Saturday, July 31, 2021

You're not alone

Happy Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In gratitude for the Society of Jesus! AMDG

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Travel Blog

My sabbatical is over but here is a web log on my travels for the school year 2021-22

Travel Blog

Sunday, July 25, 2021

"Tell me when to go" by Trackademicks

A ethereal rap song as I go back to work tomorrow.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

Message to Oakland officials: Don't give in to A's

Friday, July 23, 2021

My friend, Yumiko, told me of the TeamLab show at the Asian Art Museum. Using present technology, TeamLab is known for using darkened rooms with walls and mirrors to create immersive environments of natural elements that move and grow on projected on the walls and floors. TeamLab is an art collective of artists, engineers, programmers, animators and architects from Tokyo, Japan. They create borderless digital artwork using advance technology.

In the Continuity show at the Asian Art Museum, the spaces were filled with butterflies, flowers, fishes, crows and organic plant forms. Inadvertently Yoriko and I discovered that the fish responded to our hands in one particular room and butterflies died when we shook our hands at swarms of butterflies. In another room, a participant waved her hand over a moving organic branch that responded by changing colors. The work reminded me of a communal Yayoi Kusama infinity room.

TeamLab plays with the planar concept in two-dimensional art from an East Asian perspective, that does not recognize the border between the viewer’s body in the world of the painting. In Western art, two-dimensional art has traditionally viewed as a window into another world. In the exhibition, they explore this spatial structure: creating artwork space in three dimensions on a computer to render the space in two dimensions without creating the border between the viewer’s body and the artwork. They call this construction “ultrasubjectvie space,” which appears as a video display and projection in the work, and does not became a boundary and is continuous with the viewers space in which the viewer’s body is present.

We settled in one carpeted room with sloping walls we settled on the ground and the audience was immersed in an enclosed space of fish, stars, crows and butterflies. Only the ceiling was unadorned. It was an impressive exhibit nonetheless. The space was filled with participants filming the experience and talking selfies, a present de rigueur custom of documentation. phenomenon, the exhibit shows how technology is expanding our understanding of art and how positively people are responding to it when traditional museum spaces.

Italian Rainbow Cookies--transgender colors

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Cheers

Congratulations Susan on your retirement!

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

dream

GeT wElL sOoN gAvIn!

Monday, July 19, 2021

Blessed are the bored in spirit

Happy birthday Fr. Ray! Much love

Sunday, July 18, 2021

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)

You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown
Where feet may fail
And there I find You in the mystery
In oceans deep
My faith will stand

And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours
You are mine

Your grace abounds in deepest waters
Your sovereign hand
Will be my guide
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me
You've never failed

And You won't start now

So I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours
And You are mine (You are mine)

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
And take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior

Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah

Oh, Jesus, You're my God

I will call upon Your name
Keep my eyes above the waves
My soul will rest in Your embrace
I am Yours
And You are mine

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Mask up indoors--vaccinated or not

Friday, July 16, 2021

Submission

"The Birth of the Pearl" by Albert Pierre Maignan by ketrin1407 (1896)

Submission

By William Cowper

O Lord, my best desire fulfill,
And help me to resign
Life, health, and comfort to Thy will,
And make Thy pleasure mine.

Why would I shrink at Thy command,
Whose love forbids my fears?
Or tremble at the gracious hand
That wipes away my tears?

No, rather let me freely yield
What most I prize to Thee;
Who never hast a good withheld,
Or wilt withhold, from me.

Thy favor, all my journey through,
Thou art engaged to grant;
What else I want, or think I do,
'Tis better still to want.

Wisdom and mercy guide my way,
Shall I resist them both?
A poor blind creature of day,
And crush'd before the moth!

But ah! my inward spirit cries,
Still binds me to Thy sway;
Else the next cloud that veils the skies
Drives all these thoughts away.

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

solitude

Solitude

by Caroline Caddy

It’s something they carry with them

– explorers night shifts seamen –

like a good pair of binoculars

or a camera case

perfectly and deeply compartmented.

It has a quiet patina

that both absorbs and reflects

like a valuable instrument

you have to sign for

– contract with alone –

and at the end of the voyage

you get to keep.

Sometimes it’s very far away.

Sometimes so close

at first you think the person next to you

is picking up putting down

a personal cup

a book in another language

before you realise what

– when talk has moved off

leaning its arms

on someone else’s table –

is being

handed to you.

Rosie Lee Thompkins

Having been introduced to Noah Purfoy’s inprovisational art in everyday and cast away objects, by my godson Francis Gonzales, I asked if he was familiar with Gee Bend’s quilts, where improvisation of available materials is part of the charm of the pieces. He was. So we made a trek to BAMPFA to see an retrospective exhibition by Rosie Lee Thompkins, an artist from Richmond, California.

Rosie Lee Thompkins—a pseudonym adopted by Effie Mae Howard—is recognized as an accomplished and inventive American quiltmaker of the late 20^th and early 21^st century. She was born in Arkansas in 1936 and learned to quilt from her mother, but she did not practice quilting professionally until the 1970s, when she was living in Richmond, California. She credits her artistic ability to God and

Her quilts are delights of design, composition, color, shape, and texture. Recognizing her ability to quilt as a gift from God, she her artistic work has been directed to her healing and spirituality. They are works of improvisation from found materials that demonstrated whimsy, creativity and functionality. Some are abstract pieces of color, shape and texture that dance to visual music and the viewer to touch and feel. Other pieces have recognizable images that honor and narrate a political or social perspective. Not a few have scripture verses stitched into the material, perhaps indicating the spiritual dimensions of the work. In one particular piece the script is an abstract stitch woven across the span of the fabric.