Teaching today, at the IMA in Oakland. I arrive at Fruitvale early, and wait for Celeste outside the BART station. I can’t see the IMA truck, so I find myself examining the Bingo Bugle and Classified Flea Market dispensers. What is the Bingo Bugle do you suppose? Gave a long illustrated lecture about principles of [...]
In 1889 Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig wanted to bring a bit of life to the duchy of Hesse, so he decided to found an artist’s colony. He invited the fashionable young architect Joseph Maria Olbrich — architect of the Vienna Sucession Building – to come and help him. Other artists and craftsmen were invited too. [...]
Somerset, 29th June 1860. Version 1: Constance Kent waits until the family and the servants are asleep. By dead of night she lifts her sleeping brother from his bed, takes him to a privy and cuts his throat – so brutally that he is virtually decapitated. Version 2: Constance’s father is having an affair with [...]
Until recently I knew only two contemporary mosaicists from the USSR. One was Valery – a former resident of the Ukraine who worked briefly at Mosaic Workshop. Familiar with making mosaics at a monumental scale, he found our routines rather limited in scope. His daily life as a mosaicist involved making astronauts for the side [...]
Of how many mosaicists could you say this: that they have a crater on the moon named after them, a medium sized crater on Mars, an underwater ocean ridge in the Arctic, an entire city on the Gulf of Finland (where Stravinsky was born) and that Russia’s largest university bears their name — because they [...]
The church of the ‘Saviour on the Blood’ in St Petersburg is a former cathedral founded on a titillatingly gruesome basis. Alexander II was a reformist Tsar who oversaw the Emancipation of the Serfs. He was subject to many assassination attempts, one of which succeeded. The ‘Saviour on the Blood’ was built over the cobblestones [...]
I have recently come across an artist whose work I think is amazingly good. His name is Alexander Deineka. He was a Russian, born to a railway worker. He was a revolutionary, and member of the ‘October’ association of artists. I haven’t been able to find out much about his life under Stalin, but he [...]
I don’t think it’s an accident that mosaic is often associated with madness. It seems to have a metaphorical value — piecing together a reality over which you have some control –combined with the useful quality of consuming vast amounts of time. These are both helpful characteristics in the service of mental health. I’ve been [...]
In the air today, so no internet access. Will have many thoughts tomorrow. This is another bit of traditional mosaic set dressing that includes flowers. Are they to soften the image, to make it seem homely, or to feminise it?
Today I have been working on my website. The coffers are running low, and I need to put some effort into replenishing them. The trouble is that promotion takes time. Getting work photographed is expensive, and circulating it is time consuming. I want to make a gallery of student work for the website as I [...]