Art of the Americas

(image courtesy of http://www.mfa.org/)

It's finally here! After many years of construction The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston opens the Art of the Americas addition. Fifty three galleries showcasing works from the pre-Columbian era up through most of the 20th century.

I have watched the progress over the past few years and am excited to finally see the new galleries, to see my favorite works that have been archived during construction, and to see their new acquisitions.

(image courtesy of www.mfa.org)

Cirque Du Noir and the folks of eInvite

{images l to r: guests lisa crislip, j.fatima martins, chad sirois; musician valerie thompson of goli; eInvite photographer amy demar; eInvite artists: emily quillen and scott boilard; vip passes courtesy of checkerboard; louie despres and his wife tina zlody; angela cannistraro and myself,
and the art fusion audience, all images here by louie despres}

Our recent frolicking at Cirque Du Noir was such an enjoyable night. Every year we get dressed up in our finest noir and celebrate for a good cause. The premise is a simple one, with a huge artist community right here in town, the Worcester area is thriving with talent. We gather them up, watch them create incredible collaborative pieces before our eyes, while auctioning off donated pieces of art from many other generous and talented artists. All this happens while listening to incredible music. This year Esthema and Goli of Boston joined us for the haute evening of incredible creativity and fantastic costumes.

The event was actually inspired by all the creativity surrounding us at work. From this pool of amazing friends and creative spirit, the event became a reality. In its third year Cirque Du Noir has grown so much and we are so happy, as proceeds from the event support the Worcester County Food Bank. Our sponsors like eInvite and Checkerboard help to make the night a success adding the details that make it special. The VIP passes, programs and printing donations were customized for the event. Thank you to all that came out to enjoy art, music in the spirit of Halloween and giving back to our community.

Cirque Du Noir was Sunday evening, followed by a Halloween themed celebration at our annual company picnic the day before. We are just a bunch of party people here. We are now looking to Friday, which will bring yet another costumed day of fun!

The Grand and Distant Future

Much of what we discuss here at eInvite revolves around the world of print, both its aesthetics and history. Most people are aware that, in many areas of the print world, there are serious and wrenching changes occurring as the world changes and business models adapt. We tend to relish history and art here on eInvite's Insights, but often look to the future to see "what's next."

However, it's often just as interesting to go into the past and discover the visions of the future that our ancestors had. Futurism has been an area of discussion for as long as there has been language, and in particular the past two centuries have provided a wealth of predictions for modern humanity, from the sublime to the absurd.

An engineer by the name of John Elfreth Watkins published an article in an issue of Ladies' Home Journal in 1900. Watkins was apparently instrumental in preserving the John Bull locomotive, and though I couldn't find much information in a cursory investigation, it's reasonable to assume that he understood the relationship between past and future development.

This article was a testament to that in particular. Watkins made a litany of predictions for the "next hundred years", many of which were startlingly accurate. Here is the list:

1. America will have a population between 350 and 500 million.

2. Americans will be taller by 1-2 inches.

3. There will be no "c", "x", or "q" in common use.

4. Hot and cold air will be turned on from "spigots" to regulate the temperature of a house.

5. There will be no more mosquitos or flies.

6. Ready cooked meals will be bought from the grocery.

7. No foods will be "exposed" (the open air market).

8. Coal will not be used for heating or cooking.

9. There will be no streetcars in large cities (rather, they will become subways).

10. Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance (and they will be in color).

11. Trains will travel at 150 mph (from New York to San Francisco) and will have similar cooling to the futuristic house).

12. Automobiles will be cheaper than horses.

13. Everybody will be able to walk ten miles in a single stretch.

14. Fast ships will make travel to England occur in less than two days (by using "apertures expelling jets of air").

15. There will be air-ships (it's reasonable to assume he meant dirigibles and not planes).

16. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, there will be armored moving forts.

17. There will be no more wild animals.

18. Man will see around the world by means of cameras connected electrically by circuits.

19. Wireless telephones will allow you to communicate from anywhere on earth, and the "hello girl" (operator) will be obsolete.

20. Grand opera will be telephoned to private homes via robotic instruments.

21. A university education will be free to every man and women. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in public schools.

22. Store purchases will be made by tube.

23. Vegetables will be grown year-round with electrical assistance.

24. Oranges will grow in Philadelphia and portable refrigeration will make fruit available anywhere in the union, year-round.

25. Strawberries will be grown as large as apples.

26. Peas will be grown as large as beets.

27. Black, blue, and green roses will exist.

28. Few drugs will be swallowed and a physician will "actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest [and] he will be able to magnify and photograph any part of it. This work will be done with rays of invisible light."

Well, consider me astounded. Not only are a vast majority of these predictions close to modern technology, but some of them are startlingly accurate. Most of them are common practice today.

