zygosphere

around skeppsholmen...

2012-01-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

The STF Vandrarhem AF Chapman & Skeppsholmen is a highly rated hostel on board and on land in a prominent location on the island of Skeppsholmen with a view of the charming medieval town of Gamla Stan...

[there was no room available on board when we were there, so we stayed at the lovely Hotel Skeppsholmen instead]

some of the many romantic and eccentric vintage boats [each with its own information plaque of its provenance and seafaring history] moored along the shores of the island...

The towboat is freckled with rust...

It is a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.

But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.

As if people wanted to be fetched.

[selected lines from the first verse of 'Sketch in October' by Tomas TRANSTROMER, from Paths, 1973 - this poem translated from the swedish by Robin Fulton]

[on the flight over (in October!), I read of Tomas Transtromer being finally awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 80 - he was born (and still lives) in Stockholm, publishing his first book of poems in 1954 and has since published many more volumes. I am liking what I am reading in translation but wish that I could read his poetry as he wrote them in swedish!]

working boatyards on the more rustic side of Skeppsholmen...

Dejeuner sur l'herbe by Pablo PICASSO, 1962

[sculptural installation in the shady back garden of the Moderna Museet]

The Royal Institute of Art [Kungliga Konsthogskolan]

[with the very cool Hotel Skeppsholmen in the background]

[this is one institute where I would love to be an art student again - while staying at that hotel!]

the absolute skeppsholmen

2012-01-14T15:18:00.000-08:00

Skeppsholmen dangles preciously, a bejewelled drop earring from the epilobe of central Stockholm...
the lustrous breath of an autumnal sun stirs the air, sparks the waters, flecks the trees - their leaves shimmering a thousand shades of gold...

the light-dappled writhe-morphous sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely guide the way to the lovely and idyllic Hotel Skeppsholmen...
where the dashing naval officers no longer stride down the long hallways or gaze out the wide windows, lost in reveries of exotic shores and maritime feats and clear calm seas...

we survey the gilded foliage from the serenity of room 245 [dedicated to the first president of the Swedish Royal Naval Society who had lived here with his wife from 1773 to 1776]
across the park, the Museum of Modern Art [Moderna Museet] beckons with a luminously absorbing exhibit of the later paintings of Turner, Monet and Twombly...
the darkening atmospheric sublimity of Turner's Peace - Burial at Sea drifts emotively into my painter's eye, while Monet's Matinée sur la Seine, Giverny effuses my visual field with sensually nostalgic intimations...
and Twombly's Quattro Stagioni looms grandly over my effects with the vigoroso impact of a multi-hued bloodbath...
...I eventually escape to the rational materiality of the rigidly solid structural formations in the Swedish Museum of Architecture [Arkitektur Museet] next door!

the artful light installations within the hotel's hallways lead me back to my room - without running into any of the pensive ghosts of landlocked swedish sailors, regrettably...

Skeppsholmen, the morning after...

shading off...

2011-12-30T10:17:00.001-08:00

"Le voyageur marchant sur son ombre écrit

sans attendre que le ciel marque minuit

sous le bataille de plumes la pierre sonne."

[last verse from "Sonnet" by Alfred JARRY (1873-1907)]

[translation from the french by Francis Scarfe::

"The striding traveller writes his shadow down;

not waiting for the sky to strike midnight

the feathers hammer on the chiming stone."]

along a swedish river...

2011-12-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

the Gota flows through Gothenburg, Sweden's largest port city, and where we were staying near the mouth of the widening river, we could observe much maritime traffic to and from the harbour...
on an overcast Sunday afternoon we walked along the southern riverfront going under the Alvsborgsbron bridge, with views of the massive industrial sites across the river...

the enormous ferries sailed in from Norway and Germany...

past the lone red rock - the namesake of the Roda Sten Art Centre below, exhibiting international contemporary art...

a regatta of old sailing vessels floated by in the late afternoon, contrasting leisure with industry...

left behind - the ubiquitous IKEA rug as beach blanket...

a carefully embedded mosaic eye looks out onto the river and out towards the ice blue sea...

danish vernacular

2011-12-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

Not that there is any one particular stylistic vernacular in the architecture of Copenhagen encompassing buildings from over several centuries, but on the whole the city's skyline is unobtrusively low and fairly harmonious...
The ones that caught my attention on this short visit have been mostly paired in contrasting styles and circumstances, such as the one above of one of the four identical rococo palaces at Amalienborg, residences for the Danish Royal Family since the 18th century, with the mixed modern flats in long extended blocks for their non-royal subjects...

***

The ornate brick and stone patterned façade of a 17th century house with the geometrically tiled surfaces of a 20th century planetarium, as they both project unconventional profiles upwards...

***

The batten-boarded and gable-roofed upper stories of this ivy-clad institutional building provide a traditional, almost warm and homey, feel to the school it now houses, while the sharply delineated corner glass windows of the apartments in the building below bestow a coldly hard-edged chevron design to an otherwise unadorned bare brick block...

***

The 21st century state of the art Copenhagen Opera House floats on an island in the harbour and is perfectly aligned with the axis that runs through the octagonal plaza of the Amalienborg palaces across the water, while the perfectly scaled and thoughtfully built duckhouse floats tranquilly in the pond of the Royal Library courtyard [watched over by the statue of Soren Kierkegaard no less!]...

***

A few kilometers north of Copenhagen on the way to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art located in the quiet seaside village of Humlebaek, the country vernacular manifests in tiny red cottages with picket fences and overgrown rose bushes and in larger thatched homes with well-tended gardens...all still as fresh and wholesome as in simpler times...

danish flourishes

2011-11-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

The young thinker ambles through the narrow streets of his assembled city, his mind churning constant flourishes of philosophical abstracts - sticking his leather gloved finger into the soiled commons of existence, and smelling nothing, he sequesters the questionnaire eternal, the gilded irony of an earnest life...

He sits awhile on the curved stone bench, sheltered from pithy elemental assaults - but not the stench of abject humanity - and yet the textual flourishes assail from behind, the backward comprehension of things that cannot be understood but for a curious twist of the fountainhead...

He passes by a grand portal of bronzed archaic contortions and observes the exuberant youth as yet uncrushed by the storms of life - they who smile their expectant smiles, with no need for the nightwatch explanation of the flourishes of profane love...

"Inasmuch as in being published it is in a figurative sense starting a journey. I let my eyes follow it for a little while. I saw how it wended its way down solitary paths or walked solitary on public roads... - On the other hand, inasmuch as in being published it actually remains quiet without moving from the spot, I let my eyes rest on it for a little while. It stood there like a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest, sought neither for its splendor nor its fragrance..." Copenhagen, May 5, 1843
[the above partial quote is excerpted from the Preface to 'Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses' by Soren Kierkegaard (1843-44), as translated by Howard V. Hong (1990)]

"once you label me you negate me"

[he continues to sit in the tranquil courtyard garden of the Royal Library where the birch trees still flourish into the late fall and where youth's exuberant expectancy passes him by daily in its unceasing attempt to understand which are the things that cannot be understood...]

jacobsen half-century

2011-11-17T12:15:00.000-08:00

just over 50 years ago, Arne Jacobsen, perhaps the most widely known modernist danish architect [he would never refer to himself as a designer], designed and built the first premium "designer" hotel in the world within the capital of his home country...
the SAS Royal Hotel is Jacobsen's towering ode to mid-century modernism, the revered repository of his design refinements down to the doorhandles, the timeless temple to his intrinsic belief in perfect proportions, and ultimately in the midst of much flashier architectural hyperboles all around, it has managed to pull off being the middle-aging hipster still somehow maintaining its innate cool factor...

often quoted as the world's most beautiful staircase, the spiralling black and cream stairs from the lobby still exude a sexy come hither to climb up to ever more sophisticated reveals above...

many of Jacobsen's innovative and time-tested chair creations made their debut at the Royal Hotel where they still nest cozily today in the reception area - the cluster of EGG chairs above and the ballet of SWAN chairs below...

the "total design" manifestation of Jacobsen's intuitive oeuvre included the royal blue crown logo for the hotel...

on a bright fall day a little more than half century since it was built, Jacobsen's SAS Royal Hotel [now renamed Radisson Blu] still rises tall and slim, almost ageless in appearance - still basking in its glory days but remaining majestically serene as always as a pristine modernist pantheon should...

