The Charlotte Observer has 5 questions for Marek Ranis

Marek Ranis, Albedo-Carpets, 2007, 7' x 6', wool. Handmade by Tibetan
refugees in Katmandu, Nepal; based on Albedo paintings.
No child labor was used to produce the rugs.
 

He's not an art historian, but otherwise, this is a nice little Q&A! Go Marek, my friend!

Marek Ranis makes multimedia work about social issues like climate change and war. And he's a really cool guy. In this Q&A, he talks about his work and how Americans tend to view it versus Europeans:

"There is something special in America and Charlotte. People are much more willing, especially at the openings, to talk to others, much more open to engage in some kind of conversation. They ask questions and are more willing to say I don’t understand or question the work. I really enjoy that exchange more than Europe where people are a little bit more jaded and they feel like they don’t want to show they don’t know something."

Read more at the Charlotte Observer

Article by Joanne Spataro


Visit Marek's' website: Marek Ranis

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/11/07/3650050/marek-ranis.html#storylink=cpy

“It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.”

Oh, this is the best explanation of the importance of the writer and artist in society:

"Educators do all in their power to prepare you to enjoy reading after college. It is right that you should read according to your temperament, occupations, hobbies, and vocations. But it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar. In science, we respect the research worker. In literature, we should not always read the books blessed by the majority. This trend is reflected in such absurd announcements as “the death of the novel,” “the last of the romantics,” “the last of the Bohemians,” when we know that these are continuous trends which evolve and merely change form. The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us. Artistic revolt, innovation, experiment should not be met with hostility. They may disturb an established order or an artificial conventionality, but they may rescue us from death in life, from robot life, from boredom, from loss of the self, from enslavement.

When we totally accept a pattern not made by us, not truly our own, we wither and die. People’s conventional structure is often a façade. Under the most rigid conventionality there is often an individual, a human being with original thoughts or inventive fantasy, which he does not dare expose for fear of ridicule, and this is what the writer and artist are willing to do for us. They are guides and map makers to greater sincerity. They are useful, in fact indispensable, to the community. They keep before our eyes the variations which make human beings so interesting. The men who built America were the genuine physical adventurers in a physical world. This world once built, we need adventurers in the realm of art and science. If we suppress the adventure of the spirit, we will have the anarchist and the rebel, who will burst out from too narrow confines in the form of violence and crime."

Anais Nin, 1949 (Diary of Anais Nin, Vol 5)

From Brain Pickings

Beverly McIver, The Mint Museum and Me !

Ohhhh, this is going to be fun! I'm helping out Mint Museum's master educator Rita Shumaker by leading a painting session on expressionist figure painting on November 20 (6:30-8:30).  This is one session only in a three session class that's in conjunction with Beverly McIver's exhibit at the Mint. 

Beverly McIver, Renee Moving Away, oil on canvas, 48x48", 2003 courtesy Mint Museum

It's a lovely little show...intimate, containing primarily portraits of the artist's mother and mentally disabled sister. It's gestural and direct, and there seems to be great joy within the works.  I saw just just moments after viewing the big Giacometti exhibit at the Bechtler, and the contrast was marked. The stillness and structural veil of Giacometti's work compared to the intimacy and directness of McIver's---two wildly differing approaches, but both dealing with psychological status.

Here's a link to the exhibit: Reflections: Portraits by Beverly McIver at the Mint Museum

And here's a link to the artist's website: Beverly McIver



Contact the Mint if you're interested in the class (but do it soon)!

Everything Comes to an End

I read this a couple of weeks ago, and it has been haunting me. When he was 22, Stieg Larrson wrote this letter to his girlfriend, to be opened in the event of his death. 27 years later, it was. It is beautiful, haunting and bittersweet for me.

Stockholm,
February 9, 1977

Eva, my love,

It's over. One way or another, everything comes to an end. It's all over some day. That's perhaps one of the most fascinating truths we know about the entire universe. The stars die, the galaxies die, the planets die. And people die too. I've never been a believer, but the day I became interested in astronomy, I think I put aside all that was left of my fear of death. I'd realized that in comparison to the universe, a human being, a single human being, me...is infinitely small. Well, I'm not writing this letter to deliver a profound religious or philosophical lecture. I'm writing it to tell you "farewell." I was just talking to you on the phone. I can still hear the sound of your voice. I imagine you, before my eyes...a beautiful image, a lovely memory I will keep until the end. At this very moment, reading this letter, you know that I am dead.

There are things I want you to know. As I leave for Africa, I'm aware of what's waiting for me. I even have the feeling that this trip could bring about my death, but it's something that I have to experience, in spite of everything. I wasn't born to sit in an armchair. I'm not like that. Correction: I wasn't like that...I'm not going to Africa just as a journalist, I'm going above all on a political mission, and that's why I think this trip might lead to my death.

This is the first time I've written to you knowing exactly what to say: I love you, I love you, love you, love you. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. I want you to know I mean that seriously. I want you to remember me but not grieve for me. If I truly mean something to you, and I know that I do, you will probably suffer when you learn I am dead. But if I really mean something to you, don't suffer, I don't want that. Don't forget me, but go on living. Live your life. Pain will fade with time, even if that's hard to imagine right now. Live in peace, my dearest love; live, love, hate, and keep fighting...

I had a lot of faults, I know, but some good qualities as well, I hope. But you, Eva, you inspired such love in me that I was never able to express it to you...

Straighten up, square your shoulders, hold your head high. Okay? Take care of yourself, Eva. Go have a cup of coffee. It's over. Thank you for the beautiful times we had. You made me very happy. Adieu.

I kiss you goodbye, Eva.

From Stieg, with love.

From Letters of Note

10 Rules of Writing (but let's pretend it's about art)

Zadie Smith's 10 Rules of Writing, but I'm telling you, this can apply to art as well.

1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3. Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9. Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
    

More at Thought Catalog

Met Publications offers online viewing

You can read at least 293 different fully online texts from the Metropolitan Museum. This makes Carolyn very, very happy.

Metropolitan Museum Online Publications

Here's the first one I'm digging into:

The Care and Handling of Art Objects

Modern Mondays and me at the Bechtler Museum

Visit the museum November 5 for the Modern Mondays program Living With Art. Carolyn Jacobs, studio faculty member at Central Piedmont Community College, and Karen Derksen, Director of Winthrop University Galleries, lead a discussion on how to incorporate art into your life and home, and offer practical tips to properly maintain it. Participants will also learn how the Bechtler family incorporated art into their professional and personal lives. 

Cocktails at 6pm. Lecture at 6:30. Tickets are $8 for non-members. Free to members.


Modern Mondays at the Bechtler Museum