Engineer's Daughter

horse latitudes

Aenne Biermannová: Piano Keys, 1929 (Czechoslovakia).  I see this and think of the small upright piano that was in our living room when I was growing up and the print of Picasso's Three Musicians that hung above it.  I did enjoy playing on that piano, even if I never really had much talent for it.

daymare

Memento mori stencil design, 18c. (France).  Just a couple days ago for Día de los Muertos I lit candles for Cardiff and for Orson, the kitties I lost this year, which might seem a little dorky but I still miss them, especially the cranky Cardiff-monster.  It's been a really rough year, but there have been so many beautiful moments too.  And in three weeks I will be in Spain, and when I get back there will be Unsilent Night and holiday gatherings and taking stock of the past year and preparing for the new one.  'Tis my season of introspection.

orwellian

From Japanese Haiku, Peter Pauper Press, 1955 (USA).  Winter is coming, folks, and I am not happy about it.  Poetry makes everything a bit more tolerable, however.  Click the image to make it larger (and the haiku more legible).

mendicant

Anonymous: Silhouette, mid-19c. (Germany).  I'm trying to decide if I think this is a man or a woman.  I'm currently leaning toward woman.  I'd also like to have someone trace my silhouette right now and see how it compares to the one my parents had done of me when I was like 5 years old. 

vis major

The Ka'aba (The Black Basalt Mecca), popular print, date unknown (Morocco).  I love that the artist included the skyscraper skyline in the background, just outside the mosque.

russet

George Antheil and Fernand Léger: sequence from Ballet Mécanique, 1924 (France).  You can see the sequence in motion (and hear Antheil's marvelous composition) on YouTube starting right here.

Speaking of creative collaboration, I am very excited about the new process-focused PAUSE art series at Yerba Buena, particularly the upcoming installment from filmmaker George Kuchar and artist Miguel Caldeŕon Tropical Vulture.  If you'd like to whet your appetite for the exhibit I suggest you check out the "George Kuchar Triple Threat" that the fabulous Mustache Cinema is presenting at El Rio tomorrow night.  They will be screening Kuchar's '60s film trilogy Hold Me While I'm Naked, Eclipse Of The Sun Virgin, and Knocturne in full-on 16mm gloriousness.  I guarantee it will be camptastic.

antipodal

Michael Woods: Café Les Deux Magots, Boulevard St-Germain, Paris, 1990 (UK).  Such a wonderful touch of the surreal in this photo.  Of course now I crave a glass of wine.  And a trip to Paris.

imprimatur

J.W. Goethe, from Contributions to Optics, c.1792 (Germany).  I swear I will have Chicago notes and pictures up soon.  I've just been a little busy since I got back.  And distracted.  In the meantime, I give you Goethe.

termagant

Cennino Cennini's Recipes for White and Black

How to prepare white:

Take a very white slaked lime (calcia sfiorata); pulverise it, and put it in a little tub for the space of eight days, changing the water every day, and mixing the lime and water well together, in order that it might throw off all unctuous properties (grassezza).  Then make it into little cakes, put them on the roof of the house in the sun, and the older these cakes are, the whiter they become.  To do it quickly and well, when the cakes are dry, grind them on your slab with water, make them into cakes and dry them again.  Do this twice and you will see what a perfect white it becomes.  Grind these cakes well, with water.  It is good for working in fresco.  Without it you can do nothing: you cannot paint flesh, or make tints of other colours, which you need in fresco on walls; and it never needs tempera.

How to prepare black:

Procure a slab of porphyry which is hard and strong, porphyry is best of all.  Take another stone, also of porphyry, flat beneath and raised above in the shape of a porringer, of such a form that the hand may be mistress of it and move and guide it at pleasure.  Take some of the black porphyry, about the size of a walnut, and with the stone in your hand break the pigment into small pieces.  Add clean water from a river, a fountain or a well, and grind it well as long as you please; but know that if you were to grind it for a year, so much blacker would be the colour.  Take a flat piece of grained wood, scrape the stone and collect the colour.  Another black is made of the young shoots of the vine, which are burnt and then thrown into water, and quenched and then ground.  Another black is made of the shells of almonds, or of peach stones.  Another black is made of the smoke of a linseed oil lamp, gathered on the bottom of a baking-dish: it does not require grinding, because it is already a very fine powder.

Adapted from The Book of Art, 1437 (Italy)

And with that I'm off to meet my brother in Chicago to spend a few days soaking up art and music, eating amazing food, and generally recalibrating my internal systems.  We will also be renting a car and driving over to Holland, Michigan, on Friday to join the rest of our family in celebrating my Grandma's 95th birthday.  I'll report back from the other side.

asinine

Heinrich Hoerle: cover of the journal Stupid, No. 1, 1920 (Germany).  Dada brilliance for the win.