WAX Magazine
A new magazine about urban surfing, community, and art is on the horizon. Support them here.
James Welling, Torso 3
So too in Welling’s photogram series Torsos (2005–08) do complexities manifest. He cut screening, of the same type used for windows, to follow bodily contours and placed them on chromogenic paper before exposing them. Folded, curled, and billowing up from the paper ground, the wavy-edged mesh scraps produce lushly variegated passages while also revealing an obdurate materiality […]
“Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series”
What’s striking is the way they record the mysterious and unquenchable activity of an artist at work in his studio. In precisely the years when Diebenkorn was making the Ocean Park paintings, art busted out of what had become an admittedly airless and confining realm. The work from a new era characterized by experimental and […]
Anne Truitt, Summer 96
Truitt would later distill these places, events and memories into her work. She believed experiences—particularly difficult or painful ones—were “the ground out of which art grows,†as she said in her oral history interview. “People talk as if art were something that you did with your eyes and your brain, but it’s not. It’s something […]
Mary Heilmann talks about “Visions, Waves & Roadsâ€
THE WAVES have always been in my life and work. My father was a bodysurfer and as a kid I would join him on the beach in San Francisco. I have a very early memory of watching him in the huge, crashing, cold surf. Whenever I’m in the Bay Area, I go to the beach and […]
Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost
The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water […]
Lydia Davis on Joan Mitchell’s Les Bluets
I start with the fact that Les Bluets (The cornflowers) is the painting I think of first when I think of one that has had particular significance in my life. Then I have to figure out why. I am not even certain that Les Bluets was the actual painting I saw. What I did see […]
Robert Smithson, Mirror and Crushed Shells
On July 9, 1969 Robert Smithson wrote the following letter to Andy Warhol about Mirror and Crushed Shells: Dear Andy, This is to certify that the Mirror with Crushed Shells (Sanibel Island) is an original work of art. It consists of three mirrors which may be restored if broken, and one burlap bag of crushed shells collected by the artist at Sanibel […]
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
In German, to be blue—blau sein—means to be drunk. Delerium tremens used to be called the “blue devils†(Burns, 1787.) In England “the blue hour†is happy hour at the pub. Joan Mitchell—abstract painter of the first order, American expatriate living on Monet’s property in France, dedicated chromophile and drunk, possessor of a famously nasty tongue, and […]
Anonymous Tantra Painter, Shiva Linga, 2002
I have noticed in the Tantric works how the simplicity of their conventional, geometric forms is complemented by the infinite complexity of their particular execution: water stains, flaws in the handmade paper, fragments of unrelated text combine to make each work not only unique but somehow perfect. These images would clearly not have the same […]
Michael Krebber, astrorock
It seems Michael Krebber has been on a raw foods diet, or maybe some plan of specific separation, Kosher or macrobiotic-style. Here he took a group of mainly German-made (who knew?) windsurfing boards, and made a group photo, seven boards lined up like brahs. Then he made a poster, folded it up, and hid it […]
Kay Rosen, Tide
“When it comes to reading my work, throw out all the rules you ever learned: spelling, spacing, capitalization, margins, linear reading, composition…all your old reading habits will be useless.” —Kay Rosen
Mierle Laderman Ukeles at the 2011 Creative Time Summit
As the artist-in-residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation since 1977, Mierle Laderman Ukeles orchestrates public projects that raise awareness about urban maintenance systems and the workers who sustain the urban environment.—Creative Time
Doug Wheeler, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12
Arguably more so than any other Light and Space artist Mr. Wheeler has made the quest to create a sense of absence — to enable people to perceive space and light in ways they normally cannot — a primary obsession. And his explorations of it were deeply influential in the formation of the loose movement […]
Mary Heilmann, Winter Surf, San Francisco
“Each of my paintings can be seen as an autobiographical marker, a cue, by which I evoke a moment from my past, or my projected future, each a charm to conjure a mental reality and to give it physical form.†— Mary Heilmann
New Year’s Resolutions (for surfers)
Good advice! From a post last year by Zach Weisberg of Inertia.com. 1. Surf at sunrise whenever possible. There’s no better way to start a day. Period. 2. Give someone a wave. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all looking out for number one in the water, but on rare occasions when a stranger gifts a wave to […]
Bigert & Bergström, The Last Calendar
The perfect gift for your favorite prophet! From Cabinet: When the current cycle of the Maya Long Count calendar concludes on 21 December 2012, the world will end. Of course, this is hardly the first time the planet’s demise has been prophesied. And so Cabinet offers you, doomed reader, a guide to the brief time that remains. […]
Anicka Yi, Fins
I am interested in connections between materials and materialism, states of perishability and their relationship to meaning and value, consumerist digestion and cultural metabolism, smuggling, stomachs as biological metaphor, molecular gastronomy, scent, the fragrance industry as memory machine, commodification of creativity, public relations as medium, and post-humanist theory with it’s sociopolitical implications for the body, […]
Paul Sharits, Shutter Interface
For Shutter Interface I wanted a sound rhythm and a visual rhythm that would have something to do with high-amplitude alpha waves. I think that’s why it’s such a pleasant film. I did some biofeedback to listen to the sound of my alpha rhythm and I tried to approximate it in the piece. I wanted that sound […]
Surfing in the Scottish Borders
One afternoon, we drove to the beach at Coldingham Bay, a beautifully preserved stretch of the Berwickshire coastline. Everyone managed to find a wet suit that fit, and David went out and caught a wave. Walking back to the car, he turned to me and said: “We’re so lucky, aren’t we?†–From a nice article in […]
“Goodbye to Summer”?
Big ups to my friend Eva who made it into The Sartorialist last week in a post titled “Goodbye to Summer.” Of course, Scott Schuman has no idea that the surf season has only just begun in New York. Eva and I caught a few good ones in Rockaway this morning! Welcome to the Endless Summer.
Renee Green, Endless Dreams and Water Between
LORRAINE CWELICH: One of the framed prints outlines a proposition for the September Institute. What is the September Institute? GREEN: The September Institute is a non-utopian vortex of thinkers and artists that gather each September in the island of Majorca. There’s a lot more supposed connectivity online but there also seems to be a dwindling […]
Surfing in Bundoran, Ireland
“Even its biggest fans admit that Bundoran might not seem like an obvious place to surf. “We live on the Atlantic coast; the winters are harsh and the weather is brutal,†Mr. Fitzgerald said. “Some guys go: ‘You surf in Ireland? What the hell’s that about?’ †I still love this NYT article.
