“How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”
― John Burroughs
Photography
^-^ Cats ^-^
Charles Baudelaire
They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:
When comes the season of decay, they both decide
Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;
Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.
Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,
They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;
Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,
If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.
In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;
Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.
Portrait #138 (David Hockney)
Brenda Zlamany
"For many years, Brenda Zlamany has painted portraits of other artists, including Chuck Close, Alex Katz, and David Hockney. She has also been a subject for them; as she puts it, “we are professional posers.” Recently, however, she has worked to paint portraits of those whose gaze is more internal—monks and nomads in Tibet, aboriginal people in Taiwan—creating large bodies of portraits that investigate the limits of the genre. She returned, with her daughter, to Hockney’s studio in 2014, not only to sit for him but to paint him once again. Her practice involves the long sittings and intense looking required of traditional portrait-making. The result captures Hockney’s warmth as well as his intense gaze, surrounded by the energetic foliage of his Los Angeles home."
Leaves
Elsie N. Brady
“How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.”
Sonnet 43
William Shakespeare
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
I Love Your Hair
Tim Okamura
"Moving from western Canada to Brooklyn in the early 1990s was a transformative experience for Tim Okamura. He found himself “dropped down right in the heart, the birthplace of hip hop.” In New York City he found new subjects and refined his aesthetic mixture of realism and collage, spray paint and mixed media, to reference both narrative and the urban language of graffiti. His large portraits seek to capture an urban scene as well as aspects of social and personal identity."
I am a sculptor, a molder of form.
In every moment I shape an idol.
But then, in front of you, I melt them down
I can rouse a hundred forms
and fill them with spirit,
but when I look into your face,
I want to throw them in the fire.
My souls spills into yours and is blended.
Because my soul has absorbed your fragrance,
I cherish it.
Every drop of blood I spill
informs the earth,
I merge with my Beloved
when I participate in love.
In this house of mud and water,
my heart has fallen to ruins.
Enter this house, my Love, or let me leave.
Nelson – Atkins Museum of Art
“Shut your eyes so the heart may become your eye, and with that vision look upon another world. If you can step away from your need for self-approval, all that you do, top to bottom, will be approved.” ― Jalaluddin Rumi
American Century Tower II
Mound Magician, 1997
Radcliffe Bailey
At the center of the fan-shaped baseball diamond and marking the pitcher's mound, the number "25" is emblazoned on a star. The number belongs to Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher who led the Kansas City Monarchs to five Negro League pennants, joined the major leagues and was the first player from the Negro Leagues to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Mound Magician is rich with symbolism: vintage photographs of Negro League baseball, references to African countries and southern American cities, footprints running the bases, stamped arabesque patterns associated with Bailey's grandfather's wrought iron workshop, black baseballs, and vèvè, Voodoo symbols of ceremonial space. This assemblage also includes wrapped packets of "medicines" inspired by traditional African "power objects," sculptures to which various combinations of materials are added. These empowering substances are believed to positively affect the outcome of specific events.
“I was born on the night of Samhain, when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old magic, sings its heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it.”
― Carolyn MacCullough, Once a Witch
Maverick Mist 