The Montréal Botanical Garden has been offering its millions of visitors an unforgettable experience for over 80 years. This summer The International Mosaiculture event is back after a ten-year absence on view at the Botanical Garden from June 22 to September 29, 2013.
This incredible display of two and three-dimensional constructions, cultivated by 200 international horticultural artists originating from more than 20 countries, makes it the largest eco-responsible event to come to Quebec.
Mosaiculture is a multifaceted discipline, drawing on a range of craftsmanship and knowledge — sculpture for the framework, painting for chroma, and ecology, for the understanding of the maintenance of the floral medium. This year’s event challenged the artists around the theme ‘land of hope’ as it reflects their own culture, drawing influences from icons of peace and promise for a environmentally sound world. Collectively, over three million colorful flowers and plants were used in the environmental designs, creating a colossal body of living vibrant art.
Sarah Goodridge or Goodrich (American miniaturist, 1788-1853) Self-Portrait c 1825 Watercolor on ivory. Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum
I first discovered Sarah Goodridge’s portraits visiting an historical society in Westminster, Massachusetts. Goodridge was born in 1788 in nearby Templeton, Massachusetts, the sixth of nine children, she showed an early propensity for drawing. It is said that as a child, she came across a book on drawing & painting & taught herself to draw. Growing up on a farm, with little money to buy paper, she drew her earliest pictures on the sanded kitchen floor with a stick or on sheets of peeled birch bark with a pin. A move to Boston in 1820, brought her to study with the celebrated portraitist Gilbert Stuart. Under Stuart’s influence her skill increased markedly. Upon arrival in Boston, she opened a studio and commenced a nearly thirty-year career in making miniature portraits, often two or three per week.
Sarah Goodridge. Self-Portrait, 1830. Watercolor on ivory. 3 3/4″ x 2 5/8″ (9.52 x 6.73 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Miss Harriet Sarah Walker.
Goodrich developed an ongoing love relationship with Boston lawyer & politician Daniel Webster (1782-1852), who was married with 3 children, when she painted his first portrait. He sat for at least 12 more portraits over the next 25 years. Their friendship is documented in 44 letters,that Webster wrote to Goodridge between 1827 & 1851. She carefully preserved his letters to her; he destroyed her letters to him.
Sarah Goodridge Goodrich (American miniaturist, 1788-1853) Daniel Webster 1825
After Webster’s 1st wife died, Goodridge painted for her intimate friend a daring miniature self-portrait of her bare breasts naming it Beauty Revealed. Webster may have been appreciative of her gift, but he was an ambitious man who needed significant amounts of capital to fuel his conservative political ambitions. He chose his new wife, Caroline LeRoy, from a wealthy & prominent family. Webster tucked Goodrich’s self-portrait of her breasts away among his personal papers. The miniature was then purchased by Richard and Gloria Manney, who owned it for 30 years and then donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Beauty Revealed” Inscribed 1828 & presented to Daniel Webster by the artist. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Goodridge was a businesswoman as well as an artist, so she must have known that her self-portraits functioned as an advertisement of her skill, as marketing tools, in effect. Her 1845 self portrait (shown below) is both an example of her work, and it is an illustration of her profession where she fashioned herself as an artist at work at her easel. She was somewhere between forty-five and fifty-two years old when she painted it. Her eyes are lowered, denying the viewer the typical eye-to-eye confrontation that usually adorns self-portraits. Partial views of her water glass, her hand, and her shawl hint at her illustrated profession. Posing herself working at her easel, she assumes an active, preoccupied role, too busy even to look at the viewer/mirror.
Sarah Goodridge. Self-Portrait, ca. 1845. Courtesy of the R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, La.
She never married and earned enough money to raise an orphaned niece and take care of her invalid mother for eleven years, which in itself was remarkable for a woman in the Jacksonian era. In 1850, due to failing eyesight, Goodridge retired to a house she bought in Reading, Massachusetts. Three years later she died of a stroke at the age of 65.
