Stina Wirfelt...

After a long break from using this blog for research, i have come back to it but have moved on from knitting. Now I am looking at wallpaper, Glasgow, regeneration in Glasgow, regeneration in the Gorbals, art in the Gorbals, community work, community arts, demolitions, failure of high-rise flats, families being displaced to new homes, leaving the lived in cells of high-rise living... more to come.

First, i'm looking at Stina Wirfelt's films, some are Glasgow based, 'Shelter From The Storm' is especially poignant to my work at the moment.

The Village Wash from Stina Wirfelt on Vimeo.

....use of colour, cross-narrative techniques, humour, romantic notions...

Shelter From the Storm from Stina Wirfelt on Vimeo.

Vija Celmins...

American artist Vija Celmins makes paintings, drawings and prints. Using charcoal, graphite and erasers she produces delicate monochromatic images based on photographs of the sea, deserts, the night sky and other natural phenomena. Through her slow rigorous approach, the meticulous precision of her technique, and serial exploration of her subjects, Celmins seems to question the nature of representation.

Aurélien Froment

Memory, word games and puzzles; knots, conjuring tricks and cinemaMemory is an inexhaustible cultural goldmine. Sigmund Freud, W.G. Sebald, Barbra Streisand and Plato, amongst others, have offered words of wisdom about this elusive, intractable topic and its connections to knowledge, trauma, exile and love. Countless writers and artists use representations of memories – memoirs, souvenirs, photographs, memorials, albums, archives – as inspiration, material or form. By virtue of its omnipresence, memory is also as banal as it is universally resonant. So, to remark that French artist Aurélien Froment’s work traffics in memory is perhaps predictable. However, Froment approaches memory from the somewhat less conventional angle of its mechanics, which is both a refreshing and challenging aspect of his work. Memory runs through his cultivated maze of installations, photographs, videos, performances and publications like Ariadne’s red thread – which could also be a red herring, a diversion that provides a false sense of interpretative security in the midst of shifting associations, repetitions and slippages....rest of article - http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/aurelien_froment/

Walid raad/The Atlas Group

FACT, LIVERPOOL, UK

Violently displaced from its body, a car engine lies in a pool of leaked oil. In case it should suddenly leap into life again, a military official levels an automatic rifle at the inert lump. Presented as a group of framed inkjet prints, My Neck Is Thinner than a Hair: Engines (2000–3) is the first in a series of works in ‘Funny, How Thin the Line Is: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive’ that examine the spate of car bombs detonated in Lebanon between 1975 and 1991. A wall text informs us that the engine is ‘the only part that remains intact after a car bomb explodes’, and that ‘during the wars photojournalists competed to be the first to find and photograph the engines’.... http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/walid_raad_the_atlas_group/

Judith Baca

Judith (Judy) Baca (b. 1946), a Mexican-American artist and activist working primarily in Los Angeles, has dedicated her career to demonstrating the ways in which public art, created in partnership with community members, can be a force for social change. One of her first undertakings after college was a collaborative mural project aimed at tempering gang violence (1969). In 1976 she co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), which has been a source of inspiration, support, and sponsorship for projects that address the identities and concerns of underrepresented populations such as women, immigrants, and the economically disadvantaged. Because these murals and related public art installations are located in the neighborhoods in which the participants live, a strong sense of joint ownership accompanies the works’ creation.

Baca’s most celebrated work is The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a mural project begun in 1973 in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. Completed over the course of five years, The Great Wall acts as a visual narrative of centuries of California history—especially of that history which has consistently been underrepresented in “official” documents and textbooks. It, and Baca’s mural projects in general, find their stylistic precedents in the works of the Mexican muralists and the W.P.A., yet the social activism and specific themes that they espouse are decidedly contemporary.

About Lynn M Zwerling

When I retired, I established a Knitting Behind Bars project to benefit inmates and the community. Inmates at Jessup Pre Release make small cuddly dolls to be given to truamatized children. Patience, anger management, goal setting and appropriate communications are skills developed.
To distribute these inmate-made comfort dolls to first responders.
Introduce the "behind the walls" population to the communty.
Practise goal setting, anger management and communication skills.
The inmates learn vital life skills and accomplish a creative task.
Encourage real people to interacte with cons in a creative process.
Overview
The project began with a handful of men incarcerated in JPRU and now there is a waiting list for future sites and future participants. I need funding for supplies, administrative costs and promotional materials and a stipend for my volunteers. Our plan is to encourage our knitters to "pay it forward" by teaching these life skills to other inmates. I presently have 3 volunteers who go to the prision weekly teaching life skills and knitting. Yes, knitting. I tell the inmates that knitting is the new yoga and they rave about the changes they have seen in their attitudes and relationships. After learning basic knitting skiills, a small, cuddly doll is made by the inmates and then presented in an in-person event to first responders in the community. Concept is to give inmates the opportunity to do something good while incarcerated, to build a bridge to a future community.

