My favorite thought provocateur these days (actually “these days” is actually now several months) is Juhani Pallasmaa, architect and author of The Eyes of the Skin. Here are a few more of his insights about seeing, the dominance of the eye, modes of vision. (Other great quotes from Pallasmaa that I have posted here: Focused […]
- Aesthetics
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The Thinking/Feeling Continuum
Random window in downtown Charleston West Virginia Thinking and feeling. Some cultures prioritize those two concepts in that order. Others reverse it. And of course it is never a case of this or that, black or white. Every tradition has its own blending of head and heart, the external and the internal, the rational and […]
The Tilting Within
Annunciation Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it I know it is — and that if once it hailed me it ever does — And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction not as towards a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one […]
The Island is Also That Towards Which One Drifts
Islands O for God’s sake they are connected underneath They look at each other across the glittering sea some keep a low profile Some are cliffs The Bathers think islands are separate like them –Muriel Rukeyser I found this fresh and invigorating poem on Intercapillary/Space where I also found the following succinct commentary by Edmund […]
Sensory Intimacy, in Art and in Architecture
Sensuality afoot at the Metropolitan Museum The gift that just keeps giving…I don’t think there is a single page of my copy of Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin that isn’t marked up and annotated. Although Pallasmaa is an architect and writing primarily about that metier, his book is full of passages that are […]
Fully Engaged
Architect and author Juhani Pallasmaa A few days ago my friend Janet alerted me to an appreciation of Frank Kermode in the New York Times (an excerpt is posted here.) She also left a comment on an earlier post about Dorothea Lasky that asked this question: “I am curious about what your response might be […]
Being Scared, The Cultural Commons and the Fate of Fish
Bluefin tuna, one of many ocean fish at risk Book updates: Dorothea Lasky‘s most recent book, Black Life, is reviewed in the Boston Globe today. I just recently discovered Lasky and am a fan of both Poetry is Not a Project and Awe. In this review Michael Brodeur speaks to the contrasts at play in […]
Entanglements and Mysteries
Frank Kermode died this week at the age of 90. His output was staggering. I’ve only read a small sampling of a body of work that is wide ranging as well as insightful. In her appreciation of Kermode in the New York Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg describes Kermode’s literary modus operandi. It struck a chord. The […]
In Awe of “Awe”
Whatever you Paid for That Sweater, It was Worth It Be scared of yourself The real self Is very scary. It is a man But more importantly The man is tall And is everything in you that is an absolute reverse of all your actions. In you he will do things and in you no […]
- Architecture
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Architecture and Beauty
Another book that sounds like it is right in my sweet spot: Architecture and Beauty: Conversations with Architects about a Troubled Relationship, by Yael Reisner. Ah, beauty… It continues to be an issue of dispute in every contemporary métier—visual art, music, literature. This topic continues to engage, divide, provoke, perplex. I know a bit about […]