The Vision and Art of Shinjo Ito: An Exhibition of His Work (5/8 - 6/29/2008)

"One day I encountered the line in the Great Parinirvana Sutra that reads, ‘One who gives priority to making Buddha images and stupas, and takes great joy in doing so, will thereupon be born in the Land Immovable (the realm of resolute determination)’" - Shinjo Ito Shinjo Ito (1906-1989) is one of Japan’s great modern Buddhist artists, although he thought of himself as primarily a religious man.

Technologies of Intuition

Jennifer Fisher makes an interesting observation in her introduction to Technologies of Intuition. If we define intuition as knowing without a conscious understanding of how something is known, there are two fields of endeavor which value intuition: art and spiritualism.

Plazm 28: Luck

Editors Jon Raymond, Tiffany Lee Brown, and Joshua Berger begin their opening epistle with the words, “It’s been nearly four years since an issue of Plazm last appeared . . .” As a follower of small press, I hadn’t realized how much time had passed! And I am heartened that after all this time, Plazm decided to print a new issue. It’s good to see them back. This issue was packed with interesting art and interviews. It’s difficult to pick a few highlights from a magazine brimming with fascinating work.

Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt: Awakening the Healing Power of the Heart

Nicki Scully and Linda Star Wolf have written a fun and strange manual that teaches us how we can unlock the secrets of the New Age teachings with the help of the shamanic Egyptian mysteries. In addition to an array of beautiful illustrations, the authors have effectively organized the book into three parts. The first two contain instructions on performing rites of passage and meditations with a little help from our friends, the always accessible primary divine entities of prehistoric Egypt. The third section focuses on the four elements: water, earth, fire and air.

Figures of Resistance: Essays in Feminist Theory

Figures of Resistance is a collection of essays, including previously unpublished lectures and essays, by the absolutely brilliant, feminist thinker Teresa de Lauretis. The texts in this collection span from the concept of feminist aesthetics (or deaesthetics) in film as well as the notion of the narrative, and lesbianism.

Rashaya & Resistance Cruisers

Matt Weston’s album Rashaya is a fantastic piece of modern art. It is unique in that it is not a standard drum performance one would find at a symphony or pop music concert. Listening to Weston’s music is a different experience in and of itself; there is a variation in the sounds that is reminiscent of the Broadway show Stomp. The tracks have a surprising amount of expressive emotion produced from the unique instruments.

When I Met the Wolf Girls

The title of this children’s book caught my eye since my family supports Wolf Park, a local wolf education and research facility located in Battle Ground, Indiana. This delicate story of family and friendship, set in picture-book format, recants the ordeal of two feral sisters discovered in Midnapore, India in the 1920s.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread uses visual images to show the deplorable conditions that are inflicted on animals and the toxic spraying of crops to awaken the public to the reality of our food supply. This film also shows the isolation and monotony faced by workers in the industry. Our Daily Bread was a thought-provoking film that left me horrified by its disturbing images and concerned for my family’s welfare. Unfortunately, some of the scenes were so upsetting to me that I was unable to watch them.

Art Cards

Fun and spirit cheering: I love these cards so much that I don’t want to give them away! They totally rock. Not only because the art design on one of the cards – a bird perched under a tree – is cute and effective, but also because its simplicity evokes a kind of ethereality. The art feels like a poem on a page.

Venus Zine (Spring 2007)

Venus has come a long way from its inception more than a decade ago. In its current form, it bears little resemblance to the average zine. Instead, Venus is a refreshingly sophisticated publication — glossy enough to tempt more mainstream consumers into giving the pages a once-over, while still maintaining a feminist perspective. The latest issue is packed full of everything one might expect from a woman-centric publication, sans skeletal models and hetero-focused sex tips.

ARTitude Zine (Issue #23: Winter 2006)

Sweet and sincere, ARTitude Zine includes well-written articles by and about artists and their processes, nifty project ideas with full instructions, and full-color pages displaying readers’ work.

Geisha: A Photographic History, 1872–1912

Geisha: A Photographic History, 1872–1912 is a beautiful hardcover coffee table book. I paged through this volume of history and beauty, and learned so much about the culture through this most amazing collection of photos and well-researched history that bullets important landmarks for the unknowing reader.

Various Artists – Cochen en Boite

Mislead by the rather alluring title and expecting something on a par with St. Germain’s sleep-inducing tooting, I practically wept with the grief only an avid music fan can know when forth from my stereo spilled the stomach disrupting lyrical expulsion of Jillian Iva breathing, “I'm a love maker, soul shaker, body manipulator,” in a manner not far removed from Cher’s auto tune incident. I persevered through hallucinations of topless grinding, dax wax a go go clichés of all night gay bars, cringing at the cheesy lyric overload.

Vanderbilt A-Light Lamp

Bringing the urban landscape into the home environment, designer Donna Jo Brady creates lighting fixtures that illuminate the beauty in street culture. The construction of the Vanderbilt A-Light Lamp base is sleek and modern, which contrasts the gritty artwork on the lampshade itself. The design melds together two different artistic worlds in a way that exemplifies the way they compliment each other. On this lamp, dripping paint and rust eating away at metal meet a clean birch wood base.