Goal is to develop other sites

How will the 50K be Used?
Budget Notes: Cost of traveling to public relations meetings and events Cost of memebership fees for community organizations Transportation cost for volunteers to facilities
$ 5,000	Website design and hosting
$ 1,500	Yarn, knitting needles and other craft supplies
$ 6,000	Annual stipend for knitting teachers
$ 5,000	Annual stipend for web master
$ 31,500	Annual salary for Project Director
$ 1,000	Collateral supples, fliers, cards, ads, fundraising

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Kaffe Fassett

"Those of you who feel knitting has changed your life,
welcome to the club. I can think of no better
occupation to reveal your own creativity" - Kaffe Fassett

"Like so many other crafts, knitting has the potential to create magic in our lives".

The Culture of Knitting by Joanne Turney

From booties and scarves to art and fashion, The Culture of Knitting addresses knitting as art, craft, design, fashion and performance, and as an aspect of the everyday. Drawing on a variety of sources, including interviews with knitters from different disciplines as well as amateurs, the text breaks down hierarchical boundaries and stereotypical assumptions that have previously negated the academic study of knitting. The book also highlights the diversity and complexity of knitting in all its guises.



The Culture of Knitting investigates not merely why knitting is so popular now but also the reasons why knitting has such longevity. By assessing the literature of knitting, manuals, patterns, social and regional histories, alongside testimonial discussions with artists, designers, craftspeople and amateurs, the book offers new ways of seeing and new methods of critiquing knitting - without the constraints of disciplinary boundaries - in the hope of creating an environment in which knitting can be valued, recognized and discussed.

About the author

Joanne Turney is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Design at Bath School of Art and Design.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Knitting: a gendered pursuit?

Chapter Two: Knitting the Past:: Revivalism, Romanticism and Ruralism in Contemporary Knitting

Chapter Three: Twisted Yarns: Post-modern Knitting

Chapter Four: Unravelling the Surface - Unhomely Knitting

Chapter Five: In the Loop? Knitting Narratives, Biographies and Identities

Chapter Six: Knit Power - The Politics of Knitting

Conclusion: The World is Full of Ugly Jumpers

How knitting crops up when least expected...

Session #4: Stream of Consciousness & Interior Monologue

(Taken from a lesson on 'interior monologue' by Marc Sheffner on Reading Blog = http://sheffnersweb.net/blogs/reading/)

The second extract we read comes from later in the novel, and illustrates how one thought leads to another by a quick process of association. Stephen Dedalus watches two nuns/midwives walking on the beach. He recalls that one such midwife assisted at his own birth. He glimpses some knitting in her bag and imagines the strand of wool as a navel cord, and the knitting as a “misbirth” “hushed in ruddy wool”. The idea of a navel cord makes him think of the genetic links that connect all human beings, going back to our original “mother”, Eve. “Navel” reminds him of “navel gazing”, or meditation. His knowledge of Greek tells him the Greek word for navel, “omphalos” Somehow, the “cord” or cable, together with the idea of monks meditating in order to connect with God, gives Dedalus the hilarious idea of telephoning Eden: “Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.”

Mark Newport

Flashy capes and skintight garments are the usual accouterments of comic book superheroes. But artist Mark Newport has some fun with these larger-than-life characters with his soft, hand-knit costumes, which are on view through January 3 at the Renwick Gallery's "Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009." He spoke with the magazine's Jordan Steffen....

Who taught you how to knit?

I learned to knit twice. The first time was when I was a kid and my grandmother, who was a first grade school teacher, taught me. I think I was ten or something. I probably forgot because there were no knitting needles or yarn at home. In 2000, I wanted to include knitting in some undergraduate classes I was teaching. My wife is a knitter. She gave me a couple books and said, "Here get to it." The first thing that I had to do was learn how to make a couple of different things. I could knit and create cables and stuff, but I hadn't made any functional garments. So I made a pair of socks and a pair of gloves. Once I learned to knit in the round, it all made sense....

http://www.gregkucera.com/newport.htm

I found a website full of male knitters, here is an artist called Mark Newport, going back to the accidental gender reference i made during my public art project...

