Innisfree

Social media for 20x200.com. Art, poetry, beauty, and history delight. JenBekmanProjects Tumblr 20x200 Facebook 20x200 Pinterest @20x200 @JennetteM "There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings."

[kittyboats]

65 Million years ago, when giant KittyBoats ruled the earth…

Lake from traverseearth.smugmug.com. Wings from dinoleaks.com.

[inisfree]

Yes!

[kittyboats]

Row, row, row your KittyBoat, gently down the stream…

[inisfree]

My Thundercat as #kittyboat

[exhibitiona]

BEST NEWS EVER: White Columns’ upcoming exhibition “The Cat Show” will not only feature cat art, but CATS-IN-RESIDENCE.  

We got so excited we made a gif. 

Image: Elad Lassry, Two Cornish Rexes, 2011.

[fvckout]

[bojandordevic]

Some of these Tumblr photos are pure art…. Appreciation for all these gorgeous photo.

[bitchfaceart]

Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Madame Bilibin (C. 1800)

[inisfree]

Brilliant. 

[hateplow]

[tatteredcover]

February: Love it or loathe it.

[inisfree]

Beautiful.

[kittyboats]

Thanks, Lucy! Looks like Desi’s the KittyBoat of choice for many sportsmen. 

[changetheratio]

And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market — the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, their tears confused with their diamond earrings, their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, their response and your performance twinned. The jokes over the phone. The memories packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. Who will do it again? That’s it: no one; imitators and descendants aren’t the same.

- John Updike, “Perfection Wasted” (via changetheratio)

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Margot Fonteyn (via liquidlightandrunningtrees)

[manbartlett]

Required reading.  Includes quotes from some of my biggest heroes in the art world today: William Powhida, Ed Winkleman and Magda Sawon. These folks, among a handful of others, continue to inspire me. Even in the bleakest of times. Which, truth be told, happens to be now. I haven’t had a sale in a while and am behind on every bill; more than usual. Which, as a full time time artist, tends to complicate my relationship to artistic creation and production. Exponentially. Still working my way through that one. In the meantime, you know, buy art! 20x200 is still down so you have no excuses! 

Related: I WILL NOT MAKE ANY MORE SELLABLE ART

[particleb0red]

make things because its like breathing, not solely for money or laurels.

[manbartlett]

Because it’s like breathing? That’s a little naive/dramatic. If you know anything about my work it should be pretty clear that money and laurels are tertiary influences at best in my practice. But I don’t shy away from talking about them openly and honestly. I’ve also made a career out of it. For better or worse. In my opinion we need more people talking about these issues and taking the related risks with the work. I also believe it can and should be supported, and I’ll fight for it any day of the week. Not just my own, but my peers too.

[inisfree]

"I'll tell you what I really think—in this climate, I'm pretty sure someone like Robert Rauschenberg could never have made it."--Magda Sawon

[storyboard]

Ukiyo-e Heroes: Donkey Kong Visits 17th-Century Japan

Mario racing a rickshaw, Kirby wielding a katana, and Donkey Kong bounding past cherry blossoms. In his fantastical Ukiyo-e Heroes series, 29-year-old illustrator Jed Henry reimagines classic video game characters in the style, setting, and medium of traditional Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e). Growing up in Indiana in the 1980s, Henry learned to draw by copying the art in his video game manuals. It was an exciting time to be a gamer, as companies like Nintendo and Sega raced to create the best systems and graphics. A decade later, with a degree in animation and living in Utah, the illustrator and children’s book author is working with Canadian (by way of Tokyo) printmaking master Dave Bull to to create fine art prints of his characters. With the help of a Kickstarter campaign — Henry raised $290,000 more than his original goal — his illustrations are celebrating Japan’s vibrant pop culture, both then and now. We talked to him about his craft.

How do you choose which video games to feature?

I’m a big retro gamer. I played a lot of games as a kid, and my heart is really stuck on those games — a lot of Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom titles. So, that’s how I choose, it’s just my favorites from when I was a kid.

Read More

[jenbekmanprojects]

Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Left Panel, Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Right Panel, MORE BOOKS, and WORD STUDY by Mickey Smith

 As we slowly replace printed books with digital versions, conceptual artist and photographer Mickey Smith has made it her mission to document bound periodicals and professional journals in public libraries. Some of the volumes she has captured have already been destroyed. “I am struck by the physical mass of knowledge and the tenuousness of printed work as it fades from public consciousness,” says Smith. 

[penandink]

Temporary tattoos for children commissioned by McSweeney’s The Goods.

[jenbekmanprojects]

Common Morpho (word / l8r) and Aphrodite Fritillary by Amy Jean Porter

What strange magic allowed us to conjure butterflies in December? Let us reassure you, collectors, that there’s nothing supernatural about Common Morpho (word / l8r) and Aphrodite Fritillary, our new editions by Amy Jean Porter, enchanted as they are. Summer’s delights can look like sorcery to off-season eyes. Read more.

[inisfree]

Bright, flat, unpretentious planes of color.

[storyboard]

The Reconstructionists: Celebrating Badass Women

What do Buddhist artist Agnes Martin, Hollywood inventor Hedy Lamarr, and French-Cuban author Anaïs Nin have in common? Their names may not conjure popular recognition, and yet, for Lisa Congdon and Maria Popova, these women represent a particular breed of cultural trailblazer: female, under-appreciated, badass. They are “Reconstructionists,” as the writer-illustrator duo call them — and for the next year, they’ll be celebrated on a blog of the same name. Every Monday for 12 months, The Reconstructionists will debut a hand-painted illustration and short essay highlighting a woman from fields such as art, science, and literature. The subject needn’t be famous, but she will, as Popova, the creator of Brain Pickings, puts it, “have changed the way we define ourselves as a culture.” We spoke with Popova, and illustrator Congdon, about the inspiration behind their project.

How’d you come up with the name ‘Reconstructionist’?

Maria Popova: It’s very challenging to celebrate women without pigeonholing the project into some stereotypical and alienating feminist corner, the most dangerous part of which is the preaching-to-the-choir quality that many such projects tend to have. So when it was time to come up with a title for the project, it couldn’t be something too literal or too obvious. After sifting through hundreds of letters, diaries, autobiographies, and other writing, I suddenly remembered something Anaïs Nin had written in a 1944 diary entry — about “woman’s role in the reconstruction of the world.” It was perfect. It was the only common denominator between those women – they aren’t all artists, or all writers, or all to be expected in the pages of a tenth-grade history book. They are simply all reconstructionists.

Read More

[jenbekmanprojects]

Autoportrait en poulpe, 2009 by David Favrod

An entrancing, sometimes hallucinatory collection of images, Gaijin is a tool in photographer David Favrod’s quest for identity.  The Second Edition 2012 Hot Shot and Aperture Portfolio Prize–winner has lived in Switzerland for most of his life, but was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Swiss father; he created Gaijin after the Japanese embassy in Switzerland denied his citizenship request.  “The aim of this work is to create ‘my own Japan’ in Switzerland, from memories of my journeys when I was small, my mother’s stories, popular and traditional culture and my grandparents’ war narratives,” says Favrod.

See all of our Second Edition 2012 Hot Shots and learn more about the Hey, Hot Shot! photography competition. 

[inisfree]

Mesmerizing.