I know, I know (you can comment now)

I know we've already done an "inspiration" post, but ... well, I have a lot to contribute to that thread. I will write about these informally as always -- will I ever be a professional? A: Probably not.

Wandering Bears

Wandering Bears is an excellent website to check out. They show a range of work by emerging artists from around the world. Their vision is quite clear and I love the work they've been showing (check out the last post! so good so good). They recently put together a show with Blink Magazine, recognizing the re-emergence of the still life in contemporary photography. From the photographs I've seen of the show, it seems that Blink magazine's curation of the show included the interference of the image/image-as-object by the hands of the curator, like cutting an image, folding a photograph to fit into a corner, etc. No, interference is the wrong word -- but, it's certainly a wonderful collaboration between the artist and curator.

Humble Arts Foundation blog

Humble Arts Foundation rules! I discovered one of my favorite artists, Brea Souders, via their Women in Photography archives and they give out a Women in Photography grant every year. How righteous is that? And since most the people in our class ARE women in photography, that's definitely a kind of grant you'll want to consider applying for! Anyway, they conduct interviews every now and then, have calls for submissions once a year.

Mossless Magazine

Mossless Magazine is a photography blog turned publication. They conducted interviews every week with young artists from around the world. Recently, they printed the publication. It is a series of four magazines, each focusing on a different artist with text and photographs from that artist (including the aforementioned Brea Souders). ... Can someone buy it for me for my birthday?

PORTALEN PORTALEN

Letha Wilson on Portalen Portalen

It's perfect. It's perfect. This blog has a mix of different art disciplines. Just check it out. It's perfect. One more time. Perfect.


Brit's half:

Where do I find inspiration to create?….

I have a few answers…. But I’ll narrow it down to the most important: nature and philosophical studies (books). I want to focus more on the latter because at this point in time it has been the main basis of motivation. I took a Themes in Existentialism class last semester (I high recommend it to anyone and everyone!) and we read a book written by Martin Buber titled Ich und Du (translated into I and Thou), I swear this book has changed my life! Up until reading that book I was trying to find a way to describe how I view the world and the relationships that I strive for with other people and everything around me. This book put it in to the words I struggled to find. Basically, Buber talks about two forms of relationship, the “I-it” and the “I-Thou”. The aspect of experience vs. the aspect of relation. Subect-to-subject vs. subject-to-object. An I-Thou relationship is seeing a person (to be specific) without isolated qualities and instead seeing that person as a whole being. On the opposite end, the I-It relationship is the process of perceiving another with specific, isolated qualities, and viewing themselves as part of a world which consists of things… I-Thou consists of mutuality and reciprocity, I-It consists of separateness and detachment. I realize that it is almost impossible to have an I-Thou relationship with every being on the planet, because not everyone thinks on an I-Thou level… Buber doesn’t say that it is necessarily a bad thing to have both forms of relationships in your life, but it is something nice to look forward to and work on.

Here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite parts of the book:

“ I contemplate a tree. A can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground. I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air – and the growing itself in its darkness. I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance, with an eye to its construction and its way of life. I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law – those laws according to which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate. I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it. Throughout all of this the tree remains my objects and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition. But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me. This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused” (pg. 57/58, I and Thou, Martin Buber).

On that note, you should probably just pick up the book and read it yourself!
I ALSO recommend the book “On Relationship” by Jiddu Krishnamurti… It’s another favorite of mine…

Here’s a little lecture by Jiddu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-7-ZiiM-o






Under the comments, I'm interested in certain aesthetic visions that YOU specifically are into. Search for artists, blogs, literature, films, quotes, text, nonsense, etc, whatever that REALLY strikes a chord with you.