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN MULTITASKING

BRANDY R. CRISS

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

MWSU

Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.

Sale 14244 - The Private World of Truman Capote New York, 13:00 9 Nov 2006

Buyers of property lots offered in this catalog will not acquire any copyright, intellectual property, publicity or similar rights in the property (including without limitation the artwork, photographs, books and manuscripts being offered) or in the images or likenesses that may be contained therein. Accordingly, buyers of lots may not publish, reproduce, distribute or create derivative works of any such property without the prior consent of the holders of such rights.

Please note that Truman Capote's personal wardrobe lots are in various states of condition. As with all lots offered at auction, we recommend that potential auction participants request detailed condition reports before bidding.

The Truman Capote Literary Trust is neither a participant nor sponsor of this sale.

1001 Capote, Truman. Various titles. 3 volumes: A Christmas Memory. New York: 1966. Original cloth, slipcase. 1st edition, in original plastic wrapper. * The Thanksgiving Visitor. New York: 1967. Original cloth, slipcase. 1st edition, in original plastic wrapper. * One Christmas. New York: 1983. Original cloth, in slipcase. 1st edition. With Truman Capote library stamp to upper cover of slipcase. Sold for $1,076 inclusive of Buyer's Premium	1002 Capote, Truman. Various titles. 3 volumes: In Cold Blood. New York: 1966. Original cloth, no jacket. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. * Music for Chameleons. New York: 1980. Original cloth, slipcase. Limited author's edition, with Capote library stamp. Damage to slipcase. * The Muses are Heard. New York: 1956. Original cloth, DJ. 2nd printing. Condition varies. Sold for $359 inclusive of Buyer's Premium
1003 Capote, Truman. The Dogs Bark. New York: 1973. Original cloth, no DJ. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. * Another copy. New York: 1977. Paperback edition, lacking library stamp. Sold for $179 inclusive of Buyer's Premium	1004 Capote, Truman. Music for Chameleons. New York: 1980. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition* 2 additional copies, in DJs, later editions. Condition varies. $300 to 500
1005 Capote, Truman. Various titles. 5 volumes: In Cold Blood. New York: 1965. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition, with Capote library stamp. * Music for Chameleons. New York: 1980. Original cloth, DJ. 3rd printing. *One Christmas. New York: 1983. Original cloth, slipcase. 1st edition, lacking Capote library stamp. * The Muses are Heard. New York: 1956. Original cloth, DJ. 2nd printing, with Capote library stamp. * Trilogy. New York: 1969. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition, with Capote library stamp. Sold for $657 inclusive of Buyer's Premium	1006 Capote, Truman. The Grass Harp. New York: 1951. Original cloth. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. * The Grass Harp (Play Version). New York: 1952. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. Shelfwear, jacket chipped with 1 1/2 inch closed tear. Sold for $418 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

Suzanne Lacy- The Crystal Quilt

I've been returning to refer to this piece of work for months.

On Mother’s Day, 430 women over the age of 60 were performers in an hour-long tableau that was live broadcast by public television. 3000 people attended the performance staged on an 82 foot square rug with tables placed to resemble a quilt (designed by painter Miriam Shapiro) and listened to an accompanying soundtrack that mixed the voices of 75 women talking about aging (by composer Susan Stone). Speakers mixed personal observations and reminiscences with social analysis about the unutilized potential of the elderly.

Jo Hanson. Street Sweeping.

Hanson came to prominence early in the 1970s soon after she moved into a deteriorated but stately Victorian on Buchanan Street. Once she had resuscitated the house into a landmark, she tackled its windy litter-strewn sidewalk. Her personal act of sweeping one sidewalk grew into a celebrated public art practice and citywide anti-litter campaign. Her compiled volumes of urban detritus are recognized as an artistic political tour de force that raised community awareness as it chronicled rapidly changing demographics.

Jenny Holzer - Truisms

Often holzer's work presents both explicit content and
minimalist aesthetics that make profound statements about
the world of advertising and consumer society today.
by presenting an assemblage of phrases that mimic advertising
slogans through vehicles commonly used in advertising,
such as electric billboards, coffee mugs, and commercials
on cable and network television, holzer questions what
our eyes can see and what we can't see in media,
whether consumers today have any real control over the
information that is provided to them.

