An Optical Chapel

 

 

David A Brown created an Optical Chapel in an office space that was once an optician’s office in downtown Houston. The installation incorporated 11,000 photographs. The project was featured in FotoFest 2012.

Filed under: Art, Current Events, Design, Photography, Poetry, Travel, david a. brown, fotofest 2012, houston, installation, optical chapel

City Lights: Robert Montgomery

The urban lyrics of Robert Montgomery are nested so tightly into the cityscape, you might not notice. But they are there, each of them, a ghost in the machine.

Check out his site here.

(via My Modern Met)

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Design, Photography, Poetry, Travel

Never Sorry by Vicki Dasilva

From Moco Art:

Vicki DaSilva uses tube lamps to create photography based on light graffiti. DaSilva uses this medium to create site-specific installations loaded with socio-political commentary. The single frame time exposure light paintings are made by moving the lamps either by hand or along tracks to create fields of light. Her current show of work, Reverb, features photos based in an abandoned silk factory. The photo above is in reference to the Chinese artist/activist, the pale yellow a nod to the Jasmine Revolution.

Find out more about the artist, Vicki DaSilva, here.

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Photography, Poetry, Light painting, Site-specific art, Visual Arts

On the perilous effects of buried alien spacecraft by peter jay shippy

They told me, fetch the jawbreaker

They told me, take down the wash

They told me, any day now, any day

They told me, one book?—as good as another

They told me, ’til someone loses an eye

They told me, gravity is deafening

Nancy, they told me, Nancy with the laughing face

They told me, just flour water and sea salt

They told me sometimes a rave

They told me sometimes a dove

They told me, they told me

They told me, blow skyward

They told me, stars across the knife

by Peter Jay Shippy
published in Diode

photo by lastplak_artworks

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Photography, Poetry, Science, alien poem, peter jay shippy

Why I Am Not a Good Kisser by Mary Ruefle

Because I open my mouth too wide
Trying to take in the curtains behind us
And everything outside the window
Except the little black dog
Who does not like me
So at the last moment I shut my mouth.

Because Cipriano de Rore was not thinking
When he wrote his sacred and secular motets
Or there would be only one kind
And this affects my lips in terrible ways.

Because at the last minute I see a lemon
Sitting on a gravestone and that is a thing, a thing
That would appear impossible, and the kiss
Is already concluded in its entirety.

Because I learned everything about the beautiful
In a guide to the weather by Borin Van Loon, so
The nature of lenticular clouds and anticyclones
And several other things dovetail in my mind
& at once it strikes me what quality goes to form
A Good Kisser, especially at this moment, & which you
Possess so enormously—I mean when a man is capable
Of being in uncertainties, Mysteries & doubts without me
I am dreadfully afraid he will slip away
While my kiss is trying to think what to do.

Because I think you will try to read what is written
On my tongue and this causes me to interrupt with questions:
A red frock? Red stockings? And the rooster dead?
Dead of what?

Because of that other woman inside me who knows
How the red skirt and red stockings came into my mouth
But persists with the annoying questions
Leading to her genuine ignorance.

Because just when our teeth are ready to hide
I become a quisling and forget the election results
And industrial secrets leading to the manufacture
Of woolen ice cream cones, changing the futures
Of ice worms everywhere.

Can it be that even the greatest Kisser ever arrived
At his goal without putting aside numerous objections—

Because every kiss is like throwing a pair of doll eyes
Into the air and trying to follow them with your own—

However it may be, O for a life of Kisses
Instead of painting volcanoes!

Even if my kiss is like a paintbrush made from hairs.
Even if my kiss is squawroot, which is a scaly herb
Of the broomrape family parasitic on oaks.
Even if a sailor went to sea in me
To see what he could see in me
And all that he could see in me
Was the bottom of the deep dark sea in me.

Even though I know nothing can be gained by running
Screaming into the night, into the night like a mouth,
Into the mouth like a velvet movie theater
With planets painted on its ceiling
Where you will find me, your pod mate,
In some kind of beautiful trouble
Over moccasin stitch #3,
Which is required for my release.

by Mary Ruefle
published by Verse Daily

photo by ScribbleTextures via flickr

Filed under: Photography, Poetry, kiss poem, Mary Ruefle, poem about kissing

Cusp by Melanie Braverman

If the heron comes in low over the marshes, if it shadows the car as you drive
west toward the sea, breakwater holding the lip of the coming tide
at bay while the autumn sun cast one gold and pink sheen over the grasses
like a spell, like all the secrets you tell
yourself while driving; if the heron comes in low, great wings beating the air
slowly as a woman beats rugs on a line, having pulled them from the basement
readying the house for winter (it is a fine, warm day but she is not fooled,
having lived her whole life here she knows what’s just beyond the cusp
of October); if you stop the car and, getting out, watch the bird hover and dip
and disappear below the horizon of the tall grass, wait then, just wait:
before the sky loses its light for good, and your hands grow unusually chill
in the new air, the head of the heron will bob like a buoy back out of the grass
again, as if it had always been there, still as a road sign, and there
it will remain, unfazed, patient and voracious
in this splendid world.

