Sunday, May 31, 2009

His Private Language


Dan Zaretsky studied sculpture with Rudy Lehman. As a sculptor, Zaretsky learned bronze casting which helped him in the field of his art. He learned to take advantage of the lesser known possibilities inherent in bronze sculpture; here, Zaretsky has unique accomplishments.
Zaretsky is a figurative sculptor who has a private language. It seems to me that his private language is drawn from ancient Assyrian sculpture, which was mainly the art of relief. Zaretsky creates sculptures in bronze that are extremely thin-but they are, nonetheless, very, very three dimensional. Here, there is a mutual understanding between the art of sculpture, and the art of relief. In bas-relief, figures are sculpted on a tablet of stone, wood, or other material, and the figures cast shadows and create the illusion of three dimensions. In haut-relief, perspective is also created. What Zaretsky accomplishes, and in my opinion he is the first to do so, at least for us here, is to create a sculpture that is so very thin that it is a deep relief, on both its sides.(more...)

Friday, May 29, 2009

Stoke-on-Trent 1932

These are scenes taken at the Spode factory in Stoke-on-Trent around 1932. It’s typical of many items in the Film Archive showing the pottery industry. Films began to be made at this time to promote the sale of pottery – particularly abroad. It was the height of the Depression, and so there was a reason for these films to be made. And they show all the processes of pottery making from the arrival of materials through to the finished goods going out.

There are some valuable glimpses here of girls carrying unfired ware to be put into saggars (or safeguards) so that they can be fired in the bottle oven. And here we see the placer placing the ware into a saggar, which is then carried on his head and stacked inside the bottle oven ready for firing. The safeguards – or saggars – are to keep the flame off the ware so that it’s baked inside these protective fireclay cases, This is the era of coal firing. This film also features in the documentary; “Stoke-on-Film, 1930s”, produced by Ray Johnson. Source: Staffordshire Film Archive

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Bernard-Henri Zizek (israel, israel,israel...)


Bernard-Henri Levy, France's "rock-star philosopher," and Slavoj Zizek, the Slovanian "Elvis of cultural theory," will scrutinize the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those of the future, as they argue for a new political and moral vision for our times and investigate the limits of tolerance.
Does the advent of capitalism cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbor? asks Zizek in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.
Are human rights Western or Universal? How is it that progressives themselves-those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism-have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes? - New York Public Library
Slavoj Žižek's work triggers continuous controversy; Welcome to the Desert of the Real, his analysis of 9/11, was attacked both as anti-Semitic in Israel and as Zionist in Egypt. He is the author of more than thirty books and is the subject of the documentary Žižek. His own critically acclaimed documentary, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, was the subject of a film retrospective in 2007 at the Museum of Modern Art.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Ein Hod Pottery


We create hand made pottery: functional stoneware pots thrown on the potter's wheel, decorated with various glazes, fired in a gas kiln to a high temperature.
Our pottery studio has been open to the public since 1982. We welcome visitors seven days a week and sell a variety of pottery: bowls, plates, casseroles, mugs (all of which can be used for cooking and serving food and drink), boxes, vases, and ocarinas(clay whistles and flutes).
We teach weekly pottery classes all year and conduct short workshops for groups and individuals during the week and on Saturdays and holidays(all ages).
We have a book shop where we sell a large selection of used and rare books in all languages.
For more information about our studio and activities and/or help in arranging visits and workshops with other artists please contact us:
Naomi and Zeev 04-9841107. zeno@netvision.net.il
Second hand books
At zeev Verchovsky "Pottery Always Open" #33 on the map
Accommodation and cafes are also available in the village.

קורס קדרות- (מגיל 13)

לימוד טכניקות באובניים בחומר,

צביעה בגלזורות ושריפה בתנור גז.

סדנת שבת,חגים,ימי קיץ,ימי חול.

-עבודה בחומר לכל הגלאים-עבודת יד.

-התנסות באובניים מגיל 18 (30-40 דקות)

לקבוצות

-סדנת הדגמה-הסבר והדגמה באובניים והתנסות קצרה לכל משתתף

(עד 25 איש, 40 דקות)

-סדנה פעילה-הסבר והדגמה באובניים ועבודה לכל משתתף באובניים אישי. עד 16 משתתפים, שעה וחצי

פרטים- נעמי וזאב ורכובסקי.
טל 9841107 04

Awkward and Disgusting meet Bizarre and Hilarious


"Copulation," said Leonardo da Vinci, "is awkward and disgusting." Despite his aversion, Leonardo was the first to attempt a cross-sectional anatomical drawing of coition. Some 500 years later, Mary Roach offered herself and her husband as guinea pigs for the modern equivalent: dynamic 3D ultrasound imaging. Although not disgusting, the process is certainly awkward. "Now please make some sort of movement," the scientist tells them as he positions the imaging equipment. Roach certainly gets full marks for unflinching commitment to the job in hand. In search of a link between fertility and orgasms, she visits a pig farm for tips on the best way to stimulate a sow. The Danish government publishes a Five-Point Stimulation Plan; there were six points, but farmers balked at sow vibrators (from Guardian)
(more on the blog...)

