Archives for January 2015

The first Adirondack chair was designed by Thomas Lee while vacationing in Westport, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains in 1903. Needing outdoor chairs for his summer home, he tested his early efforts on his family. After arriving at a final design for a “Westport plank chair,” he offered it to a carpenter friend in Westport in need of a winter income, Harry Bunnell. Bunnell saw the commercial potential of such an item being offered to Westport’s summer residents, and apparently without asking Lee’s permission filed for and received U.S. patent #794,777 in 1905. Bunnell manufactured hemlock plank “Westport chairs” for the next twenty years, painted in green or medium dark brown, and individually signed by him.

Originally the chair was called the Westport Plank Chair, but was renamed the Adirondack Chair after the mountain range Westport is located in; the Adirondacks.

These Chairs are in the collection of Gail Gannon.

Scroll to the bottom to  Join Discussion and “Speak  Your Mind”.

Real Time Meeting Feb 8:

Group took turns sharing how the first 90 pages informed their practice or their life.
Deb: Heteronymns Pessoa…poems in different personalities
Trying to create voices that speak through her.

Madeline: Feels good about making her own choices. Feels for HArriet and the time she lived.  Jill responds about references…some she made up. Deb: Hide and seek puzzle. Karlyn responds…relief that not all refs are real. NYC references are personal for her. Lived there during the late 60s?

Karlyn: Feels different kind of pressure because of age discrimination. Lee Krasner. Had to paint small because Pollock got the studio.  Need to see Big Eyes.  Jill: Harriet does the opposite…hires the men for the face.
Came to Minnesota and worked on wolf conservation. It was a male world.
Women and wolf ate on the mezzanine. Women had to work harder. Had to take on male persona. Must be assertive.

Cohen: Popular Problems: Great new collection of new music. Book: I’m Your MAn : The Life of Leonard COhen

Layl: Why didn’t Felix launch her? HArriet takes her work in difference directions. Pushing the limits of “What is Art?” There are male artists being more accepted in polymer clay.

Attached to balls and a cock? People will take it seriously. All agree.

Jill: WARM retrospective did not acknowledge the rank and file veterans.
Must remember our own history. Must keep the ball rolling.
Perception of “collectors” that women’s work is not a good investment.
Blazing structure makes the story so well rounded. Many viewpoints of the same “person”.  Harriet may be the best of Siri. Joy of the book is the literary style. Which “world” matters? Quote: “She held court, she spoke many languages. She learned just enough to charm….pg 84.

Barbara: Time Creeps. Time Alters. Gravity Insists. Age and Power?
The first Mask: The History of Western Art. Why?
Nightwood…gender exploration. Harry was given the name by her father. Future implcations

“Art dealers have to be magicians of hunger.” Layl: Does art sales at fairs. Layl delivers “joy”.  Susan: Wildlife documentation. It is my job to deliver whimsy. Barbara: Delivers social responsibility. Marcie: More important: Sincerity. True to yourself. More important than feeding the viewers hunger. Marcie says: Color invokes emotional vibration. Madeline: Landscape . Marcie assists: Madeline conveys the truth about nature. People need to be connected to the earth. Landscape of the the South West. Karlyn: Do not care. Might not need to answer that question. Deb:

Susan: Powerful discussions. I am now motivated to read the book. We have a responsibility to share these stories in an illuminating way, not finger pointing.

Marcie: Deeper Meaning Quote: Harriet said: My mother used to talk about color….believes it is in us. The color is in us. Color is visceral.  Superficial vs. the deep.

Action Items:

1. Portfolio: Have patrons/colleagues write a description of your work for your artist statement.
2. Liz Lurhman  has a critical response model. Perhaps do a session.
3. Art Adventure style program for under represented artists in the schools.
Looking for participants. Jill reports Terry __________has developed a program. Use as a starting point.
4. Venus Challenge… make a sketch/art to portray what you think the Venus looked like.
5. Keep in mind. What if I invented an artist that was all art criticism? Are they “Fake” artists? Let’s think about this as we read.

March Meeting. Barbara will put a new doodle up. We will use Join Me for that meeting. Barbara will be out of the country and Jill may “lead”.  I should be able to call in but just in case. WE WILL DISCUSS UP TO PAGE 180.

 

Feb 8.  From Rebecca:

I ran across this short video on GUy DeBord on youtube. its a commentary by an author/historian who knew him and the Situationist movement. Most other things about GUy on Youtube are in french ;P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ1ZM01oroU

I was reading the comments on Barbara’s blog and that motivated my search.
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January 15, 2015

Greetings!

I am excited to report that Barb Kobe, Rebecca Dudley, McDill, Layl  Susan Gainen, Debra Ripp,  Carolyn Halliday, KateRenee, Jill Waterhouse, Madeline Kamp, Rebecca Pavlenko, Marcia L. Soderman-Olson,Chris Cinque;karlyn.atkinson Berg have joined our reading group.

Proposed Timeline:

Sundays? What time would be best? Layl=Before 1:pm

Hi Group.  There will be about 90 pages per section.  Note that the first “Join Me” meeting is Feb 8.  Still no input on time for Sunday meetings

February 8 .  9 AM First “Join Me” Meeting.  I have a “Join Me” account and will open a meeting.  Join me is a lovely piece of meeting software.  I will send a code and you will call in on the phone and we will be able to share and see each others’computer screens.  Free for all of you.
March 8  Second Join Me

April 12 Third Join Me

May 3^rd FAce-To_FAce Wrap up celebration in Minneapolis?  Hot dish? Inspired by Blazing? Venue to be announced.

