forward motion




























hey gang - I'm off for a bit here - I'll be back on in mid-july and hope to have some tales to tell and visual spectacles for you to behold.

see you soon, eh!




photo; via morgan maassan

the incomplete manifesto for growth | Bruce Mau






































All over this today!
Happy Full MOON eclipse - because it's big even it you don't notice it...


Bruce Mau Design

Thomas Christopher Haag













































Thomas Christopher Haag - I met him on Saturday at The Compound Gallery opening.  I bought those lower two pieces.  He is referencing when Buddha reaches enlightenment, He exclaimed:

"I have had numerous births. In vain have I sought the builder of the house. Oh, the torment of perpetual rebirth! But I have seen you at last, O builder of the house. You no longer build the house. The rafters are broken; the old walls are down. The ancient mountain crumbles; the mind attains to nirvana; birth is no more for desire is no more." 

Thomas' work is amazing - it requires your attention and curiosity to investigate each piece and the multidimensional symbolism and incredibly intricate layering of imagery and text.  Trust me that the pictures do these pieces no justice whatsoever you need to see this stuff in the flesh.

He uses reclaimed house paint and wood and old books and periodicals.  Clever.

I was blown away.

Thomas Christopher Haag has a space at The Compound Gallery 
Website 

alberto seveso












































this is only a drop in the bucket.  I don't even know what to say...

just.  go.  here...alberto seveso












Bronwyn Oliver




































































Bronwyn Oliver had that rarest of all skills: she knew how to create beauty.

It might seem facile to read her life, and her death, into the works, but she was so much like her work: simple yet complicated, fragile yet strong, eccentric though oddly straightfoward. She was a deeply awkward person, but it was this awkwardness that lent her works their peculiar grace, that made them interesting. The shadows cast by the object were an integral part of the artwork, and sometimes the shadow would be more powerful than the object, become the work itself. One wonders if her extraordinary industriousness was a way of warding off the shadows that finally engulfed her.

An extremely guarded person, she gave an unusually candid interview a few months before her death, revealing insights into a painful childhood and complex feelings about parenthood. She had no children, and several of her works referred to barrenness in some way – the suggestion of a shrivelled pod inside the lacy carapace of the larger shape, for example. She loved her years of teaching art to small children at Cranbrook – a career she could afford to retire from a couple of years ago – and one wonders whether the responsibilities and human contact of this job helped to keep her aloft. Although she had an angular sort of personality and could be brusque at times, she had a touching nature, and a surprising, almost old-fashioned unworldliness. At the same time the covert aggression and defensiveness of some of the works hinted at an inner darkness: as she said, ‘I haven’t made an innocent work in a long time.’

Bronwyn was modest yet utterly sure of her vision, secure in the confidence of her originality. Her art was fully resolved – perfect, really – and she stands alone in the annals of Australian art history. There was no-one like her: she invented her own deeply intelligent form, and entered fully into the world that it opened out to her.

Her most successful works were like a flourish, a single expressive gesture. The idea of the work was always perfectly worked out which gave the finished object a wholeness, an authority and sense of inevitability, as though it had always existed. There was an astonishing clarity in the entire thinking behind her work. Her titles, apt and always sophisticated, were an integral part of the work, a clue into the meanings of her unique conceptual language. The objects were painstakingly produced, and sometimes – but only if the work was not entirely successful – slightly tortuous. Of course we will read her work this way now – for the moment the shadows will dominate the art, and will change the way we read it forever – but nothing can alter the resilience of the works themselves, their eternal elegance, intelligence and beauty.

Hannah Fink





all pics courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery



I'm still trying to recover from the story of Bronwyn Oliver.  The painful parallels.  Her work is beautiful, intelligent....and silent.  Silent like the hours and hours she spent alone - the existence she had in the world that created them.  moving.





Sylvain Deleu blog





















































found via sylvain deleu photography blog.

An interesting pictorial dynamic of design, art, fashion among other interesting happenings.  His wife is Aneta Regel Deleu - so there is a regular bent toward the ceramic community in the UK.

Plate: Cormac Boydell (incredible)
Rings: Aneta Regel Deleu
Box: Hitomi Hosono - made for wedgewood.  so quiet and brilliant.

I want to talk about Gundi Deitz


















































words from her website: "Creatures with a strange sexuality, girl-like an massive lost in meditation and whimsical at the same time, helplessly plump and yet frivolous."


I'm drawn in.   The power of this work for me is it is all about contrast and extremes, but in so subtle a way - there is such solid, stubborn power displayed in the fragile porcelain 'picture' of a pudgy, seemingly simple, innocent, young (?) girl.  




Gundi Deitz website is very interesting in that the gallery format shows photos of work spanning 30 years.  I find it a fascinating commentary on the emergence of a style and it's spectacular expansion.  I found it very informative to see such an amazing artists career arc.  


Please go check out the works page on her website.  
and here




I'm feeling akio and esther in these pieces too!