BEAUTY: Painting--Alai Ganuza

I just love the charming, domestic scenes of kitchens and food by wildly talented artist Alai Ganuza. Regular readers know I have a soft spot for paintings that display their paint like cake frosting, and Ganuza manages to be both Impressionistic in that sense as well as approaching a sense of photorealism.

https://www.instagram.com/alaiganuza/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/AlaiGanuza

Harvey Milk Day 2021

Today is Harvey Milk Day, an international day of remembrance and celebration of the life of political pioneer and gay rights activist Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978), organized by The Harvey Milk Foundation.

Harvey Milk, who was known informally as "The Mayor of Castro Street," was the first openly gay candidate elected to political office in California, and the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. His presence, life, and tragic assassination at the hands of a homophobic murderer (an event that triggered the White Night Riots) changed the texture, pulse, and meaning of life for gay men and women everywhere. Cleve Jones, a friend of Milk's and intern for Milk at the time of his assassination, put it succinctly: "His murder and the response to it made permanent and unquestionable the full participation of gay and lesbian people in the political process." The progress we have made and the continued success of gay rights was certainly helped by Milk and his courage. Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us."

http://www.harveymilkday.co/
http://milkfoundation.org/

The Spoons of Mark Reddy

Woodworker Mark Reddy is represented by Gallery 57 in West Sussex, England. They say:

Mark Reddy takes the modest, humble form of the spoon and imbues it with symbolic expression.

Skillfully working with wood cut and foraged locally, he utilises the innate character inherent in this material. His extraordinary spoons and vessels are carved in the green with simple traditional tools: the hand axe, the maul, the froe, and the crook knife, from native Somerset trees.

Spalted beech, oak, maple, apple, cherry and walnut; a pale hazel spoon - the handle with live bark still intact; others embellished and burnished with gold; a loop of hand woven reed or grass cordage or adorned with a Roman coin, a stone bead, with carved and found objects.

Each piece, with its tokens and amulets embody a strange and intriguing narrative.

There are vessels, pod like or structural, the wood raw, gilded, painted, faceted, or carbonised, still with all the evidence of the maker's hand.

The spoon is arguably man's first vessel, a giver of life, a utensil providing comfort and nourishment: universal and timeless, domestic and intimate. Spoons are the earliest eating tools, dating back as far as the Paleolithic era. Sea shells were connected to small wooden sticks and chips of wood were slowly carved into spoon-like shapes.

With its lip, bowl, shoulders, neck and stem the spoon has all the attributes of a sculptural object.... but it is still just a spoon and for Mark, the repetition in making such a humble and yet essential vessel is infinitely fulfilling and endlessly demanding.

I am having a visceral response to these objects of great beauty.

Walnut, cherry, beech, and maple spoons, scoops, and bowls embellished with small tokens.

First two spoons carved in green wood from beech with woven grass cordage, found objects including beech husks, Neolithic beads,
sea-worn stones, and beaten silver. The third spoon is Blackthorn with a live bark handle.

Carved green wood spoon and vessel and metal spoon.

Five live bark-handled spoons carved from various green woods.

Spoon of blackened wild cherry wood with Roman bead, stone bead, unnamed found coin,
sea-worn metal token, wood and metal armature.

Pale plum wood with Roman bead, two found metal tokens, sea-worn stone token,
wood and metal armature.

https://www.gallery57.co.uk/mark-reddy

BEAUTY: Photography--George Byrne

Australian photographer George Byrne says his work investigates an "urban absence." And his vibrant Color Field series is a wonderful example. Saturated in candy colors melting in the hot Southern California sun, the places he captures are devoid of people and any sense of human occupation...and the presence of a single person in some images somehow only serves to reinforce this absence. Byrne says, "To me, there is a distinct beauty to be found in this sort of subject matter but it's also a slightly unsettling reverberation...a strangely meditative state. I think the images speak to that too."

