Currently watching...

...Alan Ball's new show "Here and Now" for HBO.

I like Alan Ball. How can I not? He wrote the glorious film "American Beauty." He created one of the most profound television series of all time, "Six Feet Under" (and he wrote and directed many of the episodes). And he turned a campy horror series of novels into the delightful "True Blood" (although it did stray a bit too far from the original books in the last seasons but he was no longer show runner at that point which might be a bit of an explanation).

So when I heard that he has a new series on HBO called "Here and Now," I was curious. It is another unlikely blend of genres, exploring an ethnically diverse family in Portland, which serves as a springboard for studying the state of our current sociological and political climate in the Unites States. But this drama/comedy also inexplicably weaves in elements of the surreal and supernatural, and, dare I say it, spiritual (Ball IS a Buddhist after all).

I have seen the first four episodes, and I am eager to see where this goes and how Ball intends to get us all there. I am intrigued...

If you have not seen it yet, it might not be too late. Try to see if you can find the already-aired episodes to catch up. It stars the masterful Holly Hunter and Tim Robbins as the parents of the family. It might intrigue you too.

https://www.hbo.com/here-and-now

BEAUTY: Illustration--Jenna Barton

Animals and mysteries. That is what artist Jenna Barton says she draws.

Top to bottom: Interstate 15; It came through the yard again; Mountain spirits see and love you; Shrine; There was something in the pool last night; Familiar

Her blog:
http://dappermouth.tumblr.com/
Prints and clothing:
http://dappermouth.storenvy.com/

BEAUTY: Illustration--Yosuke Yamaguchi

Japanese illustrator Yosuke Yamaguchi's imagination runs in a direction that is sympatico with my own: a bit magic realist, a bit surrealist...a bit like dream logic...and a bit like a shaman might see while deep in a trance. Enormous spirit animals protect humans in forests, magical rites are underway, and lycanthropy is alive. Human/animal, animal/human...it's a fine line. We're all animals after all.

Top to bottom: hidden history; nemure 1; nemure 2; nemure 8; nightwork; shiranaikoto; slowending; someday; viridarium cymicum; we know you; wolf in her breast; yakoku 11-12

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cribas/

BEAUTY: Photography--Ellie Davies

I previously posted Ellie Davies' work here in 2011 and she has been working last year and this year on a newer series of photographs called Stars 2014 - 2015. Her Artist Statement about the series says it best:

"Stars, 2014 explores my desire to find some balance between a relationship with the wild places of my youth, and a pervasive sense of disconnectedness with the natural world.

The Western landscape tradition embodies a pairing that James Elkins calls ‘the subject-object relationship’. Typified by the ‘scenic viewpoint’ or tourist panoramic overlook, we gaze, often through binoculars or telescopes, at wide vistas and dramatic seascapes, awed and overwhelmed. But this landscape experience often alienates the viewer from the scene and, just as the landscape itself becomes an object, a separation arises between them.

Today the majority of people live in urban or semi-urban environments, experiencing the landscape from a distanced position mediated through various media and technology. From this viewpoint the notion of the landscape in all its sensuous materiality, our being within it rather than outside it, seems beyond reach.

Stars, 2014 addresses this distancing by drawing the viewer right into the heart of a forest which still holds mystery, and offers the potential for discovery and exploration. The series considers the fragility of our relationship with the natural world, and the temporal and finite nature of landscape as a human construct.

Mature and ancient forest landscapes are interposed with images of the Milky Way, Omega Centauri, the Norma Galaxy and Embryonic stars in the Nebula NGC 346 captured by the Hubble Telescope. Each image links forest landscapes with the intangible and unknown universe creating a juxtaposition that reflects my personal experiences of the forest; its physicality and tactility set against a profound and fundamental otherness, an alienation that separates us from a truly immersive relationship with the natural world."

http://www.elliedavies.co.uk/

BEAUTY: Painting--Ruprecht Von Kaufman

Regular readers know that I truly love painters who work with very oblique, enigmatic narratives. And painter Ruprecht Von Kaufman really knows how to present a scene that requires interpretation, showing us frozen scenes of arcane rites, covert actions, or ambiguous situations we are not meant to see. His imagery is clouded in mystery and verge on the surreal... more qualities I love in a piece of art.

http://www.rvonkaufmann.com/

Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey!

Today marks the 88th birthday of artist, illustrator and author Edward Gorey (February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000). This largely self-taught artist left behind a delightful, remarkable, and wholly unique body of work upon his death. Most of his works are set in the Victorian and Edwardian era, with a very dark sense of humor and a twist of morbidity. His fascinating and skillful pen-and-ink works inspired generations and spawned the opening credits of the PBS series "Mystery!" as well as the absolutely gorgeous music video for Nine Inch Nails' song "The Perfect Drug" directed by Mark Romanek in 1997 (previously here).

I saw a wonderful exhibit of Gorey's work at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco in 1993. The museum had a limited supply of signed books and museum catalogs by Gorey, which I snapped up!

And here is the man himself, in one of his many beloved fur coats (he stopped wearing fur altogether, rightly calling it "cruelty to animals"), and with a few of his many, many cats.

And for fun, here is the PBS "Mystery!" opening credits...

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gorey!

His home on Cape Cod is now a museum whose profits go toward protecting animals, particularly dogs, cats, bats, and insects.
http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/

BEAUTY: Photography--Mikko Lagerstedt

Finnish photographer Mikko Lagerstedt beautifully captures what I imagine to be the mood and tone of his home country where winters are long and days are short. Cold, darkness, stars, moonlight, and mysterious figures. It feels like Romanticism from 1790...

http://www.mikkolagerstedt.com/index.html