Daniel A. Rabuzzi's Blog, page 6

Diego Salazar Gallery Group Show

Deborah A. Mills & Daniel A. Rabuzzi (a.k.a Imps Etc.), "Changeling Blocks, numbers 4-6: Baba Yaga, Coraline & Friends"  (2013)
The  Diego Salazar Gallery (Long Island City, NYC  http://diegosalazargallery.com/ ) has a brilliant show running through June 15th, eclectic in style and media but unified in its dedication to exquisite execution and attention to beauty.   Lobster & Canary--in a departure from our norm--cannot claim to be an objective observer, since we have a collaborative piece in the show (the first three "changeling blocks," in our "not-quite-right toys" collection) and Deborah has two other pieces of her own also exhibited.  
All of the artists have studios in the building.  Painters, photographers, sculptors, collagists, glassworkers... styles ranging from the purely abstract to the most traditionally figurative...another common thread: a romanticist focus on reverie, a warm meditative spirit pervades the show...whether revealed in subtle arcs and swathes of muted color enclosing a darkness for introspection in the work of  Karen Mastriacovo, or in the gestural work of  Preston Trombly, with its delicate traceries over calm fields, in the surrealistic assemblages of  Caroline Golden (her work has a smile on its lips, even as it tries to keep a straight face!), or the esoterica and occult images of  Ragnar Lagerblad and of  Christian G. Brandner, in the super-saturated mysteries photographed by Steve McCurry or in the precise, intimate compositions of  Robert Badia, small checkered geometries overlaying forms of nostalgia.
Here is a small sampling from among many good things...noting also that the gallery space itself is a work of art (as always, the artists hold the copyright in their works; the images are shown here for purposes of commentary, not for commercial reasons):

Christian G. Brandner, "Painting # 00900" (2010) http://christiangbrandner.blogspot.com/

Ann Leggett, "Manuel and Mortality" (1996) http://www.annleggett.co/annleggett/Biography.html

Preston Trombly, "Imaginary Landscape with Red Ribbon" (2013)http://www.prestontrombly.com/index.html Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Ligature

Joan Snyder, Carmina (1995; oil, acrylic, herbs, cloth on canvas)

Snyder, My Life (1996; oil, straw, velvet, silk, plastic grapes on linen)

Snyder, Antiquarum Lacrimae (2004; acrylic, dried flowers on linen)
All images copyrighted to the artist, Joan Snyder; used here exclusively for purposes of commentary; no commercial use intended.

Struggling always to close the gap between the Me and the World...navigating towards an ever-receding membrane, an endless arc placidly retreating before and behind me...while I try to impress upon the tangent some small token of my Me, of my being, or at least my sentiments...
...pinning a relic or a flower just picked, it matters only that a sliver, a strand, the tiniest wisp is affixed, connected...
...which would mean (if only the world would hold still for just that one quiet moment) that some of me would become and remain part of the world...for every one else, forever...Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Who says we cannot dance about architecture?

 Trying to come to grips with Le Corbusier--an on again/off again endeavor of mine for decades--a presence forever looming, like the Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, one of my favorite buildings, yet forever unattainable-- but also like so many of his other buildings (realized and not) that leave me cold--the cavalier trajectory of his urban vistas--how I so appreciate what he wrote and what he painted, the lightness of line and all that emphatic certitude, while so mistrusting the outcomes of his architecture--admiration mixed with wariness.
 Regardless, what most intrigues are his polymathic means to singular goals-- starting with his self-declared alias (a mask that lays bare?), and the oft-remarked fact that, when he gained French citizenship, he entered "homme de lettres" as his occupation on his identity card/passport.  


A belletrist then, a self-declared citizen of the Republic of Letters...to encompass all else, or at least to order the others: the architect, the painter, the designer, the one who sketches.



Two months before he died, in his final interview, Le Corbusier said: “...not being able to build certain things, I could draw them; but not being able to explain them entirely in drawing, especially when it came to urbanism, I had to explain them, so I wrote.”


So maybe we can actually dance about architecture...

Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Unique Gestures, Already Pre-Determined

Johannes Vermeer, Lady In Blue Reading A Letter (c. 1662-'65)
I am fascinated by the emerging field of Big Data, and the data mining/analysis that proceeds from the ever larger sets of statistics we gather.  Just when you think you are truly individualistic, you discover that you are but one point on a curve, acting in accordance with the laws of large crowds.  Disconcerting.
How to reconcile the individual and our preciously random actions, with the story told by the trends plotted across millions and now billions of us?
The private and personal, of import only to the reader and the writer (what is the Lady thinking?), juxtaposed with the geometries of collection and the analytics of abstraction (the map on the wall was Big Data in Vermeer's time).
Something I muse on... more to come in future blog posts...Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Upon repeated visits...