The programming committee decided to run the discussions from my WordPress blog since no one will need to create accounts or sign in. Discussions could start now.  I propose that all of us take responsibility for posting one question to the board during each section.  When  an idea, a literary device, a situation emerges from your reading, throw up a question on the following URL.  I will go first. We can also include other resources we find.  Just send them to me and I will put them at the top of the post.

Members:  http://bridgescreate.com/blazing-world-discussions-warm/
Rebecca Dudley <pareidoliette@gmail.com>; McDill, Layl <layl@claysquared.com>; Susan Gainen <susangainen@comcast.net>; Debra Ripp <tobersonstudios@gmail.com>; Halliday, Carolyn <cghalliday@gmail.com>;katerenee <katerenee@katerenee.com>; Jill Waterhouse<h2o.jill@gmail.com>; Madeline Kamp <madeline.kamp@yahoo.com>;pavlenko@bitstream.net;Marcia L. Soderman-Olson <msol.arts@gmail.com>;Chris Cinque <chriscnq@gmail.com>;Karlyn Berg <karlyn.atkinson.berg@wildblue.net>;<aihejny@gmail.com>;pwright@rubywings.com

 

Blazing World by Minnesota’s own Siri HustvedtJoin us for a winter WARM Read, Reflect and Discuss. Three Virtual Meetings, a running discussion board and a final face-to-face celebration/meeting in MAY. Many women artists have observed and experienced the disparity of recognition as connected to gender. Some of us may have fanaticized about hiring a man to mask our work.  What would happen? Siri Hustvedt imagines the possibilities. The purpose of this read is not to critique Siri’s book but to relate her ideas to our experiences and perhaps use the outcomes to inform our own practice. Simon and Schuster has provided reader guide questions: (http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Blazing-World/Siri-Hustvedt/9781476747248)  but we would like to invite interested participants to also send THEIR ideas for questions.

 

NPR (snip)
Every now and again I come across a book that makes me wish to do violence to my learning, to tear away words like tour de force and magnificent in order to excavate something more true, more raw, more appropriate to the experience of reading it. Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is such a book. Like fire, it feeds as it consumes: It gives off the warmth and light by which to read, understand, marvel at it — but in order to do so it absorbs the reader’s gaze, knowledge and attention and combusts them, transforms them into the brightness by which it is read.

 

Presented as an anthology of texts assembled by Professor I. V. Hess, The Blazing World tells the story of Harriet Burden, an installation artist who, disappointed in the lack of recognition her work receives, chooses a succession of three different men to be pseudonymous “masks” for her pieces over a five-year period, an experiment to determine whether her work is better received when attributed to men. She calls the whole project Maskings, and the story of its conception and development is told through excerpts from her private journals, written statements offered by friends and reviewers, fiction from her son, and edited transcripts of interviews with her daughter. The result is complex, astonishing, harrowing, and utterly, completely engrossing.

collaborative read and discuss.

The New York Review of Books (snip)
Not unexpectedly, Hustvedt is also a serious feminist, much praised for her thoughtful fictional renderings of women’s lives, especially as lived among the urban, college-educated, Kindle-owning, heterosexual middle classes. (The Blazing World, Katie Roiphe suggests, is “feminism in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, or Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: richly complex, densely psychological, dazzlingly nuanced.”)

A discussion site will be launched on January 15, 2015.  The first “meeting” will be  February 1, 2015. Time to be announced. We will use  “Join Me” software to meet on our home computers. This is free for participants. Please contact Barbara Bridges if you are interested in joining this WARM activity.  drb@bridgescreate.com

TOUR THE COTTAGE  First Floor   Second Floor    Third Floor

First Time!  Special Discounts for Special Groups

YOU create the workshop for your event. WE provide the venue!  Please contact Gena Zak to plan your event!!  townsendpropertymanagement@gmail.com

• Skiers
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• Front Street Shipyard – ship/boat crews use with extended stays Specials
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• Camden Windjammer Festival  Specials
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• Gaugi Building workshops in Brooklin, ME  Specials

In the off season, I am flexible for checking in and out. I am flexible for fees but here is a general fee schedule. Generally there is a two night minimum but Special One Day Events: Negotiable

5 people $250 a night or $ 1200 a week
10 people $300 a night  or $1400 a week
15 people $600 a night  or  $1700 a week

Trade anytime outside July and August. June and September are spectacular.

Please read the following information and see more pictures here: http://bridgescreate.com/chateau-mer-rental/

The property address is 58 Hersey Retreat Road, Sandy Point, Maine 04972. If you did not find me on VRBO. Click here for details: http://www.vrbo.com/112188ha

Chateau Mer is available for weekend rentals this winter.  Sit by the fire, walk on the beach and see the giant icebergs come in.  Have 23 of your friends and family at Thanksgiving!  $500 for the weekend if you are a SPIE (Sandy Pointer in Exile).
Come for the leaves in October. Have Thanksgiving on my 18 foot table!! Sit around the fireplace on Christmas with your entire family!! Cross country ski or snow shoe.  Ski at Herman Mountain or the Camden Snow Bowl- http://www.camdensnowbowl.com just 30 miles away. Snowmobile: http://www.mesnow.com/Map.html  also: http://www.visitmaine.com/things-to-do/outdoor-activities/winter-activities.