Pedro Meyer’s touching and elegiac remembrance of his parents has been reissued in various digital versions, twenty years after its initial publication as a CD-ROM. “I Photograph To Remember” reminds me of John Berger’s precious collection of essays in ‘Hold Everything Dear’, where, in talking about his friend Juan Muñoz and poet Nazim Hikmet, he writes:

…finishing with: “A reel of scotch tape stirred by a draught from a window is sometimes enough to move mountains.”

Mr. Pedro Meyer, thank you for your reel of scotch tape and draught, all lovingly laid out in one swirl. And as always, thank you Mr. Berge for always reminding us of the magical brevity of photos.

Shane Darwent, ‘Rush In Truck Bed’

Photographer Shane Darwent, traveling, as far as I can gather, and making some rich work. Check out his blog. As he puts it in one recent entry, “3 bicycles, 2 fellas, one sweet lady, 3,750 miles, bunch o flats, 12 states, 11 weeks, 10 bucks to my name for most of the trip, 3 back wheels for Rush, 2 for me, one for Elspeth, a shitload of rice and beans, and more peanut butter and banana sandwiches than I can ever bear to think about-ever…”  Swing by Sewanee any time you want, Shane!

Martin John Callahan: I Want To See All Of The News From Today

Currently a teaching fellow at the Slade School of Art in London, Callahan’s sparse electronic work touches the rawer nerve-tips of our media-immersed selves. This current piece is typical of his approach.

“Borges’ map, described in “On Exactitude in Science”, imagines an empire where the science of cartography has become so exacting that only a map of the same scale as the empire itself is sufficient. This seems prescient of the increasing digitization, both of the world about us and correspondingly of our own lives. The world’s fastest computer in 2006, IBM’s Blue Gene L, has more processing capability than the 500 most powerful computers of 2001 combined. Blue Gene L is 15 times more powerful than its predecessor: within five seconds it can produce a volume of data equivalent to the total information held in the British Library”. The data collected by our networks, in data warehouses and elsewhere, vastly exceeds that which could be recorded about our world and knowledge on the 1:1 scale Borges imagined.”

Martin John Callanan, December 2006

Allan Jones. 
1992. platinum-palladium print.
8 x 10 in 

My friend, Allan Jones came by to visit today. I made this portrait of him sixteen years ago while he was still a student at Sewanee. He is still thinking. And painting. Thanks for swinging by Allan! And for the gift of this wonderful painting.

Allan Jones: Water Tower

Cover of book entitled, “Poems and Drawings,” by Josef Albers. 1958
Albers, Josef, Pps Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University 

More results from my browsing of online image archives, this one from Yale. Exquisite.

Yoshitoshi, Tsukioka: A fireman, looking left, holding the standard for district six
From Series: Firemen’s Standards of All Great Districts
(Kaku daiku matoi kagami: Dai ichi daiku, rokuban gumi)

I am becoming fascinated by the amount of work that is being made available via online image archives! Here is another rich source, in this case of Japanese woodcuts. Lovely, the image of a fireman! And its correspondence to the previously posted image of Rachel with the lamp does not go unnoticed. I love life’s little synchronicities!

Robin Gillanders, Sewanee, TN

1994

8×10 in contact print

photograph by Robin Gillanders from the Highland Journey series

Shakerag workshops are almost over, and Pradip and Luca express serious concerns about the fabrication of the paradigm of the mind and the creation of the artist class.

jennifer knowles-mcquistion: poem in prose, 2

Jennifer is an artist based in Nashville, TN and is finishing up her studies at Watkins College of Art. Thanks for the work, of which there is much more on her web site. I met her while taking a workshop with Chris Bucklow at Shakerag.

christine remy, “stanley”, 12” X 88”
Acrylic paint, plastic resin on wood panel

My friend and artist Christine Remy has just posted a lot of her recent work on a new web site. An accomplished calligrapher, she has combined her interests in movement, space, and highly nuanced palettes with electronic technologies to render a series of animated light paintings that are loaded with a ‘ghostly otherworldliness’. Along with her paintings, photographic work and drawings though, these electronic pieces hint at something more than the contemplative traditions. Christine’s images seem to roil to the surface, calm in their instantiation, as they present themselves to the visual world, but also hinting at the high emotional energy that they result from, like boiling water. Thanks Christine!