Jim Alinder, Imogen Cunningham, 1964
Judy Dater, Imogen and Twinka, 1974
Also working here is Wayne’s daughter, Twinka Thiebaud, who is living a very interesting life. Dig the peace signs on Imogen’s dirdle strap? scarf accessory? This was a theme for her. Tremendous lady.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Helen Frankenthaler, on the other hand, broke the Lee mold and was such a crazy genius that I think some people don’t even know that she was married to Robert Motherwell. Or they do know that and they think to themselves, Was he worthy? This beautiful series above was taken by Ernst Haas in 1969.
Now, it’s Helen, who was an Uptown Girl from birth, so you have to understand that there was also a little bit of this-
Photo by Gordon Parks, c. 1957
Photo by Michael Fredericks
Helen Frankenthaler with Alexander Liberman, in her studio, New York City, 1967, Photo by Dan Budnick
And at the end of the day, she was coming home to Motherwell and this-
Photographed at Yale by Sedat Pakay
Photo by William Grigsby, originally published for the article “Artists as Collectors” in the November/December 1967 issue ofArt in America. Drool. But always, she was back at this-
Photo by Hans Namuth, 1987
Photo by Hans Namuth, 1984
Photo by Alexander Liberman
Photo by Alexander Liberman
Helen Frankenthaler in her studio in Darien, Connecticut, 2003. Photo by Suzanne DeChillo.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Lee Krasner painting Portrait in Green, 1969. Photos by Mark Patiky.
Hans Namuth, Lee Krasner, 1962
Lee Krasner in her studio, 1956 (Waintrob-Budd, William Morrow)
Lee Krasner is another Lee famously in peril of always being overshadowed by the man with whom she was associated, this one because she was married to Jackson Pollock. I say “famously” because I greatly prefer Krasner’s work to Pollock’s and I feel like the whole underdog wifey-artist hype is distracting. So OK, let’s do this:
Lee Krasner
-Vs.-
Jackson Pollock
You decide! And remember there’s two E’s in Lee, boys.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
OK, the year is still 1971. You are now a group of Florentine architects who began with a focus on radical architecture and urban research, and you have lately taken up an interest in clothes.
Cuuuute. Despite your day to day choice of sensible tweed suits and slouchey knits for your own body coverage, your idea for others is to make a simple clothing system based on slimfitting bodystockings over which decorated overalls could be worn.
You sketch it out, see that such a system would look nice in empty corridors on your own, in pairs. It would work with bald men with bushy beards, with haired men with bushy beards. It would probably work when you cast a shadow against a wall. Or when you visit skyscrapers, when you do yoga, when you play a stringed instrument.
You think to yourself, This idea works. Let’s test it out on some handsome neighbors. Sure enough:
Slam!
Ka-blam! Sans understocking.
Hot damn. This last picture is from 1972, boys and girls. Nineteen Seventy-Two. And so, the American Apparel problem was born, never to look so very fine again. Oh man, oh man.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
© Lee Miller Archives, England 2013. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk
Lee Miller is another one of my big fascinators and another American woman who caught big waves in Europe. She was both a photographer and great collaborator with photographers, most notably Man Ray. It doesn’t sit right to call her a model, though that is how she got herself out of Poughkeepsie.
The top portrait of Lee was taken by Man Ray in 1929; then in 1941, Lee took “Women in Fire Masks”. Clearly those two had things to say to one another. There is a book about this called Man Ray | Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism (via Mondo-Blogo).
When the war came, Lee became a war photographer. She entered the U.S. Army as a correspondent for Vogue and was dispatched weeks after D-Day to report from St. Malo, the liberation of Paris, Alsace, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau, where she was the first woman photographer to enter. Her reports were unusual for Vogue, andVogue, to its credit, published them.
Then comes the Hitler bathtub shot. Lee was an absolutely legit photographer, both of beautiful things and of war, but because she looked as she did, her most famous work has her in it. “I looked like an angel on the outside. That’s how people saw me,” she wrote. “But I was like a demon inside. I had known all the suffering of the world since I was very a little girl.”
© David E. Scherman. Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England 2013. All rights reserved.
This image was taken by David E. Scherman, a Life correspondent with whom Lee traveled and worked throughout the war. It was the night after the two of them had photographed Dachau—that same day, Hitler had committed suicide in Berlin and they had entered Munich with American troops liberating the city. They came upon a regular-seeming apartment building at Prinzenregentplatz 27 and realized, upon entering, that it was Hitler’s Munich apartment. They stayed there for three days amid the swastika china and linen monogrammed A.H. Scherman slept in Hitler’s bed and Lee took this bath.
