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The new Card Catalog Challenge is a ‘green’ event using twenty library catalog cards to create an art piece with the same cards that are now part of our online public access catalog. Back in the day, these cards were hand written/typed by catalogers and later machine processed to provide a record of what the library held in its collection. Now they are recycled cards whose text can be a part of a created art piece to be displayed in the Divinity Library art gallery during October. Prototypes are on display in the library to help give you ideas. Pick up your cards September 1st from the Circulation Desk. Deadline is Sept 25th. One entry per person, cannot be larger than “12 x 12 x 12″, don’t have to use all 20 but can’t use more, only acceptable text is what’s on the card, origami is okay, sculpture, painting or three dimensional work is fine, everyone gets 20 cards. Good luck!
Jonathan Franzen has a way of making people mad. When his last novel, The Corrections, was picked by Oprah Winfrey for her book club, Franzen made it known that he was not comfortable with the populist honor — so Oprah withdrew the offer. This time around a couple of best-selling female writers, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, have tweeted their disdain for what they see as critical fawning over Franzen's new novel, Freedom.
Weiner has even come up with a phrase to describe her feelings: Franzenfreude. "Schadenfreude is taking pleasure in the pain of others," Weiner says. "Franzenfreude is taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen."
But her angst is not just about the book — or even about Franzen himself. It's about the establishment choosing one writer and writing about him again and again and again," Weiner says, "while they are ignoring a lot of other worthy writers and, in the case of The New York Times, entire genres of books."
From GOODYou can download the free app and start engaging with your city's buildings here.
CHURCHMIN 5.07 Poet and Painter as Priest
Six weeks had passed since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing 230,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million others homeless. But the ground was still shaking in the nation’s rubble-strewn capital, Port-au-Prince, and 87-year-old Préfète Duffaut wasn’t taking any chances. One of the most prominent Haitian artists of the past 50 years was sleeping in a crude tent made of plastic sheeting and salvaged wood, fearful his earthquake-damaged house would collapse at any moment. "My future paintings will be inspired by this terrible tragedy,” he told me. “What I have seen on the streets has given me a lot of ideas and added a lot to my imagination.”
There was an unmistakable look of hope in the old master’s eyes. “Deye mon, gen mon,” a Haitian proverb, is Creole for “beyond the mountains, more mountains.”
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In April 2009, influential religion scholar Mark C. Taylor (currently chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University) published one of the most widely read and provocative Op/Ed's in recent memory when his End The University As We Know It appeared in The New York Times.
Due to the passionate response (both for and against) and the wide-readership/discussion which it generated, the publisher Knopf approached Taylor about writing a book-length version of the Op/Ed. Now, on August 31st, that book will drop both online and in stores. The publishing of Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities looks to be a significant (perhaps even landmark) moment in the on-going discussion of the future(s) of the university and of academic departments.
An excellent place to learn more about the ideas behind the book as well as Taylor's career as a provocateur in fields as disparate as religion, the arts, and educational/pedagogical theory is this January 2010 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Provocations of Mark Taylor. Also of note, particularly regarding Taylor's views on teaching religion, is this 2008 Q & A session with Columbia University Press shortly after he became chair of the Religion Department. -- Leif
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Just another day at the gym.
As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.
Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.
The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.
Even children are drawn, viscerally, to "The Figure 5 in Gold," one of the most recognizable works in American Modernism. Painted in 1928, its vibrant red, black and gold fire-engine motif barrels at the viewer, delivering a "Pow!" that Pop artists strived to achieve a few decades later. Somehow, the bold image manages to transmit not only the speed but also the screams of a fire truck weaving its way through a crowded New York street.
On its own, this visual impact might have made Charles Demuth's most famous work into an icon of American art. But "The Figure 5 in Gold" has much more going for it. It's the best work in a genre Demuth created, the "poster portrait." It's a witty homage to his close friend, the poet William Carlos Williams, and a transliteration into paint of his poem, "The Great Figure." It's a decidedly American work made at a time when U.S. artists were just moving beyond European influences. It's a reference to the intertwined relationships among the arts in the 1920s, a moment of cross-pollination that led to American Modernism. And it anticipates Pop art.
For this Friday afternoon, a throwback video snack from 1968. Artistic renderings of being through ambulatory expression. The film as described by the National Film Board of Canada’s website:
Animator Ryan Larkin uses an artist’s sensibility to illustrate the way people walk. He employs a variety of techniques—line drawing, colour wash, etc.—to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot. The springing gait of youth, the mincing step of the high-heeled female, the doddering amble of the elderly—all are registered with humour and individuality, to the accompaniment of special sound. Without words.
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Full article here // Excerpt belowYet according to a recent article in an academic journal, researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A modest industry of medical speculation has grown up around the subject, evidence of our fascination with what cut down great creative artists in history.
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Sean Wilentz's new book will be published in September by Doubleday. Click here to read an excerpt.
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This collection is what results when two people who usually work in two-dimensional, wall-mounted media, (printmaking and photography) take their work off the wall and turn it into three-dimensional books (loosely defined). These objects fold, move, pop-up and do other things that books are not typically expected to do. The successful integration of content and structure is one of their principal objectives.
The show will remain up through the end of August.
Foyer gallery hours are Weds 4-6pm and by appt. 949 4847.
BCAC members will have work for show and sale in their studios.
Wednesday
