Month: January 2016

Hozier, “Take Me to Church”

Hozier, “Take Me to Church”

Hozier was born in Bray, Ireland, the son of a local blues musician. He attended St. Gerard’s School before he began studying music at Trinity College, Dublin, but dropped out midway through his first year to record demos for Universal Music. While at Trinity, he became involved with the Trinity Orchestra. He was a member of the chorale ensemble Anúna from 2007 to 2012, and appears as a soloist on their 2012 release Illumination singing “La Chanson de Mardi Gras. He toured and sang with the group internationally including performances in Norway and the Netherlands.

In 2013, Hozier released the EP Take Me to Church (also containing “Like Real People Do”, “Angel of Small Death and The Codeine Scene” and a live version of “Cherry Wine”), with the title track becoming his breakthrough single after it went viral on YouTube. It reached number one on iTunes on 25 October 2013. Hozier followed up Take Me to Church with the new EP From Eden (also containing “Work Song”, “Arsonist’s Lullabye” and a live version of “To Be Alone”), and a number of festival tour dates and television appearances in the United States.

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

The Ayam Cemani Chicken

The Ayam Cemani Chicken

Ayam Cemani is an uncommon and relatively modern breed of chicken originating in Indonesia. They have a dominant gene that causes hyperpigmentation (also termed as Fibromelanosis) leading to the skin, feathers and even the internal organs appearing dark black.

The breed originated from the island of Java, Indonesia and was probably in use for centuries and used for religious and mystic rites. They were first described by Dutch colonial settlers. It was first imported into Europe in 1998 by Dutch breeder Jan Steverink. Currently stocks are kept in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It is thought that Ayam Cemani may also earlier have been brought to Europe by Dutch seamen who had numerous contacts in both Africa and Asia.

The birds are completely black: black plumage with a greenish shine, black legs and toe nails, black beak and tongue, black comb and wattles; even their meat, bones and organs appear black. The blood of the Ayam Cemani is normal (though it is remarkably dark). The birds’ black colour occurs as a result of excess pigmentation of the tissues, caused by a genetic condition known as fibromelanosis. This gene is also found in some other black fowl breeds. The roosters weigh 2–2.5 kg and the hens from 1.5–2 kg. The hens lay cream-colored eggs with a slight pink tint, although they are poor setters and rarely hatch their own brood.

Lucea Spinelli

Lucea Spinelli, “Photosgraphe”, Light and Motion Photos

NYC-based photographer Lucea Spinelli has a special appreciation for light and motion in her series of moving images titled Phōtosgraphé. She utilizes chairs, swing sets, and park benches as backdrops and props for luminous forms that seem to bounce effortlessly through the frame. In some pieces the light mimics the pathway of ghostly human figures while in others it sparkles like fireflies or expands like a rainbow.

“Photography is the process of drawing with light, as it’s etymology implies: a compound of the greek words φωτός (phōtos) “light” and γραφή (graphé) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”. Like a human eye, the camera receives impressions of light reflected off the world around us. When making long exposures, the film (or sensor) becomes a canvas for as long as the shutter is open, permitting light to act like paint on a brush.

In this way, by distilling the course of movement over time into one single image photography, in addition to it’s potential to mirror reality, also has an ability to suspend reality.” – Lucea Spinelli

Max Ernst

Max Ernst, “Deux Oiseaux (Two Birds)”, Colour Lithograph, 1975

Max Ernst was born in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family. His father Philipp was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter, a devout Christian and a strict disciplinarian. He inspired in Max a penchant for defying authority, while his interest in painting and sketching in nature influenced Max to take up painting himself.

In 1909 Ernst enrolled in the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, art history, literature, psychology and psychiatry. He visited asylums and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients; he also started painting that year, producing sketches in the garden of the Brühl castle, and portraits of his sister and himself. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, deciding to become an artist.

In 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work was exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, and then in several group exhibitions in 1913.

Maggi Hambling

Maggi Hambling, “ A Conversation with the Sea”, Steel, Aldeburgh, England

The sculture is made from stainless steel and is a celebration of the composer Benjamin Britten who lived in the area. The words stencilled onto the tip of one of the scallop shells read “I hear those voices that will not be drowned” and are taken from Britten’s opera “Peter Grimes”. The twelve foot high sculpture is made of 10mm-thick stainless steel, with five tons of shingle between it and its foundation, which is also of steel. It will withstand gales of 100 miles an hour.

The scallop-shaped sculpture was built thanks to the enthusiastic support and fund-raising efforts of Simon Loftus, an influential figure in the Aldeburgh music festival and the chairman of Adnams, the famous brewery in Southwold, up the coast from Aldeburgh.

Olivier Valsecchi

 

The Dancers in the Dust Series: Photography by Olivier Valsecchi

Olivier Valsecchi, born in 1979 in France, is specialized in portraiture and photographing nudes; but the most attention he has recently gotten is with his series “Dust”. This series consists of nude males and females covered in white powder in awkward positions. This series was recently published in the spring issue of 2010 of magazine “Eyemazing”.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, “Dying Bull”, 1934, Oil on Canvas, 33.7 x 55.2 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Picasso’s father took him to see his first bullfight in 1889, when he was only nine years old. The spectacle so impressed him that he made it the subject of his very first painting that same year. In 1934 Picasso again took up the subject in an extensive series of drawings, prints, and paintings in which the choreography of the corrida became a metaphor for life and death. Here, Picasso focuses solely on the agony of the dying bull, eliminating the spectators, horses, and matador.