Speed of Life

Thomas Eakins, (1844-1916) The Cello Player, 1896 Formerly the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Joseph E. Temple Fund, 1897 Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes has the scoop on the deaccession of Thomas Eakin's "The Cello Player" to help fund the accession of the "Gross Clinic": "Proceeds from the deaccessioning will be applied toward PAFA's co-purchase of Eakins' The Gross Clinic, which PAFA and the Philadelphia Museum of Art are co-purchasing from Thomas Jefferson University."

At the Sundance Film Festival “Grace Is Gone,” by first-time director James Strouse and featuring John Cusack, has won the the dramatic audience award and the Waldo Salt screenwriting award. John Cusack stars as a former soldier - Stanley- home from the front caring for his two daughters while his wife continues to serve in war-torn Iraq. Early in the film, Stanley is delivered the news that his wife has been killed in Iraq. Rather than tell his daughters of their mother's death, Stanley attempts to flee the reality of absence by taking his children on a road-trip. James Rocchi , from Cinematical, describes the film as a needed look at contemporary reality: "There's a certain play of light in Grace is Gone, and carefully composed moments as well as a swiftly-captured realism that still looks wonderful. Grace is Gone has the look of life, and the glow of art. The film is as affecting -- and as ultimately human -- as one might hope, and it still brings home the ugly real fa...

Senator Barack Obama speaks in remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr. -Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press Speaking today at the annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship breakfast in Chicago, Barack Obama evoked the memory and the social activism of Martin Luther King, Jr.: ''As I recall, Dr. King wasn't hanging out in Manhattan, Dr. King wasn't hanging out in Beverly Hills." Introducing Obama, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told a crowd at the annual King scholarship breakfast, ''it's a long, nonstop line between the march in Selma in 1965 and the inauguration in Washington in 2009.''

This upcoming weekend Phil and I will be presenting the second in a series of exploratory workshops at the Esalen Institute. Gregg Chadwick "Immersed in Silence" 60"x48" oil on linen 2006 Upcoming Workshop at Esalen,Big Sur Phil Cousineau & Gregg Chadwick DEC 22-24, 2006 AT ESALEN INSTITUTE "Genius is the power for lighting your own fire." -- Emerson For thousands, one of the profound mysteries of human adventure has been the creative impulse. The irrepressible urge to leave our mark, to express ourselves, is an essential part of what makes us human. But while creativity is as natural as breathing, it is also notoriously elusive, challenging, and riddled with ordeals--like any grand adventure. This workshop will use a three-stage model of the Creative Journey -- Inspiration, Process, Realization-- to explore what it means to harness our imagination and tend our creative fires over the course of a lifetime. To explore this possibility, the course wi...

Ruth Bernhard "In the Box" gelatin silver print 1962 "My aim is to transform the complexities of the figure into harmonies of simplified forms revealing the innate reality, the life force, the spirit, the inherent symbolism and the underlying remarkable structure – to isolate and give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity." -Ruth Bernhard The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the photographer Ruth Bernhard died yesterday in San Francisco. Ruth Bernhard was a vital presence in the Bay Area art world. I remember running into her at a gallery opening south of Market a few years ago. Her eyes were like open lenses. She seemed to embody Christopher Isherwood's phrase - "I am a Camera." In "Goodbye to Berlin" (published in 1939), Isherwood writes: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Someday, all t...

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is making an effort to keep Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia. Please note that everyone who supports this cause can help by making a donation to a fund specifically set up to purchase the painting: Save "The Gross Clinic" Your donations will contribute to the $68 million needed and will send a powerful message that the American public wants to stop the plundering of America's libraries and collections. More at: Save "The Gross Clinic" Keep "The Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia

Barack Obama I have been reading Barack Obama's new book, "The Audacity of Hope" on this Thanksgiving. Obama's astute words on Abraham Lincoln brought to mind the ongoing need for healing, thanks and humility in the United States. On October 3, 1863 as the Civil War raged, President Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November: "I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise... for deliverances and blessings, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, and commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation a...