Stan Douglas - Television Spots.

Stan Douglas
«Television Spots»

Produced between 1987 and 1988, the «Television Spots» are exactly what they claim to be: these twelve, short video sequences were originally planned as inserts within the regular advertisements on Canada’s private television network. Unannounced and without introductions of any kind, on a nightly basis one of the fifteen to thirty-second-long spots was aired as part of the scheduled blocks of broadcasting. The sequences tell short stories or show excerpts of occurrences: so «Answering Machine,» for example, begins with the shot of a woman arriving at the door of her apartment. The moment she finds her keys, the telephone rings. One sees her enter the apartment, put down her handbag, and finally sit down to smoke a cigarette. On the table beside her, the telephone continues to ring. The spot concludes with the caller’s voice leaving a message on the answering machine. Regarding the camerawork and sense of dramaturgy in the editing, the spots correspond—if greatly shortened—with conventional film and television practices. Yet their content, the dramaturgy of the action, and what’s depicted, run contrary to the usual expectations of viewers; they undermine the usual construction of their needs; in doing so, the [representation of the] public’s identity is shown in the end as a greatness defined purely though the medium. The «Television Spots» appear as ‹narrative› fragments spontaneously readable and formally easy to identify but their imagery shows ‹empty places›: interchangeable performance locations, urban areas lacking any dramatic or narrative value—as everyday and banal as the ‹action› or the ‹events,› images normally left out between edited shots. They show waiting, a lack of orientation and misunderstandings, or the impossibility to agree at all. Alongside all this, and while using an editing rhythm considerably slower than that of the advertising world’s sense of dramaturgy (but always within the framework of the economic time-frame of conventional cinematic images), these shootings take on the quality of reality captured as found footage, as fragmentary found objects, or, in the transporting of medial constructions in their dysfunctionality, as an alternative way of representing reality—one that refers to meaning-laden structures outside of the medium.
(Source: «Seeing Time,» exhibition of the Kramlich collection at the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, http://on1.zkm.de/kramlich/douglas)

Douglas’s Monodramas, ten 30- to 60-second videos conceived as interventions into commercial television, interrupted the usual flow of advertising and entertainment when broadcast nightly in British Columbia for three weeks in 1992. These micronarratives mimic television’s editing techniques, but as kernels of a story they refuse to cohere. They are tales of dysfunction and dislocation, misanthropy and misunderstanding: a car and a school bus nearly collide at an intersection, only to drive away; a pedestrian greets an Afro-Canadian man he encounters on the street but is told in response, “I’m not Gary.” When the videos were aired unannounced during commercial breaks, viewers called the station to inquire about what was being sold, their responses evincing how the media can refocus attention from content to consumption.

Peter Greenaway - Dear Phone

A narrator relates a variety of peculiar stories involving characters with the initials HC and their dealings with telephones. These are interspersed with artistic shots of telephone boxes in a variety of locations

People did this in 2007... (in Glasgow, Scotland)

BALIOL LANE

Jonny Filter presents PALE BLUE GREEN.
A filmic and painterly exploration of visions, sounds and space.
Live performance on Halloween with shambolic noise masters Dumbracket

22 WILLOWBANK CRESCENT

Deer's Head Gallery: illustrations by Rebecca Davies in hallway entrance from her current project, Men With Interesting Faces and a video projection in the stairwell by Jamie Kenyon

63 LAUDERDALE GARDENS

Last Evening: a body found in the close of the tenement.
A sculptural installation by Little Whitehead.

a series of tenement and backcourt dwelling installations, performances, loads of things, events, there was probably food and drinking, and it happened not now but in the recent past of 26th october 2007 till the 1st november 2007 i believe.
http://www.closeprojects.co.uk

Dame Elisabeth Frink

I had never looked into the extensive work of Elisabeth Frink until now, only knowing that she was the artist commisioned to make the 'Flying Figures(Untitled)' (1964) on the Ulster Bank building in Shaftsbury Square in Belfast. I was thinking of researching this sculpture for a presentation and in doing so came across some very exciting drawings and bronze sculptures.

Better Things

the photography and the silences in this film make you forget to breathe. all the colours are so sombre and reflect the bleakness of the story.