The New York Times described the image like this: “A picture of the Führer balances on the lip of the tub; a classical statue of a woman sits opposite it on a dressing table; Lee, in the tub, inscrutable as ever, scrubs her shoulder. A woman caught between horror and beauty, between being seen and being the seer.” Yes, there is the Hilter pic prop, and the figure prop, and beautiful Lee, but there is also the filthy boots.
Lee said she was only trying to wash the stench of Dachau away, though apparently there was also a reverse setup, now lost, with Scherman in the tub. So she was definitely after art too, and perhaps through it, the survival ofher sense of humanity despite the atrocities she was seeing and documenting. She wrote to her Vogue editor Audrey Winters:
I was living in Hitler’s private apartment when his death was announced, midnight of Mayday … Well, alright, he was dead. He’d never really been alive to me until today. He’d been an evil-machine-monster all these years, until I visited the places he made famous, talked to people who knew him, dug into backstairs gossip and ate and slept in his house. He became less fabulous and therefore more terrible, along with a little evidence of his having some almost human habits; like an ape who embarrasses and humbles you with his gestures, mirroring yourself in caricature. “There, but for the Grace of God, walks I.”
Lee carried the experience of the war with her forever. She described her life as a “rotten puzzle, whose drunken pieces never match in shape or meaning.” Throughout it, though, she made great pictures.
We thank the Lee Miller Archives for allowing us to use Lee’s pictures and David E. Sherman’s pictures in this post.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
This image is always at the front of my mind. It’s 1958 and Lee Bontecou is in Rome on a Fulbright working in her studio. There’s so much that is dear to me here—the widow, the shutters, the light, the shadows of the sculptures on the wall, her blue jeans, her turtleneck, her little nun haircut which she still keeps, how she seems like she’s jamming so much work into her time. It looks like a Vermeer portrait but instead of doing needlework or pouring water, she’s sculpting. Lee learned to weld steel frames that year and then she did insane things with them over the next 50+ years.
These images, including the badass blowtorch shot, by Ugo Mulas show Lee in her Wooster Street studio in 1963. The closeup of Lee at work was taken by Hans Namuth in 1964.
If it’s OK to focus down a bit more on her lewk, which is so blessedly consistent, I’d like to point out that here she is back in NYC at her Wooster Street studio, probably freezing, owning zōri + socks + blowtorch. And then, like, here she is now and I bet you she’s got slippers on underneath that table.
Lee in her Pennsylvania studio in 2003. Photograph by Will Brown. It pleases me.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Tadanori Yokoo, now I know your name, I get to see you everywhere! Blessings! At the very wonderful, sadly now closed MoMA show Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde I saw several very nice posters then at my silkscreen class I saw you being ripped off by a teenager. And at Kiosk, where I’m working Mondays, I get to enjoy and straighten your postcard that looks like this poster:
Yeeeeessssss, it’s a nice dark one. One can buy one from Kiosk on Mondays when I work there or any day of the week (except Sundays) or online here. Or if you got the cash, buy the book:
That’s it Tadanori, or fan of Tadanori or whoever you are. You buy the book because I’m saving up for Japan and I’d like to see. Just buy it and then bring it by Kiosk some Monday soon when I’m working and we can look at it together :^P
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
By now I’ve called the good people at Colby three times trying to order up another printing of our SEY YES posters, and three times, the same message: President Glenn Hinman on the line, “Unfortunately we have closed our doors as of December 31st, 2012…. And I wanna personally thank you for being wonderful customers, and especially, being wonderful people. Have a good future.”
TRAVESTY! And a surprise, too. From where I stand, it seems like Colby is a well-acknowledged, and therefore well-insulated, survivor from the pre-digital age. Glenn’s grandfather Herbert Lee Colby opened the Colby Poster Printing Co. in 1946, offering Litho, Letterpress, and Screen Printing on posters for Gene Autry, Elvis, Ray Charles, Martin Luther King, and scores of politicians, soccer fans, and us. We used our posters to black out the windows at the shop when we were doing our initial construction work and people would stop by wondering what sort of YES-oriented campaign we were running. This pleased us so we kept the posters around.
