art and ghosts

1. Into the Wallpaper 1, 2. Penny Farthing, 3. The Writer

the inner workings of animals

ghost patrol on flickr

eastern european matchbox labels

how i love the saturation of colors on these. i especially love the one of laika, the first russian dog sent up in space...
1. polish matchbox label, 2. polish matchbox label, 3. hungarian matchbox label, 4. russian animal matchbox label, 5. german matchbox label, 6. russian matchbox label

and hundreds more where these came from.

via the drawn blog also.

"a poem may be devoted to giving clear meaning to one word." ~george oppen

then there's the safety in numbers...

1. apple apple., 2. night flys

soft and found

thursdays, music, secrets, glimpses, blackboards, subtitles, elegance...

clarke_henry_1954_dior_fb.jpg, 2. Untitled, 3. noted, 4. a random scene....

pure inspiration

nests and bowls and bowls and nests. ephemera and alliteration. repetition of shapes, of colors. the safety of numbers, the consolation of patterns.
1. Cowboy Sheetmusic, 2. Vintage Wallpaper, 3. watchfacescan, 4. Eggs, 5. Very Old Hankie Box, 6. candy

it's the little things

1. wooden bird trio, 2. a persimmon, 3. *ice cream*, 4. Italian tea cups from the 50s, 5. in the kitchen, 6. swan B1

image quilt

colors that depict the past in photographs have always had time to soften, and in turn give the impression that the past was much softer and more beautiful than the present. i would like to climb into each of these separately and inhale its fragrance. i would like a city which had a mural of the 'brown bird singing' sheet music painted on an entire side of a building. i would have liked for max ernst to play chess with me, to photograph and paint me in a striped bathing suit reclined, twirling a compass from the time of copernicus.

1. traveling troupe, 2. Sign: Fermé, 3. Public Domain - Vintage Postcard Images, 4. max_ernst_schach.jpg, 5. emmy hennings, 6. Music Sheet, Copyright 1922, A Brown Bird Singing

sewing without underwear

i feel a real affinity with this photo today.

"birds and people are not all that different"

"says Kevin McGraw, a biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. In crowded, expensive cities (New York, San Francisco, Boston), women want men who can provide financial stability, he found. In smaller cities (Kansas City, Pittsburgh), women look for men with positive emotional traits such as honesty, compassion and good listening skills rather than money. In crowded places with scarce resources, female birds prefer males that build nests and find food, while in less crowded settings, females are content with singing a duet or foraging for food with a mate."



1. HEAD WITH OVER HEELS, 2. Scots Fancy Canary - #11
1. free to use in your artwork, 2. White Yorkshire Canary - #5

really appeals to me today

fantastic diptych from here

february

i must admit. as soon as it is safely february, i begin thinking that spring is really right around the corner. the result of this yearly delusion is that i often leave the house quite underdressed, with bare toes and shoulders gathering frost, teeth chattering like a toy clacker, seed packets in my thin cotton pockets. i know i should also treasure winter's gifts, but the truth is that they leave me cold. i can never achieve a homeostasis in winter, in which i am not aware of the outside temperature being wildly afar from my interior one. as i spent my youth in hawaii, where the temperature always hovers somewhere around 75 degrees, the feeling of being cold or hot drives me to distraction. by february 1st i'm already longing to leave the windows open and sleep in my sundress. states of undress without goosebumps, and warm air teasing out the trees' summer frocks.
1. Bored with the Weather, 2. the afterthought, 3. birthday-shades, 4. ventana, 5. Untitled, 6. Hades

look away

1. Ms. D and the JF, 2. Untitled, 3. crossing - lomo, 4. tch, 5. To the sea of winter, 6. Untitled

you can imagine my joy

at finding this gloriously color coordinated set of cigarette cards on flickr. the official definition of a cigarette card, courtesy of wikipedia, is "a trade card issued by tobacco manufacturers to stiffen cigarette packaging and advertise cigarette brands." i love the contradiction of pictures of exercisers advertising cigarettes. and for youse who know me, i'm a sucker for little compartmentalized pictures of people in various states of bending.

great collection of photos from the library of congress on flickr

1. M. Le Blanc (LOC), 2. Maggie Jones of Cleveland [baseball] (LOC), 3. Burman (LOC), 4. Eva Morrison (LOC), 5. Blind stenographer using dictaphone (LOC), 6. C.Y. Smith [boxing] (LOC)

and hundreds more where they came from.

sortsolsum

fiona has taught me this word: sortsolsum. the danish word for the swarming of starlings. (you can see it happening in the fifth photograph.)


i love the synesthetic and sensuous quality of these six photographs. how they borrow sugar from each other. i also prefer these six ingredients: snow, paper, string, sticks, cloth, and ether.
1. Turfed Ducks in flight 鳳頭潛鴨, 2. myrtle, 3. un coin de ciel bleu, 4. 30810014, 5. sortsolsum, 6. natural history

"the rustle of language forms a utopia...that is a music of meaning; in its utopic state, language would be enlarged." ~roland barthes

a pattern of favorites to form a bouquet. their relationships to each other hold up to however rigorous of a study we might subject them to. images gathered that lie flat beside each other and yet instigate further alliances and betray secret tensions. i like to steep them and drink the tea after it's cooled slightly. 1. MY MOLSKINES, 2. Sasha by Daniel Jackson for i-D Sept 2006, 3. happy new year!, 4. From New High School Algebra, Wells and Hart, Copyright 1912, 5. 010804035.jpg, 6. Wren 1-2-08

stranger than fixion: an impermanent record of transient events

a mosaic of favorites to ring in the new year.
why not pay them a visits:
1. Sunday. In the city of Love., 2. wild, 3. Birds, 4. the 3, 5. Packard Proving Grounds, 6. 10/13/06 Vintage Freebie 13

december is also an aquatic animal

a pack of flickr favorites demonstrating my point. see them individually here: 1. .self mission., 2. white seams..., 3. Untitled, 4. the real chuckeeboo

"this snapshot effect, like a speech delivered on no matter what occasion, but at such and such an hour." ~m. duchamp

1. green piece, 2. birds + snow, 3. the corner, 4. Barcito, 5. 259: 10.17.07, 6. 301: 11.28.07