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Five-a-day keeps smaller farms away

Eating more healthily might be better for us as individuals, but would it be bad news for farmers? A research project funded by the UK Research Councils’ Rural Economy and Land Use Programme had found that if we all followed government advice to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day this could have serious implications for the countryside.
Their research shows that, if we assume that the percentage of imports will remain constant, many more hectares of intensive production under polythene tunnels would be needed in order to produce the quantity of fruit and vegetables for the recommended healthy diet.
At the same time, areas such as Wales and the south west, which are most suited to grazing animals rather than growing crops, would suffer a severe decline in such production. For example, in Wales, cattle numbers would fall by some 400,000 head and sheep numbers would be halved. In the north of England both sheep and cattle numbers would fall by 200,000 head each.
This could mean unemployment in, and abandonment of, upland areas. Smaller farms would disappear and be absorbed into larger land holdings. Upstream industries would suffer, particularly feed suppliers, and there would be a knock-on effect on the wider rural economy of the uplands.
(read more...)

Monday, May 18, 2009

35,000 Years Old: Art or Porn?


The short, squat torso is dominated by oversize breasts and broad buttocks. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continuous without interruption to the front of the figurine. A greatly enlarged vulva emphasizes the “deliberate exaggeration” of the figurine’s sexual characteristics.


Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, said it was at least 35,000 years old, “one of the oldest known examples of figurative art” in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe.(more ...)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Are You Happy?


As a young man, Vaillant fell in love with the longitudinal method of research, which tracks relatively small samples over long periods of time (as in Michael Apted’s Seven Up! documentaries). In 1961, as a psychiatric resident at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Vaillant found himself intrigued by two patients with manic depression who had 25 years earlier been diagnosed as incurable schizophrenics. Vaillant asked around for other cases of remitted schizophrenia and pulled their charts. “These records hadn’t been assembled to do research,” Vaillant told me recently, “but it was contemporary, real-time information, with none of the errors you get from memory or the distortions you get when you narrate history from the vantage of the present.” In 1967, after similar work following up on heroin addicts, he discovered the Harvard Study, and his jaw dropped. “To be able to study lives in such depth, over so many decades,” he said, “it was like looking through the Mount Palomar telescope,” then the most powerful in the world. Soon after he began to work with the material, he found himself talking about the project to his psychoanalyst. Showing him the key that opened the study cabinets, Vaillant said, “I have the key to Fort Knox.”

(read more...)

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Japanese Potters: Ningen Kokuho


Potters of Japan (1968): a two-part film that documents the techniques of seven illustrous Japanese potters, including Kei Fujiwara (1899-1983), Takuo Kato (1917-2005), and Yuzo Kondo (1902-1985), each of whom has been recognized with the honorable title Living National Treasure (Ningen Kokuho) by the Japanese government. Shot in various locations in Japan, the films reveal the influence that Japanese pottery has had on ceramics throughout the world and provide insight into Japanese culture through the potters' ceramic methods and philosophies. A particular attraction of the films is the firing of multi-chambered Japanese kilns. Potters of Japan was produced by Indiana artist Richard Peeler (1926-1998)(read more...)

Leaded Petrol to Save the Earth

Lead is a toxic heavy metal that can cause severe damage to health.

"However, with the benefit of hindsight we can now explain why there has been a trend towards more rapid temperature rises in recent years; it is because mankind has cut back its emissions of lead and sulphates,"

Lead pollution in the air stimulates the formation of ice particles in clouds. A team of scientists from the USA, Germany and Switzerland has found that particles containing lead are excellent seeds for the formation of ice crystals in clouds. This not only has a bearing on the formation of rain and other forms of precipitation but may also have an influence on the global climate. This is because the heat given off from the earth's surface is more efficiently radiated into space by ice clouds (cirrus) with lead-containing particles
In comparison to clouds with a low lead content, clouds with a high lead content thus actually help cool the earth. Over the last twenty years, there has been a continuing decrease in the rate of anthropogenic lead emissions. This may mean that the greenhouse effect is now even more pronounced because lead-containing clouds once previously helped limit it.(read more...)

