Month: March 2016

Kill Your Darling Mother Goose (History of Easter Eggs)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Now that the chocolate withdrawal has begun to rear it’s ugly head, I thought this was a good time to take some time and discuss the Easter tradition, as it relates to art. It is Timely Thursday after all, dear readers.

funny-pictures-auto-egg-birth-480271

Whether you are gung ho for Easter or not, it is a commonplace event in Western culture and is celebrated for a few different reasons. Some do it to celebrate a tradition, others feel obligated to keep their children included and their colleagues in a state of uniformity, still others really really like the ideas espoused in the messages (family, charity, giving, togetherness, etc.) both from a religious or secular viewpoint.

The reality is that there is more than meets the eye to the tradition of Easter, both from a Christian perspective and a secular one.

It has a lot do with notion that whatever the dominant religion is in a culture, most people won’t reference the detailed aspects of the tradition, they just do what their families and friends have always done, and that is how events like this slowly evolve over time.

Look at the history of the Easter egg for example, a lot of people believe that Easter eggs are decorated and given out to symbolize the empty tomb of Jesus (death and rebirth), others believe it is a symbol of spring time, represented by the Easter Bunny. Which makes a lot of sense, but isn’t necessarily realistic.

The reality is kinda a combination of the two beliefs, and they just layer right in there. The tradition of the Easter egg stretches as far back as to ancient Africa, over 60,000 years ago. And we have evidence that eggs were symbols of fertility, death and rebirth, via the Sumerians and Egyptians about 5000 years ago – being placed in graves and decorated with gold and silver.

2

Christians in Mesopotamia started the practice of staining eggs red, as a symbol of the blood of Christ. And this invariably spread throughout the different Christian communities over the centuries. Which is why Russians and Greeks got ahold of this practice, and it eventually made it’s way through different European countries…

Taken from Wikipedia and edited,

In the Orthodox churches, Easter eggs are blessed by the priest at the end of the Paschal Vigil (which is equivalent to Holy Saturday), and distributed to the faithful. The egg is seen by followers of Christianity as a symbol of resurrection: while being dormant it contains a new life sealed within it…

In Greece, women traditionally dye the eggs with onion skins and vinegar on Thursday (also the day of Communion). These ceremonial eggs are known as kokkina avga. They also bake tsoureki for the Easter Sunday feast. Red Easter eggs are sometimes served along the centerline of tsoureki (braided loaf of bread)…

The dying of Easter eggs in different colours is commonplace, with colour being achieved through boiling the egg with either natural colours (such as getting brown by using onion peels, black by using oak or alder bark or the nutshell of walnut, or pink by using beetjuice), or using artificial colourings.

When boiling them with onion skins leaves can be attached prior to dying to create leaf patterns. The leaves are attached to the eggs before they are dyed with a transparent cloth to wrap the eggs with like inexpensive muslin or nylon stockings, leaving patterns once the leaves are removed after the dyeing process...

Pysanky are Ukrainian Easter eggs, decorated using a wax-resist (batik) method. Many other eastern European ethnic groups decorate eggs using wax resistant batik methods for Easter. The word comes from the verb pysaty, “to write”, as the designs are not painted on, but written with beeswax.

As you can see from the excerpt above there is an incredibly storied history to the Easter egg, and a ton of opportunity to contribute to it’s future. But what do you think? Do you decorate eggs every spring and have you ever considered using eggs as symbols in your art? Know any expert egg painters? Please leave some comments and we’ll eggsecute a discussion.

Sorry I had to, I mean I had all this unused internet to write on… Please don’t leave, I can eggsplain, I was recently eggshiled from my family and I make yolks when I’m lonely.

Okay, I’m done. I got all the fun I could get out of that joke. And I’m out of theories for now friends, so please have an eggsellent weekend, and I’ll catch you on Sunday evening for something stimulating!

Tim!

Problems With Art Galleries That No One Talks About (Take Photos All The Time)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Now here’s a little story I’ve got to tell, about an artist blogger you know so well.
It started way back in history, with a museum, a guard, and NYC – you see?

And that dear readers, is how you make a transitional joke from one post into the next one. Please see previous post for reference if you want to get the joke, but I’m going to move along so that I don’t lose this post’s momentum.

Let’s visualize for a moment here.

