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ash to ash ~ dust to dust

Texas “dirty car artist” Scott Wade (pictured here recreating Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”) has found an artistic use for the ever present dust collecting on his car. He has recieved a good bit of notoriety for his creations which wash away with tomorrows rain.

“I don’t do this to try and create immortal works of art” says Wade. “We aren’t going to be around forever, and nothing we do is going to last forever as much as we’d like it to. We need to learn to let go of that I think, and just enjoy what’s here.”

When asked which of his works is his favorite, Wade replies “the next one!”

Later this year, Scott will be creating a special piece for the Atlanta Arts Festival. Correction: Scott Wade created a special piece for the Atlanta Arts Festival in 2008.

If you liked this, you might like: Joshua Allen Harris, Your Art is Trash

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DirtyCarArt.com

To believe your own thought… that is genius.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, beauty, genius, and wisdom are your native state, held captive only by the ramparts of conventionality, insecurity and the insincerity that pour forth as you seek the favorable opinions of others at the expense of the true expression of your rightful self.

Like many great men before him, Emerson too earned a badge of condemnation and was called a “poisoner of young minds”. He was even banned from Harvard for 30 years following an address he gave to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School in 1838. But, Emerson exemplified the bravery of thought that he hoped you might find within yourself. His wisdom changed our world through men like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, both inspired partly by Emerson’s transcendentalism movement.

I find it best to take Emerson in doses. I have called this “Part 1” so that from time to time I might be able to add to this. In the excerpts below I’ve added italics to emphasize important points, the emphasis is not original to the writing.

Emerson’s “Introduction”:

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also…

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Bernard Pierre Wolff died of AIDS in 1985 and will likely never assume the fame and credibility that his work deserves. His images of statues seem to be alive with human emotion. They are weighty with a kind of longing that resonates with the viewer. When he photographs people, we see often them juxtaposed against a non-living figure in such a way as to cause the viewer to compare life and non-life.   If there were such a category as existentialist photography, I think Wolff might be its champion.

I first discovered Bernard Pierre Wolff in the late 1980’s after I purchased Joy Division’s album “Closer”. I was captivated by the albums cover image.  Since then I have found Wolff’s work to have a certain darkness, but also a gentle beauty that is delicate and human.

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Bernard Pierre Wolff

On September 18th, 2006, my wife and I saw Little Miss Sunshine.  It really absorbed me.  I wrote my wife an email from work the next day once I’d had a good night to let my thoughts “percolate”, as you might say.  That email has since gotten forwarded around a bit.  I’ve been told by several people that they’d been inspired enough to save it.  That made me think, “Hey, easy blog post, I’ll just copy and paste that old email!”  It may seem odd or untimely to post a review of a 2 year old movie, but ultimately, it is not really about the movie anyway.  As you will see it is about us; about my life and your life.  It is about something that I believe that we all came here to experience as part of the full palate of life’s blessings.  And that is suffering, and our struggle to understand its meaning in our lives.  Well, the topic is close to my heart and I hope it touches you as well.  As Friedrich Nietzsche might say, this post is dedicated to “the few”…

09-19-2006

Hey Sweetie,

I keep thinking about that movie last night.

I am curious about the writer or director of that movie.  I felt that he did a good job of splitting the various sides of ones personality into several pieces and then bringing those pieces to life in a compelling way through the characters of the movie.  We watch the drama of  “the innocent child”, the “depressed rebellious teen”, the rejected suicidal academician, the driven, success seeking “Winner”, the regretful old man who wishes he could do it all over again, and the woman who has to hold them all together as a family…  The characters are all so wildly different from each other, and yet I could identify with them all.  It is as if the writer took each stage of his own life and created a character to represent it.

I really think that the whole movie was intended as a Nietzsche-esque morality tale.  Of course, through Dwayne’s character  Nietzsche is mentioned and his book “Thus Spake Zarathustra” was displayed.  The “Moral of the story” given near the end of the movie is similar to one of Nietzsche’s teachings, which is “to embrace suffering“.  I believe it is Frank who argues that (more…)

Julie Heffernan describes the process for her artistic inspiration:

“Before I’m actually sleeping, as I relax and get out of the conscious mind, pictures will flood into my head, kind of like a movie,” Heffernan explains. “It’s not like daydreaming or remembering. They’re spontaneous pictures that I just sit back and watch. And then I’ll fall asleep. When I wake up, it’s at that point where the images start to stream in, and out of those I’ll usually ‘see’ something.”

The first time I saw Julie Heffernan’s work was in 2004. My wife and I spontaneously decided to run through a local museum despite the approach of the closing hour. What followed I’ll never forget. I had not yet heard of Julie Heffernan.  When I entered the exhibit room I became entrance by “Everything That Rises”.  The image instantly connected with me.  Varieties of birds emanate from a hovering fire over a chandelier amidst falling berries.  All of this set within a greek revivalist surrounding.  It was love at first sight for me.  I wont interpret a meaning, I will leave that to the individual observer.  Her work combines realism with fantasy, allegory, portraiture, and still life. Yet all these elements in are in a natural balance that is both innately pleasing and also mysterious.

All images can be clicked to enlarge.  Enjoy!

More Julie Heffernan:

Artnet

Lux

Insight

Wiki