Month: August 2015

Shaman with Totem Staff

Photographer Unknown:  (Shaman with Totem Staff)

Celtic Shamans used a staff as both a symbol of authority, leadership and as a tool for spiritual journey. Often carved with mystical symbols, Celtic runes, or animals, these were the Shamans’ tools to help aid in their workings and guide their path as well as the path of their clan. The totem staff is carved and often decorated with the antlers of a deer, with leather, feathers and/or with stones or beads. Each staff is unique to it’s owner and their position in the world, giving special meaning to that person’s life and their usage of the staff.

Henry Moore

Sculptures by Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA RBS was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire.

Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner. He became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Yet he lived frugally and most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts.

My all-time favorite sculptor. Pictures do not do them justice. Find one of his pieces near you and spend some time actually “seeing” them.

The Tiger is Awake

Artist Unknown, (The Tiger is Awake), Computer Graphics, Gay Film Gifs

That the typical tiger is a fiercer fighter than the typical lion is common knowledge. Less widely known is what gives that tiger the advantage. Simple thing. The lion stands on three paws to maul with the fourth. But the tiger balances itself on its hind legs to maul with both front paws simultaneously.

Jim Sanborn

Sculptures by Jim Sanborn

Jim Sanborn (born Herbert James Sanborn Jr.)  is an American sculptor. He is best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. surroundings. Sanborn designed Indian Run Park located adjacent to the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Beltsville, Maryland with inspiration from the Iroquois Nations that inhabited the area nearly 900 years ago. On this site, hundreds of artifacts by the Iroquois have been discovered, and it is estimated that thousands still remain.

Jim Sanborn himself has also “seeded” 10,000 arrowheads within the grounds, allowing visitors the possibility to take a piece of this work of art with them. The park, named after the original Indian Run River that once existed here, includes a waterfall and walkway resembling the snaking waterway. Also, located within the park is a bronze cylindrical sculpture written in Onondaga language and “transcribed from the ancient oral tradition of the five Iroquois nations.” At night it is illuminated with a pinpoint light that emits its text upon the surrounding environment.

Jürgen Wittdorf

Woodcut Prints and Linocuts by Jürgen Wittdorf

Jürgen Wittdorf is a German painter and graphic artist, mainly known through his book illustrations and large sized woodcuts and linocuts. In 1960-1961, he created a series called “For the Youth”, which portrayed young hooligans and youths either dressed in jeans or posed in full frontal nudity. This “Westernization” earned Wittdorf criticisms from the German state.

Note: An interesting and extensive article to read on the attitudes regarding homosexuality in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the last half of the twentieth-century is Eric A. Gordon’s homage to his friend Michael Kuschnia which was published in the January 2021 online People’s World. The article, which covers their fifty-year friendship and correspondences can be found at: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/homage-to-michael-my-east-german-friend-of-half-a-century/

Hieroglyphic Writing

Hieroglyphic Writing at the Temple Complex in Luxor, Egypt

Luxor Temple is a large Ancient Egyptian temple complex located on the east bank of the Nile River in the city today known as Luxor (ancient Thebes) and was founded in 1400 BCE. Known in the Egyptian language as ipet resyt, or “the southern sanctuary”. In Luxor there are six great temples, the four on the left bank are known to travellers and readers of travels as Goornah, Deir-el-Bahri, the Ramesseum, and Medinet Habu; and the two temples on the right bank are known as the Karnak and Luxor.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Woodcut Prints by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡 芳年; also named Taiso Yoshitoshi 大蘇 芳年)  was a Japanese artist who lived from 1839-1892. He is widely recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. Yoshitoshi is also regarded as one of the form’s greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.

By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, Yoshitoshi almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

His life is perhaps best summed up by John Stevenson: “Yoshitoshi’s courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst of glory.”

—John Stevenson, Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1992

Getting Go: the Go Doc Project

Getting Go: the Go Doc Project, Director and Writer Cory Krueckeberg

College boy, Doc (Tanner Cohen, Were The World Mine) is obsessed with a well-known NYC go-go dancer, nicknamed Go (Matthew Camp). He befriends his hunky crush with the intention of shooting a movie about what it’s like to live in his skin. Camera in hand, he follows his subject across the city: into bars, onto rooftops and dance floors and ultimately his bedroom. But as they grow closer, flirtation blurs the line between subject and filmmaker until a steamy night together solidifies deeper feelings. Cory Kruekeberg’s explicit directorial debut explores the thrill and danger of getting exactly what you wished for.

Funny, sexy movie with a great story starring both Tanner Cohen and Matthew Camp. Nothing else needed in this great film.

My thanks to MandaBear83 for putting together this great clip with the song “Overture” from the “Sundark and Riverlight’ album by Patrick Wolf  (That song was a good choice!)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

John Jude Palencar

John Jude Palencar, “Insomnia Sleeper”

John Jude Palencar is an American fantasy, science fiction, and horror artist. He graduated form the Columbus College of Art and Design in 1980. When Knopf published “Eragon” in 2003, they called on Palencar to illustrate the cover. He also illustrated the covers for “Eldest”, “Brisingr”, and “Inheritance”. In 2010 Palencar was nominated in the World Fantasy Award Best Artist category.

Horus and Set

GlaringDragon, “Horus and Set”, DeviantArt

The most important part of the Chester Beatty Papyrus I is the mythological story of “The Contendings of Horus and Seth” which deals with the battles between Horus and Set to see who will be the successor to the throne of Osiris. Horus and Seth have various competitions to see who will be king. Horus beats Seth each time.

The specific time of the Contendings is a period during which the fighting has temporarily stopped; Seth and Horus have brought their case before the Ennead. There both Set and Horus plead their cases and the deities of the Ennead state their opinions. The combat starts up again between Horus and Seth and finally, the situation is resolved when Horus is determined to be rightful king of Egypt.