Posts Tagged ‘Transformation’
Travel Writing as a Career?
Check out this web chat about travel writing and global networking experiences.
http://moneyfortraveling.com/specialty/travel-writing/start-a-writing-career/
Resources:
Alien Weeds
Patterson Clark shared his harvesting and art making processes at the Annual Meeting of the Audubon Naturalist Society last week at Woodend Sanctuary in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
I admire his dedication and inventiveness. Take a look at his brilliant art made of weed pulp paper and essence of weed ink, plus a ferocious amount of creative energy.
In my own quest to help native plants, I usually pull Lonicera japonica out of the trees or bushes it is choking and weave the vines into baskets.
Lonicera japonica aka honeysuckle.
More information:
Urban Jungle column in Washington Post
Invasive Plant Species in the Mid-Atlantic – National Park Service
Magician : Attention
During a totally unrelated search, I came across my short article about Charles Green III, a slight of hand magician who I interviewed for a piece that ran in the Washington Post Magazine a few years ago in 1993.
Part of the article appears in this High Beam abstract which collects a fee from readers. As you may know, free lance writers do not receive a portion of the fees collected by content databases. Oh well, that’s the “free” part of free-lancing.
So, where is Charles Green III today, I wondered. Turns out he has gone global and speaks about improving presentation skills. A magician of presentation!
I like his tips for delivering a strong audience-engaging presentation. Anyone who has waited while attendants fuss with laptops, remote gadgets and projectors before a briefing, lecture, panel discussion or press conference knows that if the equipment can fail, it will. Even if you do practice and test beforehand.
Read more about Improving Presentations.
The master of magic is Ricky Jay, who is a fantastic author and historian. His book, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women explains much of the American fascination with flashy teeth, slick hair, money conjurers and religion.
Gastronomica Reader :: Wikimania 2012
The Gastronomica Reader
Univ of California Press, 2010.
What fun to find that the Gastronomica Reader , which includes my long article about Diana Kennedy and Mexican organic farming, is on a book list run by an Estonian webrarian!
Fun because this connects directly to last week’s Wikimania 2012 in Washington, DC where I met a wikimanian from Estonia, Raul Veede. Synchronicity and random serendipity are the most reliable indicators I follow in order to avoid the contrived pressures of marketing, crowd control, greed and aggression. Long life the randomness of the internet and the global volunteer efforts of wiki writers everywhere.
P.S. If you’ve used Wikipedia, consider making a donation. What would we do without it?
The Eye Has to Travel
At Silver Docs a few days ago, during the Documentary Film Festival at AFI in Silver Spring, I swooned over this film DV:The Eye Has to Travel about Diana Vreeland. She was the editrix-empress of Vogue, long before the Devil Wears Prada. The director of the documentary answered questions after 
the screening and revealed she is married to one of Vreeland’s grandchildren the access to contacts and family archives was fluid. Said the film project grew out of a book she was already working on. The images are fab — wry, witty commentary on the 1960s and 70s.
U.S. Flags and Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare
“It has become so to-day that when you see the flag boldly and proudly displayed you smell a rat somewhere. The flag has become a cloak to hide iniquity. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy. ”
Henry Miller portrait from Library of Congress.
Author Henry Miller wrote this in 1941 during a cross-country road trip of the United States of America. He had lived in Paris during the 1930s and settled in California after returning to the States, as described in the Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
I apply Henry Millers mid 20th century observations to the 21st century ornamental habit practiced by Congressional elites, Cabinet members and corporate executives — the wearing small U.S. flag pins on their suit lapels. Do they control the flag and what it stands for?
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Henry Miller, New Directions Publishing Corp, 1945, p. 37.
Henry Miller Online Resources:
A review of Air-Conditioned Nightmare that appeared in The Satirist.
Henry Miller website by Valentine Miller, his daughter.
Nexus, The Henry Miller Journal.
Henry Miller Memorial Library, Big Sur, California
Art Emerges with Mystery
“Every creative artist is a unique individual who has (her) his feet firmly planted in mid-air. He uses all his negative energies — tensions, anxieties and other vulnerabilities — and transforms them into rich reservoirs of positive forces, from which (her) his art emerges carrying with it the mystery and wonder of the unknown.” Michael Ponce de Leon
Who is Michael Ponce de Leon, I wondered, as I copied this quotation from an exhibition of Jung’s metaphysical work The Red Book at the Library of Congress, Autumn 2010? Clearly an artist who understands process of transformation, consciousness and catalyst creation.
The New York State Archives answered:
- Ponce de Leon, Michael, 1922-
Michael Ponce de Leon papers, 1943-1979
1.0 linear ft. (partially microfilmed on 2 reels)
Microfilmed portion must be consulted on microfilm. Use of unmicrofilmed portion requires an appointment and is limited to Washington, D.C. storage facility.Printmaker, cartoonist; New York, N.Y. Correspondence; sketchbooks; writings; photographs; drawings; exhibition catalogs and announcements; and clippings.REELS N69-127 & N70-14: Correspondence relating to Ponce de Leon’s service as a cartoonist with the U.S. Air Force during World War II, his trip, 1967-1968, to India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department to encourage better relations through art, his teaching appointments and exhibits; journal notes and writings concerning his trips to India, Cambodia and Thailand, his own work, teaching, Norwegian graphics and the art process; sketches and cartoons; sketchbooks containing figure studies, still lifes and sketches of Indian life; clippings, exhibition catalogs and printed material; and photographs of Ponce de Leon and his works of art. Correspondents include Elmer Davis for the O.W.I., critic John Canaday, art historian Jacinto Quirarte, and others.
UNMICROFILMED: A congratulatory letter from David Goddard upon receiving a Guggenheim award, 1967; photos and slides of Ponce de Leon’s work, a slide of him in a workshop, and photos showing his metal collage intaglio printing technique; exhibition catalogs and announcements, reprints, clippings, miscellaneous notes, three cartoon drawings, and an intaglio, “There’s a Time.”
35mm microfilm reels N69-127 & N70-14 available for use at Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan. Material on reels N69-127 & N70-14 lent for microfilming 1969 and unmicrofilmed material donated 1977-1979 by Michael Ponce de Leon. Reels N69-127 & N70-14: Originals returned to Michael Ponce de Leon after microfilming.
Subjects: Prints — Technique — 20th century.; War in art.; World War, 1940-1945 — Caricatures and cartoons.; Hispanic American artists.