This is a situation that seems to happen all the time across the world in various museums and art galleries alike. You are seeing a-one-of-kind piece of history for the first time (often a famous art-work) and you want to take a photo of it for posterity and so that you can remember what you saw when you return home. Let’s be honest here, you’re done have an eidetic memory and you definitely aren’t getting any younger.

So you snap a photo.

Kinda like I did when I was visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum for the first time back in 2006. Yes, this story is 10 years old, and for you recent graduates and Millennials on the edge of the age generation cut off, that time probably doesn’t mean much to you.

But for the sake of the story let’s pretend you all do understand me. So you snap a photo with your digital camera (not your phone), and get the warm and fuzzies almost immediately, because you now have proof that you’ve been in the presence of greatness, and your loved ones can be excited or feign excitement when they see you again, and you both show and tell.

And this was definitely part of my intent, but not the whole plan. The whole plan was to get some photos, so I could reference them in my own art later on, and because folio pictures from art books aren’t always the best quality. And at as much as 100 bucks a pop, the costs add up quickly.

But then I felt it, a warm hand on my left shoulder. Ever so slowly followed by a deep voice. “You can’t take photos in here son, read the sign.”

Ace-of-Base-The-Sign-1024x1024

I had read the sign, I saw the sign, and it told me that these works were over a hundred years old and in a dark room to preserve their colour. And I thought I was being clever, because I know all about lightfastness in painting, and I made sure to turn my flash off on my camera (not my phone), because I was being respectful.

It didn’t matter though, I had been caught.

And the guilt quickly set in. But why should I feel this way, it was 2006 and people love to take photos, in fact, digital cameras were making it easier by the day for people everywhere to get into the photography hobby. So all I have are a couple of blurry memories of one room, and I can barely remember which artists I saw in there, so that sucks.

Luckily for us today though, because museums and galleries are loosening the reins on this particular restriction. Because people take photos everywhere, of anything, and all the time. We can thank smart phones for that phenomenon. It’s really difficult for a venue to justify taking away someones’s phone, because it’s not socially acceptable, and phones can save lives.

And from the perspective of the venue they have to decide if it’s more important to have guards paying attention to visitors touching antiquities or snapping photos. That and the challenge of social media. When organizations use social media to show work going up and down, can they really complain when people are using social media to generate traffic for them? The way we think about communication and conversation is changing, visual communication is becoming hot topic once again.

But of course the biggest challenge is the issue of copyright and fair use. I think that institutions need to protect themselves by asking for permission to take photos of work, but for the layman, taking photos for noncommercial use is a lot more permissible, which may be the first indicators of a culture shift.

As time changes peoples opinions about gender, sexuality, and race, and we become more compassionate, my theory is that we will also become better communicators because we need to and our ideas about images will shift too.

What do you think? Comments? Questions? Please leave some and also subscribe! See you tomorrow with a theory about a rabbit.

Tim!

 

Cold Kickin’ It Live (Brooklyn review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I’ve never truly experienced homesickness. In all of the vacations I’ve taken, roadtrips I’ve been on, and visits with friends and family, I’ve only ever been away for a couple weeks at most.

That true sense of longing has never set in.

And so it’s difficult for me to understand what it feels like to be a fish out of water, but the beauty of film, is that sometimes, it can relay these feelings perfectly.

 

 

 

Brooklyn (2015)

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson
Director: John Crowley
released on blu-ray March 15, 2016
******** 8/10

Brooklyn_1Sheet_Mech_7R1.indd

IMDB: 7.5
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%, Audience Score 89%
The Guardian: ****/*****

 

John Crowley is an Irish television, film, and theatre director, who is best known for his first film Intermission. He has directed a handful of other dramatic films, and has slowly worked his way through theatre to film, which he believes was a natural progression.

Though his films have not seen a wide international release audience, Crowley has a strong understanding of human relationships, and the complex emotions that relate to special circumstances.

And that’s where Brooklyn shines…

Taken from Wikipedia and edited,

In 1952, Eilis (pronounced EH-lish) Lacey(Saoirse Ronan) is a young woman from Enniscorthy, a small town in southeast Ireland. She works weekends at a shop run by the spiteful Miss Kelly (Brid Brennan). Eilis’s older sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) has arranged for her to go to the US to find a better future. She departs but begins to suffer from seasickness and food poisoning and ends up being locked out of the toilet by her cabin neighbors. The woman in the bunk below her, an experienced traveler, helps her, giving her advice and support for Eilis’s entry to the US and life in Brooklyn, the new home to many Irish immigrants.