[SAS Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Hammerichsgade 1, Copenhagen]

copenhagen peripherals

2011-11-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

eloquent moments can easily slip by if one had not turn one's head at a particular angle, cast one's eyes in a certain direction to catch a glimpse so peripheral and sometimes so fleeting that would have been missed if one's head was tilted differently, one's eyes lifted elsewhere in that time and space...

such moments as happened to look down at the goldleaf-speckled water of a marina...

to glance up at the orchid and candelabra grace-notes of a coachhouse window...

to be beckoned by the still vivid coral bloom of a mid-october rose...

to heed in the distance the delicate sails of a half-hidden ancient windmill...

to peer in and be romanced by the golden light flooding the emptiness of a vacated gallery space...

to timely perceive downwards a disagreeably hard object, a cheerily obsequious royal obstacle, before tripping over in a most inelegant manner...

chromatic copenhagen

2011-10-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

in a gracious city gilded by the muted light of a nordic fall, vibrant colours flash their presence that much more, not least from the danish national flag...

and this elegant multi-hued bike, a stand-out in a sea of mostly monochromatic bicycles everywhere, and I mean every sidewalk, every street, every courtyard - everywhere!

the golden light on gunmetal gray, the cold iron grille nestling an errant white feather...

in a shaded courtyard the saturated greens against a buttery brick wall...

the weathered whites of a window frame and the stilled sails of a model ship within...

on the fluttering flags and compasses for real ships to sail away with and safely come home again...

ghostly burgos

2010-10-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

Burgos is all sumptuous cathedral soaring into the frosty stratosphere...
Catedral de Burgos glories in the Assumption of the Virgin Mary with the full gothic grandeur of her french precursors... the openwork tracery of her stone spires, stained-glass windows and the lacy star vault are pierced with pure heavenly light...
El Cid rests with his wife Dona Jimena beneath a simple marble tombstone within the cathedral...
I floated alone through cavernous chapels adorned with ostentatious ornamentation of such unearthly splendour, in the golden haze of lit candles, flames flickering to the breath of mellifluous angels...

the square outside was deserted save for a lone pilgrim who trudged slowly past us, his long journey etched onto his grimy face...

the streets were mostly empty and a cold wind swirled through the meticulously groomed topiary shrubs...

statues of kings and saints are rigidified apparitions rising above a silent city dusted by a fine efflorescence of snow...

and we leave a most frigid spanish bourg where the few people we met were most gracious, the architecture and public spaces all immaculately maintained, and the feast that warmed us up again in a restaurant bursting with so much lively energy and hearty diners that it more than made up for the spectral chilliness outside in the wintry mists...

madrid maravilla

2010-09-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

Madrid lives on sweet jamon in all its salty incarnations...

denso, suave el aire orea tantas callejas,

plazuelas, cuya alma es la flor del naranjo.

she reveres her guitar gods, strumming to her lifeblood...

resuenan cerca, lejos, clarines masculinos

aqui, alli la flauta y oboe femeninos.

she brings her glory Art back to the Prado after the carnage...

magica por el cielo la luna fulge, llena

luna de parasceve. azahar, luna, musica,

she dances her full passion on a holy sunday afternoon...

entrelazados, banan la ciudad toda. y breve

tu mente la contiene en si, como una mano

she dreams her soft childhood through an antique store window...

amorosa. nostalgias? no. lo que asi recreas

es el tiempo sin tiempo del nino, los instintos

she touches the warm cracked tiles of her ancestral land...

aprendiendo la vida dichosamente, como

la planta nueva aprende en suelo amigo. eco

and she wonders at the pendent world through the silvery falling stars...

que, a la doble distancia, generoso hoy te vuelve,

en leyenda, a tu origen. et in Arcadia ego.

[verses in spanish are from "Full Moon During Holy Week" by Luis CERNUDA, 1902-1963]

palacio longoria

2010-08-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

as alligator pilasters cling on to the back entablature of this singular modernista specimen in Madrid,

other parts of the façade are ornamented with creamy swirls of sculptural adornment

and accentuated with intricate metalwork...

not quite as fantastical nor as muscularly portentous as Gaudi's creations, but more luscious wedding cake art nouveau - an all-out visual ambrosia to a fault...

Palacio Longoria

Calle de Fernando VI

Madrid

casa de blas

2010-08-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

this is a house inspired by a book of Luis Cernuda poems...

by an architect who is sublimely poetic with his play of light...

this is a house built for a professor of spanish literature...

for listening to the music of silence, the music of the soul...

I have carried an article about this house for years now, taking it with me to France, to Spain - where the house was built outside of Madrid for Francisco de Blas, the receptive literature professor...

The architect, Alberto Campo Baeza, is based in Madrid, and I was tempted to visit his firm to find out more about his work...but shyness overcame me...

Like the Casa Malaparte, it is another idiosyncratic house that I have fallen in love with, another isolated structure conceived on another impossible site with an elongated plinth or "cave" housing the living areas and the "stage" above on which to absorb the all-encompassing views, to while away time following the sun's daily path and of course, to be lulled by the musicality of the landscape - the lightness and openness of the glass pavilion an ethereal counterpoint to the solidness and practicality of the concrete box below...

This purist elegance of a basic geometric form pushing up from the arid mount, its lustrous glass wings lifting to the widening sky - a most elemental shelter and a most resonant temple for well-read, well-tuned earthy beings...

"La Quimera susurra hacia la luna

Y tan dulce es su voz que a la desolacion alivia."*

[line from "Desolacion de la Quimera" by Luis Cernuda]

*["The Chimera murmurs at the moon

And its voice is so sweet it eases its desolation."]

Casa de Blas

oil and acrylic on canvas;

55 x 70 cm

l'arquitectura madrilena

2010-08-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

a very small and haphazard selection of edifices snapped around Madrid, not including any of the many grand monumental buildings that frequently overwhelm our visual field...

basic live-work vernacular...

Escher-inspired tile motif...

the backside of the Palacio Longoria...

under renovations in the Chueca district...

demolished and awaiting something new...

Caixa Forum's oxidized lacy blocks...

and the hot pink bedsheet spices up life in work-a-day Madrid...
[a prosaic view from the top of the Jean Nouvel expansion of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia]

madrid elemental

2010-07-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

MADRID razed us ever so quixotically with consistently warm and kind people, the hyper-chic and comfort factor of our hotel in an old renovated textile warehouse in the garment district, the Plaça Major almost to ourselves but for some policia on horseback letting their horses scratch their hind quarters on the base of a statue, the addictive tapas from the renewed, glassed-in and upscale Mercado San Miguel, the magnificent Goyas at the Prado [the "elephants" in Espana for me!], the one euro ham bocadillo from the Museo de Jamon [not a real museum but the ham "hang-out", or rather "hanging-down", spot!], the levitating view from the top of Jean Nouvel's extension at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia, Picasso's massively devouring "Guernica", a consecrated REAL MADRID game in HD, the antiquated patisseria with barely moving nonagenarian owner in the workaday Chueca district, reviving in the winter sunshine at the tranquil Parque de el Retiro, the maddeningly expansive junk web that is the El Rastro flea market on a Sunday morning, and always, the ripe Spanish moon above a dark narrow street where Cervantes had lived, written and died...

cielo madrileno

2010-07-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

the skies of Madrid were an exuberant blue, an atmospheric juvenescence, an azure foreshining of the elation to come...la furia roja has recently returned home triumphant and adored - a whole nation united in a golden moment of blissful elevation - and the fleet-footed spanish boys keep on flashing their victory smiles...

above the Palacio Real...

above the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia...

above TIO PEPE in the Plaza Puerta del Sol...

above the Parque del Buen Retiro...

donostia/san sebastian

2010-06-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

A winter twilight on the Playa de la Concha in Donostia, the Basque name for San Sebastian, a toss of the wave away from the French coast...[driving through Bayonne and Biarritz in the Pays Basque a few years ago, we pique-niqued royally high up on a cliff while watching the Atlantic surf crashed over brave rubberized men perched precariously on long slippery boards!]
This here in Spanish Basque country is also a well-fed and pampered town, the elderly leisured class always immaculately groomed and highly polished and full of sea air vigor...while the young surfers rock the waves on another beach and the seasoned fishermen disappear into the horizon...

We had our fill of hardy pintxos from some of the many tabernas in the old town where we stayed and stocked up on Basque yogur [the best!] and big bars of turron de chocolate...

We walked the port and beaches and narrow streets until dark and the breezes blowing in from the Golfo de Vizcaya had stiffened a few degrees chillier - turning us inland again, heading south towards the warmer heart of Espana...

pamplona/iruna

2010-06-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

Pamplona...Iruna...basking in the kingdom of Navarre...
where the sun also rises, but did not show itself to us...
where the drizzle-drenched streets narrow through tall tight buildings in the casco viejo [old city]...
where we [disappointedly] did not run into any rampaging bulls...
where Hemingway still stands guard in front of the third largest bull-ring in the world...
where even the most foolhardy pilgrims sat this weekend out to indulge in more comfort pintxos [Basque tapas]...
where we set foot on the slippery bridge of the departure point for the spanish leg of the El Camino de Santiago, only to wander as far as the cavernous and populous Café Iruna where we were no longer the loneliest and hungriest people in a softly raining Spain...

zaragoza sereno

2010-05-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

Zaragoza is celebrated as a hyper-rambunctious university town, with the most bars and clubs in all of Spain - a one-stop multi-night party central...but we must have arrived in a bit of a time-warp, because all was calm, all was still, not even a crooked finger from the shadows...and now we know that we missed the nocturnal enticements because we did not stay up very very late enough!

