Haystack Mountain School

I’m back from two blissful weeks in Maine where I attended a fiber workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.

CAMPUS
Founded in 1950 at Haystack Mountain, the school moved to its current facility in 1961 on Deer Isle. The campus is a collection of cabins and studios, built into a hillside at the water’s edge. Edward Larrabee Barnes designed the compound, and in 1994, having stood the test of time, it received the Twenty Five Year Award by the American Institute of Architects.

From Barnes’s 2004 New York Times obit:

His Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts…was not a building but a village of shingled cottages linked by a grid of wooden decks leading to a spectacular ocean view. Its diagonal forms were a much-noted departure from the cubical massing of the International Style that prevailed at the time. In 1994, the American Institute of Architects honored the project's influence with its 25-Year Award for older buildings, calling it "an early and profound example of the fruitful and liberating fusion of the vernacular building traditions with the rationality and discipline of Modern architecture."

The breathtaking view shifts gloriously with the fluctuating Maine weather. We drifted off to the sound of crashing waves at night, and woke to outgoing lobster boats in the morning.

Barnes’s Haystack architectural model and elevation of the campus are in the collection of MoMA.



NATURAL LANDSCAPE
The sub-tundra terrain of moss, lichen, pine, and glacial erratics provided a fascinating and enchanting landscape …













WORKSHOPS
The atmosphere is very conducive to working. Studios are open 24/7 and having prepared (and delicious) meals is very freeing.

Experimentation and exploration is encouraged and the teachers of the six workshops in session during my stay were all so inspirational. At night we got to see and hear about their work.

For example:

Kristen Morgin works in unfired clay.
Topolino, 2003
Monopoly, 2008

Jerry Bleem works with a wide range of found materials. The intriguing surface texture on these sculptures was created with staples.
June 10, 1983, 2000
Found printing plate, staples

Float, 2004
Fish scales, staples

Matthias Pliessnig works in steam-bent white oak.



Look through the Haystack workshop offerings to see other instructors.

Greetings From Maine!

June is Bustin' Out All Over, from Roger and Hammerstein's Carousel, 1956.
Internet access here is very, very slow. Regular posts next week ...

'Lost' Auction

Over 1,000 items from the ABC series ‘Lost’ will be auctioned by Profiles in History on August 21-22. Included will be costumes and props from all six seasons. I never saw the show, but they sure had some great props.Section of Oceanic Flight 815 wreckage.

Jack’s burgundy medical case

Hurley’s shirt-turned-fishing-net.

Four scorched model Oceanic airplanes from Claire’s dream.

Geronimo Jackson LP.

Sawyer’s improvised reading glasses.

Sun’s broken glass ballerina.

DHARMA-branded peanuts.

Desmond’s Portuguese version Catch-22.

The Dogs of Will Rannells (And a Contest!)

Somewhere between Cassius M. Coolidge’s Dogs Playing Poker and William Wegman’s elegant and complex Weimaraners, lie Will Rannells’ canine men of the world.
“What's on the 6th floor?” a history and special collections blog of The San Francisco Public Library, recently featured these Life magazine covers (not to be confused with LIFE, the Henry Luce publication), by Rannells (1892-1982).

Early on, Rannells found that his paintings of dogs set him apart from other artists. It is reported that he thought they were much better subjects than the beautiful girls he had previously been drawing. In fact, his first commercial success (at age 19) was a portrait of a collie that had previously been held in the arms of a girl. When he realized the dog was better off without the human figure, he painted the dog alone and sold it for $40. It later appeared on the June 1, 1912 cover of Country Gentleman. He went on to illustrate for the magazines Life, Judge and McCalls, as well as for a number of children's books.

Will Rannells became an art professor at The Ohio State University, where he taught painting and advertising design. He was active in the Humane Society and was known locally for his efforts to rescue stray animals and for his opposition to vivisection.”

To truly acknowledge the dog days of summer you must head over to Newmanology and partake of, either as a participant or an observer The Newmanology Dog Days of Summer Dog Magazine Cover Contest. There is already a fantastic gallery up, with new additions coming in fast and furious. Add your canine contestant to the mix. Still needed: a bejeweled lady-dog (not just any bitch with bling, must be canine).




Will Rannells covers (starting from the top): "Putting on the Dog," Life (Nov. 3, 1927);
"The Dog Star,"Life (July 16, 1914); "R.F.D.," Life (Dec. 16, 1915);
"An Old Sea Dog," Life (Sept. 3, 1925); Country Gentleman (June 1, 1912);
"Never Again," Life (Jan. 15, 1920). Life courtesy Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor; Country Gentleman courtesy Magazines & Newspaper Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Cement Bag Graphics

Thanks to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, we know all too well how catastrophic the results of faulty cement can be. Then again, it has also been the only fix.

Cement is one of the most consumed substances on earth, said to be second only to water.

Visit any construction site, anywhere in the world, and the bags of cement you see were likely to have been packed in locally printed bags. Together, these images form a global, graphic compendium of all we demand from our most common but significant, of building materials: strength, durability, dependability, consistency, endurance, even eternity.



CREATURES OF STRENGTH

Elephants are very well represented

You may have seen these laptop bags made from unused cement sack, by Wren, in Wired. Below, a vintage Thai poster.

Other animals that stand for strenght and fortitude ...

A fish? In Asia, the carp has long been considered a symbol of strength, endurance, perseverance and fortitude—all good traits for cement (not so good for the Great Lakes). It is said that the carp can jump completely over the rapids of the Yellow River and overcome all manner of obstacles.

And creatures of mythic strength.


STRUCTURES OF STRENGTH

The castle.
The pyramids.
Elemental to pyramids, the triangle shape, be it a rock or a road (or a triangle) is a classic symbol of stability.
And let’s not forget to remember the Alamo.


VINTAGE STRENGTH

“The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, California"
 was composed by John Fahey in the early 1960s. A vintage Monolith bag is featured on the 7” single by Cul-de-sac, 1999.

Devil’s Slide, Utah, is named for a nearby rock formation. The town grew up in the early 1900s around the Union Portland Cement Co. It is now a ghost town.


PURE GRAPHIC STRENGTH


Russian "constructivist" cement bags.

These bags assert their strength via macho graphics. Although, Vijaya reminds me of a gynecological term Oprah uses …

AMBUJA MAN
And speaking of macho, Ambuja Cement of India, features a muscleman cradling a humongous dam. Dams are the most cement–intensive projects there are. We might not be accustomed to seeing ads for cement here, but in India, branded cement ads are not uncommon. I came across the Ambuja logo in varying degrees of realism— from airbushed, to graphic black and white. Ambujaman is even painted on the sides of buildings.

Photo by Rene