A Keepsake that Brings Good Fortune
Amy Peters’ Studio’s permanent keepsake necklace pays homage to that fun tradition–the Fortune Cookie.
The gold plated cookie charm floats on the chain and the fortune passes through the cookie as it is worn. The chain and the fortune are a matte finished sterling silver. Each necklace comes packaged in a small teal take out box with tissue.
Choose from a variety of the artist’s favorite fortunes of choose to inscribe one of your own.
Banned Books Week
September 29–October 6, 2007
Celebrating the Freedom to Read
Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.
“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”
~Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
This year, 2007, marks BBW’s 26th anniversary.
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
~Ray Bradbury
Here are just a FEW Links where titles of banned books (both previously banned as well as currently banned) can be found:
Forbidden Library: Banned and Challenged Books
Wikipedia– List of Banned Books
Wikipedia– Book Burning
Amnesty International–Individuals at Risk: Banned Books Week
“The freedom of speech cannot be limited without being lost.”
~Thomas Jefferson
A Staricasean esprit d’escalier
The Museum of Modern Art 2007 Exhibition
Martin Puryear
November 4, 2007–January 14, 2008
Exhibition Locations:
The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery,
6th floor
The Donal B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium,
2nd floor
“In “Ladder for Booker T. Washington,” Puryear built a spindly, meandering ladder out of jointed ash wood. More than thirty-five feet tall, the ladder narrows toward the top, creating a distorted sense of perspective that evokes an unattainable or illusionary goal.
Puryear’s evocative, dreamlike explorations in abstract forms retain vestigial elements of utility from everyday objects found in the world.”
Link: Biography: Martin Puryear–art:21 PBS Broadcasting | MoMa.org
Eolo Perfido
Born in Cognac, France, Eolo Perfido discovered photography at 28 years-old, though “fortunately passions have no time.”
Perfido’s photpgraphy is more than simple image realization, his images contain a beauty so real, so visually stunning, it is heartwrenching. To look upon his images is to be totally absorbed, fully immersed, drowning in the eyes of the faces he captures, captured in the vivd colors of the mundane somehow made extraordinary, and awed at their deep–sometimes overt, other times subliminal–meanings. Perfido’s photographs are…breathtaking.
Link: Eolo Perfido Portfolio
P.S. Be sure to look at the Extras in which Perfido takes you behind the scenes of each gallery’s photoshoot.
There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet
“…every nerve in me was still
anointed and ringed with the
feel of her body – the body
of some immortal daemon
disguised as a female child.”
Vladimir Nabokov.
1955. Lolita
In 1955 Vladimir Nabokov’s best-selling novel, Lolita was released by the avant-garde Olympia Press in Paris. The account of Humbert Humbert’s abduction and sexual enslavement of his ‘seductive nymphet’ Lolita and their escapades across America has become part of the accepted iconography of Western culture.
What most people are unaware of, however, is that Vladimir Nabokov had deeply personal reasons for writing Lolita. Though he largely kept these to himself, he would occasionally drop hints. He divulged one clue when he approached James Laughlin of the US publishing firm New Directions with a copy of Lolita in 1954 and inquired whether he might be interested in publishing “a time bomb” (Selected Letters 1989, 144). A further hint came during an interview for the BBC television program, Bookstand in 1962. When reporter Peter Duval-Smith bluntly asked the author “Why did you write Lolita?” Nabokov mysteriously responded:
“It was an interesting thing to do. Why do I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I’ve no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions”
Interviewed two years later by Alvin Toffler for Playboy magazine, Nabokov once again stressed the riddling attributes vested in his novel when asked “…do you ever regret having written Lolita? Nabokov responded:
“No, I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle – its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look…There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet” (Playboy 1964, 36).
Author Joanne Morgan in her book, Solving Nabokov’s Lolita Riddle (2005), believes implicitly that not only was Nabokov was purposely planting a “riddle” within Lolita, but that it was also a “brilliantly conceived anit-Freudian code”purposely embedded with this as well as his other works; and that she has at last deciphered it. Solving Nabokov’s Lolita Riddle takes the reader through Morgan’s research as she “proves” that Nabokov’s “infamous ‘fictional’ novel is, in part, a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s own traumatic sexual enslavement as a young boy at the hands of his pedophilic relative, Uncle Ruka.”
Moreover, Morgan asserts that Chapter 14 of Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory/Conclusive Evidence, is both question and answer to a chess problem which he published in the Partisan Review as extremely important and related to the chess game plotted by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass. Morgan attests that the chess problem was devised by Nabokov in his overall plan to ensure children were not seduced by predatory incestuous male relatives–Carroll was more than an instrument…he was the target.