1. Population - Close. The United States has a population of approximately 307 million as of July 2010

2. Height - Close. Though I had to use "industrialized world" averages, a report by Joerg Baten suggests that the average in 1900 was 168 cm, and is 176 cm today. That's about 3" of change.

3. Alphabet - wrong.

4. Central Air Conditioning / Central Heat - Correct. Though not as mechanistic as Watkins imagines, it's common in many households and phenomenally accurate as a prediction.

5. Insects - wrong.

6. Culinary - the "TV dinner" is a staple of modern American life and exactly on-point.

7. Grocery - Close. The street-side, open air market is rare in the United States, particularly outside of major cities. When I lived in NYC, I adored the Greenmarket, but in more rural areas, the mega-super-market is king now, and the open air market is long dead.

8. Home Energy - Partially Correct. Coal's use in the home has been all but abandoned in the United States. However, its industrial use for producing electricity is still all too common.

9. Transportation - Essentially Correct. Most above-ground trains are part of a subway system and not actually streetcars, with a few exceptions (namely San Francisco).

10. Communication - Correct. Watkins imagined full-color electronic and digital communication half a century before it was common-place.

11. Transportation - Correct. Sadly, mostly incorrect for the United States, but correct around the world. The U.S. did not invest in public infrastructure as other countries did, and while we have a few high-speed trains, they do not meet Watkins' vision. Nonetheless, he was spot-on for many industrialized nations.

12. Transportation - Correct. Automobiles are indeed cheaper than horses, as any horse-owner can tell you. Moreover, Watkins predicts a future where "Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known." This couldn't be more accurate.

13. Transportation - Close. Watkins inaccurately imagines water-bound transportation, but still imagines the jet-propelled vehicle, the staple for transcontinental travel today.

14. Transportation - Wrong. After the Hindenburg Disaster, dirigibles have been abandoned for all but specific scientific and entertainment uses.

15 / 16. Warfare - Unclear. Watkins' vision of how war will be waged is highly accurate, but his nouns (particularly his reliance on dirigibles) make the narrative inaccurate. Still, modern warfare indeed resembles his description, and he has many specifics correct.

17. Biology - Partially Wrong. Though we haven't exterminated all wildlife yet, we're well on our way. Since 1900, forty-five known species have gone extinct, mostly due to human behavior.

18. Communication - Correct. Watkins' anticipates the peer-to-peer digital communication revolution by a century.

19. Communication - Correct. Watkins' anticipates present-day global communication by about a century.

20. Communication - Wrong. Sadly, we do not have any robot operas (outside of the university lab, arts, or Matt Groening cartoons).

21. Education - Wrong. Watkins' grossly over-estimated our collective generosity, unfortunately.

22. Commerce - Wrong.

23. Agriculture - Partially Correct. Though shipping is now preferable to special agricultural methods, we have the capacity to grow vegetables year-round, and in some cases, do.

24. Agriculture - Correct. "Fast-flying refrigerators" do indeed exist, though most of the United States relies on refrigerated trucking, and fruits are available around the year.

25. Agriculture - Partially Correct. Strawberries are often grown to enormous size, as large as apples in 1900.

26. Agriculture - Partially Correct. Though some of his specifics are off, sugar cane has indeed replaced the sugar beet as a source of sugar.

27. Agriculture - Partially Correct. Black and green roses exist (without dyes) though blue roses do not.

28. Medicine - Close. Watkins anticipates the common use of radiographic and nuclear medicine by decades.

All said and done, what an extraordinary set of predictions! It makes me wonder who today's most accurate futurist may be. Scientist-philosophers like Ray Kurzweil? Writers like William Gibson? Will we take into account our humanitarian and ecological failures against our technological successes? As Watkins demonstrates, accurate Futurism requires an understanding and respect for the past. It will be interesting to see if our own future is fulfilled through hope or desiccated through failure.

New Reading

Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of Cabinet, a literary and arts magazine that I was not familiar with, until seeing it on the shelf of my local bookstore. It may be that I am the last person to find out about Cabinet, but nonetheless it is excellent. It is published in Brooklyn, NY and has run thirty-five issues (so far). It's published quarterly and runs about 110 pages! A subscription is surprisingly cheap at $32 USD per year.

The philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, said of Cabinet,

"[It is] my kind of magazine; ferociously intelligent, ridiculously funny, absurdly innovative, rapaciously curious. Cabinet's mission is to breathe life back into non-academic intellectual life. Compared to it, every other magazine is a walking zombie." (BoingBoing, September 2009)

I'm very pleased to have found such a magazine, particularly as magazine publishing is so dramatically on the wane. Due to its substantial size, excellent printing, and diversity of material, it doesn't seem like the sort of reading that would translate well to an e-Reader or other such device. I say this because most articles are about six to eight pages (letter size) long, much longer than many columns.