We stayed at an uber-cool hotel across from the colossal Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar [whose bells toll on the quarter-hour!] in this most immense and serene of plazas...with its pristine surfaces and stage-set immaculateness...and the low winter light gilding the ornate renaissance edifices...
A poignant moment for the funeral procession of a female officer from Zaragoza killed in the Haiti earthquake as they accompanied her casket into the basilica...

Smaller squares are tranquil and classical, traversed occasionally by lovely fur-coated women and distinguish-looking men, all quietly off to somewhere elegant and meaningful...
Beyond, the dissonance of another world in a varietal of eras... with many store window displays reminiscent of the 1960's, chocolaterias from the turn of the 20th century, chinese restaurants from the 1980's, a chain of retro1970's diners called VIPS [that now also owns the Starbucks franchise in Spain!], and the most idiosyncratic of pre-1950's cafes and restaurants this side of the Ebro...[for our first desayano (breakfast), we stumbled into what has to be Alice in Wonderland's flagrantly eccentric grandmother's cottage with so many knick-knacks everywhere they seem to be viciously nudging each other off the narrow shelves, not to mention the giant pumpkin gleefully crushing the upright piano!...and for dinner on our last evening, we braved a frenzied sardineria filled with loquacious university students, where the specialties are fried sardines and ham slices (jamon, jamon everywhere!), and the sizzling dishes fly around the crowded room with great voracity!]

I came for Goya in this city of contrariety and contrast, this old city of his childhood...I walked alone through the silent marbled square lit by silvery moonlight, a de Chirico nightscape of emptiness, to the Museo iberCaja Camon Aznar in the 16th century Pardo Palace, where Goya's engravings and some of his paintings are hung...
On the upper floor I was enveloped in darkness, surrounded by the spectral images from one of the most powerful and visionary artists - such exquisite intensity and nightmarish vibrancy on such pale diminutive sheets floating under barely lit glass cases that seem to go on forever - and I was haunted by mounting donkeys, by masked creatures in flowing dresses, by long-robed monkeys, by maniacal faces grimacing in the shadows, by charging bloodied bulls, by the violence of death and the simpering blur between dreams and reality...
There was no one there to wake me up...

***

If we had visited with less years to our belts, Zaragoza would have been the town to burn up in!...but instead we were witness to the more sedate charms, the opulent stateliness, the bourgeois glimmer of spanish cultura, and were all the more pleasantly surprised...

and we rose to this view every morning, the delicate spires of the basilica piercing the zaffre blue skies of Zaragoza, and always the resonant bells of Nuestra Senora del Pilar knelling ever so near...

barcelona fachadas

2010-05-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

the idiosyncratic and variform visages of Barcelona present themselves here in a very few selected portraits...

from the softly aged and patined bella época demeanors up on a hill in La Franca...

descending halfway to a younger coveted villa with the coy white curtains billowing on the juliet balconey...

to the gaping noble mouth of an ancient eviscerated building in the Barri Gotic...

to a modernist upstart amongst the modernista aristocrats in the Dreta de l'Eixample neighbourhood...

to a slightly sinister and rotund presence by the train tracks outside the Vila Olimpica...

to the steroid growth of brittle and expressionless glass towers on the waterfront of Poble Nou, all greedily arrogating the view of la mar bella from their older and shorter neighbours behind...

from the time worn, sometimes gritty but always well-lived countenances to the edgy and elegantly buffed bearing of the new breed, the myriad aspects of Barcelona continue to delight, to intrigue, to entice...and every once in a while, to flash an exultant yet ever so slightly sardonic smile...

barcelona signos

2010-04-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

an assortment of signage spotted around my barcelona wonderland::

barcelona arriba

2010-04-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

from a lacy bridge that stretches unexpectedly between two buildings above a hidden back street, so whimsically evocative of amorous prowling in the deep dark night...

to the exposed patchwork of interior walls looming over the demolition site now being excavated for its Roman foundations...

"Not palaces, an era's crown

Where the mind dwells, intrigues, rests;

Architectural gold-leaved flower

From people ordered like a single mind,

I build. This only what I tell:

It is too late for rare accumulation,
For family pride, for beauty's filtered dusts;...

...Leave your gardens, your singing feasts,

Your dreams of suns circling before our sun,

Of heaven after our world.

Instead, watch images of flashing glass

That strike the outward sense, the polished will,

Flag of our purpose which the wind engraves."*

[*selected verses are from "Not Palaces, an Era's Crown" by Stephen SPENDER, 1909-95]

casa malaparte

2010-04-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Casa Malaparte

oil and acrylic on canvas;

40 x 50 cm

for well over 20 years now I have been enamored with this ran aground "ship" on the rocks of Capri -
[a slight diversion from Espana for this painting post!]
the Casa Malaparte [completed in 1942] is often noted as one of the most provocative houses of the 20th century built by the enigmatic and iconoclastic writer Curzio Malaparte [1898-1957]
his "casa come me" ["house like me"] may appear as a block of minimalist sculpture implanted on some craggy plinth a whole era ago, but to this day it continues to throb like an inflamed sacrificial heart on that primitive altar still arousing the most primal metaphysical responses...

"Odysseus-like, he commits her to the epical voyage across the Bay of Naples to the isle of Capri,

where they are hailed at the heroic Casa Malaparte...

Stranded on a rocky spur, the dramatic "casa come me" had been presented by the daring writer, invoking the muses and olympian gods to descend upon his roof theatre playing to the sky and sea."*

[*lines from "Come to my Casa..." [by g. verster, 2004] - a light homage to Curzio Malaparte, who had this formidable casa built; to Jean-Luc Godard, who made the movie "Le Mépris" so brilliantly filmed on location here; to Alberto Moravia, who wrote the novel that inspired the movie; and to Brigitte Bardot, who oh so gloriously imbued them all - house, movie, men, books - with her much too easy sexiness...]

barcelona ventana

2010-03-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

sifting through my compulsive shots of windows, I have super-edited and serialized them into vagariously contrasting pairs::
such as the obsessively glass-louvered surround of the Torre Agbar with the paranoiac bricked-up and metal-grilled lock-down of the above ex-window...

***

the most basic wood-framed square window under a roof long gone!... with this, one of the most ornately iced neo-gothic-moorish window of a modernista concoction designed for a chocolatier no less! [the Casa Amatller by Josep Puig i Cadafalch is located beside the Casa Batllo on the Illa de la Discordia of the Passeig de Gracia]

***

the simple grace of sinuous art nouveau arches [even if the curtains behind them are a bit tattered!] with the classical span of disheveled domesticity and its inelegant wash-day hangings...

***

casements from on high in elevated airiness; portholes for fathoms below in submerged darkness...

the "eyes" of structural entities come blinded, shielded, wide open... reflecting and absorbing some light, but still mysteriously unrevealing within their shaded chambers...and yet ever come hither to my focused eyeful!

barcelona proxima

2010-03-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

constantly upspotting when we walk, I am always rewarded with architectural features and ornamental details and unexpected elements such as this finely carved tree canopy that continues down to the realistically rendered trunk pilaster of a storefront...

the high-design globular light standards that must emit enchanting pixie beams into the soft night...

a pair of charmingly unobtrusive brackets and grille on a crumbling hilltop casa...

the sexy cruciform steel post that barely nudges smooth painted skin in the Pavilion Mies van der Rohe...

and of course, the fantastical iron creatures that fly out of gothic gloom into the lightness of our catalonian reveries...

barcelona momenta

2010-03-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

stepping lightly over an intricately detailed sidewalk placa...

flitting by a dark graffitied doorway with very cool aldabon...

catching a glimpse of "amor de arte" high up on a corner wall...

passing by an ornate closed-up taquilla on La Rambla...

spotting a multi-dotted tile-edged alféizar at Parc Guell...

riding along randomly patterned hand-laid losas...

casa batllo

2010-03-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

certain houses have captivated me deeply over the years, particularly ones where the architects have had carte blanche over most aspects of their designs - Casa Malaparte, Maison de Verre, Villa Savoye, and my father's house, of course! - and now in Barcelona, the Casa Batllo has been seducing me ever so softly with its undulating lightness, its whimsical elegance, and all the visionary eccentricities of one ebullient creator...

light flows in parabolic waves down the attic hallway...

light floats the glass cells of the protozoa skylights...

light curves in through the openings to the roof caprices...

light billows ephemeral laciness in the laundry room...

light, hushed and holy, infuses opalescent panes up on high...

[Casa Batllo, Antoni Gaudi, 1906

Passeig de Gracia, 43, Barcelona]

numeroso numeros

2010-03-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

a collection of numerable moments during our journey through catalonia, the basque country and espana...

barcelona-estacio de frança 9-8

zaragoza 5-7

pamplona 8

donostia/san sebastian 129-130

madrid 13

mies barcelona chair

2010-03-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

steel legs on black plush,

the marble surround...

white leather aligns,

silent forms upon a cold set...

teutonic order reiterates,

a chair dares speak its name...

from barcelona issue,

the form is not so silent yet...

["O Chair shape! Fair attitude! with brand

of leather mend and metal overwrought,

with steel branches and the trodden rug;

You, silent form, teases us out of thought

as will eternity: Cold Design World!