I first learned of Colby on account of the series of fantastic posters made for Reference Library, including my favorite, “If You Can’t See You, I Can’t See You!” Once I identified the look of them, I started seeing them all over the place. Like, chain-link fences all over the place. Inside, in frames, in 2008, Peter Coffin made those beautiful text-free 3-color fades. So nice. Then last year the Hammer had that big Made in L.A. show and Colby made the posters and pretty much lent their whole graphic style, and that led to a Colby show in London in the fall. But it seems they peaked in the 1970s, when they had 24 employees, and last year they were down to just nine, including Glenn’s brothers Larry and Lee. And now it’s all over.
If anyone knows different, please let me know! And in any case, have a good future.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
The Massage Book combines Anne Kent Rush’s clear and spare line drawings with George Downing’s lighthearted and useful massage advice. Check out these cuties! They radiate a joy that only really high level couples massage can deliver.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Much in the way I began most of my girlhood diary entries with an apology for the interlude between entries, I would like to apologize now for taking off a few days in the course of this “daily” COUNTRY♀WOMEN self assignment. I’ve missed doing them, but I had a lot of fun in LA too :0) OK! These are the last ones I’ve got. After this comes the Anne Kent Rush extravaganza.
Joan Wood
Another important proposal on the Danish horizon is made by the Children’s Commission and the Equality Council. The main idea of the law is to give a maximum leave of sixty-eight weeks- dealt between the parents over the first nine years of the child’s life. The Commission and Council believe in including the father more in the care of the newborn child. As they clearly state it, “It is just as important to support the family’s inner solidarity by having both parents take equal part in the responsibility and care of children in such a way that both the values of life and the burdens that are connected with it are shared more equally between the sexes.”
Most importantly, a law must be made that this leave of absence will not interrupt seniority, and an employer cannot fire an employee who uses his or her leave. Although this law most likely will not be approved in full, or be completely backed up financially, the fact alone that these parties in Parliament will be to the benefit of future parents and their offspring. For all the parties who use improvements in family life as their campaign slogans, this will also be a time to prove they are willing to stand behind their words, rather than think solely in terms of the costs.
Denise Taylor
I bring you lilacs, tulips, daisies, daffodils, iris the color of sky at dusk over the coast of California. I want to remind you of summer, how it arrives in spite of our impatience. The days grow sluggish as snails and we too turn into sand creatures curled against each other on a blanket, books flat-faced where we left them. Already our faces are flushed. I pull the rose cotton shirt over my head and you watch me from the bed. I can see you in the mirror, aura of hair unkempt, your pale eyes amused at my preening. You think I am a bird stroking my own new wings, looking back at your approval. Laughing, I slip out for the pier to buy fresh prawns. Our future leans only as far as dinner. We are happy.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
We finally got our hands on a new batch of Boobs Pillowcases! They’re now available in the shop and online here so you can go ahead and cross off just about every family member on your holiday shopping list, starting with your 13 year old brother who will not believe his luck! We also got a few more Boob Tops in, in case you’ve been waiting to get a hold of one of those….
Many thanks again to Andrew, Drew, and Loren for so kindly, and with very little explanation or reserve, posing for these ridiculous photographs right at the last minute when we needed them. >> UU )• )• << uu
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Sherry Thomas
Three years ago I decided that I had to learn to kill if I was to continue eating meat. This was not a moral imperative, but a personal one. I sent my lambs and goat kids off to butchers and stockyards and I wanted to know what that meant, what I was doing. There is no way to live with domesticated animals and not be involved with death. Almost all of the young males must be slaughtered and there are the older, “cull” animals which must be killed or sold, unless one chooses to spend money on the luxury of free retirements. Once becomes involved with death either remotely (by putting an animal up for sale and not actually experiencing the consequences) or very directly (literally with bloody hands). For me, the latter way is best. I know how my animals die and when and where. What I don’t need for my own use, I try now to sell to friends or to slaughter for acquaintances. I feel better doing it myself than sending my animals off to auctions and slaughterhouses.
I learned to butcher from my neighbors, two brothers in their eighties. The first time was probably as hard and as meaningful as it will ever be. She was Diesel, a “bummer” lamb I had raised on a bottle. Her mother was killed by dogs when the lamb was a month old and a nearby rancher gave her to me to raise. From the first, I knew she would eventually be slaughtered as she was a mutton-type sheep not suitable for my wool-type flock. Every day for two months I fed her on a bottle, cared for her, loved her and knew that I would someday kill her. She lived eight months as happy as any sheep ever does, a good, peaceful life. Then one day my neighbor shot her in the back of the head with a 22. She was grazing and never saw him; she fell, glassy-eyed before I heard the sound of the shot. Then he slit her throat to bleed her. I knew she had died without pain and without fear.
