Henry Darger Had a Posse

I recently have been appraising an estate’s art collection, and came across a few pieces that I couldn’t identify.  They resembled Henry Darger, but after close investigation, I do not think that these pieces are his.  There are children in them,

however, they do not look like the Vivian Girls exactly.  The title of this piece is “The Best Band Ever”.  I am still trying to verify the artist, but have enjoyed learning about Henry Darger, who Natalie Merchant wrote a song about. I have been fascinated with this artist since I started the research and have reblogged the following post, which I stumbled upon in my research. The title is from the post which I reblogged.

The writings, collages, drawings and paintings of Henry Darger have amazed viewers all over the world. His artwork explodes with color, patterns, landscapes, fantastic creatures, epic battles, evil Glandalinian soldiers and the brave Vivian Girl Princesses. Darger captured his world through a lifetime of art making and writing. He called his world the Realms of the Unreal. He produced a novel of over 15,000 typed pages and approximately 300 illustrations. Writing and art-making allowed Darger the freedom to express his views on issues such as: injustices against children, his relationship with God and the importance of protecting childhood innocence.
Darger’s novel focused on a team of heroines who fought against child slavery in the Realms, they were called the Vivian Girls. Darger collected countless photo clippings of children from newspapers, and used them as drawing references. Darger constructed beautiful landscapes for the girls to frolic in and created creatures to…

View original post 2,739 more words

Time to Create

Mary Oliver

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

– Mary Oliver

To write to your heart’s content….paint till you drop…play music obsessively…whichever you even have the tiniest spark to do,  just start.  We can surprise ourselves and find out things about ourselves we never realized we could do, just because we started!  – JQ

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. […]
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

From “Wild Geese”;

Dream Work (1986)

Waters of Life

Utagawa Kuniyoshi スクナビコナ

“We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion…This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy.”

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama (via samsaranmusing)

Happy New Year 2013!…

Jan

Jean Michel Basquiat

“I start a picture and I finish it. I don’t think about art while I work. I try to think about life.”

– Jean Michel Basquiat

Happy Birthday Mark Rothko!

Happy Birthday Mark Rothko!
September 25, 1903

“I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

Bottom: No. 61 (Rust and Blue), 1953, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Source: robertwash

Rythym From Within (photos by Michael Philip Manheim)

Michael Philip Manheim has been a professional photographer since 1969. A chance encounter with photography, at the age of 13, locked him onto a life-long pursuit. Intrigued with the themes of change and transformation, Manheim developed a signature style of layering whole phases of movement onto a single frame of film. This approach transcends a literal interpretation. He calls this series the “Rhythm from Within”.

Michael Philip Manheim’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Germany, Greece and Italy. His work has been featured in magazines such as Zoom (U.S. and Italy), Photographers International (Taiwan), La Fotografia (Spain), Black and White magazine, and numerous other publications. He has been Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, ME and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.

Manheim’s photographs are held in public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, the Danforth Museum of Art and the Bates College Museum of Art. He has had over 15 solo exhibitions. Julian Cox, curator of photography at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, noted that Manheim’s photographs “have passion and beauty, and clearly considerable skill has gone into their execution.”

Music by Budd/Foxx, ‘Here and Now’
Thank you shivabel!

In T’ai Chi, every movement we make should be like a string of pearls…the beauty of the human form. – JQ

The Mystery

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.   -Ken Kesey

photo via Ensuite  Assai

Loie Fuller

Loie Fuller dancing with her veil, 1897

Photograph by Isaiah West Taber (1830-1912)

(C) RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Michèle Bellot

Koloman Moser

Fuller depicted by Koloman Moser (1901)

“to Odette”

Fair white swan of mystic night
singing me wave upon wave
of moonlight

you spin and white lace encircles you
spirals of echoing light

a rapid bouree to a moonbeam
and the cold calculating scent of morning
hangs like icicles from your breath

caress me gently, my dove,
kiss me!
– the cold still kiss of night
of death
(a wane hand upon my shoulder now)

embrace
a circle of lines
a symmetry of passion
ending in arabesque
your converging planes
form a portal to my soul

love, fair, sweet swan of love!

-(c) 1998 Gustav BenJava

Ernesto Che Guevara

Ernesto Che Guevara 

In 1999 I was visiting Cuba during the 40th celebration of the Cuban Revolution (1953-1959).  Havana was in  full celebration throughout the city and along The Malecón,  ( broad esplanade, roadway and seawall which stretches for 8 km along the coast in Havana, Cuba).  One of the things I will never forget is running into a group of women in high spirits shouting ‘We love Che!  He is our ‘martyr’.  At that moment I especially realized the incredible importance of Ernesto Che Guevara to the Cuban people.  The following is a contemplation of this special man.  -J. Quigley

“In 1956 Guevara, Castro and eighty other men and women arrived in Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the government of General Fulgencio Batista. This group became known as the July 26 Movement. The plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro’s guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.

When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista’s soldiers. In some cases the peasants also joined Castro’s army, as did students from the cities and occasionally Catholic priests.

In an effort to find out information about the rebels people were pulled in for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured. Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining the revolutionaries. The behaviour of Batista’s forces increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958 forty-five organizations signed an open letter supporting the July 26 Movement. National bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants and social workers were amongst those who signed. Castro, who had originally relied on the support of the poor, was now gaining the backing of the influential middle classes.

In its first hundred days in office Castro’s government passed several new laws. Rents were cut by up to 50 per cent for low wage earners; property owned by Fulgencio Batista and his ministers was confiscated; the telephone company was nationalized and the rates were reduced by 50 per cent; land was redistributed amongst the peasants (including the land owned by the Castro family); separate facilities for blacks and whites (swimming pools, beaches, hotels, cemeteries etc.) were abolished.”

via warriorsrise:

Jane & Serge