Lundi Links: Art and Visuals

Today's focus for Lundi Links is the sites that make me go "ooh" and "ah" in a purely visual sense.

http://www.guidodaniele.com is the site of an artist who paints mostly on other people's hands. It's awesome stuff.

http://azuregrackle.com/periodictable/table/ is a project that recruited different artists to design prints for each element of the periodic table. Extra points for blending art and science.

http://www.brickartist.com has some very impressive Lego sculptures, including Conan O'Brian.

http://www.abelardomorell.net is the site of a really neat photographer. One of the first things you find is camera obscura work.

At http://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/, you can find grown folks reenacting pictures from their childhoods. Cross-reference: Funny.

Five at a time is enough, so that's all for today's Lundi Links. Check back next week for more, and possibly some regular posts in the meantime.

This Is Just to Say

that Art Spiegelman is the keynote speaker for AWP 2009! ART SPIEGELMAN! Chicago, here I come. I think I would like to go ahead and get a ticket and hotel room just because if I miss this, I will cry for forty days. ART SPIEGELMAN! I guess it's time to buy Maus, too, so I can get it signed. ART SPIEGELMAN! I. Am going. To see. Art. Spiegelman. ART SPIEGELMAN!

A Sledgehammer and a Sidewalk

That's what I thought I'd need, along with wine, ice cream, and Office Space, yesterday when I counted to myself all the things that have gone wrong lately. I'm having some problems with guys and friends, all of which came in quick succession, on top of the yearly April-in-school meltdown, departmental politics, looming projects, and untrustworthy weather. So yeah, it's been a hard week.

BUT. I went to a beautiful wedding this weekend and saw some old faithful friends and felt like I might believe in love. The library book sale is this week, and I picked up Thurber, E. B. White, New Yorker cartoons, a book by Gordon Lish (Raymond Carver's controversial editor), a New Journalism anthology, and essays on Superman. I did watch Office Space (and what a help!), but I haven't engaged in carb therapy, and instead of taking a sledgehammer to the sidewalk I've kicked a few sturdy trees. My friends here have come through in ways I wouldn't even have hoped for. A book for me came in the mail from my mom. My favorite professor winked at me and said I could join his class in the fall even though it's full. I am blessed even in my whining.

A word about those New Yorker cartoons. I very rarely find even contemporary ones funny, and the old ones hardly ever. I enjoy them not as humor but as zen koans. Tiny, moment-sized knots that you untie just a little with every looking.

Of a Piece

I've been thinking a lot about Andy Goldsworthy, one of my very favorite artists, and how his work is intentionally transient; he uses rocks, or twigs, or sheep's wool, to make a shape, and the tide or the wind will wisp it away hours or weeks after he finishes. There was a saint, wasn't there, who weaved baskets and then burned them in a symbol of devaluing this world and his work in it. And I'm in an art show next week, which means someone might buy something I made. If they buy it, they might break it. They might let it get dusty. If something comes loose, they might not glue it back. I feel (on a much smaller scale) what parents must feel when they're about to let their kids leave the house: I've done all I can to take care of you, little shadow box and painting and collages. No one can guarantee your well-being now, but I have to let you go and trust the universe to take care of you. It's not exactly the same as letting fire or water destroy my work, but it's of a piece. And if no one buys my work, well, I can't say I'll be crushed, because I'll get to keep it. Win-win.

The semester has, with breathtaking alacrity, reached that point where I must begin to see work not as standing between me and freedom or leisure but as a gateway to freedom and leisure, a facilitator of those things and a link to them.

