My thoughts go out to everyone affected by hurricane Katrina. I can't even imagine what it would feel like to have to evacuate my community and lose my home. The Best Friends web site has had some interesting info on the hurricane relief efforts of area animal shelters.

Here are the Fair Isle gloves in progress. I nearly abandoned them because I didn't like the colors but then DH suggested I make the fingers in a medium blue rather than the light green color. That should make all the difference. I may run out of the dark blue color before I finish.

Good news

Good news for performance art. When RoseLee Goldberg gets to business, it will hopefully mean a new level - of performance, of course:

RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director of PERFORMA, has announced programming plans for PERFORMA05, the first biennial of new visual art performance in New York City.

It's interesting to note the term they use is "new visual art performance" - at last starting to clean up the conceptual mess the word "performance" has been creating.

Technorati: performance art, performance, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Here's the blueberry lime jam/marmalade recipe I plan to use from the current edition of the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I honestly don't even remember the flavor but DH recalls it fondly and has requested I make it again.

Blueberry-Lime Jam

Yield: About 6 half-pints

4 1/2 cups blueberries
1 package powdered pectin
5 cups sugar
1 Tbsp grated lime peel
1/3 cup lime juice

Crush blueberries one layer at a time. Combine crushed blueberries and powdered pectin in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Stir in grated lime peel and lime juice. Return to a rolling boil. Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary. Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

Building room

Among the various projects by Oda Projesi, the art group created by three young Turkish women, the Annex presented at the 2003 Venice Bienale is one I find particularly powerful. One of Oda Projesi's main interests is the notion of room, as a part of the house and as space. The difference between space and room seems crucial: room is inhabited. It is the space closest to skin. Annex is the portrait of a typical dwelling, one that was meant to be temporary (as a shelter after the earthquake in Adapazari), but ended up as permanent. What we get is the transformation of an asbtract space into a human one - but this change seems to be doomed to fail. The house grows annexes, built in wood, that differ from one family to another. Oda Projesi focus on these differences, which illustrate ways of life, needs, habits: people. Those are poor people who can't afford anything more, but the pictures and descriptions force the viewer to go beyond the all-too-simple statement of poverty. They are maps that allow us to approach someone who seemed distant just a moment ago.

Technorati: art installation, installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Better than art?

Keith Gladysz over at January Blog quotes Nietzsche about the trouble with geniuses. Basically, they're bastards. Nietzsche suggests that geniuses were not great men, because great men do not act as awefuly as most geniuses did. And he goes on to say:

We have perhaps more need of great men without works than great works for which such a heavy price has to be paid in terms of human souls. But at present we barely understand what a great man without works might be.

This raises several interesting questions. For one, how good is a good work of art? Is it enough for an artist to make good/pretty art (does it even help?)? Or is art more of a personal fancy, an entertainment? And does aspiring to more make sense? Are the people educated on Mozart and Shakespeare, on Bacon and John Cage, better people? Or is the talk about educating through art, or even evolving thanks to it, pure bluff of those who simply enjoy being the elite? Nietzsche seems to be saying that one can do better than art. So here is my question: can an artist do better than art?

Technorati: art, contemporary art, vvoi