Mary Cassatt, Five O'Clock Tea (1880)
I return to paintings, the way I revisit a favorite novel, or order the same dish at a specific restaurant: with anticipation of acquaintance spiced by the knowledge that I will discover something new.
Recently, as I gaze at Cassatt's tea drinkers, I find myself examining the pattern of the upholstery.   I also notice more than before the vase in the painting hanging over the mantlepiece.
When I next look at the picture, what other nuance might strike me?
Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Wayside gems: Megan Cump at Station Independent Projects (LES, NYC)

Megan Cump, Black Moon, installation view, at Station Independent Projects (NYC)

Cump, untitled (fox)

Cump, untitled (white deer)[All images copyrighted to Megan Cump; non-commercial use intended here]

One of the many joys of New York City is coming upon gems in the less frequented byways.   This morning I came across a lovely small gallery--Station Independent Projects-- nestled among apartment buildings on Suffolk Street just below Houston on the Lower East Side.
Inside, perfectly arranged and curated, is a show called Black Moon by Megan Cump.  The individual images are mesmerizing, and the overall effect leaves one with the sense of having been someplace else, a place you cannot quite remember, while you stand blinking on the side of the road at dawn.
For more on the gallery, click here.    For more on Cump, click here. Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Boston: The Polis Unbowed, Undaunted

The "Sacred Cod" That Hangs in the House of Representatives in the Massachusetts State House, in Boston
This week's horror in Boston momentarily stilled our tongue and bruised our carapace, so the Lobster & Canary will be brief.
One thought only: 
The bombs went off right on the doorstep of Old South Church, whose congregation has played a mighty role in the forming of American liberty.  Samuel Sewall was a member, he who wrote the first abolitionist tract, and so was Phyllis Wheatley, and Benjamin Franklin's family. 
The bombs exploded across from the Boston Public Library, the first municipal library in this country, the first to allow patrons to borrow books (and not simply read them on the premises).
The bombs scorched Copley Square and Boylston Street...tore at the heart of the modern plaza, the core of the polis...and the citizens and all good members of civil society responded with swift, selfless love for their fellows, for the values heart-drawn from the deep well of our shared civitas, our commonwealth, our city on a hill. Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

Istvan Anhalt's Symphony of Modules

Istvan Anhalt, Symphony of Modules, sample score notation (1967)
Thinking still about Lebbeus Woods and his architectural forms that were never built, and the imagined libraries of Rauzier, the parrot-towers of Vega (see the two previous entries of Lobster & Canary), I offer another example of hypertrophic vision: the never-performed Symphony of Modules by Istvan Anhalt.  John Cage, in 1969, published some of Anhalt's novel formats for scoring the symphony (see above).  
Reportedly, Anhalt expected that an orchestra would need 50 hours of rehearsal before playing the piece's 28 minutes of music.  
Perhaps somewhere an orchestra is tuning up to give the Symphony of Modules its debut...in one of the winged buildings sketched by Woods, while savants listen in remotely, in a pari-colored library deep in the Brazilian rain forest...
For more on Anhalt, click here .


Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

"The Inexistent Plausible": Parrot Libraries, Toucan Theaters / J.F. Rauzier; Sergio Vega

J. F. Rauzier, Bibliotheques ideales (two from a series, 2012?) [images copyright Rauzier; non-commercial fair use intended here].

Last Sunday we mulled over the legacy of Lebbeus Woods, the visionary architect of spaces that might-be-but-have-not-yet-been-built.  Riffing further on this theme-- the exploration of the Lands Between, sketching out the vedute ideale, limning what Paulo Herkenhoff calls the "inexistent plausible"-- I offer today samples of Rauzier's "hyperphotos."

For more on Rauzier, click here .

...and then we need to join Sergio Vega on his tireless search for what he calls "the edenic stage," the strange paradise at the heart of an ambiguity just beyond the next curve in the boulevard, proclaimed with buoyant charm on travel brochures and the facings of airline tickets.



Vega, Banana Building (date?)  [Image copyright Vega; non-commercial fair use intended here}

As Vega puts matters during his quest:

"It seems plausible that the next trend in architecture will openly embrace shamanistic strategies. After all, it has already done it in a somewhat restrained manner. In the near future we may come to see a bizarre array of organic buildings acquiring the status of natural specimens. Parrot color-chart architecture, banana institutional buildings, pineapple churches, crocodilian houses, snake promenades, toucan theaters, orchid subway stations, etc. If in the process, all species end up being represented, cities could become entire inventories of the natural kingdom and the whole of the modern world a monumental paradise."

For more by Vega, click here.Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.

"...if we were free of conventional limits": The Legacy of Lebbeus Woods

Lebbeus Woods, Quake City (1995).
Contemplating and exploring the worlds envisioned by Lebbeus Woods, whose death last October occurred while the lobster & canary were in the grips of Superstorm Sandy here in NYC, i.e., we are still processing his departure and thinking through the impact of the polymathic, iconclastic Woods on art, architecture, urban planning and design.

Woods, Zagreb Free-Zone (c. 2000?)

Woods, Berlin Free-Zone 3-2 (1990)
Very few of his architectural renderings were ever built, though he insisted that they should-- and one day would--be.  A true visionary, who defied convention and walked over boundaries.  
Not enough time or space this morning to delve more deeply, but-- if I had such for a full-length essay--I would think of Woods in terms of other multi-disciplinary, slantwise form-makers: Piranesi, Joseph Michael Gandy, Boullee (The Cenotaph for Newton broods as a possibility over so much of modern architecture), Motherwell, Bontecou, Duchamp, Ernst... Ridley Scott and Giger (Woods is credited with helping them craft the settings for Aliens 3)...
For more on Woods, click here , and here .Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.