Comics and Movies: A Beautiful Friendship

I saw 300 last night (I just realized it wasn't called The 300, which I think makes it cooler), and today I read the book. The visual fidelity is commendable and makes me excited that we have the technology to do that. I felt the same way about the movie and book Sin City (same author and artist, Frank Miller, the ultimate man's man). Then there's American Splendor, which fills me with delight every time I think of it because the movie uses actors and the real folks, along with old footage of Pekar's appearances on David Letterman. Ever since I saw it, I scoff at movies like Good Night and Good Luck and Walk the Line that could use "real" footage but don't. Maybe scoff isn't the right word; I just don't see why they wouldn't. (The rights are probably expensive, but don't they have millions of dollars?) I really like those two movies, and I'd like to emphasize that they're great, but I'm sad they missed the chance to be even better. John Sullivan said in class yesterday, "Editing is much less looking for mistakes than it is looking for lost opportunities." Speaking of editing, I do it so much now that it spreads, inexorably and unapologetically, to my leisure reading. Today I read, "Your right hand sustains me," in Psalm 18 and wrote next to it, "Too vague."

My point is, comic books make great movies. If not great movies, then good, risky, hard-to-classify, innovative movies. Movies with eggs. (Eggs are the new balls, by the way. You can also say "eggsy." Spread the word.) As if I needed another reason to love comics. Oh, and the Persepolis movie is coming to Thalian at the end of the month! Quelle joie!

Picture Books

I just finished Into the Wild, which was formidable and heartbreaking and sexy and informative, everything I want in a book.

Except pictures.

Are a few photos too much to ask, people? In this case, OK, maybe the family didn't want to publish them, but think of all the other pictureless books. I challenge you to name one nonfiction book that would not benefit from photographs. Really. Post a comment if you can think of one. You can't, can you? Ha. Didn't think so.

Hillary and Barack, McCain, other front-runners, if you're reading this, here's a plank for your platform: mandatory photos for nonfiction books. You'd have my vote. Also, higher salaries for teachers and lower ones for professional athletes and other entertainers. Also farm subsidies for organic growers. Alternative energy. Get out of Iraq. Health care for everyone.

Oh, Lord, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I try not to use the word never, so I'll say some of that stuff is, um, not going to happen. For every truth I see as painfully obvious, someone is exactly as convinced of the opposite. For every Daily Show I watch, there's a half-hour of, I don't know, the actual footage it makes fun of, soaking into someone's tender brain. And while I call things painfully obvious, I just mean to me--after all the books I've read, all the conversations I've had, the towns I've lived in, while other people grew up with different books, talks, and towns. So, a little scarily, "obvious" means nothing, nearly anyone can defend his convictions as well as I do mine, and everything, y'all, everything, is relative. The truth is always ours, no matter who "us" is.

Ha! All that from a tongue-in-cheek rant about photos in books. So I guess I've decided to laugh.

TV, AWP, NYC

Watching Ace of Cakes yesterday, I realized just why I like it so darn much: it's a happy, happy show. No one is competing. No one is arguing, really. No one is crying because they have to confront their demons or fear of change. It's a show about artists. Artists having fun. And who doesn't love that? Even if it does make you hungry.

Speaking of artists having fun, I spent the weekend in New York at the Associated Writing Programs conference, and it was a very edifying, enjoyable, and inspiring event. I came home raring to write, write, write, and then to submit stuff for publication, which is not an urge I get often. I ate some formidable pizza (it is true, what they say about New York pizza. Just when you thought regular pizza was perfect...) and very authentic baguette at Le Pain Quotidien, which made me think I should move there (move to the restaurant, I mean, not New York). Sharon Olds's reading was probably the conference highlight for me, all the more a treat because I went to see the person she was reading with, not really her, and she was waaaaay better. The dance was funny because, like, most writers are nerds, and most of them were really breaking it down. One of my friends remarked on the strangeness of (and need for) social gatherings of writers: "We're all writers, you know [meaning introverts], so [at the book fair booths] I'm hoping they don't say anything to me besides hello, and they're probably hoping I don't say anything but hello." Very true for me, too. It was a good time, and I look forward to next year's conference in Chicago.

Art!

I'm doing an art show in April with some other MFA students, and now that I have a blog, what better to do than post some photos? I only have a couple things so far. Everyone in the show is doing a box the same size and shape as the one on the left, with different stuff inside or on each. It's a very cool project, and I think I may be addicted to the three-dimensional.