Oliver Sacks, Vintage, 2004.

These are less a memoir than the story of a boy’s recapitulation of the discoveries of pre-Quantum chemistry. Sacks tells the story of his love affair with chemistry, as fostered by his Uncles (including the eponymously apellated Uncle Tungsten). His enthusiasm is contagious, and his highs of discovery made me want to rush out and buy a chemistry kit … although, as he points out, today’s chemistry sets are sadly hamstrung by the removal of anything that could be dangerous — which is to say, anything interesting. His interweaving of stories of stinkbombs and metallic sodium explosions with the history of how these same chemical processes became understood makes the history accessible — not to mention more impressive.
It made me think about the knowledge that is today taken for granted (e.g., the air we breathe is a mixture of gases, and different kinds of “air” can be emitted from various chemical reactions), and the profundity of these discoveries.
Perhaps I learned less about the chemical properties of various elements than I could have from this book, but I certainly did take away a sense of the history of chemistry, a sense of the magic, and a sense of the enormously exciting environment of discovery that took place through the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Even though I’ve been working on it for about six months, I’m still in that excited, “hey this is great!” stage with my new teapot series. Usually, by this time, my enthusiasm has run out, and I’ve fallen into the depths of blackest despair over the general unworthiness of the project in question.

This series is based upon the shape of human heads. The inspiration has its genesis in teapots I did years ago, but got rekindled with Joey, and then later Sylph from last year.

The current series is less about pure representation, however. The first in the series, Identity Politics is online (although I’m not happy with the photography. I’ll probably reshoot this.) Recently out of the kiln, but not yet photographed, is Gabba Gabba Hey, which is a commentary on cell-phone culture, and Time of Your Life which is a simple summary of a life. Most recently, Hope has been bisqued, and Paranoia / Homeland Security is ready for the bisque. These two both involve modified or sectioned head forms, and I’m really pleased with both of them thus far. Last night I started work on War Widow, which will return slightly towards the more representational.

Pictures will be posted as they get completed.

There’s a show on at the County Art museum: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880–1920: Design for the Modern World which I visited with my folks yesterday. I’ve always liked “Craftsman” style, but didn’t have a good feeling for how it fits in with other styles of design and schools of art. I’ve always been partial to Green & Green craftsman style, Art Nouveau and Tiffany, Jugendstil, Bauhaus and the whole German Expressionist movement, but this exhibit gave me a glimpse into how they interrelate.
The show is organized by country, which gives a strong impression of the regional variations of the style; this could, of course, be an artifact of the pieces available in the collection.
What surprised me was the diversity of the movement: everything from almost pathologically-detailed Islamic-inspired detail work to very plain, simple work. It seems that one of the common threads in the Arts and Crafts movement, aside from the stated goals, was a sense of elegance.
As ever, the exhibit made me want to get out the calligraphy pens, the stained-glass and soldering iron, clay, woodworking tools, and learn to make jewelry all at once.

I braved the rain last night to see Joanne Jaffe and Evelyn Wilson’s opening at The Gallery of Functional Art at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station.
Joanne is showing a collection of outstanding vessels decorated with Aztec-inspired sgrafitto, along with a smaller collection of abstract sculptures with a columnar and egg-like shapes.
Evelyn is showing sculptures of people, mostly in small groups, in sorts of tableux of everyday life.

It’s worth going to check out!

F. Scott Fizgerald, 1922, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com

There is little to say about Fitzgerald that has not been said (with copious references and footnotes) by my betters. So I will merely say that this book has little to recommend it if you’re looking for sympathetic characters, an engaging plot, or even a rollicking good story. It’s a long book for the events it describes. The main characters are frustratingly shallow, misguided, and objectionable on virtually every level.
But don’t take any of this as a recommendation to avoid the book.
The Beautiful and the Damned has an astonishing collection of descriptions of people in circumstances that are so evocative that you could swear you’d been there. It features goosebump-inducing descriptions of people’s internal dialogue that ring frighteningly true. Fitzgerald makes their despair and desperation palpable. You’ll find yourself sharing the characters’ frequent need for a drink. And some of their less-shallow moments of self-reflection are nothing short of beautiful.