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Deeply Personal


More than five decades after that remarkable breakthrough, and two years after he again created history as the first person to have his own human genome mapped, James Watson is pursuing his final daunting challenge - to tackle the mysteries of mental illness.
His motivation is, in part, deeply personal. His son Rufus, 38, is a schizophrenic who lives at home, unable to cope with the outside world, and friends say that Mr Watson now has renewed hope that he can act as the catalyst for one last ground-breaking discovery.
For when Mr Watson's genome was sequenced in 2007, he was the million dollar man - the process cost a prohibitive seven figure sum. But what he calls the era of "Chevrolet genome" has now arrived as the cost has been slashed to just $20,000, the price of a new car.
He does not discuss Rufus's condition, aware that his bright but troubled son reads all about himself online. But he has previously described a bright child who struggled with his school work, unable to organise his thoughts or plan ahead, and who first received hospital treatment at 16.
"Warm and perceptive, Rufus cannot lead an independent life because of schizophrenia, lacking the ability to engage in day-to-day activities," he wrote. "For all too long, my wife and I hoped that what Rufus needed was an appropriate challenge on which to focus. But as he passed into adolescence, I feared the origin of his diminished life lay in his genes. It was this realisation that led me to help to bring the human genome project into existence."
Now the molecular biologist hopes to raise the funds to map the genomes of at least 1,000 people - and perhaps 5,000 - with serious mental illness. He hopes that will be enough to throw light on the incredibly complex genetic combinations that produce conditions like those faced by Rufus.
(read more...)

Thursday, May 7, 2009

A drop of honey catches more...1997


Dan Chamizer - flying puzzle , Nobuya Yamaguchi & Doron Shapira - Fragment in the silent Eye and the opening words...
דן חמיצר - טס בשמי עין הוד ועבודתם של נבויה
ניאמגוצ'י ודורון שפירא - רסיס בעין

Our principal goal is to be a regular stage for contemporary sculpture by Israeli and foreign artists, and in doing it outdoors, bringing Art to a wider range of spectators - those who usually do not visit museums and galleries. During the four exhibitions there were more than 300,000 visitors, including school children, students, tourists and organized groups of various kinds. We see this as an encouraging sign -- that our goal is at hand, that Art can reach everybody if we create the right environment. We believe that Art, as an international language, must lead the way and be the model for understanding and mixing of countries and cultures.

(Read more...)

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Doña Rosa and her black pottery


San Bartolo Coyotepec is one of the most important pottery producing villages in the valley of Oaxaca. Located 8 km. from Oaxaca; this village is renowned for its black clay. Doña Rosa Real de nieto stood out as a personality in Coyotepec for many years. Recognized with medals and diplomas her work was appreciated by collectors and her fame surpassed the borders of México. She gave black pottery a shine when she accidentally discovered that it can be polished, this is where what today we call black pottery came from. In her last years she continued transforming clay into beautiful pieces with the strength and abilities of her best years. She worked in her shop demonstrating her abilities to those who came to visit her until the day of her death in 1980. Her son now, with a masters ability, continues the family tradition.
The potters of Coyotepec continue to use their traditional method of turning pots without a wheel, this consists on two concave clay plates, one upside down supporting the other. This method is of prehispanic inheritance. The pieces are molded on this device. The process takes 20 to 30 days and goes from molding to decoration, to slow drying in closed rooms, polishing with a quartz stone and finally to baking where the pieces acquire their black color depending on the baking time.
(read more...)

Monday, May 4, 2009

Clear as Mud


Michael Cardew (1901-1983), the potter seen in this clip, was one of England's best-known potters. He began studying the craft while at university, and ran his own studio in the 1920s and '30s, producing practical pieces for home use. He moved to Ghana in 1942 to teach the craft, and in 1945 opened a pottery (a ceramics factory) there. In 1950 Cardew relocated to Nigeria, where he became senior pottery officer in the Ministry of Trade. After a lifetime at the potter's wheel, making a bowl is second nature for Michael Cardew. He starts by kneading a hunk of brown clay to remove air bubbles, then positions it on the spinning wheel. He drives his thumbs into the clay, creating a depression in the centre. With intense concentration, Cardew pulls the sides up and out to create a bowl shape. The process, known as throwing, is the focus of this clip from the CBC series Hand and Eye.

Friday, May 1, 2009

First they took Manhattan (blue note) ...


After they based themselves in the Brooklyn, J.Viewz decided to come to Israel for a small five-show tour. This video is from the Barby club in Tel-Aviv
New Live show Recording available
J.Viewz Live - April 2009:
Noa Lembersky.: Vocals. Urijah: Trumpet, Guitar & Vocals.Yakir B.T: Keyboards, Tal Ronen: Drums. Amitay Ashkenazi: Saxophone. Nimrod Talmon: Trombone. Tal Govhari: Percussion & Bass. Jonathan Dagan: computers, turntables, vocals & guitar. Big up Asaf Mizrahi for the sound. Avisar savir, Idan and especially Jino for great management.
Live Dates in USA
The J.Viewz Live act in it's american form, will perform this Saturday (May 2nd) with Shpongle at Irving Plaza NYC.
More Information and Tickets here
Next Monday (on the 4th) we will perform with the Israeli hip-hop band Coolooloosh in Brooklyn, more information here
Other upcoming dates will include Webster Hall NYC and 9:30 Club Washington, DC. check our websites often for more information about each show.