remix

Finally, an explanation (although incomplete) for the oddness of Jacopo Tintoretto's 'Nativity' - what is now a horizontal painting of the beginning of Jesus Christ's life used to be a vertical painting of the end of his life. Still unexplained is why Tintoretto cut up such a large piece and reworked it, apparently a couple decades after completing the original.

Here is an article about the discovery and film of a moment of restoration (or almost a moment anyway, isn't a moment 40 seconds?).

If you click here you can see the parts of the crucifixion that were remodelled into 'Nativity' by comparing the painting to the x-ray. If you zoom the slider up to the x-ray end and click 'show lines' then push the slider back down to see the paint you can see how he cut and re-arranged the pieces of canvas into the current, very different composition. Now, to find the missing pieces!

lace

I'm forging leaves and swirls for some jewellery and an assemblage book. The bits of wire sticking out will be removed as the rivets go in, and I am starching pieces of lace to be stretched between them.

Cutting up the lace, even though it is damaged, is hard - I love making things but have a very hard time breaking something rather than restoring it. Friends have told me I'll get over that someday, but it hasn't happened yet and occasionally I think about going back to school (again!) because I'd love to do restoration, especially on textiles.

Finally I got to see who has been dropping clouds of pigeon feathers from the jacaranda and leaving wings to flutter down at odd times. This is the first time I have seen one of these in the fountain, he had three watery baths plus a sun bath because that water is cold!

wreath

As a kid I heard many different explanations of what Boxing Day was, here is all of what I was told, plus some.

pilgrimage

A date palm symbolizes planning for the future because it grows very slowly so the children of the person who planted it are the ones to harvest the fruit.

leaves

While I was trying to fit some pieces for an assemblage book together this morning without altering them much I was reminded of how Andy Goldsworthy challenges himself to use materials he finds on site and with minimal modification. I love that he intends many of his creations to be ephemeral, like Tibetan Buddhist mandalas. The mandalas in person are so different from their photos, the visible height of the layers and the sound of the scraping on the sand delivery cones, seeing Goldsworthy's work in person must be even more different, the sounds and smells and breeze would add so much to the experience. Except the the smell of the dead heron he plucked the feathers from for one piece, I don't mind missing that.

clock beetle

I'm letting this piece sit for a while until I figure out where to go with it. I spent much of today drilling tiny, tiny holes in wire which I will rivet tomorrow, also experimenting with odd-shaped rivets of various materials.
Last Saturday was a day of coincidental meetings. At the show (which was in another city) I ran into the lovely woman who was my neighbour for the last seven years until she bought a house this summer. Later, at dinner in a Peruvian restaurant, it turned out that the woman sitting next to me had been in the same Chinese (language) school that I was in, for the same three years, but we had never met before this. Two friends on my left told us they ran into each other on a sidewalk in New York last month, neither knew the other was planning to be there.

seriously, who robs a tomb at 10 in the morning?

Mystery as century-old Swiss watch discovered in ancient tomb sealed for 400 years