work to live.

For halloween, my friends and I dressed up like angels while my dog was dressed as a devil. I'm not a religious person so this was just for fun. A woman walked by and said, wow - a "flock" of angels. Her comments conjured up a beautiful image in my head and I continue to imagine and re-imagine what a flock of angels would/could look like - without the philosophical weight of considering whether they exist or not. The images in my head are endless.

*I looked it up and the correct term is "a host of angels". Somehow, I prefer flock - it feels more weightless, birdlike and free.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815, London – 27 November 1852, Marylebone, London), born Augusta Ada Byron, was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron. She is widely known in modern times simply as Ada Lovelace.

She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs—that is, encoding an algorithm in a form to be processed by a machine—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.

The level of impact of Lovelace on Babbage's engines is difficult to resolve due to Babbage's tendency not to acknowledge (either orally or in writing) the influence of other people in his work. However, Lovelace was certainly one of the few people who fully understood Babbage's ideas and created a program for the Analytical Engine, indeed there are numerous clues that she might also have suggested the usage of punched cards for Babbage's second machine since her notes suggest she deeply understood the jaquard's loom as well as the Analytical Engine. Her prose also acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which Babbage never published, such as speculation that "the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent".

Currently MoAD (Museum of the African Diaspora) has a wonderful exhibition by African American painter, Richard Mayhew. Mayhew calls his landscapes "mood scapes". They are all painted from memory and follows the traditions of the Hudson River School and is reminiscent of European plein air and pastoral paintings but all were done in his studio. You really have to "feel" these paintings to know their quiet and unique strength. Having studied with Rothko, the color field influence is definitely visible yet not derivative. It was a wonderful and moving discovery thanks to Demitri of MoAD. The exhibition was still being installed when he gave us a sneak peek today.

The exhibition opens tomorrow and runs through January 10, 2010. For more info:
http://www.moadsf.org/exhibits/?mode=current

         

Click here to download:

Richard_Mayhew_exhibition_at_M.zip (325 KB)

Here are some pictures (taken from my iphone - hence the bad resolution) of my students at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art (SF). The current exhibition is called "Open Source Embroidery" which addresses the concepts of craft, coding and technology.

Here is a blurb from MOCFA's website"
The history of computing as craft began with the Jacquard loom (1801), the first programmed machine which used binary punch cards to design woven patterns. The loom inspired Charles Babbage in his design of the Analytical Engine, often described as the precursor to the modern computer. Flare Productions’ documentary film about Ada Byron Lovelace, To Dream Tomorrow (2003) highlights the significance of her extensive notes about the Analytical Engine, and her insight into the potential of the machine to operate not just as a calculator of numbers but also as a computer of symbols and information. Richard Hamilton also featured Ada Lovelace in a poster campaign to save free public entry for the South Kensington Museums in London (1998). Issues of access to code and culture are still pertinent questions of our time.
The Open Source Embroidery exhibition brings together individual and collectively made artworks by artists, crafts people, computer programmers and html users which explore the relationship between craft and code, physical and digital space. The artworks experiment with interdisciplinary approaches to modifying patterns, the DIY culture of hacking and sampling in sound, GPS and mobile technologies.
for more info:
http://www.mocfa.org/exhibitions/index.htm
The exhibition runs through Jan. 24, 2010

There were many interactive elements to engage in - embroidery, weaving, interactive programs etc...

         

Click here to download:

Open_Source_Embroidery_Exhibit.zip (165 KB)

Day-glow frogs at the San Francisco Airport exhibition.

   

Click here to download:

Day-glow_frogs.zip (151 KB)

Check out fellow CCA alumnus Hank Willis Thomas at the Baltimore Museum of Art.  As part of his Artist-in-Residence program at Johns Hopkins Center for Africana Studies, Thomas is exhibiting a number of old and new works at the BMA through November 2009.  

I went specifically to see Thomas' work but was also very pleasantly surprised to find a very welcoming and well situated museum that is intimate and unpretentious, yet houses an extensive and diverse collection ranging in periods from 19th century to Contemporary, of all mediums and genres including historical/cultural costumes, decorative arts, sculpture, mosaics, textiles and paintings.  The museum restaurant, Gertrude's was also formidable - I had a delicious Oyster Po' Boy sandwich that was fresh, airy and light served on home baked bread.  Give yourself ample time to enjoy this gem of a museum.  There is a lot to discover.

 
http://www.artbma.org/exhibitions/index.html

Press release:

BALTIMORE, MD (July 29, 2009)—Discover the powerful work of multimedia artist Hank Willis Thomas in the BMA’s West Wing for Contemporary Art from July 29 through November 29, 2009.  This acclaimed African-American artist is participating in the Artist-in-Residence Program at The Johns Hopkins University Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Africana Studies during the fall 2009 semester. Thomas is a rising star in the art world, with works featured in numerous exhibitions at national and international venues, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Prague Contemporary Art Festival. 

 

The exhibition features 10 examples of Thomas’ recent work exploring racial stereotypes and black identity in America. He first gained wide recognition for his provocative B®ANDED series, which raised questions about visual culture, the power of logos, and media representation of African Americans. An example from this series is Hang Time Circa 1923 (2008), which shows the Jumpman logo from Nike’s Air Jordan ad campaigns appropriated to create an image about lynching. The artist’s deeply personal video, Winter in America (2005), features G.I. Joe toy action figures re-enacting the senseless murder of his beloved cousin, showing how the seeds of violence are sown through play and also the all-too-common killings of young black men by their peers. In recent works such as the I Am A Man series of images (2009), Thomas explores the power of language as a means of questioning concepts of racial identity.  

 

During his residency this fall, Thomas will participate in a series of lectures and workshops on JHU’s Homewood campus, as well as an artist’s conversation at the BMA on November 12, 2009. 

Hank Willis Thomas

Hang Time Circa 1923

2008

If you are in DC, check out Mark Newport's knitted works at the Renwick Gallery - a part of the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian.  (http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions)
As part of a larger show called: Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009, Mark Newport presents a series of knitted superhero outfits.  Their crafty, limp and distorted proportions and scale are at once humorous yet critical of the notions of masculinity and gender politics.  Here are some pictures from the internet since I wasn't able to photograph in the gallery.

For more info on Mark Newport's work, see the following essay:
http://www.gregkucera.com/newport_reviews.htm

                     

Click here to download:

Mark_Newport_at_the_Renwick_Ga.zip (539 KB)