It's not just me, right? There is something inherently reflective, sappy, deeply emotional about the holidays even though it seems like it's all just boxes, bows, and expectations. It's gotten pretty commercial out there.

My husband and I are amazingly lucky kids born into wonderful families and given unbelievable opportunities in our lives. We are generally aware of what we owe to the people we love, the world at large, and the next gang to come around. But sometimes it takes a few days of comfort, calm, kindness and good food to remember just how good we have it and what we have to give back.

It's not much but I'm pasting in one of the best paintings of my last year here with a sappy and true thank you for reading.


Stay out of trouble, kids...

Rachael

Different

There was a big figure 3 --white on dark brown. Its upper loop was the same size as the lower loop. So many people thought. and yet this upper loop was
SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT
larger than the lower one.

This figure 3 always looked to the left -- never to the right. At the same time it looked slightly downward, for only in appearance did this figure stand perfectly straight. In reality, not easily discernable, the upper
SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT
larger part inclined to the left.

And so this big white figure 3 always looked to the left and a little downward.
Or perhaps it was different.

I can't stop reading and relishing in these prose poems of Kandinsky from 1912. Concrete and abstract but all full of question, doubt, discovery, and SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT of a true truth, and that's different from the garden variety of truthiness...

take care,
Rachael

simple and true.
happy.
Rachael

I've been obsessed with all aspects of modern design (as in that era from about 1909 to 1949 for the purpose of my fascination) as so I've been looking at and loving the british Design Museum's website. It was there, today, that I rembered and got all goofy about lovable Penguins and their design tradition.
For your browsing pleasure:
a good overview of the Machine Aesthetic
Russell Wright and more about Russel
and for straight up Modern Art, the Phillips has a great web resource for the Societe Anonyme show that is there right now...
and then there's this lovely little wierd Marden Hartley Black Duck painting...


(Black Duck, 1940–41, Marsden Hartley, American, 1877–1943, 71.75 x 55.88 cm (28 1/4 x 22 in., Oil on Masonite. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)


more soon and be careful on the ice, ok?
take care,
Rachael

This broken ankle has me hobbling, wobbling, completely staying away from the holiday frenzy of parties and malls, and reflecting a lot more than I am 'doing'. It's not altogether a bad thing.
I sat for hours last week cutting scraps of failed paintings, punching holes in 'em, and re-attaching the parts as paperdolls.
I've been reading everything I can get my hands on... from Sharon Olds (my favorite of hers is also Geeky Mom's and she posted it here) to a pile of Fast Companys to a big stack of glossy art books (my favorite of which is Debating American Modernism).

take care,
Rachael