train kids

Born 1985 in Arizona, Mike Brodie first began photographing in 2004 when he was given a Polaroid camera. Working under the moniker, The Polaroid Kidd, Brodie spent the next four years circumambulating the U.S. amassing an archive of photographs that would go on to make up one of the few, true collections of American travel photography. Having never undergone any formal training, he chose to remained untethered to the pressures and expectations of the art market.

Brodie compulsively documented his explorations and as suddenly as he began making photographs, he left the medium behind.

In 2008, Brodie received the Baum Award for American Emerging Artists. A new book, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity published by Twin Palms will be out early 2013, followed by numerous gallery shows. Brodie recently graduated from the Nashville Auto Diesel College (NADC) and is now working as a mobile diesel mechanic in his silver ‘93 Dodge Ram.

BBC interview begins at 12:55 

derek jarman’s garden

Derek Jarman created his own garden in the flat, bleak expanse of shingle that faces the nuclear power station in Dungeness, Kent. A passionate gardener from childhood, he combined his painter’s eye, his horticultural expertise and his ecological convictions to produce a landscape which mixed the flint, shells and driftwood of Dungeness; sculptures made from stones; the area’s indigenous plants; and shrubs and flowers introduced by Jarman himself. The book, Derek Jarman’s Garden,  the last he ever wrote, is his own record of how this garden evolved, from its beginnings in 1985 to the day of his death in 1994.

The Sun Rising -John Donne

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
In that the world’s contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere

There are over 100 houses at Dungeness. Some were created over 100 years ago from railway carriages, others are wooden huts like Derek Jarman’s tar black Prospect Cottage. It was to here that Jarman retreated when he discovered he was HIV positive. Around the cottage, in the shingle, he started to create a garden. All around Dungeness there are plants, growing in this seemingly inhospitable place they thrive, adapted to the salt-laden winds and the calcareous soil. Species such as the horned poppy, sea kale, woody nightshade and valerian appear through the shingle. These little plants hunkered down and battered by the elements inspired Derek Jarman. He added to the natives already growing encouraging more of them and experimenting with other plants to see if they too could cope with the conditions. He discovered that Californian poppies, lavender and santolina were all happy there. Collecting driftwood, bits of metal and rope and large pebbles that washed up on the shore he created sculptures and focal points which gave the garden some height. He also created patterns in the shingle such as concentric circles, a little like in Japanese gardens, where they rake gravel to symbolize water. sourcemichael kidamanda white

• Derek Jarman’s Garden

  ISBN 9780500016565

  144pp over 150 Illustrations, 90 in colour

  First published 1995

pottery japan

ohmhura takeshiando masanobuonzuka shojiyoshida kenzo

http://tohki.petit.cc

landscape paintings by jeremiah eck

Jeremiah Eck, FAIA, is the senior partner of Eck/MacNeely Architects, Boston, a former lecturer in architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a landscape painter. He is author of The Distinctive Home and The Face of Home (Taunton Press, 2003, 2006) and recently House in the Landscape: Siting Your Home Naturally (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). He is also cofounder of the Congress of Residential Architecture (CORA). eckmacneely.com

“We believe that architecture is both an art and a service and, most importantly, that good clients make good architecture.”

fabric works of louise bourgeois

2005-2006 untitled works in fabric (+) by artist louise bourgeois, 1911-2010

“My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.”

Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works

• Edited by Germano Celant in collaboration with Jerry Gorovoy and the Louise Bourgeois Studio
• 336 pages, colour plates throughout
  Clothbound hardcover with dust jacket
  24.5 × 28.5 cm / 9 5/8 × 11 1/4 in
• Skira, Hauser & Wirth, 2010
• 978-88-572-0752-0
• June 2010
• £65 / $100 / €75

bill hornstein does burning man

shots of burning man,  by art director, bill hornstein,  september-august 2012, nevada.

happens

On Dec 22, 1849 writer Fyodor Dostoevsky is led before a firing squad and prepared for execution. He had been convicted and sentenced to death on November 16 for allegedly taking part in antigovernment activities. However, at the last moment he was reprieved and sent into exile.

Dostoevsky’s father was a doctor at Moscow’s Hospital for the Poor, where he grew rich enough to buy land and serfs. After his father’s death, Dostoevsky, who suffered from epilepsy, studied military engineering and became a civil servant while secretly writing novels. His first, Poor People, and his second, The Double, were both published in 1846—the first was a hit, the second a failure.

After his  last-minute reprieve Dostoevsky was sent to a Siberian labor camp, where he worked for four years. He was released in 1854 and worked as a soldier on the Mongolian frontier. He married a widow and finally returned to Russia in 1859. The following year, he founded a magazine, and two years after that he journeyed to Europe for the first time.

In 1864 and 1865, his wife and his brother died, the magazine folded, and Dostoevsky found himself deeply in debt, which he exacerbated by gambling.

In 1866, he published Crime and Punishment, one of his most popular works. In 1867, he married a stenographer, and the couple fled to Europe to escape his creditors. His novel The Possessed (1872) was successful, and the couple returned to St. Petersburg. He published The Brothers Karamazov in 1880 to immediate success, but died a year later.