon” is from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series). This oil painting, “Walk around with your head in the clouds”, is one of four they made for the 10-Year Anniversary Show at Vertical Gallery in Chicago that opened yesterday. Love it.
Artwork: Nami Yokoyama, Shape of Your Words-T.K.-, Oil on linen, 2022 (LOVE written by my sister. As she makes Japanese candles, she thinks about healing, prayers, and the future.) (@namiyokoyama)
As always, Emily Dickinson’s poems strike the heart deep. I came across this randomly, and now I keep going back to it. From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little Brown, 1960; no. 809, p.394), a poem about love, immortality and the divine:
Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality
Nay, it is Deity—
Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.
Artwork: Shaun Tan, The Silent Sea, pastel on paper
Shaun Tan is a brilliant artist, illustrator and storyteller. I’ve read many of his books such as The Red Tree, The Lost Thing and The Arrival, and I often dip into his book of sketches and thoughts, The Bird King, for inspiration. Tan has an upcoming solo exhibition in late April at Beinart Gallery in Melbourne titled On My Way to Paradise. Here is one of the works on paper to be featured, The Silent Sea. The drawing was created without a written story, beginning with a boy making a travel companion out of a sack of rice. This is the wonderful imaginative world in which Tan inhabits.
Cool new track by Four Tet, Skrillex and Fred Again—Baby again…
Check it out!
Artwork: Mural by Mantra, Là où fleurit l’émerveillement Jussieu district, Versailles, October 2020
I love butterflies, they symbolise freedom, beauty, the ephemeral and flight. So the fact artist Mantra (@mantrarea, mantrarea.com) paints mostly butterflies in mural form is pretty special. Here’s Mantra’s exquisite mural he painted in the Jussieu district of Versailles, Là où fleurit l’émerveillement (Where wonder blooms), and he wrote this about it:
“A freehand-painted mural opening a window on my mother’s garden, located in Lessy. It’s especially in this place that my curiosity for the living grew, where as a child I spent whole days observing flowers and insects. Composed from my photographs, this painting pays tribute to the work of French botanist Bernard de Jussieu (1688-1777) which this Versailles neighbourhood bears his name.”
Grogu aka Baby Yoda is back! Wasn’t expecting Mandalorian season 3, so big surprise to see Mando and the little dude back on screen. Awesome!
Artwork: Mural by Millo, Al-Jib, Palestinian territories, 2022
On a water tower in Al-Jib in the Palestinian territories, artist Millo (@_millo) created this wonderful mural as part of the World Reverse Project in partnership with the Qalandiya Rural Council and Rawaq: The Centre for Popular Architecture in Palestine.
Millo said this about what inspired him to create this project:
”On all of its sides a girl is playing with the mulberry tree leaves, creating something out of nothing, achieving finally freedom.
The curators explained to me the need for girls who are over 11 years old, and living in Al-Jib, to play and go out in public spaces as boys commonly do.
This topic touched me deeply and that's why I decided to change my first sketch, in order to underline this issue.”
I wrote this prose/poem short story some time ago, a meditation on grief and the intertwining of the actions of the every day with thoughts and memories and the spiralling of emotions that occurs when dealing with losing someone you love. I thought I’d share it here.
Artwork: Mural by @nean_kingdom, France
it wasn’t enough to say you’re gone
Words that fell through air, at first feather light, then sucked of all resistance to earth, a weight to spear flesh.
those very words, spoken on the phone by a stranger
His eyes drifted to the weave of muslin, muffling sight through a window. He was searching for the horizon, always. And the tree so familiar. They’d chosen the house for the tree, she’d joked. And the rise of the hills beyond the boundary fence, sinking their home into a valley.
she’s gone
From the moment he entered the house where they’d lived, he could hear it.
Nothing.
passed away (without him there to hold onto her to the very last)
The silence of a breath held.
as if to avoid, to skirt that other word
Rooms, hollow and empty, filled solid with things.
dead
And the smell. Dank from the heavy rains, soaking soil, its mineral taint seeping through the wood and carpet, the chill of plaster and stone. The scent of a home too long locked up. He hadn’t wanted to come back here. Not without her. Not after an accident he could never explain as such. It felt like a collision of worlds ending, not the crash of vehicles on an ordinary, yet stormy night.
how that one word ends…
The dust was hanging in the air, catching in his throat as he breathed.
everything
They’d chosen none of the furniture. Some came with the house, other pieces he’d inherited.
they said you felt nothing, death instant
He walked, light-headed at how easily she’d slipped from being in this life to not.
nothing
no-thing…what could that even mean? how could they know?