When old age shall this generation waste,

You will remain, in midst of other woe

than ours, a friend to man, to whom you say,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

you know on earth, and all you need to know."]*

*With profuse apologies to John Keats for mauling his lovely last verse from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" for my momentary lapse of indulgence over an unravished, unwearied chair... may you live long and true, la Cadira Barcelona!

mies barcelona-exterior

2010-02-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

It was sublimely exhilarating to float through this piece of "constructivist sculpture" conceived over eight decades ago now by that most rigorous of German architects, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, for the Barcelona International Exposition in 1929 [and faithfully reconstructed in 1986 on its original site as a lasting monument to the International Style in modern architecture] ...

I stepped lightly upon an altar of Roman travertine, transversed by planes of metal framed glass and panels of green Alpine marble and golden onyx from the Atlas Mountains...and entered a minimalist shrine of asymmetrical spatial flow contained by exquisite materials gleaming, reflecting, uplifting in the ever changing light...

the enticing nude [that has been referred to alternatively as "Amanecer"/"Alba"/"Morgen"/"Dawn" by the German sculptor Georg Kolbe, 1877-1947], embraced by the hallucinatory marble walls, is a curvaceous yet solid antependium inserted in this corner of the altar exposed to the hard rays of the summer sun and the soft rains of winter...

the ablution sheet of water in the black marble pool is gently rippled by fresh drops of rain and the stray fallen leaf...

small seas of light and dark soundlessly bound the pavilion front and back with the tranquil and poetic reflection of water playing off the polished glaze of fossilized stone...

I traversed along stretches of pale travertine still glistening from the rain and framing lush foliage...

enclosed by immutable precision, by luminous fluidity, by exacting ideology, by an odd sense of purity...

I remember looking at grainy black and white photographs of this pavilion reproduced in my old copy of Vincent Scully's Modern Architecture when I was a Fine Arts student taking some courses in architectural history - and these were images of the original structure from 1929 as it was soon demolished after the exposition...

[it was cool to realize that the shot below of the view from the end of the front court is almost identical to one in the book!]

I was on hallowed ground of one of modern architecture's most numinous pantheon and we were alone under the gray muted skies of Barcelona, taking hushed steps towards a beckoning "Dawn" in the consecrated distance...

Pavello Mies van der Rohe

Av. Marquès de Comillas s/n, Parc de Montjuic, 08038 Barcelona

"No work other than the Barcelona Pavilion could symbolize the still fresh possibilities of a modern language of architecture. To the extent that modernism's supposed "coldness" had become a postmodern cliché, Mies's sensuous materials - red silk curtains, four different types of plate glass, and stone surfaces of golden onyx, Roman travertine, and green Alpine marble - fairly startled the eyes of those who had only known the structure from black-and-white photographs. Equally in keeping with the mood of the day were the spatial ambiguities and the palpable juxtapositions of the human figure - both the female nude of Georg Kolbe's statue The Dawn and the visitor's - with myriad abstract reflective surfaces. Given the particular vibrancy of that part of contemporary architecture in Spain that is directly or indirectly influenced by Mies's classic Minimalism - with new found associations of material and spatial sensuousness - it is hard to deny the importance of the Barcelona Pavilion's somewhat ahistorical reappearance. As if having arrived directly from the more radical moment of its creation, it exists as a negation of the International Style's subsequent dilutions and presents itself as a fresh point of departure."*

[*from page 29 of an essay by Terence Riley, "Contemporary Architecture in Spain: Shaking Off the Dust" in On-Site: NEW ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN, 2005 The Museum of Modern Art, New York]

barcelona lush

2010-02-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

"the pungent oranges and bright, green wings

seem things in some procession of the dead,

winding across wide water, without sound."

"does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughs

hang always heavy in that perfect sky..."*

I long to live in a grove of orange trees heavy with ripe fruit and clamourous with the shrill chirping of cockatiels even on chilly winter days...

we wander into an immaculate courtyard of a convent converted to art school crowded with lush green boughs sweetly pixellated with orange dots...

and in a garden high above the city, a lemon tree harbours delusions of mediterranean warmth yielding to its teeming need to fruit abundantly...

while below in the concrete zoo, tropical plants spike up from the top of a wall behind which exotic animals live out their lives in mostly quiet but hopefully well-fed desperation...

but not this cat which hunts in conspicuous non-camouflage amongst a cultivated and well-tended palm garden below the modest casas staggering down a steep slope...

at Gaudi's rock-and-rolling Parc Guell, century plants erupt in dangerous sword clumps to fend off invaders until they flower just once many years on after which they promptly shrivel up due to such laborious reproductory exertion...

a cool century later, in a stainless steel park below the smooth cucumber-shaped Torre Agbar, designer cacti are arranged meticulously in stacked metal pots and on top of posts contorting our expectations of landscape design and the urban-nature spatial experience...

around the corner from where we were staying, a private babylon drapes luxuriantly off a tiny balconey - a natural green-screen to the visual - and airy - pollution of living in micro-medieval quarters...

"what is divinity if it can come

only in silent shadows and in dreams?

shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

in pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

in any balm or beauty of the earth,

things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?"*

[*selected lines from Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning",1915/1923]

barcelona parallax

2010-02-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

I am in a city I haven't been to for over 20 years...a city in the invigorating throes of resumption, progression, self-determination...
we stay in the Barri Gotic, immersed in its medieval murkiness that is now tinged with fresh youthful hits, and yet on dark cloudy days, we are reeled back to a shadowy and more beguiling world...

but under sunny catalonian skies, we emerge to more recent times and wind our way up voluptuous architecture from the love-laboured hands of Antoni Gaudi and stand high above a crystalline city gleaming on the edge of the Mediterranean...[on the roof of Casa Batllo, below pic]

the giddily honey-combed Sagrada Familia is an almost never-ending project - and the tenacious spirit of Gaudi continues to preside over its organic construction from his resting place in the crypt...

the Mercat del Born is under renovations to update its airy metal-laced volumes to house and display again the poetically luscious arrangements of catalonian bounty...

and from an architectural pilgrimage to the Pavello Mies van der Rohe, reconstituted from its original manifestation at the 1929 International Exhibition, I lean over the slightly tattered barcelona chairs to peer past the mossy green marble wall from a glassed-in space that is the epitomized prototype of modern structural revelation...

on to venture into the 21st century thrusting of power-towers punctuating the catalonian nightsky in conical light curtains... a plump and sexy beacon to taunt that skeletal iron maiden to the colder north...[Torre Agbar, above pic]

alight upon the new year

2010-01-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

from a cool-chic temple to stylistic innovations and iconic fashion-worship in Paris to a secret rustic-charm chapel in the green womb of the breton countryside, my time in France is always precious because it is so limited...but what I savour and inhale and absorb would permeate me so fully that I leave satiated and gratified, at least for another year...

To one and all a vivified year of bearable lightness
and enlightened eyes wide open to what may come...

cantique des verres

2009-12-14T11:38:00.001-08:00

"sur nous tombe et s'endort un Dieu couleur de miel..."

it is almost that time again...of winter lightness, solstitial solace, celebratory clinks...
sometimes we come upon each other in the most unexpected ways, sometimes we part in silent revelry, sometimes we sing to ourselves in off-key delirium, and sometimes we revolve towards each other once more...

"Chacun immole son silence à l'unisson.
- Que portez-vous si haut, égales radieuses?
- Au désir sans défaut nos grâces studieuses!
Nous chantons à la fois que nous portons les cieux!
O seule et sage voix qui chantes pour les yeux!
Vois quels hymnes candides!
Quelle sonorité nos éléments limpides tirent de la clarté!
Si froides et dorées nous fûmes de nos lits
par le ciseau tirées, pour devenir ces lys!
De nos lits de cristal nous fûmes éveillées,
des griffes de métal nous ont appareillées.
Pour affronter la lune, la lune et le soleil,
on nous polit chacune comme l'ongle de l'orteil!

Il dort content, le Jour, que chaque jour offrons
sur la table d'amour étale sur nos fronts."

[lines excerpted from "Cantique des Colonnes" by Paul VALERY, 1871-1945]

by the real sea...

2009-11-16T10:22:00.000-08:00

"thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair
tangling in the tide's green fall...

a lone beachcomber squats among the wrack
of kaleidoscopic shells
probing fractured Venus with a stick...

though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
a grain of sand is all we have."

[lines are from Sylvia Plath's "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber By the Real Sea"

les aquarelles du morbihan

2009-10-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

a few pages from my watercolour pad, all painted en pleine air, sometimes en pleine vent!
...to revisit the loveliest month of May on the cliffs and beaches of my secluded and seductive stretch of the Morbihan coast...

sentir la marine...

