Look At Me Look At You

What is significantly different about the act of making when the object of the maker is an image of the maker?

The following assigments are due Monday, March 3:

Make a copy of the following article. Read and Annotate your copy and write a (350 word-count at least) response that includes your thoughts on the topics brought up in the article, your experience with self-image using any of the recent technology including Webcam, Cellular Cam-Phone, Digital Video or Photography, MySpace or Facebook or other imaging device. Discuss what is brought up in your thinking when you make a self image. Use MLA formating for your typed edition. So that other classmates can share in your thinking, make a 50 word-count comment to this page about self-image

As a way of entering into a deliberation on the topic of self-imaging and reflectivity in contemporary art please use the following link that will take you to…

Watch Me! Webcams and the Public Exposure of Private Lives
Brooke A. Knight
Art Journal > Vol. 59, No. 4 (Winter, 2000), pp. 21-25
Stable URL: http://ezhc.ez.cwmars.org:4000/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/browse/00043249/ap030159

Effigy of the Art Dealer Mike Tillyer

Thats Head is a Gift of Driftwood

from the Painter Ryan McDonnell

Holding a Painting by the Painter

Ryan McDonnell

of the Head of the Effigy

of the Art Dealer Mike Tillyer

Standing with McDonnell (left) and Tillyer (right)

Clay Vessel

How old does a thing have to be to be ancient? Ancient wisdom is so because it is timeless? Eternity belongs to all time? Is eternity at hand?

er-er-er-er-ooooo: a wake up call

people been askin me “what do I write on my blog”, like I would know what they should write. I say “write what you want” what am I? the answer man!? And another thing–what do all you students want anyways?? is there anybody left to vote for after today? How’d y’all like my junkster rooster? Global Warmin’, y’all

Interior Work: Sculpture in Process on Main Street

For the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to investigate my interior life. It goes with the very cold and dark of the season. Sliding by the winter solstice this year was a trip worth a memoir entry.  To begin with I created a Holy-Family tableau in the WINDOW of the emerging artspace at 126 Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. I titled the work “Holy-Family as Set in Darfur” and it consisted of two figures about 5’4″ and 6′ respectively. The smaller, maternal figure holds a baby in her arms. The objects are made of joined wood and are torched to a charcoal black.  I believe that tragedies such as that in Darfur show how when one people suffer another people gain.  In this case, since so much of the historical legacy that produced conditions leading to the genocide of the Furs by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed belongs to the results of 19th century European colonialism and 20th century Western war,  the suffering of the Furs are evidence in reverse of our great wealth.  How fitting a  remebrance is this  at a season of our tremendous consumerist excess?  Once the family was placed in situ, I had the collaborative participation of Gordon Thorne who built fine junk pile animals sculptures to visit the Holy-Family.  Let a picture and a link suffice for now.  See more at http://www.tillyervision.com and follow links

The Need To Know More

It is one thing, the need to know–another thing, the need to know more. That annoyance is the drive that has built great libraries from the beginning of civilization. As we, this substantial Fall semester cohort, push ahead to perform the rudiments of library research, I share with you this cute little vid from Cornell.

Library Limbo. 2006, Cornell University. 18 November 2007 http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/imagewksh.html

Back on the Scene with Text

My inspiration for creating this blog comes from my very smart daughter (see http://jessicatillyer.wordpress.com/). Since I created this Web log to serve as an example to my writing students who have been given the standing assignment to journal via Weblog as they process through the semester, my posts are small lesson packets. Lessons should be reciprocating, and indeed as I follow my student’s posts these lessons are. Much interesting work is going on out there.

Boy, have I been busy though–I have not posted nary a twinge (textural word choices) in the past two weeks. Business with classes and advising, with extracurriculars and parenting responsibilities have taxed texting time! I do have one post that I have worked on in spare moments. It is about the word “text” and the concept of texture as applied to writing. This “text” post follows:

Texting Me

Text has come to mean a small grouping of words, word fragments, or even invented acronymic constructs that can be sent by electronic means for the purposes of rapid remote communication, and then follows the verb “to text” and gerund “texting” as in text messaging.
IDK--somehow language loses its feel when compressed down to a teensy digital packet that is sent bouncing from server to satellite to server to user. The feel of language is a delicate property of words. The word “text”, for instance, has a gathered a finespun meaning on its historical journey from the latinate origin “texere”–to weave. Associated terms, textile and texture, give life to the definition.
To text is to weave together a meaning in terms (words–”terms” is in the latinate sense a limit: we limit through words) and inevitably from font, or typeface. The texture of a message is an important feature of writing. Texture in text is made of word choices, diction and cadence, and word arrangement. Visually, texture in text may be made of font choices and the arrangement of font and other graphical features including negative space on the page. Texture is the message insofar as meaning relates to feeling. Texture in writing is a step beyond skill. It is the touch of its author to the reader. The touch of the message. Its creation is instinctual.
Here is a little textured collage to accompany my new post.

What did you do this weekend?

This post was created by English 098.01. as a demonstration of the awesome power of the Weblog to writers. In answer to our class query, G. reports she went to Six Flags, Nate says he watched the Patriots, and Alfredo said that he watched sports, too. Did anyone watch Cleveland and Boston last night? Oh boy…

English 101

Why is the poem “I heard a Fly Buzz” one of your favorites, Mr. Tillyer?

Because I find it surprising that a little woman from Amherst in the late nineteenth century could be so bold about her atheism.

We created this post in class, remember? Now that I have seen it, I feel slightly irresponsible. The assertion that Emily Dickinson is an atheist is pretty thin and adduced by scholars from her poems primarily; although, her letters can be cited for more positive proof in places. To me, the fly interupts the work of the dying narrator in the poem, which is almost funny. How often we take the matters of living–and dying–with enormous gravity, and yet see not the simplest and, by their simple nature, most miraculous occurrences of synchronicity that compose the art of the universe.

I Heard A Fly Buzz

I came across this video of a clay on glass animation made in 1989 by Lynn Tomlinson based on Emily Dickinson’s poem of the same name, and I thought I would share it here. You will need to give the file a minute to download before attempting to view for best effect. Below the video I will paste the poem. You can read it while you are waiting for the video to load.  I liked the way the poem was read in the video. I imagine the voice of Emily Dickinson to sound similar–slight and soprano; although, I imagine her voice to be a bit more flat and resigned, sad sounding. Comments on this poem are invited. The poem allows for deep discussion. We each will die after all.

‘I heard a Fly buzz-when I died’

by Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz -
Between the light – and me -
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see -

Old Boundaries

I once thought that a stream bed was unmovable: if water traveled a path, there it would lie eternally. Not so I have learned–not so perhaps. The other day this very old guy I know and like very much pointed into a shallow woods where no stream flowed or had appeared to have flowed in a long time, and he said to me, “When I was maybe 10, there was a creek that flowed in there. With a line and hook I could have caught a trout on any afternoon. The water was so cool and fresh–it tasted so good on a hot afternoon” Streams, apparently, make poor boundaries.

Boundaries rise up and disappear. Nothing seems permanent in the larger picture. Places hold our imagination, but little else. There is a picture of a boundary gone–barbed wire just grown into a tree. Where cattle once grazed, maples fall. Where streams once flowed, a lick of sand and pebble trails off.