As my sister and I skinned and gutted her, I kept looking at her saying, “This is Diesel; I have taken her life.” I felt very conscious, humble and thankful. Later that night, I found that I was very shaken. When I closed my eyes, I would see Diesel falling dead or Diesel’s body being skinned. This was a very intense, but not a negative experience. I did not feel bad about what I had done, but I was feeling all of it. The act of killing is one we are very removed from in this society; for the first time, I was experiencing my place in the cycle of life and death.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Nancy Blum
It is very important to accept and love ourselves as we are while still working to evolve. It is also extremely important not to repress any “negative” feelings but to cop to them and get them out as they come up, thus clearing the way for the new. At the same time, however we just keep our minds on the goal and realize we can change. Our personalities are merely constructs that have been created by us to help us survive. As children we learned to mold ourselves to gain maximum benefits and avoid hurt and punishment. These personality constructs are not us—we created them and if they have outlived their use we can change them. The old ways were a habit, a pattern. They took some years to solidify. We can learn to experience ourselves and our energies in new more fulfilling ways but it takes practice.
One way to begin this practice is with the following exercise. It takes a few minutes.
1. Get comfortable. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, vitalized by the in-breath, relaxed by the out-breath.
2. Now think of how you wish the change. What do you wish to attain, to eliminate, to become? How do you want to be?
3. Look at what has prevented this. Just be aware of it and then put that knowledge aside.
4. Now suspend your doubt and imagine yourself already being the desired way. Feel how it feels to be this new way. How does your body feel? How do you feel? Imagine yourself going through your day in this new way. How does it change things? Be this way for 5 minutes.
5. Still with eyes closed, step out of this new way and resume your ordinary way of experiencing yourself. Feel the difference. Now return to the new way again. Compare. Go back and forth until you can switch at will.
6. Once more center in the new way. Relax and breathe deeply. Open your eyes and remain in this new way as you go on to your next activity.
Thus you will have learned to feel what the desired new quality feels like; to be in that space and then to compare it to your usual space. Now the trick is daily practice. Just 10 minutes a day is enough, or 5 in the am and 5 in the pm. Then begin to catch yourself when the old patterns and stresses take over and bring in the new quality to even things out. Put on the new act, be it self-love, relaxation, the ability to act with confidence or whatever. Thus practice begins to make it second nature and you will eventually own the new quality.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
by Billie Luisi
The earth reveals her workable clays. Streams, ponds, and the shores of other bodies of water are her sites. You may find it helpful to check with your local Federal Soil and Conservation office for geological information relevant to workable clays in your locality. Sites of defunct potteries and brickyards were usually located near the clay source. There are many farmers and older people in your area who know where there’s clay; they’ve been meeting up with it for forty or fifty years when tilling and planting. Well sites and construction clearances provide accessible sources. You have to get there and dig before the project is completed, before cheap topsoil and astroturf are brought in to hid the scars. Folks are very kind about giving permission to dig and haul clay; I think they like to see it going to some use.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
by Alice Flores
Tea for Stuffed Sinuses
To 1 quart water add:
1 tbsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. cinnamon
1 heaping tsp. ginger
a couple of large pinches of golden seal
a sprinkle of black pepper
Bring it quickly to a boil. Turn it off and cover. Steep 10 minutes. Add honey.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
Sharon Yudin Wintner
Astrology is a system of cycles, and the motions of the planets against the zodiacal constellations can help us understand our own individual life cycles. Why, for example, does it seem that so many people, as they approach the age of thirty, reach a resolution about the kind of work they want to do and the kind of life style they feel most comfortable with? The late twenties are years of change—breaks from the past and resolutions about the future. this cycle repeats itself around the mid to late fifties—children have grown up; there are many divorces or changes in relationships as people find that they can no longer fall back on their youth and the plans, hopes, and building for the future that sustained them through the earlier years; many people realize that they are bored with the work they have been doing for twenty or thirty years, and often they have to deal with the rejection of their children of all they’ve built for them through this work…
These critical periods in our life cycles coincide with the cycles of the planet Saturn. Approximately every twenty-eight years Saturn completes a cycle around the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Thus, every individual experiences a “Saturn Return” around her/his 28th year and again at 56 and at 84; that is, at about ages 28, 56, and 84 Saturn returns to the same degree of the same sign that it was in at the time of the individuals’ birth. These two, or at the most three, Saturn Returns are major landmarks in a lifetime and an increased understanding of the planet Saturn, can help tremendously in dealing with the upheaval people commonly go through at these times.