2009-09-07T08:53:00.001-07:00

a sea-mossy green heart cradled in a shallow tidal pool...

marine still-life basking in sun-warmed thalassotherapy...

invisible pelagic life-forms in a secret rock triangle...

a tidal guided seaweed-swirl around an unbudging stone...

strands of algae hair mimic the cracks in the rock...

black-winged birds and a spotted skull mark the rockface in mystic symbols...

abstracting into a study of blackened nubbly relief on gilded pile...

spreading ebonized filigree set with gemstone shells...

to a briny view of a sirenic "origin of the world"...

stone-aged

2009-09-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

the ancient stones of Brittany exude a sense of immutability even as they have been used for various functional purposes...they evoke the forever placement, the quotidian usage, the deeply solid rootedness to this enchanted land...

the ever-flowing fount into a large shaded bassin where the healing waters kept cool by stones formed on holy ground can only soothe fervent minds...

a miniature stone temple dome to protect a well...

the village stone oven now long-cooled and draped with wild ivy...reminds one of the jungle-swaddled ruins of lost civilizations...

and these flower garlanded stone steps must rise up to "...des archipels sidéraux! et des îles dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future vigueur..."*

[quoted french verse from Arthur Rimbaud's "Le bateau ivre", 1869, written when he was fifteen!]

signs of the times

2009-08-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

"ghost signs" such as this old advertising sign for DUBONNET are not as easy to find anymore as buildings get repainted and renovated or demolished altogether...and even if they have been left on the walls, the elements will soon enough wear them away, fading them into oblivion...

an intriguing name on the side of a building in Vannes...

another "ghost sign" for an old scuba-diving gear company is now barely legible, but beautifully abstracting paint patches remain...

the name plate carved in stone for a house I covet facing the côte sauvage, somewhat protected under an overhang from the wild ocean sprays... [le courlis is a curlew, a wading bird with a long slender curved bill]

and in the dungeon-y depths of La Citadelle we find on a darkened wall these ancient depictions of two pose-y female saints - Sainte Anne being the patron saint of Brittany...

"to be a window..."*

2009-08-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

"Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe..."*

the vitrail above filters in holy light in the beautiful little stone church of "La Vraie-Croix", named for a tiny piece of the real Cross stolen by a magpie from a pilgrim and whose nest was on the tree where this church was eventually built upon...

windows... the eyes of houses to look out upon the world, and sometimes, to let us see the secret life within...
but other times remain firmly closed as in the above weather-worn wood shutter of an old stone "shed" in a farmer's field aging gracefully along with the primitive face carved in stone...

"He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace."*

a narrow wood-slatted window on the side of the most unusually elevated façade of the church of Sainte-Avoye...

in a courtyard in Nantes, we find these wood framed windows guarded by baby lion's heads[??]...

on a large guardhouse across from the most enchanting and undisturbed chappelle [I am not allowed to reveal the name in order to protect its location!] are these two medieval window styles - the above round one with a delicate cruciform grille and the square opening below covered with its cruder and sturdier keep-out iron grate...

and on another ancient barn, this upper-level window/door has its hinged-side opening stopped up with all manner of rags and debris...an indication of what is stuffed and stored inside, or more likely a desperate attempt to keep out pests, wind and even the slightest sliver of light...!

[*verses are from "The Windows" by George Herbert [1593-1633], appropriately written when most of these windows were first opened to let in the light...]

passion de la voile

2009-08-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

sailing vessels are omnipresent on the waters of Brittany... they glide into view wherever and whenever one gazes out to sea... they stir the passion for steady winds and moderate waves and the freedom of boundless directions, wide open skies, and adventurous childhood dreams...

a partial glimpse of a colourful sail past towards the annual week-long sailboat festival in May around the Gulf of Morbihan, which is swamped with landlubbers and sailors alike and which we valiantly tried to view more of...

at dockside in La Trinité sur Mer, the contrast of a classic ketch with the latest in high-tech design at rest before racing off halfway around the world...

eager children rigging their boats for some lessons on the water before also racing off around the world!

from an island in the Golf we watch a sailboat glide past a row of beach cabanes...as we sit in the afternoon sun waiting for our bateau to come in...

the distinctive orangey-brown sails of a traditional sinagot waiting for the wind to pick up to move it through the islands of the Golf...

the windy waters around La Citadelle de Port-Louis usher sailboats of all sizes by the entrance to Lorient's harbour... this 16th century fortification was originally constructed by the Spaniards under Philippe II, then partially demolished at the end of the Spanish occupation and rebuilt again under Louis XIII... it now houses both the Musée national de la Marine and the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes [East India Company's museum], the only museum in France to depict the history of the great trading companies of the 17th and 18th centuries...

at anchor across from the massive German-built submarine bunker-base in Lorient, now disused, but still much too colossal to demolish...
nearby is the architecturally stylish Cité de la Voile dedicated to the legendary breton sailor Eric Tabarly and to the technology and adventure of sailing... "un lieu unique en Europe pour comprendre et partager le plaisir de naviguer"

architectural anomalies

2009-07-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

as we wander around unassuming towns, seaside villages and bucolic countryside it is not difficult to spot the odd architectural specimen sticking out from among more conventional structures...

this lighthouse had been converted into a single hotel room with a 360 degree view, and le petit déjeuner is hoisted up on a seaworthy rope!.. [it is apparently the only lighthouse B & B in France]

near where we were staying is this solitary minimal castellated villa overlooking the sea, a little forlorn and stoic even on brilliant days softened by effusive expanses of wildflowers...

and of course, tumbling down old stone barns are always a poignant sight to behold... this one with a graceful roof curvature balanced so precariously that a strong gust of wind could reduce it to a mound of rubble as we stand and watch...

an evocative touch of chinoiserie to jazz up any street, even in the ancient celtic depths of southern Brittany... a little like me, an exotic anomaly amongst the hardy sailors, rough-and-ready pirates and salty-tongued fishermen...

and hidden above our favourite beach is a shuttered-up comanderie turned holiday-house that has its own gunnery bunker looking out to sea... a somewhat sinister feature to stumble upon on the most tranquil of beaches!

troc et puces

2009-07-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

every weekend we plan road-trips to a wide circuit of vide-greniers, brocantes, troc et puces in search of the deal of the century!
from crowded school gyms and playgrounds to muddy fields and forest settings to portside fishmarkets and wharves to city squares and sidestreets, the piles of stuff is never-ending and drive me to crazed impatience, but it is also an excuse to explore the many small villages and towns we would otherwise miss...

on may day sweet children sell fragrant bunches of muguets [lily-of-the-valley] at the entrance to an enormous brocante in a forest grove off a country road...

hundreds of bargain-weary brocanteurs and multi-generational families congregate in organized campground chaos and spill out their dog-eared offerings to the thousands who will venture forth in rain or shine to pick through the millions of bits and pieces discarded from other people's lives...

I don't find much for myself anymore but still keep an eye out for things requested by friends and clients...
although always hoping to discover the unexpected...

this cool old engraving of a grouping of the Reines de France for 10 euros was very tempting...and the cool old gentleman selling it told us that it had been sitting [and deteriorating!] in his attic for decades...
now we regret not lugging it home!

as always, back to portside on the côte sauvage yielding up some elegant rejectamenta at low tide...
sometimes the visual cacophony of all these flea markets and attic sales can quieten down to the odd moment of a sublime grace note imagery...
[of which I don't need to purchase!]

de porte en porte

2009-07-17T10:23:00.001-07:00

I know doors are a clichéd architectural feature to photograph, but every once in a while, I can't help myself!
and behind every closed door lies a mysterious interior and the secret ebb and flow of lives unseen...

through a locked and rusty iron gate and shaded by an unkempt garden, we imagine shifting shadows behind dusty window panes...but the white door appears unopened for a long time...

I peek through the crack and spy dirt floor and abandoned detritus scattered about under decades-thick dust...

another lost in time church we could not enter, especially this side door being slowly sealed up by creeping ivy...but through the crack, the light can still get in...

the odd placement of a small planter on the threshold must trip some hobbits up!...but the shaping of the large stone frame is most voluptuous...

and back on the côte sauvage, narrow doors buffer against the strong winds and other wild tempestuous beings!
the delicacy of the brick work against the salt-encrusted stone walls betrays perhaps a more refined soul within, forever peering out through the small round window above towards the crashing green waves...

exuberant blooms

2009-07-10T09:59:00.001-07:00

the long-blooming hortensia [hydrangea] is the floral symbol of Brittany, and this is the first of the season with the softest of pink flush...I regret not being there when they are profusely in bloom in every hue everywhere...

along the highway to the Morbihan, golden walls of prickly gorse stretch on in a blaze of spring fever happiness...and their coconut scent mixes with the salty sea air to engulf us in an anticipatory holiday high...

in an old churchyard ancient stones gather around a late spring bouquet of tulips and pansies, as we tiptoe over the finely raked gravel towards the silent church...

heavy clusters of violet glycine [wisteria] defy gravity as they hang pendulous on stone houses and send out perfumed whiffs to already light-headed passersby...

and in one of the many hamlets we come across delicately tiny wildflowers flourish freely with a small red rose bush left to fend for itself in benign neglect against a weathered stone wall...

on an island in the Gulf of Morbihan we stumble upon this lone starburst-blossom stalk [I haven't identified it yet...anyone knows what it is??] in a shady glade under the gnarled branches of sea-watered evergreens...

