+44

Installed at the beginning of the month and in place for twenty-eight more days until the UK’s scheduled departure from the European Union, the always brilliant Nag on the Lake informs that artist Joe Sweeney has placed a telephone booth on Dungeness beach on the south east coast of England that invites public comment and for a forum (telephones can be intimate and powerful props and prompts indeed) for people to share their feelings on Brexit. Designed to be weathered by the elements over the following span of just weeks, the project’s title (one can see it live and leave a message here too) refers to the international dialling code for the UK and the Crown Dependencies.

houtblazer

Via the always outstanding Everlasting Blört, we are regaled with a musical performance from medievalist and musician Jim Spalink on lute, harp and hurdy-gurdy playing the composition branded onto the buttocks of one the unfortunate, tortured souls condemned to the infernal flames of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych (previously) The Garden of Earthly Delights. Spalink had to clean up the notation a bit and got a bit imaginative with the introduction and the end, employing appropriately what’s known as the devil’s interval, a dissonant triton that traditional rules of composition referred to as diabolus in musica, a modality to be eschewed and avoided. Another example of this sort of forbidden chord is in Jimi Hendrix’ opening to Purple Haze.

chiuso or venetian blinds

The always stunning Present /&/ Correct directs our attention to a photography stream focused on closed Italian shops and stalls, Chiuso di Domenica (Closed Sundays, new additions appearing on Sundays)—which when the display windows are protected behind the roll-down metal security slats (la serranda), the typography of the signage—of all vintages and eras—is really teased out of the background. Explore a whole gallery of storefronts after hours at the links above.

bildnerei der geisteskranken

Having visited the Prinzhorn gallery in Heidelberg recently, I had a deep appreciation for this extensive and respectful curation of some of the Outsider Art that comprises the collection from Public Domain Review.
Inspired by Swiss psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler published his studies on the creative and therapeutic energies of Adolf Wölfli, a patient under his care at the Waldau Clinic, assistant to the director of the psychopathology school Hans Prinzhorn amassed a catalogue, drawing on his training as an art historian and informing his overarching theses that we are driven by urges and tendencies to create—to leave traces of ourselves—that are revealed in the repertoire of the mental ill, whose upbringing may not recognise the same norms and mores that would otherwise inhibit examination. Especially worthy of note are the sculptures of former bricklayer Karl Brendel (several pictures at both sources), who until given wood to carve as a medium expressed himself with masticated bread.  More to explore at the links above, including pages and pages of unique and insightful images with attributions at Public Domain Review.

riverboat soul

My Mom introduced me to the musical stylings of Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three, a rambling quartet that defies categorisation, referencing ragtime, bluegrass and swing but refined as to not come off as period or nostalgic. Take a sample with a performance of three songs from NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series that comes a few years after their first album, “Marmelade.” One on of the artist’s new pieces that’s also really catchy—“Something in the Water”—should pop up next in the playlist right after this medley finishes.

daisy bell

Somehow this 1962 MacLaren’s Imperial Cheddar Club Cheese (club referring to a style that blends cheddar with other mature cheeses is flavoured with peppercorn and garlic, the label since wholly acquired by Kraft) advertisement subtlety prefigures the whole distracted boyfriend, me—also me meme.

 

arts & crafts

Hazel Terry of The Art Room Plant provides an exquisite and circumspect tour of the Watts Memorial Mortuary Chapel in the village cemetery of Compton in Surrey that an absolute gem, inside and out of Celtic Revival style filtered through Art Nouveau and Romanesque influences. Beginning construction of a chapel for a new cemetery on the commission of the parish council in 1896, work was overseen by local artist in residence Mary Fraser-Tytler but virtually the entire village—many of whom were precarious-employed as agricultural workers—took part. Much more to explore at the link above.