Category: book shelf

reviews and essentials –

Rosalind & Joan

Posted on Posted in book shelf, creativity, studio tableTagged , , , ,

Is Rarity or scarcity of greater value . Is a topic Infrequently discussed. A topic with more power of attention. There are two loaded subjects: death and sex ..[topic point in EXS, 1974]. If we add aging, have we multiplied a value by its scarcity.

Most artists are interested in self as youth, after all, that is where and when they began . One of the most common pictures seen in freshman photography classes are self portraits from the women students — common trope is legs in tub; while the male students photograph themselves before a mirror holding a camera. The women have taken the picture from their eye view. Men and women place themselves into different environs, engaged in different actions. These transactional differences seem to apply universally across art schools.

One arc: FROM LOOKING AT OTHERS.. TO LOOKING.. looking to seeing?

Fox Solomon says she knew of only two photographers by name when she started making pictures: Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams.

–[At thirty-eight, while living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Rosalind Fox Solomon began a new life as a photographer. Studying with Lisette Model in the early 1970s, she honed the photographic voice which would define the prodigious half-century of work to follow. After moving to a loft in New York City in 1984, and travelling to Peru, India, South Africa, Cambodia, and beyond, she became renowned for her unflinching photography of everyday life around the world.

www.mackbooks.us/products/a-woman-i-once-knew-br-rosalind-fox-solomon

With Camera

–[ The With Camera series (2001—06) marked the first time Joan Semmel purposefully posed in front of the mirror with a camera. Like her earlier Locker-Roomworks (1988—91), these paintings celebrate the aging process through their accurate portrayal of the artist’s body. Semmel continued to develop these ideas in her Framed series (2005—2006), which presented images of her taking photographs framed inside a mirror

I want them to be more than they are… they serve as stand ins for something yet to be filled. My understanding is incomplete. They have a presence I failed. Of course, some of their standing is because of the “Big Empty;” things unexplored. Age happens to be the Box they are filling in. No matter how many items they put into it, it will never be filled.

They do what they do well. That they have done so for so long is sufficient reason for engaging their work.

>> Rosalind Fox Solomon (April 2, 1930 – June 23, 2025. In 2007, the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography acquired Solomon’s archive, which includes her photographic archive, books and video work

>> Joan Semmel (born October 19, 1932…Semmel states, “While my work developed through series, the connecting thread across decades is a single perspective: being inside the experience of femaleness and taking possession of it culturally.

  • Moreland, Quinn (2026-04-15). “‘I wanted my work to be shameless’: 93-year-old artist Joan Semmel on her trailblazing nudes”. The Guardian
  • Richard Meyer, “’Not Me:’ Joan Semmel’s Body of Painting,” in ‘’Solitaire: Lee Lozano, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Joan Semmel’’, edited by Helen Molesworth. (Wexner Center for the Arts, 2008).
  • “Joan Semmel Self-Portraits Offer Vibrant Affirmation of Aging”. Hamptons Art Hub. 2016-09-29
  • You Have to Get Past the Fear”: Joan Semmel on Painting Her Aging, Nude Body, Hyperallergic Magazine September 9, 2016

PKD. Bitbros

Posted on Posted in book shelf, econocaste, stranger land

so poor I left behind unpaid library fines in three states .

Books he never wrote: bitbros: the man in the white castle, or, climbing hoover tower.

ABout: Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) numberica! Dick attended Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California. He and fellow science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin were members of the class of 1947 but did not know each other at the time

Dick was married five times:

  • Jeanette Marlin (May to November 1948)
  • Kleo Apostolides (June 14, 1950, to 1959)
  • Anne Williams Rubinstein (April 1, 1959, to October 1965)
  • Nancy Hackett (July 6, 1966, to 1972)
  • Leslie “Tessa” Busby (April 18, 1973, to 1977)

The man of many drugs, wives and words for a dreamland … billionairions think genius comes to those with accounts. It doesn’t

sci-fi is philosophy without thinking or history 

wealth is a counter indicator of genius . The wealthy prefer to buy their genius .

Leaf & Frank +

Posted on Posted in art stuff, book shelf, studio table, visual mindTagged , ,

Robert Frank ( November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019 ), June Leaf  (August 4, 1929 – July 1, 2024) 

success feeds through interaction . it’s a very fortunate artist who gets to share their life fully with another .

steidl’s ink factory –One form of the atelier. [ g-d couldn’t spell-find ] Home to book forms of both Robert Frank and June Leaf. August 2026 that is changing — [ jul16 steidl news ]

The group can be small, but it must be . In an ideal artworld every0ne is an artist. Your daily minimums are fullfilled by nearest. The scroll unrolls — you mark out portions with increasing fluency. 

The days when the group was a photo lab are gone. The print dryer doesn’t exist. 

work unrolls — The harder part of working is finding others to work with not on your work but on the work they make  that  makes your work .. their work amplified their life.. The coral reef.

Worlds, manners of stimulation — tiktoking between observation and conception — construction and marshalling. 

Steady-state studios over decades in New York and Mabou proved art accumulates within a space. Physical memory. Leaf: “I have discovered that thought is infinite” 1975 — “It is impossible to do the same story every day.” She worked daily, relying upon visual intuitions, much like Robert. Her first training was physical as a ballet dancer. “When I see a drawing it’s like a locomotive or something powerful into which I just put back the machine.” Along her craft path, she learned and built a forge. She builds her drawings/paintings as sculpture. As if forging a multipart art world.

Art has no singularity — all is wireframe. The lucky live within an accepting world that nourishes … Artists do more when living with other artists … 

Fn,  [own] because of so many uses of “hyper-personal” use by Foster. Master’s degree in 1991 from Brown University.[Looking closely and nudging others toward a shift in perception have become life’s work for Foster ] ~b. 1965