I become almost adept at shooting out of a moving car whenever the sunlit floral exuberance splashes into my line of vision...
and as always, I am still somewhat giddy with all these refreshing florescent rites of spring!

domus vernacular

2009-07-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

everywhere we go we are always looking at houses - possible new domicile and strong architectural interest in regional style - the older the more compelling, and of course, always unmodified charm!

facing the cote sauvage, a tiny cottage beckons with a grassed over pathway between the two inspired rows of miniature menhirs, no doubt emphasizing the primitive aspects of the siting...

the basic geometry of hearth and home of a built-in oven for this centuries old stone house in one of many ancient and perfectly preserved hamlets that we stumble upon...

in villages, larger and "newer" houses are animated by painted wood shutters of various harmonious hues, and in warmer weather, always enlivened by colourful floral flourishes...

across from the restaurant where we indulge in moules et frites is an almost tumbling down old fisherman's cottage... I feel a need to rescue it from further neglect and maintain its status as the main house in this minuscule port where brown and weathered fishermen still sit beside their boats smoking and looking quizzically out to sea...

[the last day of my stay the rose bushes in front had burst into a profusion of pale pink blooms...making it an even more irrisistible abode to consider...]

in larger towns elegant villas soar into the intense blue skies and are surrounded by generous gardens of exotic plants...this particular manoir stained a burnished burgundy to impart a semi-tropical ambience framed by the thriving palm trees...

and by my favourite beach a quaint stone house meticulously composed of rounded and varied sized rocks and detailed by pristine white shutters...its understated distinctiveness emboldened by the luxuriant dark foliage of a happy and vigorous prunus...

sur les plages

2009-06-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

there are two beaches that we frequented - one with the smoothest white sand glinting with minuscule mica specks that reflect the light as brightly as mirror dust...
on this calmer shoreline the water is a crystalline pale green in the shallows and warm enough to swim in even before the heat of the summer sun...
the gentle waves offer up small shells and delicate seaweed strands and when the tide is low, patches of shiny mica bits to be mined...

in between painting, I walk with my camera in hand and with my head down coming across exquisite still-life on the undisturbed sand already perfectly pre-arranged for me to just find the right frame and shoot...

sometimes a sea god drags up serpentine algae and presents it to me proudly - the sinuous frill-edged length stretching out lazily on the sand like some flattened primeval snake...

and as the tide ebbs again, graceful swirls of seaweed mark the silvery sand like rudimentary calligraphy from an unknown aquatic race, punctuated by clusters of opalescent shells hiding secret codes...

I stain my aquarelles with colours of pure light, the moist brush-strokes quickly evaporating into the salty air...and I am in my element on this tranquil beach with so much perfection in every detail around me...

on the other beach of the côte sauvage side, a different and wilder personality emerges...

the crashing waves toss up blobs of poisonous jellyfish to sting unwary feet, but I am seduced by their lavender softness, their translucent helplessness stranded on the pebbly beach, now perhaps at the mercy of children with sticks...

the rough barnacled rockpiles on this coastline create crevices and mini pools filled with shell life and lichen blooms... and like the children, we spend hours examining such wondrously pristine displays of undisturbed marine ecosystems...

we also heave rocks to contribute to a seaside festival of "land" or nature art [à la Andy Goldsworthy], where the artists create their installations out of what is at hand along the beaches...

our efforts are completely spontaneous and primitive and inconsequential to the power of the sea, but we are satisfied with our creations and having had the sheer joy of just playing all day by the seashore...

contemplatif

2009-06-23T06:41:00.001-07:00

frequently in Brittany I am transfixed by sightings that are so timelessly resonant of a deeper meaning I am always hopeful to have captured it somehow on my tiny camera...
and going over the images later, I come across ones that manage to vibrate more than I had envisioned...
the breton flag "Gwenn ha Du" waves proudly from every flag pole, black and white bands representing the former "pays" or bishoprics of Upper and Lower Brittany, and dotted by the heraldic black ermines flashing in the hallowed skies...

the suggestive stillness of the tops of just a few crosses barely rising above the wall of a small cemetary at high noon...

the hard point of a modernist church spire pierces into atmospheric holiness, its pink and white celtic motifs softening the angular edges...

on the outside wall of a school, the pale squiggle patterns left behind from the removal of old creeping vines...nervous traces of life that once was and now only the most evocative of ghostly remains of a previous florescent exuberance...

one day I was led to a secret church in a secluded hameau...the doors were opened but within it nothing seemed to have been touched for decades...antique light glazed over sacred objects, cobwebs bound crucifixes in place on the dusty altar, and in a small room off to the side, a niche held ex-votos of such raw poignancy, such primal supplication that it was hard to believe such genuflectively felt potency still existed at all...

les temps verts

2009-06-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

one of the most transcendant and loveliest of vernal moments, walking along this muddy woodland path through clouds of freshly in bloom queen anne's lace...we had been wandering around a lesser known menhir site in the morning sun and on the way back to the village we found a backfield trail, coming upon this gloriously romantic scene...I felt like some Flaubert femme in a bucolic daze mincing gingerly through the wet earth dragging my satiny folds, with only melodic birdsong and the soft breezes rustling through the budding trees soothing my fervid delusions!

the stillness of this stone font dappled by a film of viridescent lace receives the water from a nearby source known for curing ailments of the nervous system... perfect for dipping those overly delicate 19th century jeunes filles d'amour!

and just beyond the chapelle, slender yellow irises sway elegant in the shade of pale gold foliage warmed by the late afternoon sun...

always back to the shores where we find the abstract arrangements of marine life on smooth rounded rocks...silken mossy algae draping sensuously on the barnacle-doted slopes...

rocks of ages

2009-06-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

from the multi-hued blues and delicate pinks of springtime Brittany to the water-sculpted stones and cliff-faces of the coastline, striated in geometric patterns and abstractly spotted with black lichen patches...

to super-human [or perhaps not quite human!] strength hands that built such dolmen "monuments"against which much, much later settlers constructed their conventional stone houses...

we walk in dew-wet fields dotted by immense menhirs that have been placed there beyond the sense of time...

and feel the enigmatic energy exerted from such powerful and solid presences and we wonder of the mysterious significance of the chosen sites...

in Carnac, thousands of such stones are aligned in rows like some neolithic mega-sized cemetary, but their original purpose will never ever be fully revealed...

we can only marvel at the scale and determination to arrange such megaliths and how long they have stood immutable and silent in fields that bloom yellow for countless springs...

and then there is always an invigorated phallic-fixated queen along the way to commemorate some long-winded adventure by erecting this, "une des plus belles stèles du Morbihan"!

la saison rose

2009-06-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

I was already pink sensitive before primrose spring arrived and when we came upon large swaths of tiny shell pink flowers blanketing the clifftops of the Côte Sauvage contrasting with the sometimes steel-grey, sometimes deep azure sea, I became even more awashed in a blush pink mood...

carnal pink floral carpets brush onto opera pink stone walls and la Maison Rose at the narrow entrance to an inlet in the Golfe du Morbihan must always remain that pompeian colour as the marker house for sailors...

lovely gardens large and small lushed out in livid pink blossom-clouds...

and cameo pink villas soften the earth tone palette of the vernacular stone architecture...

by the seashore I find flesh pink seashells and the most wondrous marine still-life tableaux...

the luminous alga leaf in gradations of orchid rose fans and drapes a mica-studded rock...

and my pale petal dress blows softly about me as I walk along the edge of my glow-pink paradise...

breton blues

2009-06-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

Brittany is a blue world...the eyes are always absorbing the bright blue or the blue-greys of the skies, the stormy blue or calm blue-greens of the sea...and all the varying hues of blues to be found everywhere...

a fading french-blue DUBONNET sign...

a weather-beaten bleu-céleste door facing the Côte Sauvage....

so many other doors and window shutters and trims, fences, garden gates...

soon the lavender blues of the hortensias will add to the zen blueness in gardens and along pathways...

and the light will deepen into late summer, intensifying this most tranquil of colours...

breton skies

2009-06-03T08:01:00.001-07:00

as always, the dramatic skies of Brittany never fail to take my breath away...

as soon as we drive past the Bienvenue en Bretagne sign, the clouds gather to welcome us...

the salty sea air blows in our faces, the windswept trees bend as low green clouds...

and we find our place in a pristine paradise, on a wild cloud-dappled coast where the light sparks off the water and the colours of the sea and skies change by the hour....

a bedroom in chenonceau*

2009-04-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

an architectural titania stretches across the sinuous cher,
sheltering the spectral traces of a line of royal femmes...

here, the white queen had mourned in her chamber of perpetual night,
where silver tears streak the blackwater walls and snowy plumes of bowing feathers flinch from the curious crowns of thorns,
while the muted sound of turbid waters swirling beneath the stone comportment reverberates a prenatal realm to comfort the neglected wiles of many such feminine persuasions as these in the château chenonceau...

[*"a bedroom in chenonceau" by g.verster, 2004]

déshabillé

2009-03-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

"Le vif oeil dont tu regardes... jusques à leur contenu

Me sépare de mes hardes... et comme un dieu je vais nu."