Top to bottom: 99c Culver City; 99c Silverlake #3; Bank Palm Springs; Bankruptcy; Burbank; Burton Way; Cahuenga; Caryard; East Hollywood Carpark; El Chavo; Feder; Gas Station, Melrose; Palm Springs; Pink Desert; Transparent Billboard; Vigil

https://www.georgebyrne.com/color-field

The Durutti Column: "The Guitar and Other Machines"

Now it's time for you to meet The Durutti Column. One of the first bands to be signed to the legendary Factory Records in Manchester, The Durutti Column is a musical project fronted by Vini Reilly with a rotating group of support and studio musicians. Reilly plays guitar...well, maybe play is a bit of a misnomer: he plucks, he caresses, he shakes, he stretches, he sculpts the guitar into alternative paradigms of what a guitar can do.

My favorite Durutti Column release is the haunting masterpiece "The Guitar and Other Machines" from 1987 which utilizes Reilly's amazing guitar techniques and textures (and his murmured, shy vocals) but also synthesizers, viola, harmonica, and piano to startling, enigmatic effect. There really is no other band who has made music like this, then or since...

Here are some highlights from the album.

"What Is It To Me (Woman)"

"Don't Think You're Funny"

"Jongleur Grey"

"Red Shoes"

"Bordeaux Sequence"

"Miss Haymes"

"English Landscape Tradition"

http://www.thedurutticolumn.com/index.php

BEAUTY: Painting and Mixed Media--Medrie MacPhee

Medrie MacPhee's 2020 series Dark Matter combines oil paint and salvaged scraps of clothing (resuced from 99 cent store bins and bargain basements), including seams, buttons, and zippers. She deconstructs the garments and lays out the pieces, assembling them into a composition. She then paints over the fabric, giving it an almost concrete-like appearance and the resulting abstract images are satisfyingly chunky and textural, referencing some sort of denim fantasia.

https://medriemacphee.com/works/dark-matter/

International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia 2021

The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia was created in 2004 to draw the attention to the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexuals, transgender, intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics.

The date of May 17th was specifically chosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. The Day represents a major global annual landmark to draw the attention of decision makers, the media, the public, corporations, opinion leaders, local authorities, etc. to the alarming situation faced by people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics.

May 17 is now celebrated in more than 130 countries, including 37 where same-sex acts are illegal. Thousands of initiatives, big and small, are reported throughout the planet.

The International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia has received official recognition from several States, international institutions such as the European Parliament, and by countless local authorities. Most United Nations agencies also mark the Day with specific events.

Please visit the website for more uplifting and empowering information.

https://may17.org/

"Visions" by José González

José González (previously here) has treated us to another beautiful, profound song. Watch the earth fly by, but watch out for the spanner in this video for "Visions" from his forthcoming album "Local Valley," due out September 17, 2021.

Visions
Trying to make sense of the now
Trying to make sense of the past
To show us how

Visions
Imagining the worlds that could be
Shaping a mosaic of fates
For all sentient beings

Visions
Cycles of growth and decay
Cascading chains of events
With no one to praise or blame

Visions
Avoidable suffering and pain
We are patiently inching our way
Toward unreachable utopias

Visions
Enslaved by the forces of nature
Elevated by mindless replicators
Challenged to steer our collective destiny

Visions
Look at the magic of reality
While accepting with all honesty
That we can't know for sure what's next

No we can't know for sure what's next

But that we're in this together
We are here together

https://jose-gonzalez.com/

BEAUTY: Painting and Watercolor--Katya Filimonova

Seems Katya Filimonova's monkeys in restaurants and bars have all had a little too much to drink...

https://www.instagram.com/filimonovakaty/

"Please" by Jessie Ware

Oh, I just love Jessie Ware (previously here) and her glorious, nostalgic, disco sound tinged with a 90s club vibe, but perfect for right now. Listen to this dance fantasia "Please" from the Platinum Pleasure version of her album "What's Your Pleasure?" So much fun.

https://www.jessieware.com/