Link: Solving Nabokov’s Lolita Riddle
Photograph taken by Eolo Perfido
A curious German obsession with the Wild West?!?
“There are clubs, magazines, trading cards, school curriculums, stupendously popular German-made Wild West films and outdoor theaters, including one high in the sandstone cliffs above the tiny medieval fortress town of Rathen, in Saxony, where cowboys fight Indians on horseback. A fake Wild West village, Eldorado, recently shot up on the outskirts of Templin, the city where Angela Merkel, the chancellor, grew up.
The cause of this infatuation is a writer named Karl May (1842-1912), virtually unknown in the United States but the most popular author in German history.”
Some famous adorers of May’s books: Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Kafka, Fritz Lang, and last but not least…Hitler.
The Globe that Inspired Chaplin Infact Still Missing!
“Hitler’s globe is missing.
Wolfram Pobanz, a 68-year-old retired cartographer, is positive that it’s not the one in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, or the one in the Markisches Museum (the Berlin history museum nearby), nor the one in a geographical institute across town–and he can prove it.
“We called it the Führer globe,” he remembered. It planted the seed of his fascination with the Columbus Globe for State and Industry Leaders, as this enormous model was called — a far cry from the inflatable version that Charlie Chaplin bounced around in “The Great Dictator,” which mocked Hitler’s megalomania and created the indelible vision of a fascist tyrant doing a pas de deux with the planet.
Besides the globes in Berlin, he said, there are two Columbus globes in public collections in Munich. Fellow globe hunters, put on the scent by word of his pursuit, have turned up several more in private hands and elsewhere, outside Germany. None, however, is from Hitler’s office in the New Reich Chancellery, the globe that inspired Chaplin.”
Link: The Mystery of Hitler’s Globe Goes Round and Round– The New York Times
A Golden Age, Gobbled Up by the Gilded Age
“With his opulent paint, acute ambition, stumblebum’s mug and pilgrim’s soul, Rembrandt van Rijn was a god of 17th-century European art. Some 20 paintings by him — the largest number outside Amsterdam — pulse through “The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” a show with an elusive heart.
“The Age of Rembrandt” is a show of strength, displaying the Met’s entire 17th-century Dutch painting collection: 228 pictures, of which about a third are usually on view at any time, and some never.
For an earlier showing, the Met stuck to linear chronology: early to late. For “The Age of Rembrandt” the Met has come up with a theme, and a perfect one for our time: money.
The work has been sorted not by artists or dates, but by the names and dates of the collectors who bought and gave the paintings to the museum. In this arrangement the history of Dutch “Golden Age” art begins in the American Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when the Met first opened its doors. The exhibition’s stars are not Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals, but J. P. Morgan, Collis P. Huntington, William K. Vanderbilt and Louisine and H. O. Havemeyer.”
Link: A Golden Age, Gobbled Up by the Gilded Age– The New York Times
Diamond Trompe-l’oeil
There are no diamonds in Alissia Melka-Teichroew’s rings, simply a thought-provoking silhouette imitating the conventional Tiffany setting. Wearers create their own traditions, meanings, and stories. Made of sterling silver. Price: $125.
Link: MoMA– Pins and Rings
Alice in Wonderland an Interesting Side-effect
Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS) is a disorienting neurological condition which affects human visual perception.
Sufferers perceive humans, parts of humans, animals, and inanimate objects as substantially smaller(micropsia) or larger (macropsia) than in reality. Generally, the object perceived appears far away or extremely close at the same time. The syndrome is associated with, and perhaps in part caused by, the classical migraine headache.
Small children, usually between the ages of five and ten, form a large proportion of those afflicted.
The syndrome not only affects visual perception, but also one’s hearing, sense of touch, and sometimes one’s own body image; the syndrome continues even when the eyes are closed.
The disorder is named after Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where the title character experiences many situations similar to those of micropsia and macropsia. Because Lewis Carroll recorded at least one episode of classical migraine, scholars have speculated that he may have experienced this syndrome himself.
“It appears that still only a minority of medical professionals have heard of the syndrome. If it is possible to have AIWS symptoms with no underlying cause, then perhaps more people would be diagnosed with AIWS itself, but it seems likely that there is (almost) always an identifiable cause, so AIWS is probably seen as an interesting side-effect.”
Willie and Trigger on Jukeboxes
“Ninety-nine per cent of the world’s lovers aren’t with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play.”
–Willie Nelson
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal”: Bowie donates to Jena 6 Defense Fund
“David Bowie has donated $10,000 to a legal defense fund for six black teens charged in an alleged attack on a white classmate in the tiny central Louisiana town of Jena.
