quare id faciam?

Lines

Speaking of David Rathert – I note that October is with us for a few days yet.

posted by paul bowman @ 9:20 PM 0 comments

Link

Added to the sidebar under 'Art & Illustration Interest' a link to the blog Lines and Colors, by evidently quite prolific designer & illustrator Charley Parker. I haven't found a great deal that appeals to my own tastes, I confess, in what I've seen so far of Parker's visual work, but his blogging about others' visual work is admirably thoughtful & varied – especially considering he seems to cover new material every day (something like a solo-contributor Drawn! – though with as much appreciation for past as for present).

The last two posts, Sat. 10/28 & Sun. 10/29, are particularly noteworthy, for attending to particularly noteworthy material, in my judgment. Have a look, and see if you agree.

(Thanks! to diversely creative friend David Rathert for pointing me to this site a couple of weeks ago.)

posted by paul bowman @ 9:00 PM 0 comments

Drawings

I'm sorry to have to admit here that my good intentions, discussed in posts some months ago, to get back to drawing more frequently haven't been carried through. There are reasons, of course, good & bad.

I do hope to pick up again before long. Some form of drawing ought to be woven inextricably among the habits of my life – that's what I feel. But the habits we most want often aren't so easy to foster or retain – as no one needs to be reminded.

For the present, and with an eye to future efforts, I'm beginning to add to the site in a direction I've had in mind for some time, with something of a gallery of sketchbook drawings, mostly several years old. This'll give me opportunity to talk drawing a bit here again. I'll post something whenever I have a chance to put up new material, at least for a while.

There's now a single page in that 'space' – a page of sketches of the several times previously mentioned Jeff Fisher. These are some of my favorite sketchbook drawings, for one thing. Gives me a chance, also, to mention by way of congratulation two big steps Jeff's life has taken this month: receipt of commission for a series of illustrations for a book in the works with a children's publisher in the UK, and, still much more significant, engagement to his lovely girlfriend Jen. (On a number of levels, all at once – one might say – Mr Fisher really has his work cut out for him.)

posted by paul bowman @ 9:00 PM 2 comments

An excerpt

From Alexander Tzonis & Liane Lefaivre, Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order, toward the end of chap. 1 'Taxis: the framework':

Taxis and its schemata are applied to buildings, regardless of their use. Churches, palaces, villas, gardens, and town plans can adopt the same plan pattern. The so-called centralized cross pattern, even more than the formal schemata from which it was derived, is not the property of a specific architect's work. Wittkower's table of 'Schematized plans of eleven of Palladio's villas' (1949), which has triggered so many interesting discussions on typology in architecture, although not incorrect in its application to Palladio's work, has had many misleading implications. It has obscured the fact that taxis and its schemata are general ordering devices and that their roots in the system of thought of classical poetics go beyond neoplatonism.
    The presence of the same taxis frame in artifacts of different meanings and uses is characteristic, in fact, of other cultural expressions that have adopted the classical canon: poetry, painting, and especially music. Ecclesiastical or operatic music, a dance, or a piece of chamber music can have the same musical subdivisions, the same formal schemata of partitioning. The compliance with the classical canon implies the introduction of normative schemata, with their combinations and transformations close to those used in classical architecture. The tripartition schema is present in all formal expressions of classical art. All classical works, whether in words, sounds, or shapes, are identifiable by their strict adherence to the schema that demarcates a realm of departure, a central realm, and a realm of arrival. It comes under many names: opening, continuation, completion; introduction, main part, conclusion; exposition, development, recapitulation. Most typical are the sonata form (Momigny 1806) and the ABA rondo form in music, in which the melodic strings are structured in rise (monte), bridge (ponte, and descent (fonte) parts (Ratner 1980). As in architecture and literature, so in music, the length of each part is unimportant. What matters is the clear distinction of each section, the characteristic formal role that it plays, and the rigorous application of the principle at every interlocked hierarchical step of the work. ... As in classical music, so in architecture, taxis acts not so much through the duplication of formulas as through new combinatorial patterns. There are other similarities in the application of taxis to the arts. The ABCDCBA taxis spatial formula encountered in Cesariano's illustrations is close to the crisscross pattern often found in classical poetry and rhetoric, known as the chiasmus pattern, and in its ABCBBCBA version it resembles the octave or octet form of the classical sonnet in the Renaissance.
    ....
    As classical architecture became a less favourable idiom and as the classical canon came to be seen as a despised formal straitjacket, it was taxis and its schemata that were first and most viciously attacked. The picturesque, romantic, regionalist, expressionist, and modernist anti-classicism took shape only after an alternative to the classical taxis of grid structures and tripartition was devised.

posted by paul bowman @ 5:46 PM 0 comments

Link

Take a look the sites of Texas student blogger & Gideon Strauss reader Stephen Henderson – a 'notes' blog & companion sketch blog. A wide-eyed student's view of art, architecture, aesthetics, ideas, with a Christian love of creation & its story, and of the Author behind it – his approach to things resonates in some ways very closely with what I've wanted to get at here. (If I should retain/regain the best aspects of that 'wide-eyed' receptivity, in particular, in turning thoughts over a bit in notes here and in all my reflecting, then such effort of self-direction as this blog is meant to represent will stand lastingly in my mind as having been worthwhile, I think.) His brief post of yesterday, 'Light as Glory', seems to be representative and is worth a read.

