Knotted Brain Much?

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art: "the world's largest collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art. Inspired by research from neuroscience, dissection and neuroeconomics, our current exhibition features three quilts with functional images from PET and fMRI scanning, a knitted brain, and two fabric pieces interpreting single neuron recording."

Their disclaimer amuses this soon-to-undergo-MRI-scan woman: "While our artists make every effort to insure accuracy, we cannot accept responsibility for the consequences of using fabric brain art as a guide for functional magnetic resonance imaging, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, neurosurgery, or single-neuron recording."

Found via the scary, slightly incomprehensible Knitting For Nerds which also includes links to knitted nonorientable manifolds (no, I don't know either) and The Periodic Table sweater.

Joan Eardley

One of my biggest regrets about falling ill right now is that I have missed out on an exhibition of Joan Eardley's work. She is probably my favourite Scottish painter and I had been looking forward to the National Gallery of Scotland's first major Eardley exhibition. Before Christmas I was too busy to find time to make the trek to Edinburgh (and to be honest, the prospect of travelling anywhere near the middle of Edinburgh at the height of the shopping season scared me profoundly), but I had promised myself that post-Christmas I'd have a few weeks to catch up. As it turned out, I did not. Grrr.

But Eardley is wonderful. The painting I posted above ("Two Children") can be seen at Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum. The piece is big, powerful and almost overwhelming. It feels out of time - very modern, very traditional and very much of its time .. all at once. The Eardley paintings I have been fortunate to see all share this strange quality; they also share a quiet anger, an air of resigned melancholy. Her famous depictions of children have an odd, almost urban art feel to them coupled with a traditional motif (- and I cannot resist her almost nonchalant use of lettering). Eardley's later landscapes are almost abstract by comparison.

In unrelated news, I'm halfway through Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I tried reading it a few years ago but gave up after 45 pages or so. This time I'm mostly confined to my bed and am enjoying taking my time with the book. Sometimes you have to be in the right frame of mind for a book to find you.

Destroy in Order to Create

To make a Dadaist poem:

* Take a newspaper.
* Take a pair of scissors.
* Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
* Cut out the article.
* Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
* Shake it gently.
* Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
* Copy conscientiously.
* The poem will be like you.
* And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

- Tristan Tzara

Public Writing

One of my current preoccupation is the idea of public writing - that is, writing/lettering/typography found in public places and spaces. I take photos whenever I see somebody doing something interesting - whether they be commissioned or non-commissioned pieces. I have even tentatively put together a small Flickr-set of some of my photos. One of my favourite examples stem from my erstwhile hometown of Copenhagen, Denmark. I was walking along a wall when I noticed the street name elaborately carved into the bricks. Above the carved brick you had the traditional blue-white street sign with the same name. Two centuries of labelling streets in one go. I was excited by the juxtapositions: permanence vs. easily replaced and serif vs sans-serif. I was also excited by how the contemporary street sign had been placed higher than the carved brick as if to exercise its dominance, its importance.

One of my Scottish friends, Fi, works as a curator and we recently spoke about the concept of public lettering and writing. Fi mentioned that the first thing was sprung to her mind was the Scottish Parliament's Canongate Wall. It is absolutely fascinating: various stones with quotes on Scottish identity and history are inserted into an outer wall, so anybody walking along the street will be asked to reflect upon Scotland, art and identity. Even the pavement has slates engraved with sentences. And, as I agreed with Fi, that is really a great example of public space and writing being combined to great effect.

And then you have non-commissioned stuff like graffiti and posters and random notes put up in windows..

Greetings

GeoGreeting is a really nice idea: images taken from Google Earth show buildings shaped as letters when viewed from above. You can then combine the letters/buildings to send online greetings. It's that latter bit which doesn't really work for me, but I do enjoy exploring the various letters. The "o" is particularly beautiful.