one piece

'October 10'

Now constantly there is the sound,

quieter than rain,

of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright

gold, the sycamore limbs

bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers

are beeweed and aster, spray

of their white and lavender

over the brown leaves.

The calling of a crow sounds

loud—a landmark—now

that the life of summer falls

silent, and the nights grow.

Wendell Berry, "October 10"

Historic Rhode Island Theater Designed by Stanford White to Reopen

The stage has been dark and the curtains closed at the Newport Casino Theatre for more than 20 years, but little imagination can conjure up images of Will Rogers spinning a monologue here or Orson Welles or Oscar Wilde entertaining the crowd.

The building was designed by Stanford White, a New York architect for the rich and glamorous whose murder by a girlfriend's jealous husband became a tabloid sensation, and contributed to the glimmering landscape that made Newport a popular summer resort for affluent industrialists and their families during America's Gilded Age.

Now after years of vacancy and deterioration, the building — owned by the International Tennis Hall of Fame and located at the Newport Casino complex — is being revived through a roughly $4.5 million facelift that will return it to a functioning theater.

This fall, workers will install heating, air conditioning and new electrical systems, make the building handicapped accessible, restore the exterior and touch up other signs of structural defects that led the building to close in 1987. The theater is expected to reopen as soon as next summer.

The theater, built in 1880, occupies prime Newport real estate on the grounds of the Newport Casino, a National Historic Landmark home to the tennis hall of fame and the traditional venue for the opening night performances of the city's heralded folk and jazz festivals. It lays claim to being the first — and only remaining example — of Stanford White's theater architecture.

An architect responsible for Fifth Avenue mansions, the palatial Rosecliff property in Newport and one of the original incarnations of Madison Square Garden, White also occupied high-society circles around the turn of the 20th century.

Evelyn Nisbet, an actress and model who became one of White's lovers as a teenager, famously recounted swinging nude for him on a red velvet swing he had installed. She went on to marry Harry Thaw, who shot White at close range in 1906 during a rooftop performance at the old Madison Square Garden. Thaw's first trial ended with a hung jury, and he was later acquitted by reason of insanity.

Read more here

On Line

The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480–1650, at the RISD Museum of Art, explores the art of engraving and its transformations during the European Renaissance. Showcasing works by Albrecht Dürer to virtuoso specialists such as Agostino Carracci, the exhibition demonstrates how engravers learned from one another and pushed their art to remarkable technical heights. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to observe the rapid visual evolution of one of Europe’s first reproducible art forms.

Richard Merkin 1938-2009

Richard Merkin, 70, New York painter, illustrator, teacher, author and all-around fashion plate, died of a heart attack on Sept. 5, 2009. 

Celebrated for brightly colored, R.B. Kitaj-inspired portraits of authors, jazz musicians and sports figures, Merkin was nevertheless a master of sophisticated pictorial space, whose grander compositions are present-day successors to  works by Braque and Matisse.

 Born in Brooklyn, he exhibited with the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in Manhattan from the 1970s until the dealer’s death in 2004. He taught at the Rhode Island School of Design for nearly 45 years, and was a contributor to Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and other magazines.

link: artnet

Happy 2nd Birthday Blake!

Today was good. 

Today was fun. 

Tomorrow is another one. 

Dr. Seuss

Marcel Breuer at RISD Museum

"Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture," on view at the RISD Museum (224 Benefit Street, Providence, from April 17 to July 19). 

Organized by Vitra Design Museum in Germany, it marshals furniture, photos, brochures, architectural models, video, and pull-out architectural plans to beautifully, clearly, dashingly enumerate the ideas and development of one of the most influential designers of the past century. It is one of the best shows you'll see in New England this year.

via: The Providence Phoenix

"Is Shepard Fairey's poster of Obama really the best design of the year?"

“I find the relationship between Fairey’s work and his sources discomforting. Nothing substantial has been added.” - Milton Glaser

"Well, what else could have won?" people keep asking me. Illustrator Shepard Fairey's famous poster depicting a moody, mystical Barack Obama gazing into the great future above Chicken Soup for the Soul incantations like Hope and Progress, won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year, picked by a panel of greats and goods including Alan Yentob and Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was, apparently, chosen as "most innovative and forward thinking design of the past 12 months".

Really? Innovative and forward thinking? Really?

It is indeed a handsome poster. Bold. Graphic. Packed, like most of Fairey's work, with allusions to Soviet revolutionary propaganda, and from the street art and graffiti culture in which Fairey's made his name since his teenage years. Though it hardly pushes the envelope in terms of posters as a type of design; while as street art Fairey's work lacks the light wit and many-layered subversion of, say, a Banksy. "Just as the presidential candidate's campaign speeches recaptured the lost art of oratory," says the jury's citation, "so this poster breathed new life into a form that had lost its purpose." This poster, they go on to say, "demonstrates the power of communicating ideas and aspirations from grass-root level."

There's no denying any of this. But this is Designs of the Year. Not Poster of the Year. Or Ad Campaign of the Year. And the prize's self-defined role is to reward the most "innovative and forward thinking" design. This poster is neither innovative or forward thinking, certainly not compared with last-year's winner, the bargain-basement laptop in reach of the world's poor, designed by Yves Béhar. Indeed the poster's very nostalgia - nodding to a past, and, it implies, a future, of Kennedy-sque cosy God-Bless-America certainty in which we really can believe in our Messiah-like leaders - is part of its appeal. Maybe the jury, like the rest of the western world, is still riding the wave of Obamamania, taking leave of their critical faculties. Yes the poster is bold and powerful; yes, it helped galvanise support. But it says precisely nothing about the direction in which design is going right now.

Still, maybe it's comfort and nostalgia and certainty we want right now, not challenge and provocation. In which case Fairey's poster delivers it in spades.

link: "Is Shepard Fairey's poster of Obama really the best design of the year" 

By Tom Dyckhoff 

Times Online

Break Down

Last Wednesday, I slipped on some ice, and broke my left arm.

 I was throwing some plastic bottles into the recycling bin when it happened. 

So much for trying to help the environment -- thanks mother nature...

My postings might be a bit scattered over the next week or so as I adapt to my cast, and catch up with my work. 

I leave you with the words of rap legend

 Kurtis Blow.

 "Breaks on a stage, breaks on a screen

Breaks to make your wallet lean

Breaks run cold and breaks run hot

Some folks got 'em and some have not

But these are the breaks

Break it up, break it up, break it up!

Break down!"

Pull me up up up up, up up up up!

The RISD Museum of Art presents Carl Ostendarp, “Pulled Up,” an exhibition in its Lower Farago Gallery that not only borrows its title but also its optimism from the 1977 Talking Heads song of the same name. 

Opening February 13, “Pulled Up” will feature works chosen by the artist from the Museum’s collection together with new paintings of his own.

While pulling works from the Museum’s collection, Ostendarp was keenly aware of the 1970 intervention at The RISD Museum by Andy Warhol for his historic “Raid the Icebox” exhibition. Ostendarp also has been inspired by music in much of his work and for the RISD installation, he borrowed the title from the Talking Heads because of their connection to RISD-- Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz are both graduates. 

Ostendarp’s work is both cheerful and sly. Typically spare and often including simple biomorphic forms or words, his compositions are flooded with flat color. Often inspired by music, Ostendarp will create multi-sensory experience for visitors by playing the Talking Heads 1977 album in the gallery.