posted by paul bowman @ 7:18 PM 2 comments

Simpliciter

posted by paul bowman @ 11:30 AM 4 comments

An excerpt

From Günter Grass's The Tin Drum (previously excerpted here), Book 2, Chap. 10 'Bebra's Theater at the Front':

While slipping into his clothes, adjusting the drum round his neck, stowing his drumsticks under his suspenders, Oskar carried on negotiations with his two gods Dionysus and Apollo. The god of unreflecting drunkenness advised me to take no reading matter at all, or if I absolutely insisted on reading matter, then a little stack of Rasputin would do; Apollo, on the other hand, in his shrewd, sensible way, tried to talk me out of this trip to France altogether, but when he saw that Oskar's mind was made up, insisted on the proper baggage; very well, I would have to take the highly respectable yawn that Goethe had yawned so long ago, but for spite, and also because I knew that The Elective Affinities could never solve all my sexual problems, I also took Rasputin and his naked women, naked but for their black stockings. If Apollo strove for harmony and Dionysus for drunkenness and chaos, Oskar was a little demigod whose business it was to harmonize chaos and intoxicate reason. In addition to his mortality, he had one advantage over all the full divinities whose characters and careers had been established in the remote past: Oskar could read what he pleased, whereas the gods censored themselves.
    How accustomed one becomes to an apartment house and the kitchen smells of nineteen tenants. I took my leave of every step, every story, every apartment door with its name plate: O Meyn the musician, whom they had sent home as unfit for service, who played the trumpet again, drank gin again, and waited for them to come for him again – and later on they actually did come for him, but this time they didn't let him take his trumpet. O Axel Mischke, for what did you exchange your whip? Mr and Mrs Woiwuth, who were always eating kohlrabi. Because Mr Heinert had stomach trouble, he was working at Shichau instead of serving in the infantry. And next door lived Heinert's parents, who were still called Heimowski. O Mother Truczinski; gently slumbered the mouse behind her apartment door. My ear to the wood, I heard her whistling. Shorty, whose name was really Retzel, had made lieutenant, even though as a child he had always been compelled to wear long woolen stockings. Schlager's son was dead, Eyke's son was dead, Kollin's son was dead. But Laubschad the watchmaker was still alive, waking dead clocks to life. And old man Heilandt was still alive, hammering crooked nails straight. And Mrs Schwerinski was sick, and Mr Schwerinski was in good health but nevertheless died first. And what of the ground floor? Who lived there? There dwelt Alfred and Maria Matzerath and a little rascal almost two years old, named Kurt. And who was it that left the large, heavily breathing apartment house? It was Oskar, little Kurt's father. What did he take with him into the darkened street? He took his drum and a big educational book. Why did he stop still amid all the blacked-out houses, amid all those houses that put their trust in the air-defense regulations, why did he stop outside one of these blacked-out houses? Because there dwelt the widow Greff, to whom he did not owe his education but certain delicate skills. Why did he take off his cap outside the black house? Because he was thinking of Greff the greengrocer, who had curly hair and an aquiline nose, who weighed and hanged himself both at the same time, who hanging still had curly hair and an aquiline nose, though his brown eyes, which ordinarily lay thoughtful in their grottoes, were now strained and protuberant. Why did Oskar put his sailor cap with the flowing ribbons back on again and plod off? Because he had an appointment at Langfuhr freight station. Did he get there on time? He did.
    At the last minute, that is, I reached the railway embankment, not far from the Brünshofer-Weg underpass. No, I did not stop at the nearby office of Dr Hollatz. In my thoughts I took leave of Sister Inge and sent greetings to the baker couple in Kleinhammer-Weg, but all this I did while walking, and only the Church of the Sacred Heart forced me to pause a moment – a pause that almost made me late. The portal was closed. But only too vividly my mind's eye saw that pink boy Jesus perched on the Virgin Mary's left thigh. My poor mama, there she was again. She knelt in the confessional, pouring her grocery wife's sins into Father Wiehnke's ear very much as she had poured sugar into blue pound and half-pound bags. And Oskar knelt at the left-side altar, trying to teach the boy Jesus how to drum, but the little monster wouldn't drum, wouldn't give me a miracle. Oskar had sworn at the time, and today outside the closed church door he swore again; I'll teach him to drum yet. Sooner or later.
    Having a long journey ahead of me, I settled for later and turned a drummer's back on the church door, confident that Jesus would not escape me. Not far from the underpass, I scrambled up the railway embankment, losing a little Goethe and Rasputin in the process, but most of my educational baggage was still with me when I reached the tracks. Then I stumbled on a few yards, over ties and crushed stone, and nearly knocked Bebra over in the darkness.
    'If it isn't our virtuoso drummer!' cried the captain and musical clown. Bidding one another to be careful, we groped our way over tracks and intersections, lost our bearings amid a maze of stationary freight cars, and finally found the furlough train, in which a compartment had been assigned to Bebra's troupe.

