If you thought Modernism was little more than straight lines, mechanized systems, and sterile environments, you’re gonna want to get a load of this gorgeous Alvar Aalto chair at SPOMa: Spokane Modern Architecture, 1948–73. The exhibit opens this Saturday at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. In addition to the sumptuous curves above, you’ll see designs by Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and George Nelson.
Yesterday afternoon, CK Anderson, John Mraz, and the MAC‘s Ryan Hardesty (above) installed the first display shelf and case for the upcoming SPOMa exhibit. Both shelving and hardware were designed by helveticka and fabricated by Hydrafab Northwest; the custom Plexiglas case was built by Perception Plastics. SPOMa opens March 2 and runs for eight months.
It’s the High Priestess of Soul’s birthday today. Nina Simone, the devilishly hard-to-categorize singer, songwriter, and arranger who died in France in 2003, would have been 80. You can read all about her on Wikipedia—and you really ought to, if only to gain a full appreciation of her musical genius—but today, I’d rather you just listened. So here she is with the definitive version of the traditional spiritual “Sinnerman” from her 1965 album Pastel Blues.
Visitors to the upcoming SPOMa exhibit are in for a special treat: a 40′ x 18′ mural, adapted from a 2012 Harold Balazs painting entitled Swimming By. Volunteers, led by Whitworth University associate professor of art Gordon Wilson and with the full participation of Balazs himself, are currently about a third of the way through the project, and should have it completed by Friday.
A few millennia of music history boiled down to a seven-minute video? I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But apart from a few quibbles (The Doors? Seriously?), I’ve got to hand it to Pablo Morales.
Be sure to watch to the very end.
There’s more to a museum exhibit than hanging a few pretty pictures on a wall. First, you need some walls. CK snapped this photo last week as workers at the MAC began construction in preparation for SPOMa, which opens March 2. Painting will be done tomorrow and Wednesday, then display cases installed, then…well, you’ll just have to come see for yourself.
Ah, Valentine’s Day. A holy day of obligation for attached men; weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth for single women. Oh, and something about a Christian martyr who was tortured to death in Rome around 269 AD—but let’s not talk about that.
It turns out we can blame Chaucer for the commodification of this particular feast day. In Parliament of Foules (circa 1381), he wrote, “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.” It was, as far as we know, the first mention of St. Valentine’s Day as a special day for lovers.
Here’s a decidedly different take on love, circa 1985:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWhpk-8QLFQ
Yet more evidence that Truman Capote fictionalized parts of In Cold Blood—his celebrated 1966 “nonfiction novel.” But does it really matter?
Unless there’s a larger discrepancy than what’s reported here by the Wall Street Journal, then, well…no. Capote was well-known for his belief that “the taking of notes, much less the use of a tape recorder, creates artifice and distorts or even destroys any naturalness that might exist between the observer and the observed, the nervous hummingbird and its would-be captor.” He committed everything to memory; as soon as an interview was over, he quickly wrote down everything he’d been told. Quite honestly, I’m astonished he got as much right as he did.
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother me that, nearly 50 years after In Cold Blood was published, people are still getting their panties in a bunch over its author’s “journalistic sins.” Of course, the fact that the book is an absolute feast of finely tuned prose doesn’t hurt, either.
Smackdown! Montana State University paleontologist Jack Horner and Yale Institute for Biospherics postdoctoral fellow Nick Longrich debate the burning question: “Is Torosaurus a distinct dinosaur species or just an adult Triceratops?”
Marine biologists from Japan have finally confirmed what sailors and fishermen have been telling them for years: squid can fly.
The 48th Mersenne prime was discovered last month. It clocks in at 17,425,170 digits.
Mitosis-inspired architecture at the University of California, Irvine.
And finally, moles smell in stereo. “I thought the moles’ nostrils were too close together to effectively detect odor gradients,” marveled researcher Kenneth Catania, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University. We’re just as surprised as you are, Kenneth.
Behold! Jargon Madness! After having to live with this steaming load of codswallop for the last 11 years or so, it’s nice to see a mainstream magazine like Forbes finally poking fun at the pretentious twits responsible for, among other crimes against humanity, turning “ask” into a noun.
My Final Four predictions? Ideate, Best-of-Breed, Optics, and Fail. And I’m putting all my money on Ideate.
So it’s February 2013 already, and I just realized that I neglected to share my top 10 albums from 2012.
Is it too late? No? Good. Thanks for understanding.
This year, I’m going to throw in a couple of bonus selections: two albums that, while not exactly new, were first made available in 2012. Let’s start with those first.
Grateful Dead, Spring 1990: So Glad You Could Make It—a more affordable two-CD version of the mammoth, limited-edition release that only comfortably retired hippies could afford
Terje Rypdal, Odyssey: In Studio & In Concert—the best guitar player you’ve never heard of, Rypdal is at the top of his game in this first-on-CD complete version (plus bonus tracks) of the original 1975 album
Now for the top 10 new releases of 2012…
Dave Douglas, Be Still—a sublime recording of Douglas’s jazz quintet fronted by contemporary bluegrass singer Aoife O’Donovan (listen to “Be Still My Soul”)
Porcupine Tree, Octane Twisted—live Porcupine Tree, which means I shouldn’t have to say any more
Krzysztof Penderecki / Jonny Greenwood, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, etc.—the avant-garde composer meets the Radiohead guitarist
Storm Corrosion, Storm Corrosion—debut collaboration between Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson and Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt
Arvo Pärt, Creator Spiritus—Pärt creates some of the most ethereally beautiful music you’ll ever hear
Chick Corea / Eddie Gomez / Paul Motian, Further Explorations—one of the last albums Motian recorded before he died last year, this is a double-disc live set of standards (mostly by Bill Evans) plus some original tunes
Stile Antico / Fretwork, Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart—Tudor and Jacobean sacred music for private devotion
Steve Kuhn Trio, Wisteria—Kuhn re-unites with Steve Swallow, one of my favorite electric bass players, for a surprisingly varied program
Return to Forever, The Mothership Returns—with the addition of flutist Jean-Luc Ponty, Return to Forever breathes new life into some of their classic material from the 70s
Baroness, Yellow & Green—my son and I were gobsmacked when we saw these guys open for Mastodon a couple of years ago, and they just keep getting better (listen to “Green Theme”)
What with libraries offering pole-dancing lessons and Amazon giving away books, you’ve got to wonder: is anybody out there, you know…reading? I mean, why bother?
Well, it turns out that it just might save your life.
Florence, New Jersey, population 12,109, is home to one of the more unusual artifacts from World War II: Hitler’s toilet. From the story:
“…the toilet has all the traits of a toilet from a ship—including an open side slot for seawater to be pumped in. The knobs on the faucet bear text written in Blackletter—the famous and classically German family of typefaces that Hitler adored. (The Nazis, in 1933, chased typographer Jan Tschichold out of Germany for advocating use of sans-serif fonts instead of Blackletter, among other design travesties.)”
Gasp! Sans serif?!? Just when you thought the Nazis couldn’t be any more evil.
Tschichold went on to design the Sabon font in 1967; one of its earliest uses is in Bradbury Thompson‘s Washburn College Bible.
In 1978, a helicopter pilot spotted something deep in the Siberian wilderness that shouldn’t have been there: a large garden.
Here’s the fascinating story—and a follow-up.
Want to succeed in life? An academic at the University of Virginia recommends expanding your vocabulary.
But don’t just grab the nearest dictionary, cautions E. D. Hirsch, Jr., professor emeritus of education and humanities: “A large vocabulary results not from memorizing word lists but from acquiring knowledge about the social and natural worlds.”
So…pick up a book. And read it.
