Fewer writers

Victoria Donohoe in a photo from the Free Library

Very sorry to learn of the death of Inquirer critic Victoria Donohoe as I skimmed today's headlines. Bonnie Cook wrote a lovely appreciation of her for the Inquirer that you can find here.

Sad to see you go, Ms. Donohoe.

Practice, practice, practice

My lettering is not great, but I am trying. I thought pangrams would be good practice. There is a certain amount of this that is clearly working out things I stared at in Rome. More to come.

Course evaluations

As a department chair, I read more than 1,000 pages of student feedback forms every semester on more than 40 classes offered in my department. As a teacher, I know how infuriating these forms can be.

Here is a list of things that drive me nuts on student feedback forms:

Complaints that the readings or projects 'were all pretty much the same"
Whenever I read this, I want to show the student a picture of a gothic cathedral and ask which of the dozens of pillars or buttresses should be removed. There must be something about this era in which we can watch anything at any time, this age which some argue is defined by the iPod shuffle, that confuses people. Not all repetition is redundant, some is reenforcing. When you're trying to teach something new and unfamiliar, you often need to put it to them a number of different ways before they realize that the differences between the readings or projects are superficial and you're trying to communicate something about the structure. A course that flits from one topic to the another, completely different topic too easily allows students to hold their breath through unfamiliar and uncomfortable new information or experiences.

"I didn't learn anything"
Yeah, well, I didn't earn anything from the enormous expansion of wealth created by the stock market's climb over 17,000. And that's for the same reason you didn't learn anything in class - because I didn't invest in it. If you think a class is supposed to deliver technical skills and information like a hamburger at a fast food restaurant then you're not ready for college.

Ad hominem statements 
You would think that weeks, months, semesters and even years of critiques in which the conversation is directed toward the work and away from the maker would provide the tools necessary to evaluate course content and the means of instruction, but you would frequently be wrong. To many students, course evaluations are places to offer judgment about the people who teach the course. These comments most often betray the most casual sexism, age-ism, and, yes, racism, you are likely to encounter.

From the studio table

I am pleased to be showing two works in the Benefit for the Friends of the Rail Park at the invitation of Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Here are some (not great, but passable) photos...

Quite Useless (A code of signals for all nations), 2018, acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 in.

Require an interpreter (A code of signals for all nations), 2018, acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 in.

Each panel is available for a $500 donation to the Friends of the Rail Park. There is an opening reception on Friday, September 7, and the show continues until October 5. There are more than 200 works in the fundraising exhibit. You can shop online here...

New Label - NEWS ITEMS

Francis Luis Mora, Evening News - Subway Riders, 1914

One of the things I enjoyed about Facebook was that it gave me a place to share things I found in my reading.

Sometimes sharing a link was enough; sometimes there was more to say. So I am adding a new label to the cloud on the right side of the screen that will classify 'news items.'

Most of them are things that I'm just putting out there, but all of them will be things I think are interesting and I invite you to get in touch by email or text or whatever if there's one you want to talk about. And there's always the comments...

The first one is a story by Daniel Hernandez about the deportation of Oxacacan muralists (painters Dario Canul and Cosijoesa Cernas, who work under the name the Tlacolulokos) whose work was on view in the LA Central Library (link to story). Hernandez points out that the practice of artists and DJs and others int he cultural community working while traveling on a tourist visa is common, and its hard not to see the deportation of these artists as the capricious enforcement of a rule that is often overlooked. The work is amazing. You can see more about it in this story from last year in the LATimes.

a photo by Al Seib used in a story by Deborah Vankin in the LA Times 20 Sept. 2017.

Change for the better/change for the worse

This morning's reading included Anand Giridharadas' opinion piece in the August 24, 2018, New York Times, Beware Rich People Who Say They Want to Change the World. It was a sobering read and I want to share a passage that caught my attention:

Consider David Rubenstein, a co-founder of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. He’s a billionaire who practices what he calls “patriotic philanthropy.” For example, when a 2011 earthquake damaged the Washington Monument and Congress funded only half of the $15 million repair, Mr. Rubenstein paid the rest. “The government doesn’t have the resources it used to have,” he explained, adding that “private citizens now need to pitch in.”

That pitching-in seems generous — until you learn that he is one of the reasons the government is strapped. He and his colleagues have long used their influence to protect the carried-interest loophole, which is enormously beneficial to people in the private equity field. Closing the loophole could give the government $180 billion over 10 years, enough to fix that monument thousands of times over.

The link to 60 minutes profile in the quote is especially disturbing. Asked directly if the care of public monuments isn't properly a function of government, Rubenstien explains that government "doesn't have the resources" and the story goes on to portray him as a hero instead of talking about what he has done to limit government's ability to response to crisis...

