Image Inspiration

This picture of Levon Helm and his daughter makes me want to move to upstate NY and get a barn. And a banjo. Start a family. Wool socks. Dogs everywhere. Wildflowers.

For info on his new album, go here. Hats off to Frannie for her work on this story!

Cat helped with Folding. Then got stuck.

Erica il Cane -- Artist of the Day

White Flag, 2007

Today's AOD is Erica il Cane for her etchings and engravings involving animals with a twisted sense of reality. If I was a chicken, this would be me on a bad day at the office.

Starring

I'm officially in the spirit (thanks to David and Molly)!!

Sketchbook 10

Kirstine Roepstorff --AOD

Today's artist of the day (AOD), Kirstine Roepstorff, makes collages that capture a fleeting moment in modern culture and reveal the ticking time bomb embedded in it all. Sadly, her work is part of a group collage show at Gagosian right now that, on the whole, looks like a confused teen shredded up a celebrity magazine and tried to juxtapose the clippings with a pop-cult-obsessed edge. Her "Where the World Wanders" series stood out above and beyond.

See more here

Memories

My friend sent this to me and it turns out to be the exact Gregory Crewdson photograph that I worked on in Pittsfield, MA during the summer of 2004. If you really squint, you'll notice that the woman inside the car is actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. And I'm somewhere on a side street with the smoke machine boys, going crazy. Oh how I miss those mountains!

Martin Puryear

Moma's retrospective of sculptor Martin Puryear made me:

1. proud that another artist I like is from Washington, DC
2. want to go to my Uncle John Talbot's carving studio and see his process in real life (although this website has beautiful pictures)
3. want to clean my cutting board with that special wood oil that people keep telling me I have to clean it with to preserve it
4. want to befriend a Keebler Elf to see what the inside of a tree really looks like

Formal Wear

The look of the season.

Holiday Boston

Tara Donovan

(Photo: © Tara Donovan/Stephen Friednman Gallery/Pace Wildenstein)

I revisited the MET's mid-career contemporary space that Neo Rauch claimed a few months ago and was pleased to find Tara Donovan's abstract metallic bubbles spiraling around the walls. I agree with the New Yorker review that, "As with previous projects, the work takes on an organic quality in its proliferation; the arrangement of plastic clusters suggests a beautiful bloom of algae, collapsing soap bubbles, or archipelagos."

Bird Snacks

This gull's got gall!
(thanks to karyn)