Peter Peri - The Preacher

1961 Forest Gate Methodist Church, London, E.7. The preacher. Diagonal sculpture.

Reminds me of this.... in Belfast...

'Draft And Overdraft' (nicknames) on The Ulster Bank Shaftsbury Square.

by Dame Elisabeth Frink 1964.

Siobhan Hapaska

Siobhan Hapaska's sculptures incorporate extraordinary objects from palm trees to buffalo skulls, goat skins to old socks.

They create metaphors reflecting on the fundamentals of life, unearthing the unsaid and the troubling.

Her sculptures of the mid 1990s had highly finished metallic fibreglass surfaces. Her new works reflect on how things have changed since. Their scale is larger than human. Themes of fertility and potential abound in 'Dry Spring' which uses copper pipe and flowers.

Politics, technology, speed, travel and nature are all made reference to, but ultimately you are encouraged to open your minds to the space her sculptures leave for imaginations to take hold.

my heart sang when i first saw slides of her work at a friday event, i can't remember what she said but it was very very important. i think i smiled the whole way through her talk which has never happened before or since.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film "so closely tuned to the pulse of communal life, to the rhythms of how people work, play and struggle together, it captures the larger picture along with the smaller. Like Poppy, the bright focus of this expansive, moving film, Mr. Leigh isn’t one to go it alone. Played by a glorious Sally Hawkins — a gurgling, burbling stream of gasps, giggles and words — Poppy . . . keeps moving forward and dancing and jumping and laughing and nodding her dark, delicate head as if she were agreeing not just with this or that friend but also with life itself. She’s altogether charming or perhaps maddening — much depends on whether you wear rose-colored specs — recognizably human and every inch a calculated work of art."

warming objeects

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (NY: Fa

this book is like relish, i can't have enough but its incredible. probably because the characters are completely fabricated. but the sentiments, the nostalgia and hope and despair is all real and from somewhere true.

'The book emulates the celebrity auction catalog (think of the six-volume Sotheby’s catalog for the many personal collections of Andy Warhol and you’re on the right track). The twist is that Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris are fictional characters and their joint possessions, carefully itemized and offered in rough chronological order in the auction catalog, are supposed to reflect the arc of their relationship, beginning with “the first known photograph of the couple together” (Lot 1005) and ending with various lots suggesting two lives going in different directions.

Shapton’s auction catalog mimicry is pitch perfect; her lot descriptions satirize the dead-pan verbiage of the high-brow auction house. And, in fact, Shapton’s “auction catalog” appears to have fooled the Library of Congress, which catalogs the volume not as fiction but in the CT class, or Auxiliary Sciences of History: Biography. Shapton must have had a blast collecting or faking the items to be included in the 332 lots: fake snapshots, tourist postcards, lingerie, clogs, 18 bras for “Lenore” and 18 tee-shirts for Harold, cheesy paperbacks, vintage sunglasses, stuffed squirrels…

On the other hand, Important Artifacts and Personal Property is less successful in giving much depth to the relationship between the two characters. Auction catalog language is deliberately wiped free of emotion and subjectivity, so Shapton often resorts to personal notes, letters, and annotations by Lenore and Harold themselves, buried in the descriptions of the various lots, as a vehicle for depicting the status of their changing relationship. For example, here is Lot 1253:

An unusual chair and a handwritten note
A vintage 1930s leather and oak chair. Good condition, some marking to leather. A note on the back of a receipt for groceries reads: “You said you’d be back at 8, you could have called. Have gone to the movies. here’s your present – Happy Birthday. L 9:45”
24 in. wide x 30 in. high x 18 in. deep
$700-900

The problem, of course, is that most of our personal possessions don’t really say much about us in isolation. (The fact that I have a Hello Kitty mug of Badtz-Maru in my office won’t tell you anything about me unless I tell you the story behind it.) When items in Shapton’s book do point to biographical traits of their owners, the message often seems forced.'

From the http://sebald.wordpress.com/

gloss over the artwork

in found this website which adds its own tagline on each work.

here jan bas ader 

and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

i don't think the website owner calls themself artist. actually i'm not entirely sure. but is still ok for me to use him or her as secondary research? i think their commentary on 'modern art' as a tool to impress a date is very valuable to me as an art student.

miranda's website

HERE

MIRANDA JULY

miranda july.

I liked her book here:

I really loved it, its ridiculous but completely normal at the same time. I can identify with all the shit in this book, every singleword.