Speed of Life

Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the force's combined press center, described the number as an "artificial mark on the wall." "I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq," Boylan said in an e-mail. "The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall"

I voraciously gather images to use for reference in my artwork. I especially like to collect photographs of artworks that move me in some way. I spend hours in the studio looking at these images of paintings and sculptures and then jotting down my thoughts and ideas. A year ago, on my birthday, I was traveling in Maine and shot a few photos along the way. Modern Kicks' entry on the Neil Welliver exhibition, currently at the Portland Museum, brought back memories of that journey. On that gray day in Portland, two works in the collection stood out. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Sharpshooter, 1863 oil on canvas 12 1/4 x 16 1/2" Portland Museum of Art, Maine USMC Sniper Team, 2004 Photo by: Gunnery Sgt. Keith A. Milks Winslow Homer's "Sharpshooter" is as relevant as the front page of today's New York Times.* Alexander Eliot in "Three Hundred Years of American Painting" describes how Winslow Homer's "huntsman eyes saw the world his contempo...

Rosa Parks died today, October 24, 2005 at 92. On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks set the modern civil rights movement in motion when she refused to give up her seat on the the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger. When the front of the bus filled up, the driver ordered Rosa Parks, a seamstress for the Montgomery Fair department store, to give up her seat for a white rider. She refused and was arrested. Rosa Parks's arrest for breaking Montgomery's segregation laws started a boycott of the city bus line that lasted over a year. This eventually led to the 1956 Supreme Court decision which ruled that segregation on public buses is illegal. Rosa Parks: "The famous U.P.I. photo (actually taken more than a year later, on Dec. 21, 1956, the day Montgomery's public transportation system was legally integrated) is a study of calm strength. She is looking out the bus window, her hands resting in the folds of her checked dress, while a white man si...

de Young Museum in fog A party was held at the new de Young Museum in San Francisco on October 20th for the local art world. The event was sponsored by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which encompasses both the de Young and the Legion of Honor, and the San Francisco Art Dealers Association. We were asked to arrive in festive attire. A heavy San Francisco fog shrouded the new building which seemed to appear briefly then vanish into the mist. The new structure looked less like a beached aircraft carrier and more like the Enterprise cloaking and uncloaking in Golden Gate Park during one of the Star Trek films. The new de Young is both spacious and elegant which gives the art room to breathe. The architects, the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects from San Francisco, have allowed the function of the building to determine its internal look and structure. "We wanted to keep the art itself in the foreground," Herzog says. Looking down on Andy Go...

Currently at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is a Huang Yong Ping retrospective entitled "House of Oracles". Huang Yong Ping "11 June 2002--The Nightmare of George V" "The title identifies the hunter as King George V of England. Huang explains that in 1911 the king, while hunting in Nepal, killed four tigers in three days, a remarkable feat. One of the tigers attacked the king, and he donated this specimen to a museum in Bristol, where Huang found it. In Paris the artist located preserved animals from other treks. He attached to a wicker howdah on the elephant’s back a tiger in the documented position of attack, but he replaced the royal howdah–an emblem of empire–with the sort used to protect well-heeled tourists. The tableau looks back to the approaching end of the colonial period." - Artforum Crate Logo for Huang Yong Ping Exhibition at the Walker Art Center Designed by Phil Docken The Walker's visual arts blog has a wonderful piece on the tr...

This Sunday on the Cal Berkeley campus, the writers of the Simpsons will come clean as closet math geeks. "We couldn't handle the pressures of academia", they might say, "but at least we kept our day jobs in animation." MSRI’s Archimedes Society invites you to this FREE public event Mathematical Writers from The Simpsons and Futurama Sunday, October 16, 2005 • 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Valley Life Sciences Building's Chan Shun Auditorium (Rm. 2050) at UC Berkeley Writers David X. Cohen, Ken Keeler, and Jeff Westbrook have kept their math habit alive by sneaking in hundreds of mathematical and scientific references into The Simpsons and Futurama. Join in as the writers discuss their mathematical backgrounds, favorite theorems from Homer and Bart, along with thoughts on the representation of mathematics in Hollywood. In honor of this event , and in anticipation of the upcoming Simpson's Halloween special, we join The Simpson's episode "Treehouse O...

(Jennifer S. Altman / LAT) "I try to find beauty in the middle of the horror, and vice versa," she says. "Sometimes, really horrible things — you can turn into a weapon of beauty." -Shirin Neshat in an interview with Tyler Green Tyler Green's article on the Iranian- American artist Shirin Neshat in the Los Angeles Times is well written and provacative. A must read: Shirin Neshat: Trapped Between Two Worlds More on Shirin Neshat: Shirin Neshat: Photo Essays- Time Europe

HAROLD LEVENTHAL 1919 - 2005 Harold Leventhal, died on Tuesday at the age of 86. A renowned folk music champion, Leventhal acted as promoter, producer, and manager for Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and countless others. Leventhal presented a 21-year-old Bob Dylan at Town Hall in New York in Dylan's first major concert hall appearance on April 12th, 1963. Harold Leventhal was featured most recently in Martin Scorcese's documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" in which he provided glimpses into Dylan's early years in New York. Harold Leventhal enlisted in the US Army during World War II and was stationed in India from 1944-46. These years had a profound impact on his life both politically and artistically. In India, Harold's political interests led him to seek out members of the Indian National Congress. He met with Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. Harold Leventhal and Jawaharlal Nehru,1945 Jorge Arevalo, in the concert notes to the Tribute to...

Shahzia Sikander (detail from dissonance to detour, mixed media on paper) Shahzia Sikander, who has traveled from Pakistan, to Rhode Island, to New York is now in Los Angeles for a short time, as a guest artist at the Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent work is on view until November 12 at Otis' Ben Maltz Gallery. Shahzia Sikander's exhibition "Dissonance to Detour", curated by Meg Linton, features new paintings on paper, a digital video animation, and a large wall painting. There is a rich fluidity to this work, especially in the details which play with the idea of 17th century Mughal miniatures. There is an expectation of narrative and resolution within the paintings. But upon closer examination, the works slip into a vivid flux of color and line. By shifting the viewer's expectations from narrative to paint, Sikander refuses to create the works that might be expected. Instead Shahzia Sikander's exhibition evokes an imaginative response. While viewin...