Richard Benson
Richard Benson sits down with Harmony Blogger to make the best prints he’s “ever seen.”
Blind Spot Conversations 02: Richard Benson and Arthur Ou from David La Spina on Vimeo.
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Surf SurvivalLake Michigan
Photograph by Mike Killion
Send in your best surfing beat down story here for a chance to win a free spot at the Surf Survival Camp and a 7-night stay at the Harmony Hotel. Here’s another great entry from the contest:
Have you ever heard of a beat down on a lake? There I was watching perfect overhead lines peel into the shore. This was on Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois, a place where the waves only get good a few times a year. When it gets big, the paddle out can be brutal, especially in a 6/5/4 wetsuit. So many people opt to jump off the pier. The trick is you have to time leap, so that you land on top of a peak. As one large set rolled in, I launched myself into the air. I looked back in time to see my leash catch on the top of a ladder. Then all I could see was the sky because I was falling ass-backwards into the water. I hung upside down, hogtied by my leash. As I scrambled to release the velcro, a set of waves approached. They proceeded to pummel me like a boxer hitting a speed bag. Finally, I undid my leash and fell the rest of the way down. With the ladder no longer holding my surfboard, it became a flying projectile towards my head. Luckily, I dodged the polyurethane missile.
Hilma af Klint, Altarbild, 1915
Hilma af Klint, Altarbild, nr 1, grupp X, Altarbilder, 1915
In af Klint’s pictorial universe, the semiotic level is never radically separated from the world of visual forms; her cosmic figures send out mysterious linguistic messages that, as a mystic, she seemed to channel from another dimension, often referring to herself in the second or third person. One of the spirits told her: “You are called to present in pictures a wonderful linguistic system that we term the influence of miraculous powers on people’s outer and inner lives. True, the pictorial language comes from the Orient, but it will be illuminated by a northern light and will be explained in conjunction with outer signs and inner life.”
“Hilma af Klint, a Pioneer of Abstraction” recently closed at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. It will be on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin from June 15 to Oct. 6 and at the Museo Picasso Málaga from Oct. 21 to Feb. 9.
JAMES TURRELL: ATEN REIGN (2013)
It seemed like everywhere I went this weekend people were talking about this exhibit (Turrell’s first one in New York since 1980). The piece will be up until September 25th and was such a major undertaking, that it would be worth a look just to see how he transformed the famed rotunda.
Seaside Then & Now
In honor of the renovations that are taking place at seaside destinations around the UK, residents of the towns have been posting photos taken of the resorts in their heyday as well as photos of what they look like today.
The towns once attracted many tourists, but in recent years attendance has waned drastically. Gathering money from the government, the lottery, and other sources, some parks are looking to rekindle the lost era of weekends at the sea, getting families and young people alike to leave the city and spend a day at the beach.
Check out the Guardian article here for a full slideshow of images from then and now.
Forecast.io
The most handsome way to check whether the day will bring surf-worthy weather is data from more than a dozen sources and presents it in a clean, easy-to-use format. Bookmark the URL!
Cloud 9 in Siargao Island
Jes Aznar for The New York Times
Ondine Cohane recently profiled “a teardrop-shaped island that’s just one of the Philippines’s 7,000-plus, and the southernmost refuge for travelers before the less politically stable region of Mindanao”: Siargao.
She writes:
[T]he island is known to surfers, largely because of its fabled break, endearingly called Cloud 9. It stands in the firmament of the best rides on the global circuit, a fast and powerful monster because of the water that sweeps in from the Philippine Trench in the Pacific Ocean. In the fall the arrival of the habagat, a weather system fed by southwest winds and easterly currents, creates even more monumental tubes. Local lore credits a drug runner-turned-surfer with putting Cloud 9 on the radar — and in the decades since, it has drawn world pros for an international tournament hosted by companies like Billabong and Quiksilver. A small industry of hippie-style guesthouses, bars and surf schools has followed.
Surf SurvivalSan Diego
A great entry in our Surf Survival Camp Contest:
Recently in San Diego, two dolphins appeared through a glass walled wave heading straight for me. No way to duck dive the six foot wave in fear of colliding with the dolphins who had just dove a little deeper to just grazing level I had to take the full brunt of wave on the head rolling me across the (luckily) sand bottom. Ending up waist deep in water, confusion and excitement.
Send in your best surfing beat down story here for a chance to win a free spot at the Surf Survival Camp and a 7-night stay at the Harmony Hotel.
