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Admiring the world’s nicest woodpile…

Stacking by Alastair Heseltine

Larger image here.

Happy is the house that shelters a friend.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of my students brought a brand-spanking-new copy of Patricia Seggebrush’s Encaustic Workshop to class. Though I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, I DID page through and can tell you it’s a juicy one! It’s a technique book chock full of lush, inspiring how-to pics. We passed it around the class (lots of oohs and ahs) and everyone seemed to find something take inspiration from. Highly recommended for students and teachers of encaustic.

My love affair with the The Sartorialist is over. I deleted photographer Scott Schuman’s blog from my blogroll for posting too many glamorized pictures of cigarettes being smoked and for aggressively moderating anti-smoking comments out of his conversation while allowing pro-”ciggy” voices to hold sway.

There are good arguments both for and against the use of destructive imagery in art (yes, I think glamorized images of smoking are destructive). John H. Richardson’s personal take in, “My History of Violence,” is great and though his focus is on violence his arguments apply to all images that depict self-harm or the harm of others. An excerpt:

When I was a cub reporter starting out at the Albuquerque Tribune, I found a report in the police blotter about a pair of 16-year-old lovers who gassed themselves in a car. I about choked on how great a story it was, did a little reporting, found out they did it in a closed garage and that their bodies were discovered by the very same parents who were trying to split them up. Then I pitched it to my editor. no way, he said. I said, “What? Are you crazy? It’s Romeo and fucking Juliet!” He gave me a sad look. “If I run this story, and give it big play and a nice layout, I guarantee you there will be a copycat suicide. Maybe a bunch of them. Do you want that on your conscience?”

I said, it’s not my responsibility what crazy people do. It’s the truth and that’s what I want to write, the truth. Would you tell Shakespeare to stick to comedies? Would you tell Tolstoy to write Peace and Peace?
…

Somehow, my editor managed to resist my blinding rhetorical onslaught. He didn’t run the piece. And I thought, this little burg is just too small-town for me, baby. These people don’t understand art. They don’t understand transgression. So I went to Hollywood. And just after I got there, some guy made a movie called The Program that had a scene where some kids lay down on a highway divider as a dare—and sure enough, there were copycats out in Pennsylvania who laid their dumb asses down on highway dividers and got squashed. And the studio said, hey, it’s not our responsibility what crazy people do. These people just don’t understand art…”

You can read the whole article on Paste.

Those of you charmed by bee imagery should check out Bees in Art, a virtual gallery of lovingly rendered images of honeybees, bumblebees and other Hymenoptera.

Worker Honey Bee, mezzotint engraving by Andrew Tyzack

Curator, artist and beekeeper, Andrew Tyzack, has assembled a collection of vintage books, paintings, drawings and prints that enhance his dramatic paintings of beekeepers at work.

Honey Farming, oil on linen by Andrew Tyzack.

The collection has a storybook quality that’s earnest and sweet and not at all didactic.

I love the softness of this bumblebee.

Bombus Terrestris, print by Richard Lewington

Happiness! Joanne Mattera just posted the preliminary roster for the 2010 Encaustic Painting Conference. I will be there (presenting “Wax Fetish” a new talk/slide show about beeswax, materialism and encaustic paint, more details later.) Readers, If you plan to go, let me know. I’d love to connect with you.

Something warming from the NYTimes, a slide show about a woman who likes to walk.

P.S. I know I’ve been a delinquent blogger lately. It’s been a hectic couple of months. I have missed you.