posted by paul bowman @ 7:30 PM 0 comments

Project for 'Providence House'

It looks like I'm being given opportunity to do a little project for the home of the pastor of New Hope Pres. in Fairfax, Va. – the church I attended for a number of years (& where, technically, I'm still a member, though for about a year I've been mostly worshiping in LCMS churches) before moving back to Baltimore two years ago. I've done a fair amount of work for families of New Hope, but have never had a chance to work on the Coffins' house, a relatively plain but nicely proportioned & well built brick colonial-revival-generic about 60 or 70 years old (if I recall right) that they (and church members with them) really love. For that reason, and because I don't get many opportunities, working the way I do under present circumstances, to do exterior finish carpentry, I'm grateful for & looking forward to this modest job.

I've put a bit of effort into setting up the project, accordingly. It's small and certainly nothing fancy – just repairs to the porch columns (which sit directly on the concrete deck & have begun to show the inevitable rot, though after a surprisingly long time) and replacement of existing black-painted iron railing with a more traditional-looking white wooden railing. But even for something this small & ordinary, there's a considerable distance between what might be called passable work and good, attractive, durable work. So there've been a number of little details to consider and options to communicate, with a view to doing a job the Coffins (and I) can be confident about & happy with for a long time.

No sense in going into the details here, fascinating (and, perhaps, psychologically revealing) though they all are; but for visual interest I include, below, part of simple drawings I used with the homeowner to go over parameters & problems. (Drawings might seem like overkill for a job so seemingly straightforward, but I'm well satisfied they were worth the trouble – a good deal of explaining having been saved and a few worthwhile questions having been ironed out now by reference to them.) I may follow up in later posts with some photos & notes from the job, assuming the project goes ahead.

posted by paul bowman @ 12:00 AM 0 comments

Out of the ordinary

Headline: 'Dozens of Amish mourn schoolhouse killer.'

posted by paul bowman @ 8:28 PM 0 comments

An excerpt

From Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (previous excerpts: 1, 2), toward the close of Chap. 6, 'Life-symbols: the roots of sacrament':

'A god with an epithet,' says Murray [Five Stages of Greek Religion, 1925], 'is always suspicious, like a human being with an "alias." Miss Harrison's examination [Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1908] shows that in the rites Zeus has no place at all. Meilichios from the beginning has a fairly secure one. On some of the reliefs Meilichios appears not as a god, but as an enormous, bearded snake....
   'The Diasia was a ritual of placation, that is, of casting away various elements of pollution or danger and appeasing the unknown wraths of the surrounding darkness. The nearest approach to a god contained in this festival is Meilichios.... His name means "He of appeasement," and he is nothing else.'
   ... The first entirely anthropomorphic conception seems to have come into Greece with the conquering Achaeans, whose Olympian Zeus, a mountain god, had attained human form, at a time when the native Pelasgian gods still retained their animal shapes or were at best monstrous hybrids; Athena still identified with an owl, or figured as the Diver-Bird or bird-headed 'Diver Maid' of Megara. The effect of this personified Achaean god on the barbarian worship then current in Aegean lands was probably spectacular; for a single higher conception can be a marvellous leaven in the heavy, amorphous mass of human thought. The local gods took shape in the new human pattern, so obvious once it had been conceived; and it is not surprising that this Achaean mountain-god, or rather mountain-dwelling sky-god, became either father or conqueror of those divinities who grew up in his image.
   'He had an extraordinary power of ousting or absorbing the various objects of aboriginal worship which he found in his path,' says Professor Murray. 'The story of Meilichios [whose cult he usurped] is a common one.'
   But even this great Olympian could not attain his perfect form, his definite relations to the heavens, the gods, and the human world, until he became a figure in something more than ritual; it is in the great realm of myth that human conceptions of divinity really become articulated. A symbol may give identity to a god, a mimetic dance may express his favors, but what really fixes his character is the tradition of his origin, actions, and past adventures. Like the hero of a novel or a drama, he becomes a personality, not by his sheer appearance, but by his story.
   ... Divinities are born of ritual, but theologies spring from myth. Miss Harrison, in describing the origin of a Korê or primitive earth-goddess, says: 'The May-pole or harvest-sheaf is half-way to a harvest Maiden; it is thus ... that a goddess is made. A song is sung, a story told, and the very telling fixes the outline of the personality. It is possible to worship long in the spirit, but as soon as the story-telling and myth-making instinct awakes you have anthropomorphism and theology.'

posted by paul bowman @ 11:30 AM 0 comments

Catedral increíble

Via Gordon Anderson: an extraordinary story of one fellow determined to build ... well, something very like a cathedral.

The part of me that identifies with personal, self-submerging ambition to build is stunned. The part of me that respects & feels a certain longing after formal and structural integrity in buildings small & great is – ahhmm – altogether tongue-tied, let's say.

posted by paul bowman @ 12:10 AM 0 comments