Eilis lives at an Irish boarding house where she dines each night with the landlady and her fellow residents, all young women. She also has a job at a department store but is shy and quiet when interacting with customers, earning the gentle scolding of Miss Fortini (Jessica Paré), her supervisor. Her letters from her sister Rose, back in Ireland, give her homesickness. She is visited by Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), a priest who arranged for her job and accommodation, and he tries to help by enrolling her in bookkeeping classes. At a dance she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), from an Italian family, who is quickly interested in her and becomes her boyfriend. With these developments, Eilis begins to feel more comfortable in New York, although she is slow to return Tony’s declaration of love.

Father Flood informs Eilis that Rose has died suddenly of an undisclosed illness. After a trans-Atlantic phone call with her mother reveals that she is struggling to cope, Eilis decides to return home for a visit. Tony insists that if she is leaving they must get secretly married first. They enter a civil marriage without telling family and friends. Back in Ireland, everybody seems to be conspiring to keep Eilis from returning to Brooklyn. Her best friend is getting married a week after her scheduled return journey, and her mother has already accepted the invitation on her behalf. She is set up on dates with eligible bachelor Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), who is about to inherit property. She takes her sister’s place as a bookkeeper on an emergency basis. Eilis starts to feel that she now has the future in Ireland that did not exist when she left and stops opening the letters she receives from Tony.

Miss Kelly, her former employer, meets with Eilis and says she has learned that she is already married. Eilis is reminded of the small-town mentality she had escaped, where there are no secrets. She informs her mother of her marriage and that she is leaving for Brooklyn the next day. On the crossing, she plays the role of the experienced traveler, offering words of guidance to a first-time émigrée. The film ends with Eilis and Tony reuniting and happily embracing.

This is well-scripted story that features subtle character shifts, emotional weight with intelligence, and an elegance to the backdrops. Crowley does an excellent job of showcasing how Eilis feels both at home in Ireland, as she grews in America, then again back at Ireland, and finally at the change when she returns to America, her new home with a new life.

Pros: This is an incredibly understated film which does an excellent job of evolving Saoirse Ronan’s character from timid little sister into career-oriented and capable. Yes there is romance in it and it feels integral, but surprisingly, that is not the driving force of her story.

Cons: Because it has a slow start, and is harkening to an era of film gone by, it can be a little difficult to digest for some. And the conflicts are never incredibly dramatic.

Runtime: 111 minutes

Points of Interest: Saoirse Ronan was born in New York, but her parents are Irish, so she was raised in Ireland – this is her first time using her natural accent in film. Emory Cohen was the only American on set, which is odd given the film setting.

The entire film is beautifully shot, with excellent set pieces, costumes and characterizations. And though it’s already been said, this story really does work perfectly because of Saoirse Ronan’s efforts. It makes sense that she was nominated once before for an Academy Award (Atonement), because she can make everyone around her laugh, cry, or contemplate rather easily.

I couldn’t help myself while thinking about buying this movie, then while watching it, and finally as I write this review. But it has to be said – I finally get what The Beastie Boys meant when they sing the lyrics “no sleep till Brooklyn,” a song often describing as a rant about that New York borough.

Whether Eilis was terrified of leaving Ireland for Brooklyn or terrified of being away for so long, I bet that she just could not sleep on that boat ride. But that’s just my theory. What do you think?

Tim!

Better To Burn Out? (Iggy Pop, Post Pop Depression, review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I didn’t want to leave him behind, but I knew it was time. It was for the best.

Sometimes that’s what happens though. You lose a friend, you say goodbye in your head, and you walk away. But that doesn’t mean your feelings won’t betray you and leaving you hurting, sometimes aching like a bad knee in-between seasons.

That deep ache is how this week’s album comes out.

 

 

 

Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression
released March 18, 2016
******* 7/10

iggy-pop-josh-homme-post-pop-depression-art

Iggy Newell Osterber, Jr., better known by his stage name, Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and actor. He is the vocalist of the infamous and incredibly influential band The Stooges, and is a bit of a wildcard.

Post Pop Depression is Iggy’s 17th solo album. That’s right, he’s made 17 albums on his own, and it’s his 23rd studio album altogether, if you include 1977’s Kill City which he partnered with James Williamson on, and the 5 Stooges albums he’s been a part of.