I am not familiar with Giridharadas' writing, but I look forward to reading more...

Statement to the Landsdowne Arts Board

On July 24, 2015, I received an email from Hanne Weedon, representing the Lansdowne Arts Board, advising me that I had been selected to participate in a series of exhibits at the Lansdowne Arts Board’s 20*20 gallery, curated by Philadelphia gallerist Bridgette Mayer. At the time, I was unfamiliar with the Lansdowne Arts Board, but Bridgette Mayer’s professional reputation in the regional arts community and investment in its programming encouraged me that this would be a worthwhile project to undertake. Over the next three years, I worked with Ms. Weedon to schedule and organize the exhibit. More than 140 emails and three site visits took place in this time. Throughout this period, I found her to be extremely responsive and cooperative. A written agreement about the exhibit was pending, but not signed by either party.
 
On August 19, 2018, more than three years after this invitation was extended, I learned that Ms. Weedon’s employment had been terminated and that a long list of tasks necessary to carrying out the exhibit remained. Having worked with Ms. Weedon to plan the exhibit, its installation, and interpretation, I was naturally concenred about this decision. I have not been given an explanation why she was immediately terminated, but I was reassured that volunteers from the community would come forward to carry out the program.
 
As a mentor to young artists, a teacher, and an experienced arts administrator, this decision gives me cause to be concerned about the Lansdowne Arts Board’s and the local government’s commitment to professionalism. My conversations with artists who have exhibited with the LAB confirm that the gallery administrator has been pivotal in carrying out programs. This is consistent with best practices in the galleries.
 
Professionalism is an important issue in the arts. It is the means by which accountability can be assured to the community. As a faculty member at Tyler School of Art, I try to uphold and instill in my students a high level of professionalism and respect for accountability.
 
For these reasons, I have decided to withdraw from this project. I want to thank the numerous volunteers who came forward to offer their assistance; I regret that the compressed timeline of the exhibit, combined with communication challenges produced by this change, made completing the project unrealistic without continuity of leadership at the gallery. I especially want to express my thanks to Hanne Weedon for her patience and cooperation throughout the planning process.

Makes you stop to think...

Came across this reading Ashley Primis's story What Ever Happened to Generation X? in the February, 2018, Philadelphia Magazine...

Setting the record straight

“Carpet With the Arms of One of Sultan Qa’it Bay’s Emirs,” made in Egypt in the 15th century, on display in the Uffizi.CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times

When it comes to the west's relationship to Islam, I have never been a fan of the clash of civilizations idea that seems to be defining the world view of so many folks these days...so I was grateful for a little historical perspective in the form of this review of a show currently at the Uffizi

The West “pays very little attention to the Islamic world. We still haven’t realized that the world is a little more vast, and that culture is not just a Western prerogative,” [Giovanni Curatola, professor of Islamic art and archaeology at the University of Udine] said. “We continue to think that we’re the center of something.”

Now I just wish I were in Italy to see it. 

Regrettably, the essay goes on to describe the reactions of interior minister Matteo Salvini and his ilk, and it's hard to imagine that the response of nationalists would be any different here. But still, the exhibit is a hopeful example of bridge building, and a reminder that things haven't always been this way...

Seen & noted

You are not alone...

A big body of work on which I have been focused for about a year deals with the identification of patterns in fields of information. I am starting small. Inspired by a weird 1970s book - The Language of Pattern by Keith Albarn and a a slew of others - I have been trying to figure out how numbers become shapes. Mostly, I've concentrated on times tables and counting sequences, employing Albarn's method of reducing numbers by using digit sums to get them to numbers between one and nine (this can take a few steps...for example, 84001 is calculated as 8+4+0+0+1 = 13, and finally 3+1 =4).

I did a lot of this in Rome. I had some time to think.

At one point is seemed like a good idea to use the famous Fibonacci sequence, beloved of conspiracy theorists everywhere. I got about 100 or 150 numbers out in the sequence and started to notice something...the digit sums themselves form a pattern.

Turns out I am not the first to see this...I was delighted to come across this site where Gary Meisner writes about a 24-digit repeating sequence of digit sums of Fibonacci numbers. In case you're interested (or trying to figure out if aliens are trying to communicate with you...) the sequence is:

1,1,2,3,5,8,4,3,7,1,8,9,
8,8,7,6,4,1,5,6,2,8,1,9.

If you assign each digit a color, and you count to 100, the array looks like the square above on the right.

Another part of the communications strategy

A Padlet screenshot...

So this blog has been a little reborn as I plan my escape from Facebook. But blogging seems to lend itself to one kind of sharing and social networking to another, more spontaneous form. So how to preserve a little spontaneity?

I have been toying with another tool I really like for a while and maybe that's part of the solution. Please take a minute top peek at my Padlet called Bookmarks and let me know what you think...

