“I want to be an artist.”
“What kind of art do you want to make?”
“I want to make different versions of myself.”
Just awesome. I want to make different versions of myself too.
“I want to be an artist.”
“What kind of art do you want to make?”
“I want to make different versions of myself.”
Just awesome. I want to make different versions of myself too.
I’m fascinated by the addition of wood chips (or bark bits, tree shreds, whatever they might be called) to the short stretch of Logan Boulevard greenspace that plays host to the Logan Square Farmers’s Market on Sundays. I can’t stop thinking about trails.
The little reading I’ve done on the history of Logan Square reveals an emphasis on the role of Milwaukee and Elston Avenues as commercial conduits that grew from so-called “Indian trails.” In the mid-nineteenth century these routes were paved with wood, becoming the plank roads that ferried goods into the emerging Chicago metropolis (in this case the North West Plank Road). The plank roads were reported to be notoriously dangerous, the wood rotting after only a few seasons of traffic. As the story goes, they were upgraded to more durable surfaces, then came the railways, expressways, and airways (if you take account for the endless chain of flights between O’Hare and New York). These arrived in sequence, all along the same northwesterly corridor.
Logan Boulevard itself is part of, or was incorporated into, the (awe-inspiringly grand) “Emerald Necklace” designed by Daniel Burnham for the master plan of Chicago. The wide boulevards with flanking streets and wide medians are a beautiful vision of never-quite-realized urban ideals. Walking around at twilight I can sometimes glimpse the ghostly image of a phaeton on its leisurely weekend ride. One of these days I want to bike every extant (and unrealized/non-extant) yard of the boulevards, camera (and maybe voice recorder?) in hand.
Today we have the phenomenon of the farmer’s market. What I’m fixated on is the idea of recursivity. The market pops up every weekend (late May to October) at the juncture of Logan Boulevard and Milwaukee Avenue, the meeting place of these two historical threads. If the farmer’s market creedo is about (re)introducing local produce and goods into urban markets (or, alternatively, food deserts), then the use of Logan Boulevard’s wide greenspace is an imaginative hack of Burnham’s plan, a creative subterfuge of early twentieth-century notions of leisure. It also loops back to the former uses of Milwaukee Avenue as a route for the transport of local goods.
But beyond that I see something poetic in the foot-worn trail that kills the short green grass. The footsteps of market goers who’s flip-flops and strollers tame the manicured lawns of master plan-Chicago. One hundred years of concrete and iron infrastructure peeled away to the sinews of (so-called Indian) trails. While I adore the idea or recursivity, there is something more tangible at play, and the addition of wood chips seems to make it all the more real.
I wonder if NPR noticed the symmetry here.
Leeds IMC 2013 CFP
Variegated Pleasures: The Sensation of Stone in Medieval Visual and Material Culture
In his 9th-century description of the church of the Virgin of the Pharos, the Patriarch Photios noted that “the spectator, through his whirling about in all directions…is forced to experience…the variegated spectacle on all sides, [and] imagines that his personal condition is transferred to the object.” As material for sumptuous objects, sculpture, and architectural decoration, marble and other variegated stones can be seen as a trans-historical medium, used and re-used in a wide array of cultural contexts for visual appeal. Following Michael Greenhalgh, marble can be seen as a historical category of stone materials, such that limestone, alabaster, porphyry, granite, and other stones are all grouped together as “stone[s] which will take a polish.” Alternatively, materials like glass, ivory, wood and paper were painted and treated to mimic variegated stones with the intention of misleading one’s perception. Whether marble, marbled, or marble-like, this category of materials reflects the shared power of variegated surfaces to channel specific sensory experiences that acknowledge the pleasures of color, sound, and movement. Along these lines, this session seeks papers that address the sensory and aesthetic experience of variegated stones and marble-like surfaces in the visual and material cultures of the Middle Ages. Topics might explore spolia, use and re-use, descriptions of and encounters with variegated stone/marble decorations, marbling, painting and polishing of variegated surfaces, spiritual appreciation/symbolism, and cross-cultural significance of marble/stone.
Please email abstracts of approximately 100 words to icma-student-committee-cfp@googlegroups.com by September 15, 2012.
We encourage submissions from students and scholars in all disciplines. The Student Committee of the International Center for Medieval Art involves and advocates for all members with student status. As a committee that addresses the concerns of students, we see this session as a forum for discussion and informal mentorship within our field.
For Peter.
At the MNAC. This is a famous sculptural fragment from Santa Maria de Ripoll (where I will be this weekend). It doesn’t have a title, but one might call it “home menjant una cabra” in Catalan (man eating a goat).
