eMusings

Johannes Lotz presents paintings and drawings in the style of Goya cum Francis Bacon. He has a talented and decidedly cynical viewpoint of the world.

Over a period of fifteen years, Martin Ramirez created roughly eighty drawings which he hid under his mattress while incarcerated at the DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California. An additional 450 pieces were discovered in a garage in California in 2007. He made his own homemade glue from potato starch, dough and saliva, used a matchstick rather than a brush, and collected whatever scraps of material he could find in his restricted environment. Diagnosed as an "incurable catatonic schizophrenic", Ramirez seldom spoke and left no written content about his work.

Marius Watz creates fascinating interactive projects for the Web. Shown here is a drawing tool that he says "has a mind of its own". After exploring this one, click "Back to Unlekker" at the top of the page to see more of Watz's experiments. (Incidentally, Watz is also mentioned on this month's Digital Sculpture page.

Linda Ganjian is currently featured in a show at the NURTUREart gallery in Brooklyn, New York, along with myself and eight other artists. When I saw the brochure for the exhibit, called "Who's Afraid of Ornament?", I was impressed by her work and wanted to share it with all of you. (Incidentally, if you would like a copy of the color brochure for the exhibit, send a SASE to me at 932 Bryant Street in Palo Alto, CA 94301.)

Jean-Pierre Hebert creates many types of drawings, based frequently on geometry, fractals, and software extrapolations.

The photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson are being featured in a large exhibition at MOMA in New York. The New York Times describes his wanderings, his portraits, and his obsession with the camera. In spite of some negative comments about his abilities by Gertrude Stein, Cartier-Bresson became a renowned photo journalist as he roamed the world producing thousands of now-classic images. The exhibition will travel to San Francisco, Atlanta, and Chicago at the end of June.

Do you like your Shakespeare raw? Romeo and Juliet will appear on Twitter as continuous messages in a global theater. Some of the early tweets are available at such tweetsorrow.

A young designer named Pedro Lourenco has been setting the fashion world on its ears with his current collection. You may not wear these to the next PTA meeting but wherever you do you will attract attention.

Sumptuous, elegant, baroque, gilded - these are just a few of the words that spring to mind with the last designs of Alexander McQueen. Before his untimely death, McQueen had prepared these elaborate outfits for presentation at the Paris fashion shows.

Henri Matisse needs no introduction, but art lovers can get an eyeful of his works at the Art Institute of Chicago and later at MOMA in New York. The exhibition includes graphics and sculpture as well as paintings.

A small but elegant exhibition of the drawings and rare books of Palladio is on view at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Called "Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey", the exhibition will travel to Washington D. C., Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh.

If the past is comforting, the future may be less so, at least as envisioned by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, at the Pentagon. These scientists are putting $6 million USD into a project called BioDesign, intended to produce death-resistant organisms with loyalty embedded into their eternal genes. Of course there will be a "genetically-coded kill switch" - don't you feel better now?

c.Corinne Whitaker 2010