eMusings

Let's start April off with a smile, and hope it continues through the month:

Laughing Squid tickles our ivories with animated fonts. They take us a long way from verdana and arial.

Water-jet cut aluminum and stainless steel make up the site-specific sculptures of Mia Pearlman. Explore the site further and you will find pieces in blown glass as well. They are compatible with the squiggling fonts seen above.

Penny Olson uses aluminum in a different way. Olson describes her material as "dye-infused aluminum". Rather than the wriggling contortions of Pearlman, these pieces project an intense intimacy, a sense of inner quiet. In a frenetic world, Olson's sense of tranquility reigns quietly supreme. Her website includes this quote from the filmmaker Dziga Vertov: Our eyes see very little and very badly - so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena. They invented the telescope...to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten....I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it."

Some of the treasures of the Bardo Museum in Tunisia can be seen here, before they were recently destroyed in an act of barbarity. The tragedy is not only in the loss of irreplaceable art, but in our inability to convince our sisters and brothers of the sanctity of cultural heritage.

If you are unlikely, as I am, to travel through the vastness of a Vietnamese cave, you can watch this vimeo of Han Son Doong, said to be the world's largest cave. First created millions of years ago, the limestone cave was recorded by American photographer Ryan Deboodt using arial drones.

This article from the New Yorker magazine explores the sound installations of a Berkeley, California team known as Meyer Sound Laboratories. John and Helen Meyer create environments that use sound to enhance the experience of dining, for example, so that the usual cacophony of a restaurant is muted and convivial.

The Center for Fine Art Photography is featuring the intense photographs of Youngho Kang in a portfolio called "99 Variations". With titles like "A deep river that runs behind the back" and "The prison that does not regret", Kang brings passion and empathy to the world around him, immersing us in an atmosphere of barely suppressed turmoil.

Theodor Geisel, known fondly as Dr. Seuss, loved architectural drawing. His imaginative houses and villages with oddly-shaped roofs, strange color schemes, and wildly creative shapes filled his books. Other designers and architects were inspired by his fanciful ideas as well. This site shows you some of his work, and some work that was inspired by him. It's an interesting journey.

Stephanie Metz does wondrous things with wool and porcupine quills. The contrast of materials is intriguing in itself, but the shapes that she achieves are equally seductive. There are other fine works on her site, so do explore. Basically she is drawing attention to bioengineering and the responsibility that humans bear in their control over other life forms.

Now that you have flown over and through the world's largest cave, in Viet Nam, it is time to go inside of an Alaskan Ice Cave. Near Juneau, Alaska, sits the Mendenhall Glacier, a 12-mile long sheer ice formation that allows visitors to walk across the top of the glacier. These photographs, untouched, will give you a good view of what can be experienced there.

Mirrored architecture seems to be much in vogue right now. The results are often startling, sometimes disconcerting, and certainly challenging. From Australia, to Sweden, to the Netherlands, here are some examples of the genre as currently in practice.

Those of you who have visited San Diego are familiar with the colorful and provocative sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle. The French-American artist is now being honored with a retrospective at Guggenheim Bilbao and the results are as hilarious and challenging as you could wish. Be sure to see "Gwendolyn" and "View of the Tarot Garden".

Tony Cragg is a British sculptor who works out of Germany. About 25 years ago he was the darling of the curatorial world. For those who are now not familiar with his work, this exhibition in Edinburgh serves as a good reminder of what a master crafsman he was. An additional piece called "Britain Seen from the North" was acquired by the Tate in 1982. In his own words, Cragg described his passions this way: Simple processes. With materials no one else wants. Ideas that interest me. Images that interest me. Made where people let me make them....Works in which I learned from the materials. Works like pictures. Meanings I intended. Meanings that surprised me. Personal references. Cultural references. No references."

Phyllida Barlow revels in visual chaos, the bigger the better. Frequently her massive installations are taken apart after an exhibition, the materials to be reused in another explosive piece. Now 70, she has achieved an eniviable position as a leading British sculptor. Barlow loves the blob and the lump, so you can imagine that a spirit of playfulness fills her sculptures.

If you are curious about Google's planned headquarters, here you will find renderings of what is in store for the city of Mountain View, California. The technology to realize some of these schemes, like the giant canopies, has not been developed yet. Translucent enclosures blend outside and inside; solar canopies protect pedestrians and cyclists; an aerial view resembles a diaphanous cocoon. It is expected that construction will not begin for another five years.

Art, and culture, seem to be threatening radical regimes. In addition to the destruction of priceless artifacts at the Bardo Museum in Tunisia, ISIS has trashed the Mosul Museum, the second largest in Iraq and home of artworks representing thousands of years of Iraq history. This violence was preceded by the burning of the Mosul Public Library. The invaders claimed that the art pieces were "idols for Gods that were worshiped in contradiction of worshiping one God: Allah". Using electric drills, the militants destroyed a gigantic winged bull that stood for thousands of years from the ancient Ninevah civilization.

c. Corinne Whitaker 2015