Visitors to giraffe.com know of my admiration for the glass art of David Ruth. We now have a video showing him at work on a huge glass commission called the Colorado Cascade Project.

Linda Leavell has written a biography of the poet Marianne Moore titled "Holding On Upside Down", the first authorized account of the life of this brilliant but complex poet. Ezra Pound described Moore's work as "the mind cry...of clever people in despair". Moore's family history was stressful, at best. Her relationship with her mother was both intense and sad, while her sexual identification was something she tried to hide. She wrote lines like "without loneliness I should be more lonely, so I keep it in". One lover described her as "a heraldic pterodactyl". Her spare yet dense lines require more than one reading, while her titles tended to be equally enigmatic, like "Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish". Moore demands much of the reader, but she offers much in return.

Researchers in Peru have unearthed 19 wooden sculptures that were hidden roughly 750 years ago in the Chan Chan complex in Northern Peru. 28" tall, the sculptures have clay masks and were buried in an adobe wall. They appear to have been part of a ceremonial center.

Artificial Intelligence is slowly entering the public's awareness, perhaps to some dismay. This site shows you some portraits generated from photographs without any additional filters or visual manipulations. The portraits are created by GANs, Generative Adversarial Networks, and the creators discuss the current obsession with what is real and what is fake. You can also upload your own photo and get an AI portrait made. Another site describes the process in more detail.

If you think of a train ride as a special experience, you will want to go on the Cruise Train Seven Stars in Japan. While Japan's bullet trains garner more attention, this luxurious train is truly unique. In fact you will have to enter a lottery to get a ticket. The train has 14 suites and rides through some of Japan's most beautiful scenery. The 70-year-old designer insisted on handmade porcelain sinks, miniature paintings, stained glass and gold-painted ceiling logos.

A show at the Morgan Library celebrates the drawings of Tintoretto on the 500th birthday of the artist. Jacopo Tintoretto was a prodigy, but he was also arrogant. Initially his career was blocked by Titian, while he developed a reputation for impulsivity and lack of planning in his work. This spontaneity defied the traditional painstaking discipline of preparatory drawings and careful pre-planning, espoused by academics. In fact, Tintoretto revered Michelangelo, and created more than 100 drawings by copying Michelangelo's sculptures. He tended to combine layers of painting, overlaid by drawing, overlaid by more painting. This exhibit at the Morgan Library will go to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. next year, combined with a Tintoretto retrospective now on view in Venice.

Galerie Lelong & Co is featuring the work of Petah Coyne, in an exhibition titled "Having Gone I Will Return". An advocate of women's art, Coyne is using sewing for the first time: she hired expert seamstresses to educate her in techniques that she is now using to shape blue and black fabric between her figures. In the monumental centerpiece of the current exhibition she has woven velvet and wax-dipped silk flowers into an installation called "Untitled #1379 (The Doctor's Wife)".

Artist Beth Shields uses oil, wax, and graphite to create lush, atmospheric paintings that draw you in for a closer look at her swirling paintscapes. Going further into her site, you will find small drawings with scampering delicate jiggles on more placid grounds. Shields is based in Santa Cruz, California. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts from UCLA.

The Art Institute of Chicago is now offering free access to more than 44,000 images from its archives. The images can be downloaded for free from the Institute's website. Enhanced programming makes it possible to see much greater detail in the works. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art tried a similar project last year, their website experienced a 64% increase in downloads and a 17% increase in traffic. The Met also found that users tended to stay 5 times longer on their site.

A group of David Salle paintings that have rarely been seen are on their way to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. The three paintings were commissioned by collector Carlo Bilotti, who wanted them based on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Salle originally called the idea "wacko" and the "height of hubristic folly". Salle added references to contemporary events, as he studied both the biblical ideas and the implications of Michelangelo's painting on the Chapel's ceiling. Salle's three works will be included in an exhibition called "Every Picture Tells a Story", to be on view at the Museum for one year.

The New York Times presents 8 photographers from the Paris Photo Fair, each of whom takes a somewhat different approach to the medium. Some images are made without a camera; others clearly show the influence of digital iconography in their visualization.

c. Corinne Whitaker 2018