And then he stopped, arrested by light shafting through a pane of glass. There was a fine tracery, a web of lines, faintly etched on its surface that caught and cracked the light and set his mind wandering through to the place beyond it, threaded and shaped.
how to leave—let go
His hand fisted to hold the muslin to cocoon himself with it. A taut sheet of mesh like skin. An echo of being held. And then he ran, out through the back door into the evening air, the sky opening to him. Descending shades of blue so intense he wondered if he was dreaming. Wanted to run towards it and let it seep into him, so that he disappeared.
how to move away from here—you
As if words could somehow release her from his life.
how to say…
Standing still, shrouded in the coming twilight, the words were falling.
Heavy.
Too blunt to capture the passing of a life.
you felt nothing, and to me, you are everything
As if words ever could.
© Angela Jooste
Artwork: Yoshitomo Nara, Sleepless Night, painting, 1999 (Image choice mine, not Nick’s from his original post!)
This is just awesome! Nick Cave’s recent The Red Hand Files question and answer (February 2023):
I’m 13. In a world ridden with so much hate, and disconnect; How do I live life to its absolute fullest, and not waste my potential? Especially as a creative. Also, what is a great way to spiritually enrich myself? in general, and in my creative work.
Ruben, Melbourne, Australia
Dear Ruben,
When I read this question, my initial thought was that the kid who wrote this has nothing to worry about, they’re going to be all right. Ruben, you are very smart, you are engaged with the world and I’m not sure what your creative interests are, but you can certainly already write. Not only that, you are also reaching out for answers. At thirteen, this is all brilliant! Luckily for you, Ruben, I have some! So here goes!
Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. Fully understand your enormous value in the scheme of things because the planet needs people like you, smart young creatives full of awe, who can minister to the world with positive, mischievous energy, young people who seek spiritual enrichment and who see hatred and disconnection as the corrosive forces they are. These are manifest indicators of a human being with immense potential.
Absorb into yourself the world’s full richness and goodness and fun and genius, so that when someone tells you it’s not worth fighting for, you will stick up for it, protect it, run to its defence, because it is your world they’re talking about, then watch that world continue to pour itself into you in gratitude. A little smart vampire full of raging love, amazed by the world – that will be you, my young friend, the earth shaking at your feet.
Love, Nick
Artwork: Paste-up, Flinders Lane, 2023
Blep! Every day is cat day! Found this paste-up in a side alley off Flinders Lane, artist unknown.
Photograph: By Hamza Nouasria
This story is both uplifting and heartbreaking. It’s about one man’s determination to raise the literacy levels in his home of Rabat, Morocco.
Aziz was orphaned at the age of six and attempted to afford his dream of graduating high school by fishing. At fifteen, Aziz realised he wouldn’t be able to finish his education because the textbooks were too expensive. Aziz’s anger at his situation fuelled his passion to begin a career as a bookseller. Aziz has been selling books for fifty-five years in Rabat’s medina (old city), and in that time Morocco’s literacy rate has improved, yet Aziz believes the country’s literacy rate is still impacted by the number of students, like him, who aren’t able to finish school, having to leave to make a living.
Aziz’s shop is a literary meeting point for people from all over Morocco and the world. Many of these people, such as summer-bound students, leave their used books at the shop. By engaging with the donors in long conversations and reading their donations, Aziz taught himself standard Arabic, French, and Spanish. By providing books in all of Morocco’s languages Aziz hopes to one day fulfil his dream of bringing literature and a love of reading to his home of Rabat.
“My life revolves around reading,” Aziz said. "I’ll be here till everyone can read. I’ve read more than 4,000 books, so I’ve lived more than 4,000 lives. Everyone should have that chance.”
A love of books and reading has been one of the greatest gifts in my life, so Aziz’s story resonates completely.