Given that it is nearly the length of a paperback book (200 or so pages, if you were to cut them to the size of a paperback), it isn't the sort of magazine you flick through. There are few advertisements, as Cabinet is a non-profit organization. The structure of the magazine is quite interesting, too.

If you're looking for something to put on your coffee table, and perhaps remove a sitcom or two from your nightly routine, I highly recommend it. Check out their current issue: Issue 35, Dust.

Cirque Du Noir 2009

{scott boilard working his octo-magic with "deep sea" in the art fusion}

{jessica burhans illustrator extraordinaire sketching away}

{payal kripalani and derek ring work magic in minutes}


{derek ring on the dark side, recently featured on behance and fuel your creativity}

{creative black attire winners, 2 of which were our own scott boilard and jessica burhans}

{esthema of boston}

{liz charbonnier, erin wolczik and emily quillen and cynthia woehrle}

{artistic guests rocked the creative black, todd rawley and aaron white,
both winning contest prizes}


{scott boilard and me, michelle may having fun in the fusion, oooo check out the hat I made at a workshop at sprout before the festivities, graciously hosted by cathy walsh}

{andreea waters getting caught in the shot of guests watching the art fusion}

{extraordinary flora and candy du noir by Cathy Walsh of SPROUT}

{this handmade "ghost rider" mask by scott boilard definately won some votes for best costume}

ALL OF THESE AMAZING IMAGES BY THE VERY TALENTED

LOUIE DESPRES

Sunday night at Bocado in Worcester was filled with creativity, as the folks from eInvite stepped out onto the dark side to support the Worcester County Food Bank. {Yeah, we party like rockstars!}

You all were invited...Live violin from Onur Dilisen and then the rest of Esthema joined him to set the tone and kick off the evening. We celebrated with a live art fusion, a silent art auction, and prizes for best creative black attire. There is always next year...

additional pix can be view here

Clementine Art

I love these art supplies from Clementine Art. They are all natural, certified non-toxic and environmentally friendly. But the great packaging and clean product design is enough to inspire my inner artist. Sold!

Like Butter

I cannot get enough of warm sunshine yellow paired with light pewter. Modigliani's painting of Jeanne Hébuterne's creamy skin inspired this collection. Holiday Filigree - Yellow by einvite, yellow room from Jay Jeffers via desiretoinspire, and succulent bouquet on oncewed.

Love

Thanks to Marc over at Wooster Collective, I came across this great video of Two Twelve, a graffiti artist based in Houston Texas, creating his piece titled Love. I'm always curious about the process of street art. It amazes me that these pieces are created spur-of-the-moment, in some of the hardest-to-get-to locations, at night sometimes, in the biggest cities in the world! I have a hard enough time completing a drawing in the privacy of my studio, at my leisure, never mind on the top of a water tower at 3am. CRAZY! And it's not like the work emanates this frenzied practice either, the pieces are often well thought-out, multi-dimensional, and showcase layers upon layers (never mind hours) of stencil-work and spray paint!

Just as impressive as the art itself, is the passion that artists, like Two Twelve, have for their craft! Graffiti artists around the world spend hours creating these stunning works, not knowing how long it will be before they get painted over, or covered up. It's definitely something to be admired. I really enjoyed watching this video...totally inspiring!

Love from two twelve on Vimeo.

Gloom-Busting Balloons

With the gloomy days we’ve been having here in New England, and the incessant cold I’ve been fighting for the past week, I find myself yearning for some cheerful, funny goodness and fortunately that’s what I found in the latest edition of W magazine.

Among the high glam and glossy beauties I stumbled across a small blurb on the fantastic work of Buster Balloon…it was the tiny inflated Elvis that caught my attention (anything Elvis makes me chuckle).

Based out of Southern California, the balloon twisting genius has traveled the globe teaching, performing, and uncovering new and amazing balloon ideas to adults and kids alike. He’s even inspired famed artist, Jeff Koons (known for his own larger-than-life balloon sculptures made of stainless steel) and has collaborated with Koons on a “top secret” project. Now…THAT is something I am very interested in seeing! Until then, these fun pics of Buster’s work will have to suffice…enjoy!





{all pictures via www.acmeballoon.com}

the avant-garde of 20th century Mexico

{image from Museum of Fine Arts Boston}

I recently went to the MFA in Boston and saw the Vida Y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints Exhibit. It is a small, but excellent collection of prints by the likes of Alberto Beltran, Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, among others.

It is fascinating to see how these great 20th century Mexican artists, inspired by American and European Avant-Garde art, used printmaking methods to depict and comment on what they saw around them; from political and social injustice to intimate portraits and studies. I highly recommend seeing it if you're in the area. It is on display until November 2nd, 2009.