Nuance in a time of sharp contrast

Words are powerful...but power is not always the use of force.

I recalled this as I listened,. in amazement to linguist Geoff Nunberg's careful analysis of the phrase Deep State at the end of yesterday's Fresh Air broadcast. You can check it out here:


Nunberg uses his characteristic thoughtful and precise language to unpack a term that has slipped into everyday political use (or at least, into regular tweets from our Fearless Leader and his cronies...) and to describe why it is so troubling. What I admire about this essay is how ti takes its time to reach a conclusion, supporting it withe evidence, so that when we arrive it seems entirely reasonable. So reducing it to a soundbite seems especially in approprtiate, but the sentence that really hooked me was this one:

It's that suggestion of ruthless efficiency that makes "the deep state" sound more ominous than a name like "the invisible government." We think of a government as a collection of people, with all their foibles and frailties [...] Whereas the specter of the "deep state" is chilling precisely because it seems to be so capable. Hidden from view, it orchestrates complex schemes across a half-dozen agencies, buries incriminating documents, compromises inconvenient opponents with spurious allegations.

What Nunberg is doing in the essay is an important you-can-do-this-at-home strategy for finding bullshit. He replaces the new term with another, theoretically synonymous one that shines a light on the connotations of the first one.  I have always liked to use this strategy when folks complain about the tyranny 'political correctness.' Replace that Fox news talking point with "showing respect for others and their identities" in most phrases and you see what these folks are actually complaining about....

All of this puts me in the mind of an article by Nicholas Lehman that appeared in the July 31, 2000, issue of the New Yorker. Lehman carefully examined George W. Bush's use of metonym in contrast to Al Gore's use of metaphor and hinted at the carefully controlled language being deployed by politicians to shape their messages.

To pretend these are 'just words' is to be naive about how speakers and writers seek to shape our thoughts and behaviors through the choice of words. Nunberg's essay is a sobering reminder that we can be controlled as easily by language as by overt use of force...

A reminder

The Carried Him - The Shame by Azza Abo Rebieh

Today's New York Times brought a reminder that, among other things, art offers a window into the terrible things that are going on in the world today. The story introduces readers to Azza Abo Rebieh, a Syrian woman detained for her activism, and her work, which records images of other women imprisoned in Syria. Her prints and drawings are worth a look.

Business art

from biography.comhttps://www.biography.com/people/andy-warhol-9523875

A little bit of a place holder here...I wanted to share a short interview with Blake Gopnik that aired on this morning's Marketplace Morning Report about Andy Warhol's 'business art.'

Gopnik described Warhol's belief that business (in general and selling out in particular) could be an art form (an assertion I kind of hate...I think it reflects the idea that being 'an art form' is an unquestioned good that I cannot stomach, but I digress...). He offered examples of what a terrible business man he was - including, famously, his support for the Velvet Underground.

Host Kye Rysdall suggested that Elon Musk's side business in flame throwers had a 'performance art' quality about it. That's where it gets interesting to me...

I make paintings. Paintings - if they are discussed at all in the non-art world - are talked about in 'museum quality' or 'sofa sized' terms. So the idea that performance art, in the non-art world, stands for a kind of anarchic activity - the economic equivalent of having a punk band - is amusing. I used to work at a school that struggled with what it was doing when it offered classes and degrees in fine arts (most schools don't really lose a lot of sleep over this question...it was refreshing). One of the answers they were most comfortable with was that fine artists (which is code for folks whose market is completely invisible to those who teach them) were a kind of R&D world for commercial art to reprocess for mass consumption. Performance artists, painters, etc., could be counted on (...to the extent they are reliable at all...) to generate ideas that could be popularized by savvy business types.

When they post the excerpt, I'll update with a link.

Crazy watch

I will be trying to gather and concentrate a lot of threads I have been tracking in various places as I move from Facebook to something else, which may include this blog.

So I'll start with a note for my ongoing research into conspiracy theories. This one comes from a report by Alex Goldman on NPR's All Thing Considered on August 4, 2018.


 In this story, at 2:40, there is a very interesting part about how the folks who believe that Q is giving them hints about Trump's thoughts and ideas believe he signals them. Goldman describes Trump's assertion that he had been to Washington "maybe seventeen times" before his election. Q is the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, therefore he must be signaling his audience in code about the validity of Q, organization.

The number value of letters is an important aspect of secret communications. I got interested in this subject years ago because of reporting on sports jerseys that communicated hateful messages through the public sphere.

I am beginning to see Q as the V as of the right. But that's a post for another day.

Strange Characters

Another weird typography citing...along the lines of Keith Houston's Shady Characters

Daisy Alioto writes about the Dinkus (***) in The Paris Review - 8 June 2018.