“There is clearly a separate and unequal judicial process going on in the town of Jena,” Bowie said Tuesday in an e-mail statement. “A donation to the Jena Six Legal Defense Fund is my small gesture indicating my belief that a wrongful charge and sentence should be prevented.”"
Link: Rocker Donates To Jena 6 Defense Fund– CBS News
For an extremely detailed account of the case and comprehensive legal analysis on the Jena Six, visit Friends of Justice blog– “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel: What Blane Williams should have known”
The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons.
The first size zero…it’s all her fault ladies
A gorgeous 19 year old Brigitte Bardot in what becomes her trademark sexy pose.
The photograph was taken on the beach at Cannes in 1955 when Bardot made her first appearance at the film festival.
Link: Brigitte Bardot, the first size zero– Daily Mail
International Talk Like a Pirate Day
September 19th…Git yer grog on!
University of Michigan Students seek to stop sexual assault…sexism in advertising its 1st target
How interesting that Gilding had just finished watching Jean Kilbourne’s “Still Killing Us Softly’ and “Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women” and reading the synopsis of her other films and lectures, that she comes across this page, SAPAC–Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center from the University of Michigan.
SAPAC’s current campaign is ‘Sexism iAdvertising’
Now, for any who have not seen or heard Kilbourne and one of her witty, pithy lectures you are missing out on an enlightening demonstration of the inequality of gender representation in advertising through a critique of over 160 ads and commercials, as well as the advertising industry subsequently fostering an attitude that continues to teach men contempt for women and as well as teaching women that these society-weakeningimages of the female gender are acceptable and in fact should be mimicked.
Kilbourne doesn’t preach or tout that any expression of women’s sexuality is sexist, rather she invites the viewers to look at familiar images in a new way and promotes that there should be “equal sexism” in advertising if there is to sexism at all. In other words, for every sexist image of a woman in bondage to sell the newest model Lexus, then there should be an equal ad of a man in bondage selling the newst model of vibrator.
SAPAC takes this consideration of sexism in advertising a step further in its campaign. Along with an image of the advertisement deemed oppressive is a critique–or analysis, whichever you prefer–of the sexism the advertisment promotes. SAPAC’s mission is to stop the increasing incidents of sexual assault, and to do so it is taking the public right to the advertisers doorstep. Contact information to the advertiser (whether is be ad agency, deisgner, or company) is given along with a downloadable SAPAC Letter addressed to the specific contact. Here are some examples as follows:
DON’T ASSUME YOU KNOW ME!
“At first glance, this Axe ad might not seem that bad; however, once the text is read the seduction and assumptions made about women are apparent. For example, stating that a woman is a tease because of her attire makes assumptions about women based on their wardrobe. It also dictates that a woman’s clothing should imply a “guaranteed” consent to sexual activity. Furthermore, assuming that any woman that has a wrinkle wants to have children immediately is problematic because not all women want children and a single wrinkle should not imply that a woman’s biological clock is running out.
There are not only assumptions made in this ad, but also women are being judged based on their beauty (with statements like ABORT MISSION!) and how good the viewer thinks that this woman is in bed (“Into your needs,” “Likes a man who can use a whip”). Clearly, it is not possible to understand everything about a woman including her future goals for family or whether or not she likes to have kinky sexual relations solely based on her appearance.”
THE YOUNG AND THE STARVED
“In a society where young girls are ashamed of growing into their bodies, images like the ones portrayed by BCBG Girls do not help. The model in this advertisement is absolutely tiny and with her washed-out complexion, she looks weak and almost doll-like. This is not a positive image of the female body that young girls should aspire to have.”
It is important to note that both Kilbourne and SAPAC aren’t just abdicating the removal of sexist advertising, they are abdicating sexual equality in advertising such as: placing women in a role that expresses equal dominance to that of men; portraying women in more active positions rather than passive positions; Kilbourne personally notes the images of woman-on-woman fighting/dominance which she feels creates an attitude among women that they are constantly in competition with one another further preventing female bonding and abdicating the attitude of “she deserved it” towards other female victims of sexual violence; and the removal of play on words that overlooks, blurs the line, or minimilizes the right to deny sexual activity or that promotes sexual activity without consent (i.e. through intoxication, bondage, physical incapacitation). The problem they theorize is not in the portrayal of woman’s sexuality, but it is that women’s sexuality is not portrayed equally to that of male dominance.
Link: SAPAC | SAPAC Sexism in Advertising Campaing | Jean Kilbourne | Killing Us Softly Study Guide ( a great resource for those who can’t watch the video but wish an indepth synopsis of the lecture)
Now this is a step in the right direction.