["Le Marchante d'Habits" by Stéphane Mallarmé, 1842-1898]

a study of walls

2009-03-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

a study of black and white, pristine and worn, smooth and rough, graphic and abstract, playful and contused...
the contrast of aged corrosion, unkempt upkeep, hidden frictions, interior forlornness...

to the freshly painted, swissly precise, boldly marking, exterior exclamation...

the personalities of buildings expressed through their wall treatment emerge in large spatial vociferous instances...to captivate, to seduce, to invite prolonged glances and even a surreptitious touch or two upon unblemished or weathered skin...

aux vieux murs...

2009-03-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

"L'heure passe que les mains de la nuit faufilent aux vieux murs...
Mais qu'est-ce qui vous trouble au fil de l'heure pâle qui s'ourle aux mains noires des grilles?

Plus tard, un peu de soleil dore une feuille, et deux, et puis tout!...
Un rayon rôde encore à la crête du mur, glisse d'une main calme et nous conduit vers l'ombre..."

[lines excerpted from the poem "Au Fil de l'Heure Pâle" by Léon-Paul Fargue, 1876-1947]

paris neige

2009-02-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

"Rooftops in the Snow" Gustave Caillebotte
[c.1878; oil on canvas; 64 x 82 cm]
Collection Musée d'Orsay, Paris

from the few times it snows in Paris and the snow actually sticks around long enough for an artist to capture his impressions of a whitened and muted city...albeit over a hundred years ago...
[this painting and a few other [snowless] ones by Caillebotte at the Musée d'Orsay draw me back over and over to revisit his luminous and charmed world...]

fiat lux

2009-02-11T11:15:00.001-08:00

from a clutch of multi-coloured lightbulbs' haphazard installation in the temple of modern art...

to the ornate clusters of glittering crystal drops in the church of saint-paul-saint-louis...
drawn to the light like so many tired tattered moths...always hoping to behold a softer, sweeter luminosity...

of lamps lighted very late...

2009-02-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

dans un coin le ciel délivré
aux épines de l'orage laisse des boules blanches.
dans un coin plus clair de tous les yeux
on attend des poissons d'angoisse.

dans un coin la voiture de verdure de l'été
immobile glorieuse et pour toujours.
à la lueur de la jeunesse
des lampes allumées très tard...

[From "Max Ernst" by Paul Eluard]

*Post 200*

vers le ciel

2009-01-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

cast your eyes upwards and follow the symmetry of birds perched on solid notes of stillness...

as the evening clouds gather, dark lyrical movements unfurl slowly across the skyline...

lumière

2009-01-14T17:05:00.000-08:00

"quand, ainsi qu'un poète, il descend dans les villes,

il ennoblit le sort des choses les plus viles,

et s'introduit en roi, sans bruit et sans valets,

dans tous les hôpitaux et dans tous les palais."

[from "Le Soleil" by Charles Baudelaire, 1821-67]

joyeuses fêtes!

2008-12-19T11:33:00.000-08:00

" Baise m'encor, rebaise-moi et baise;
donne m'en un de tes plus savoureux,
donne m'en de tes plus amoureux:
je t'en rendrai quatre plus chauds que braise."

[from "Baise m'encor..." by Louise Labé, 1520-65]

chevaux bien frappés

2008-12-11T14:02:00.000-08:00

all "knock knock" jokes aside, door-knockers [and their accompanying doors] must be some of the most frequently photographed images in Paris...and every so often one will catch the eye with its intricacy of design and clever use of animal forms in the fashioning of the metal knocker...
to thump on this door with its ornate twin-horses marteau de porte is perhaps to gain entry into an other-worldly realm of decadent refinement and delicious intrigues...and hopefully, not to a boucherie chevaline!

puppy love

2008-12-03T12:08:00.001-08:00

an altar in the salon des chiens to honour the irresistible cuteness of puppies as presented by a contemporary ceramic sculpture by jeff koons and an 18th century painting of "la lice et ses petits" by jean-baptiste oudry...
in the musée de la chasse et de la nature, a museum dedicated to the art of hunting and to maintaining the "equilibrium" in nature, where many stuffed animals stare happily at human visitors...

the painterly life

2008-11-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

a simple window display taunting us to cash it all in, unload our material possessions and follow our artistic inclinations... to live a life where the most important decision of the day is what size of canvas to use for that image you would like to paint, gather up some brushes and tubes of paint, and with not a care in the world...just what the whim of your subconscious will manifest...

sur un banc

2008-11-10T16:49:00.000-08:00

dans un square sur un banc
il y a un homme qui vous appelle quand on passe...
il vous fait signe et rien personne
ne peut vous empêcher d'aller vous asseoir près de lui
alors il vous regarde et sourit
et vous souffrez atrocement...

[lines from 'Le Désespoir est assis sur un banc' by Jacques Prévert, Selections from 'Paroles']

la fille hollandaise

2008-10-31T15:53:00.000-07:00

not a sexy halloween costume, but the launch of a line of dutch-inspired lingerie on comely live models...
how I love walking the streets of paris just to chance upon voluptuous sights such as this!

la garde républicaine

2008-10-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

[detail of painting]

la garde républicaine [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 90 x 90 cm

the officers leading the cavalry back to their barracks on boulevard henri IV after the inaugural parade where the new monsieur le président had just relished his dream come true... we missed that part of the procession but we caught the tired horses on their way home for some well-deserved pampering on that auspicious day...

suze

2008-10-16T16:15:00.001-07:00

the juxtaposition of the early 20th century sign for a popular liqueur with the rambling signature of a 21st century taggeur...look up for a bitter-sweet reminder of the paris of old, faint nostalgia for only a very few now...

canal saint-martin

2008-10-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

canal saint-martin [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 60 x 75 cm

along the canal saint-martin, the large plane trees shade a row of orange and red tents provided for the homeless... on this particular stretch the encampment is dwarfed by the highrise apartment buildings across the street, with the matching orange plexiglass balconies...

Likas Drive

2008-10-05T09:53:00.001-07:00

Likas Drive [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm

the ghostly apparition of my childhood home floats in a garden of tropical lushness...
my father built our first home in a quiet neighbourhood still inhabited by british ex-pats drinking gin tonics on their shady verandahs...
my bedroom upstairs overlooked the back garden where we planted papaya and mango trees, even a large pomelo; there were smaller bushes of mangosteen, custard apple, sapodilla, starfruit...
in the front garden was a mix of fragrant frangipanni, oleander, poinsettia, cascading morning glory on the trellis of the porch, hibiscus, periwinkle, bougainvillea, many species of orchids, and my favourite firecracker plant by the gate...

paris petits

2008-09-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

one of the things I love most to do while in france is to eavesdrop on french-speaking children...there is something unbearably poignant and sweet in the sounds made by such melodic voices...["ponette", a movie with the most adorable little girl...]

giaconocchio

2008-09-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

in the paris apartment where I stay, a framed drawing of a barely there giacometti stick man hovers above my head, rendering minimalist dreams in black and white after surrendering another day to the overwhelming stimuli that is planet paris...

[giacometti sculpture at the centre pompidou]

l'esprit de l'escalier

2008-08-30T11:58:00.001-07:00

I was once being insulted while I climbed up a flight of stairs [usually it is the other way round, when one thinks of a retort after one is already out the door and going down the staircase, as the case may be!]...I was so shocked that I could not think of a repartee until days later, and this was my "l'esprit de l'escalier": "Monsieur, it takes a very small man to feel the need to put a woman down."

parigigi

2008-08-19T14:36:00.001-07:00

the lovely flowergirl pranced up and down the steps of the mairie in her elegant silk and tulle gown set off by cherry red hightops and a green plaster full arm cast...christmas colours at a warm june day wedding and a mischievous girl elf who can't quite contained her emerging eccentricities in a city full of such wondrous sights...

888

2008-08-08T14:24:00.001-07:00

eight million light bubbles spark off the eiffel tower into the dark nebula of a paris night sky...
stop and wonder at the confluence of charmed lives that are all meant to be...

boulevard arago

2008-08-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

boulevard arago [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

known as a vespasienne, after the roman emperor VESPASIEN [9-79AD], who originated the brilliant idea of controlling and thereby squeeze-taxing urine dispersal through the installation of public urinals, this somewhat comical-looking descendant remains sadly the last existing 19th century monument to french piss in Paris...[the others having been eradicated due to overly popular usage for many-manly activities - ironically, this final unsavoury sample has been preserved outside the populous jailhouse La Santé on the boulevard Arago where guillotined heads had once rolled!]

[even though this particular model was commissioned a century before his time, there is an almost prouvesque elegance to the compact structure - especially since I have not emphasized the belle epoque flourishes in the metalwork - the overt functionality of the design can be seen as a prelude to modernist aspirations...]