by Melanie Braverman
from her book Red

Photo by Anita, on flickr akr67042

Filed under: Books, Photography, Poetry, bird in flight, Heron, Melanie Braverman, nature, poem

Snowliloquy by Ben Mirov

I had a dream I was a satellite
and then I woke and I was
still a satellite. Signals shot through me
like birds in the dark. I was transmitting
something. Cubes of essence stolen
from the Moth Man. Snowflake after
snowflake like jellyfish drifting
through the void above a balcony in Brooklyn.
My friends in California, selling out
falling asleep, falling in love or out.
Loneliness is barely more
than nothingness. It’s Snowbody
touching your thigh in bed. Snowbody
chopping the peppers for the soup. Snowbody
calling your name from the control room
late one night. When Snowone is around
you think about them. Or you gauge
the rate of your disintegration. The exact
amount of detritus you’ll leave floating
through your friends. Maybe you fall
apart. Or you break off a shard
and send it to someone else.
A distant stranger taking off their mask.
No more transmissions for tonite.
Signed, Yours Truly, Ben Mirov.

by Ben Mirov
published in Absent Magazine

photo by throughtheloops via flickr

Filed under: Photography, Poetry, ben mirov, snow poem

For the Love of Buttons

Yeah, I still love buttons.

[photo by monkey123 via flickr]

Filed under: Photography, buttons

From UPPLAND by Aase Berg

Uppland lightland hovercraftland
Good yellow circles
Tensionwidth
wingspan,
lightband after lightband

All my shooting stars
sparkle over Uppland
See how all of Uppland
stands in flame
burns border

Crashland,
steer softly out of hullwreck
lander, loader
crushed sewn whole

Creep under the skin
Hold on to your skin
Elephantize
mutual pupa

Wake!

Prick spindle
wake up spindlefly

Dragonflee
dayflee
shuddering lifts
In the slenderfly’s balance
balancedance

Foothold

Nudefart, nudesmack!
clothograph mealy time

No sewage
but small stings
in sunglasses
nothing
Sees hummingbird drunken
in bunken

Aerodrome

High traffic
Plane on plane
forced flight
cockviolent

Foot chain

Hold on to your skin
fasten the wing skin

Dragon situation unfolded
in a standstilldance
earthbalance

Remainland Airport

High clear september air
Urmountain of day

Birdflight
flightline

heads hurriedly southwards

We want to be remains here

Written by Aase Berg
Translated by Johannes Göransson
Published in TYPO 7

Photo by *Kicki* on flickr

Filed under: Photography, Poetry, Travel, Aase Berg, Sweden, Uppland

Write to Noguchi 3: Black Hole Sun

Black Hole Sun, originally uploaded by BrianKG.

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Photography, Travel, Writing Exercise, Noguchi, sculpture, Seattle

Write to Noguchi 2

NYC Isamu Noguchi’s Cube 1000, originally uploaded to flickr by njsnowdog.

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Design, Photography, Travel, Isamu Noguchi, new york city, Photography, red cube, sculpture

Death by Kiting

Death by kiting, originally uploaded by nakedgremlin.

I love this love this love this. Here are a few thoughts from the photographer, David Chien:

I’m enveloped in Jacob Hashimoto’s Superabundant Atmosphere. The entire installation was made up of thousands of handmade kites hanging at different lengths from the ceiling.

In person, the piece was incredibly soothing and non-confrontational… unlike the photo — which actually makes it look more like an angry jelly fish wanting to suck my brains out.

The installation was created at the Rice Gallery here in Houston.

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Photography, Poetry, Travel, David Chien, houston, Jacob Hashimoto, Rice Gallery, rice university art gallery

89 by Suzanne Gardinier

photo by nevil zaveri

The vase of tower fragments and his mother’s
last dress made ashes the wind blows loose

How the rain reaches into the winter ground
and warms and turns the grasses loose

Walk on your knees says the guard to his father
Give me a name and I’ll turn you loose

The harbormaster’s hands in the morning
on the knots the night tides tried to pull loose

The peony petals pressed in round bud
then unfolding Your shirt’s pink Then falling loose

How the years found what she held so tightly
and took it Prying her fingers loose

Left in the tree he passed every day
A man The tatters of his clothes flapping loose

The smallness of the barbarians’ airplanes
after the emperor’s airplanes let loose

How he sat coughing shards of his nation’s hatred
How she wanted to keep him and he said Turn me loose

The meadow paddock by the intransigent
sea broken open and the horses run loose

She’s remembering your way with her bindings
Yrs bridled How you tighten How you cut them loose

by Suzanne Gardinier
published in The Lavender Review

Filed under: Photography, Poetry, nevil zaveri, Suzanne Gardinier

Get Inspired with New June Wallpaper

Dress up your desktop. Free from Smashing Magazine.

Filed under: Art, Design, Photography, Web, desktop wallpaper, free desktop wallpaper, free wallpaper, graphic design

Art Car Parade, Houston, Texas

ac 7039-7040 halo copy, originally uploaded by Cuong T Tran Photography.

Great photo by Cuong T Tran of the annual art car parade.

Filed under: Art, Current Events, Design, Photography, Travel, art, Art car, houston