Here’s a contemporary museum that I would like to visit. The collection at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel represents some of the leading artists of the first half of the 20th century and many of the major movements of modern art in this period.
The new Herta and Paul Amir Building on the western side of the museum opened in November, 2011. It houses an Israeli Architecture Archive, and a new section of photography and visual arts. Designed by architect Preston Scott Cohen it houses 18,500 square feet of gallery space over five floors. The gleaming white curves of the façade are composed of 430 polished cement panels. A vertical “light fall” orientates the visitor, unites all spaces around it, leads from one level to another, and brings natural light to the building’s lower level.
Herta and Paul Amir Building, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, IsraelWalls fold around the entrances to these rooms and appear on approach to be wafer-thin. I like how the windows match the shapes of the triangular and rectangular panels.Dramatically faceted atrium piercing center of new wing at the Tel Aviv Museum of ArtGallery exhibit inside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s new wing.Art Library inside the Herta and Paul Amir Building
What’s on permanent exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art:
The Sheppardess by Vincent Van GoghUntitled (Mother) by Lea NikelThe Zeppelin Over Tel Aviv by Israeli artist Reuven Rubin
New artist: Elad Kopler, Winner of the 2012 Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli Painter
An example of Elad Kopler’s abstract on the disintegration of the real worldUntitled (Detail) 2013 by Elad Kopler
Sand mandala created by Losang Samten in January, 2008 at California State University in Chico
Until relatively recently, if you were not a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the chances of seeing a sand mandala were slim. In 1988, almost three decades after Chinese troops marched into Tibet, the Dalai Lama broke with tradition and sent four monks to make a sand mandala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as part of an effort to raise awareness about the culture, religion and plight of Tibet.
Dalai Lama drawing sand mandala Credit: Kazuyoski Nomachi/Corbis
In Tibetan Buddhism, a mandala is an imaginary palace that is contemplated during meditation. Each object in the palace has significance, representing some aspect of wisdom or reminding the meditator of some guiding principle. Various scriptural texts dictate the shapes, forms, and colors of the mandala. There are many different mandalas, each with different lessons to teach and blessings to confer. In the mandala, the outer circle usually symbolises wisdom. The principal deity is housed in the center.
The monks always begin by drawing the axes in the four cardinal directions using chalked string that has been blessed. With large wooden compasses, small metal calipers, and lots of rulers and pencils, they then create an explosion of radiating spokes, overlapping circles, concentric squares and parallel lines. Just when the confusion seems overwhelming, a monk wipes away the excess chalk guides, and an elegant blueprint of the mandala emerges.
Namgyal Monks beginning a sand mandala
Sand mandalas are made from millions of grains of powdered, colored marble. The monks used a cone-shaped metal funnel, or chak-pur, to pour the sand. Running a metal rod on the chak-pur’s grated surface created vibrations that caused the sand to flow like liquid.
Tibetan Monks Mercy Buddha Mandala Credit: AP Photo/Chiang Ying-yinAdding additional layers of sand give the mandala a more three dimensional look. Credit: City of Austin, Texas/FlickrSymbol of the Deity always resides in the center
To Tibetan Buddhists sweeping up the sand destroying the mandala symbolizes the impermanence of existence. Pouring the sand into water dispersed the healing energies of the mandala throughout the world.
Sweeping up the sand Photo credit: BBC
You can watch a video of construction and destruction of sand mandala:
Before Facebook people kept travel journals to document their summer adventures. I recently saw an article about a wonderful album acquired by the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe Institute written by Helen Augusta Whittier which she titled: “Ye Log of Ye Square Partie at Ye Great Brewster in ye pleasant month of July 1891”. The author was an art teacher, photographer, avid promoter of women’s clubs and an entrepreneur who helped run the family’s mill business in Lowell. Helen, along with three of her well-educated, upper class friends sailed from Rowe’s Wharf in Boston on board the Nantasket Steamer landing at Pemberton Pier in Hull, Massachusetts. There the “merry trippers” changed into more casual clothes and set off for Great Brewster Island in Boston Harbor on a lobster rig piloted by a man they dubbed “William the Swedish fisherman”.