Lido

2008-08-02T11:16:00.001-07:00

Lido [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm

one of the cinemas that my father designed in the 1960's...in which I had watched many of the classics from the western cinematic repertoire...memorable films from Dr. Dolittle to Dr. Zhivago, from Disney fluff to James Bond buff...all forming my early exposure to american and european cultural dissemination, and inevitably leading to unrealistic and disillusioned expectations during my initial encounters of life in the canadian "wilderness"...

paris nues

2008-07-28T09:18:00.000-07:00

"the brocade strings and reeds weave daily music,
half of it with the clouds, half river breezes:
for music such as this was meant for heaven,
how many times is man allowed to hear it?"
[TU FU, 761 AD]

les nues du soir

2008-07-26T09:34:00.001-07:00

"from the south sea did a guest appear
and give to me a mermaid's tear
and in that pearl there were cloudy signs:
I tried to unfurl what lay in those lines;"
[TU FU, 796]

pleine lune

2008-07-24T09:59:00.001-07:00

ferry me across the dark distance to this solitary pearl -
so still, so far...
in the full umbra of the alabaster moon, glowing pale fire, mild passions are smuggled and obscured for later disbursement...
on some other night when the moon hangs low again over the next reclaimed isle, softly lighting the steps down to the cimmerian sea.

[from 'once upon an alabaster moon' by g.verster, 2005]

la porte ottomane

2008-07-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

an aeolian howl reverberates in the courtyard, rattles the portal doors...
a wisp of paper, leaf, soul brushes against the shutters, providently, just once...
a being in a darkened eyrie contemplates impromptu sounds through the wordless night...
stringendo compositions of derelict noise spiraling aloft...
...brushes up again...
continental elements held together by an unseen extempore force...
still out there fiercely corralling pieces of intangibility...
soon to disconnect and escape, air distrait in the morning light.

['a november wind' by g.verster, 2004]

orangerie [parc andré-citroen]

2008-07-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

orangerie [parc andré-citroen]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

one of two glasshouse pavilions on the former site of the citroen automobile factory, now transformed into a hyper-rigid designed park on the south west flank of paris [patrick berger, gilles clément, jean-paul viguier, allain provost, jean-françois jodry et associés (1992-3)]
the exotic plant "temples" showcase a collection of tropical specimens, some of which brings me right back to the wild jungles of borneo...

monument tpm

2008-07-15T09:56:00.001-07:00

monument tpm

oil and acrylic on canvas; 90 x 120 cm

"This monument is erected by the people of Jesselton to the founding of Malaysia on 16th September 1963"...engraved on the plaque of this monument designed by my father and sponsored by the North Borneo Chinese Asssociation and the Jesselton Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

[Jesselton is now known as Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of the state of Sabah, one of the two states of East Malaysia on the northern half of the island of Borneo]

*structuralambiguity::

2008-07-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

::the obscuration of an exterior wall by the tenacious willingness of vertically challenged plants to bond, survive and flourish against all odds, [thereby gracing the building envelope to encompass more than a uni-faceted function...]

[location:: Musée du Quai Branly, a new museum exhibiting primitive art and artifacts from non-European cultures, designed by Jean Nouvel (2005-07), and the "Mur Végétal" by Patrick Blanc (2007) on Quai Branly, 75007 Paris]

*from ZY-XIN's ZYGOSPHERIC HYBRIDARCHITECTURAL TERMINOLOGY

[originally published in the september/october, 2007 issue of FRONT journal of contemporary art and ideas]

*ornamentalisentropy::

2008-07-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

::the adornment of a 17th century ceiling with segmented owl body parts composed into a gleeful montage as a measure of the ever devolving degradation of the wholesome natural world...

[location:: Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, a museum dedicated to the hunt and to nature in the Hôtel de Guénégaud designed by François Mansart (1652-55), Rue des Archives, 75003 Paris]

*from ZY-XIN's ZYGOSPHERIC HYBRIDARCHITECTURAL TERMINOLOGY

[originally published in the september/october 2007 issue of front journal of contemporary art and ideas]

père lachaise::les monuments

2008-06-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

light the first light of evening, as in a room in which we rest and, for small reason, think the world imagined is the ultimate good.

this, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. it is in that thought that we collect ourselves, out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

within a single thing, a single shawl wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, a light, a power, the miraculous influence.

here, now, we forget each other and ourselves. we feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, a knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

within its vital boundary, in the mind. we say god and the imagination are one... how high that highest candle lights the dark.

out of this same light, out of the central mind, we make a dwelling in the evening air, in which being there together is enough.

['final soliloquy of the interior paramour' by wallace stevens, 1954]

rue de charonne

2008-06-01T10:43:00.001-07:00

rue de charonne [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 90 x 120 cm
along the rue de charonne, one block has had a 1970's utilitarian apartment building inserted between older structures...one end bracing against a skinny 19th century building with le bistrot du peintre on the corner...the interplay of stylistic differences all the more stark in the sheer verticality of both...

père lachaise::les symboles

2008-05-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

"old styles, old tempos, all the engagement of the day -

the sedate, the regulated fray - the antique light, the moral rose, old gusts, tight whistlings from the past, the mothballs in the love at last our man forswore."

[from 'medgar evers' by gwendolyn brooks, 1968]

paris rouge::les milieux

2008-05-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

moroccan rose petal tea in the lush sleekness of the ysl salon privé...

gliding along the seine with a red steel box of secrets...

ascending to a mysterious rendez-vous at chez julien...

red walls and freeflow wicker::an unlikely combo for modernist architects...

paris rouge::les objets

2008-05-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

redo-rhino demagog-demigod guarding the temple of modern mod-art...

the holy receptacle of sacred water for precious futuristic gardens...

randomly thought-out nest chair for the poetically agitated...

for slow-paced adventures in the land of remnant-romantics...

les objets rouges of paris firing up serendipitous passion in spades...

paris rouge::les portes

2008-05-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

behind the red portal doors the insistent ghost tend to her garden of occidental conceit...layered greenness draped with white roses, heavily scented, lightly virtuous, easily bruised...
the ghost poet looks out his window at the darkening of this jade canopy, elusive words clinging to torn pages...
the ghost artist hoards the hours of light, shifting images in pale grey strokes on another fresh canvas...
the ghost pianist lingers on notes that cry out for a sultry voice, a faithful orchestra, the lover who turns his back when the music begins to fade...
the ghost of the muses visits upon them all, at the vanquished hour, when the snow roses float in the moonlight and the portal doors creak open slightly to let in the river breeze...
the poet is lying fitfully on his nest of tangled lines, the pianist trembles in a mild state of satie fever, the painter in fragile sleep still dreams in flashes of luminous hues...
the gardener ghost drifts through her vernal nightscape, fading in and out of the dawning mist, entangled in the reaching branches...

'behind the red portal doors' by g.verster, 2008

off gaya street

2008-05-13T13:41:00.001-07:00

off gaya street [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm

something about hot pink walls against a bright blue sky...I find them in borneo, in mexico, even in paris [see below post]...but not much in rainy vancouver...

one of my father's shop buildings [from the 1960's] off the main street downtown and a couple of blocks from his office...walk behind these blocks and across the parking lots is the lush jungly hillside shimmering in the tropical heat and afternoon sea breezes...some days I would play marbles along the shaded sidewalk behind the coffeeshop with the kids from the record store...

paris tropicale

2008-05-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

the palette for my paris paintings is usually moody greys and the muddier colours...but having tropical blood, I can still be drawn to the brights, be they in france or in borneo, which I am now exercising in the paintings of my father's buildings...

rue keller

2008-05-07T10:02:00.001-07:00

rue keller [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; diptych 60 x 100 cm
a 1960's generic schoolhouse for the little ones in the bastille...across the street is a magic store, a tap-dancing studio, a one-stop gothshop, several emerging designers' boutiques, a gay and lesbian youth centre, a bicycle shop...in short, everything to encourage a well-rounded childhood on top of the standard education provided under the bleu-blanc-rouge...

paris me manque...

2008-05-04T10:41:00.001-07:00

paris me manque...
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

every spring I spread my wings for my french feeding ground...I flock to be with my caillebottes, my morisots, my rodins...I land in the shade of the branches above the place des vosges...I find again my nest on rue charles V...
and I will answer the call of the crazy bird across the street in the garden of the marquis de brinvilliers...

baudelaire's muses

2008-05-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

du temps que la nature en sa verve puissante concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux, j'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante, comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux...

baudelaire still musing away in the jardin du luxembourg...

j'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux; deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme aux brouillards humides qui nagent dans ses yeux;

parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes; ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes, et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne, dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins, comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.

['la géante', charles baudelaire (1821-67)]

lèche-vitrines III

2008-04-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

from a rude gilded gnome and his odd assorted friends in the window of a hair salon...
to a coyly posed unicorn lounging on a stiff green broom...
to a window stacked with all cutesy things plastic, yellow and some red...
paris can still do kitsch with the best of them...

la tour phallique

2008-04-20T09:09:00.001-07:00

la tour phallique
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

je te goûte de plus en plus - ta salure, mon appétit...

mes cuisses coussinent ton visage - ton festin, mon tourbillon...

je m'abaisse dessus ta gloire - ta résurrection, mon sauvetage...

ma bouche s'élargit pour l'air - ta persistance, ma prière...

[excerpted from 'à nous deux' by g.verster, 2004]