Saturn teaches us about sensitivity and responsibility—being sensitively tuned in to the needs of oneself and others so that one can then be responsible about meeting those needs. Saturn teaches us to focus on reality and to learn to assess it; to develop a sense of judgement and to use or develop the strength and fortitude to follow through; to act on one’s own assessment of reality and one’s own needs. It teaches us to trust our centers, our guts, to know what is right for the individual in the present—not for anyone else and not what was right yesterday or what may be right tomorrow, but for the Self, Now. Saturnian strength is knowing that nobody else’s standards are quite suited to you, just as yours will not be quite suited to anyone else; that each person must follow her/his own inner structures, needs, strengths and standards.
Thus Saturn is always striving for individual growth. But it is also constantly reaching out to its environment, its society. Saturnian growth is always linked with social usefulness—what can I contribute to the social whole? How can I affect my society? So sensitive is Saturn to its social environment that a strong Saturnian influence can make a person a virtual microcosm of whatever social structures and norms surround her—unless, that is, she can get to her own deepest center and tune into the person rather than the structures that seem to contain her. The question “How can I be socially useful?” presupposes a clear sense of the “I”. No one can be wholly effective unless she is functioning from a solid foundation, a solid center within the self. The Saturn Return is a good time to ask oneself—Am I creating or adapting the structures of my life to best fulfill my own needs and potential? Or am I adapting myself to fit into the structures provided for me by my society, family, or whatever?
Saturnian energy can help us to see what is happening internally and externally at any given moment and to respond (from the same root as “responsibility”) to that reality. The response is always geared toward growth—not the most pleasurable, or the easiest, or the most immediately satisfying resolution or action; but the path which will lead to the greatest ultimate development of the soul (individual) in question. Saturn’s lessons are difficult, but solidly rewarding. A Saturn reward is not a pat on the back or a passing show of approval; it is an anchor in reality, an anchor in sanity that can help stabilize and strengthen one through whatever storms life may take her. One has to work for such an anchor; one has to earn it—and it is through the process of learning Saturn lessons, or the lessons or reality, that this is done. Testing one’s limits is the way to stretch them. Thus, a period of hardship—physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual—necessitates raising one’s tolerance level and increasing one’s self-reliance. The less one needs those things which one can lose, the less fearful one becomes, the more anchored and stable within the self.
The Saturn Return is a time for self-examination. Where you’ve been cheating, restricting, or denying your true potential for spiritual growth, accept the prods that nudge you toward it. Where you’ve been fulfilling and developing your potential, accept the rewards and keep moving. Remember that reality is in a state of constant flux and it is realistic to accept change; to be able to respond to the reality of the moment in a way that feels right at that moment for yourself. Remember also that Saturnian movement is slow and steady, not sudden and spasmodic. A Saturn Return may be felt for a year or more, though its peak intensity is usually about six months or less. It is difficult to know what Saturn is doing to or for you until there is some distance and hindsight. While it’s happening, it may feel either like your life is coming together or like it’s falling apart, but it is only with the perspective of hindsight that you can wholly appreciate the new strengths and wisdom you may have gained.
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
CW: What do you wonder?
A: I wonder about the people in Japan. What is it like in a war. I wonder what it’s like to be abaloneing.
S: I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, what it’s like on other planets. I wonder what nothing looks like; And like on the moon. I wonder how the beings are on other planets.
K: I wonder why grownups don’t like a lot of children to see a lot of things that they do. Like in bars and courtrooms, and movies, and like making love.
A: I wonder if there are really Martians. I wonder what it’s like to be an Indian. I wonder if there’s really ghosts.
K: I don’t believe if you burn someone’s grave the spirits haunt you. I wonder a lot of things. I wonder why a lot of kids aren’t allowed to swear.
A: Children I mean.
S: They swear like this—Baaaaaa.
A: I have to go take a shit. Let’s turn the tape off.
CW: Can’t you say that into the tape?
K: If we put it in Country Women all the straight people will read it.
CW: I’d like to talk about that. Even in our favorite books they don’t go shit and pee.
A: I know.
S: Yeah, even in Laura and Mary books. They are the weirdest people in the world. They never go shit or pee or eve have an outhouse.
K: Maybe she was constipated….
This post originally appeared on the Gravel & Gold blog.