Interestingly enough, Iggy has been doing his own thing longer than he’s been partying with the boys, which says a lot about his own rock n’ roll journey. Iggy Pop has been involved with lots of different acts, and not unlike a recently deceased pop idol, he has been part of pop culture for decades, participating in film, television and radio too.

I think that’s important to keep in mind while listening to this record.

The album title says it all, Iggy Pop knows that his time has been significant, but he isn’t a young buck anymore, and this album feels like a nod to years gone by. He’s looking backwards on his life and sharing with us some anecdotes and utter honesty about what he sees happening, but he’s not lamenting entirely, he’s still having fun and making an influence.

Apparently the real reason the album is called Post Pop Depression is because the album collaborators Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal), Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys), and Dean Fertita (multi-instrumentalist that’s played with literally everyone, think Dave Grohl), were sad for weeks after recording the tracks, and experience real depression.

But what is the album like you ask?

Gardenia is probably the standout track at the moment for me, with it’s jumpy lyrics and whisky tinted vocals. This is followed shortly by American Valhalla, a track that explores death and likely ties into David Bowie’s own death. And that’s the way the album goes the whole time, back and forth between sex and death. Not a terribly detailed account, but Iggy Pop manages to make it interesting for us anyway.

The closer, Paraguay is probably the most interesting though. Because it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the album, but it’s message is very much an Iggy thought, one that demonstrates he isn’t exactly your classic and measured guy, he is an explorer and an innovator.

These tracks are raw especially so in Chocolate Drops, Vulture, and Break Into Your Heart. In short, if you are expecting heavy rock, you’ll be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean this doesn’t pop.

 

 

 

I’ve been there, I’ve lost my share of well-worn friends to circumstance and also to decisions, both of my volition and theirs. But that doesn’t mean that a friend for a season should never have been. Iggy Pop may miss his friend and his season may be fading away, but the memories and feels will remain. That’s one of the benefits of a legacy.

Check back tomorrow for a film review! Comments! Leave ’em! Subscribe! Please! No more theories today.

Tim!

We Don’t Need No Education (Paige Knickle interview, Education)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Friends, fans, family, and followers that last bit of heavy weight on my shoulders has finally been lifted! I’m older, wiser, and mored learned as a result. That’s right, the very last of my delayed interviews has been completed and is now the topic of the day!

Going forward we are going to see an interview a month, and they will all be super current and fresh.

It’s still kind of hard for me to believe I finished this video because this interview looks and sounds amazing. What a great opportunity to learn how to use some new audio equipment, and I haven’t even addressed the content of the interview just yet.

Let’s get to it.

With episode 7 of timotheories interviews, I had an opportunity to interview a friend I made last year when I was taking improv classes, and she is an incredible ball of energy, excitement, joy, or whatever the word you want to use for pure happiness.

In all the time I’ve known her, I’ve been fortunate to learn something every time we’ve interacted. And I just had to interview her and her pursuits so I could show you a perfect example of a lifelong leaner, someone who has her fingers in all the pies, but is also accomplishing goals in autonomy; and in whatever fields she focuses in on. Simultaneously.

Paige Knickle is an artist of many talents – web design, sound production, vocalist, improv actor. And she also happens to be someone who blends both the sciences and arts together rather well.

 

This one promises to be sweet treat for your ears, that just can’t be beat. I’m using a Zoom H2Next portable recorder which Paige lent me for the interview, and which I loved so much that I bought one for myself!

What a learning curve it was though, but it just makes sense in relation to the experience I had talking with Paige. She is self-taught web designer, with a BA in Psychology, and a vocalist, who co-owns Copper Cabbage recording studio with her partner, does some improv on the side, and is already pursuing a second degree in Music. Paige’s ideas about education, school, and learning are incredibly on point, and it’s hard not share her passion.

But you should take a look for yourself, because I’m not doing you anymore justice writing about this interview, when you can experience it below.

And as always, if you want to check out more timotheories interviews or the Cross Talk series please visit our YouTube channel.  And please, please, please leave some comments and of course subscribe to both the blog and channel!

Please also check out Paige’s website and use her creative services.

And of course my sincerest thanks to Paige for being playful, passionate, and philosophical. See you tomorrow with a music review.

Tim!