Contemporary view of Great Brewster Island in Boston Harbor
Leaving behind their families (and apparently their identities) they simply called themselves the Autocrat, the gentle Aristocrat, the artistic Acrobat and the veracious Scribe.
Drawing from Helen Augusta Whittier’s album. Credit: Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe Institute/Harvard University
Their journal includes photographs of the house they rented for two weeks as well as floor plans of the rooms.
Photos from Helen Augusta Whittier’s album. Credit: Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe Institute/Harvard University
The acrobat made sketches for the “glorification” of their album and lovely watercolor drawings of sunsets, sailing boats and the wildflowers they collected to decorate their dining room table.
Watercolor of nasturtiums gathered on Great Brewster Credit: Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe Institute/Harvard University
I especially enjoyed reading the daily menus they prepared. Breakfast: coffee, oatmeal, fishballs, salt pork, fried potatoes and toast. Lunch: lobster –just boiled, crackers and preserved giner. Dinner: Fricassee chicken on toast, boiled potatoes and tea.
Photo from Helen Augusta Whittier’s album. Credit: Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe Institute/Harvard UniversityPhoto from Helen Augusta Whittier’s album Credit: Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe Institute/Harvard University
Roughing it on the island included fetching driftwood for the fire, lugging water from the well, walking to the seawall, wading and clamming. William the Swedish fisherman brought them fresh milk, ice for the icebox, newspapers and on one happy occassion chocolates. They also had a visit from the Lighthouse Keeper of Boston Light.
Boston Light Photo Credit: US Coast Guard Auxiliary
For entertainment the trippers wrote verse, sewed, photographed, used a spy glass, sketched, waded in the cold sea, played a board game called halma and card games like solitaire. Believing that “a contented mind is a continual feast” they also read aloud most notably these three books:
The friends weathered rainy days with a sense of humor even when the roof leaked soaking all the bedding in the east room and restless nights when the fog horn kept them awake all night. However when it was time “to leave behind the uneventful days to return to the work-a-day world”, they would miss the fog horn which had come to have a friendly, protective sound. They would return home to “winter fireside dreams of dawns and sunsets by the summer sea.”
Watercolor from Helen Augusta Whittier’s album Credit: Schlesinger Library/Radcliffe Institute/Harvard University
String theory attempts to combine two different theories – Quantum Theory and General Relativity – to create one ultimate theory of the universe.
Quantum Mechanics is a mathematical machine that predicts the behaviors of microscopic particles.
General Relativity was proposed by Einstein. It is the combination of space and time into what Einstein called spacetime. The theory states that rather than matter moving through a passive space-time continuum, that the presence of matter should distort space-time. Spacetime can be warped by forces from massive bodies such as planets.
String Theory postulates that subatomic particles such as quarks and electrons are not points of energy or matter, but are one-dimensional strings. String theory, if true, proves that everything in the universe is actually made up of tiny strings that are constantly vibrating or oscillating. The vibration of the string determines the charge and mass of the greater particle.
ToE
Superstring Theories take this idea and build the entire universe from the bottom up. And yes, it’s as challenging a task as it sounds. That’s why we speak of String Theories in the plural, because there are several different String Theories that attempt to make it all work. Oh, and at least 10 dimensions are called for, too, just for all the math involved. Physicists propose that any dimensions beyond time and visible space are folded up and out of sight.
As you probably guessed, Superstring Theory is still developing, meaning that physicists continue to work out kinks in the individual String Theories. Eventually they’re aiming to fulfill Einstein’s unrealized goal of unifying General Relativity with Quantum Theory. That’s why string theory also is sometimes called a Theory of Everything (ToE), because it could serve someday as a foundation for all future scientific discovery and innovation.
Computer art of Superstrings by Mehau Kulyk/Science Photo Library
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