A fine art, film, history and literature site oriented to, but not exclusively for, the gay community. Please be aware that there is mature content on this blog. Information on images and links to sources will be provided if known. Enjoy your visit and please subscribe.
AJ Fosik was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. In 2003, he received a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design in New York City. He is currently based in Portland, Oregon. Fosik’s work has been exhibited in galleries across the country including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and San Francisco. He has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Brooklyn Rail and Tokion. In 2011, Fosik was commissioned by Mastodon to create artwork for the cover of their album, The Hunter. The band’s music video featured the artist working in his studio on the piece.
Maskull Lasserre was born in Canada in 1978, and spent his early childhood in South Africa. He has a BFA from Mount Allison University (Visual Art and Philosophy), and an MFA from Concordia University in sculpture.
Lasserre’s drawings and sculptures explore the unexpected potential of the everyday through allegories of value, expectation, and utility. Elements of nostalgia, accident, humor, and the macabre are incorporated into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected.
Lasserre is represented in the collections of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Government of Canada amongst others. He has exhibited across Canada, in the United States and in Europe, including at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the GRASSI Museum in Germany. He is also a recent participant in the Canadian Forces War Artist Program in Afghanistan.
Bloc Party, “Kreuzberg” from the Album “A Weekend in the City”
Video by Ricco Buitink, January 2011.
This video was partly shot in Berlin (district Kreuzberg) in winter 2009. The other parts are taken from a video of Bloc Party live at Bristol Academy. The scenes in the U-Bahn are from the short movie “U-Bahn”, directed by Hendrik Hölzemann.
Kyle Okereke, the openly gay lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, wrote the lyrics for the band’s second album, “A Weekend In The City”, partially in response to the death of London bartender David Morley who was beaten to death in a possibly homophobic “happy slapping.” The song “Kreuzberg” is about unfulfilling promiscuity.
Bloc Party, “I Still Remember” from the Album “A Weekend in the City”
Bloc Party are an English indie rock band, currently composed of Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, sampler), Russell Lissack (lead guitar, keyboards), Justin Harris (bass guitar, keyboards, saxophones, backing vocals) and Louise Bartle (drums). Their brand of music, whilst rooted in rock, retains elements of other genres such as electronica and house music. The band was formed at the 1999 Reading Festival by Okereke and Lissack.
With the release of “Flux”, Bloc Party’s style became even more diverse with the inclusion of electronic music. “Mercury” saw Bloc Party distance themselves even further from the traditional guitar band set-up by experimenting with dark electronic sounds and a brass section inspired by Siouxsie and the Banshees. The band’s third album Intimacy also features synths, processed drum beats and loops, vocal manipulation, and choral arrangements. Even though the album was influenced by electronic music, the band still had not lost their feel for guitar music.
Kyle Okereke, the openly gay lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, wrote the lyrics for the band’s second album, “A Weekend In The City”, partially in response to the death of London bartender David Morley who was beaten to death in a possibly homophobic “happy slapping.” The song “I Still Remember” is about an unspoken attraction between guys.
Tuvan Shamans: Photography by Alexander Nikolsky, Siberian Times
Spiritual leaders from different corners of the globe gathered for the ‘Call of 13 Shamans’, a four-day festival held near the village of Khorum-Dag in the Tyva Republic.
It is the centre point of the Asian continent and an area that is said to have high spiritual ‘charge’. The timing of the event had been chosen to match natural cosmic cycles.
The group of shamans, who travelled from countries including Mexico, Mongolia, Greenland, Russia and Korea, began by trekking to isolated locations for three days of meditation before performing a number of ceremonies – many of which originated in prehistory.
Kraken were also extensively described by Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, in his Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie “The First Attempt at [a] Natural History of Norway” (Copenhagen, 1752). Pontoppidan made several claims regarding kraken, including the notion that the creature was sometimes mistaken for an island and that the real danger to sailors was not the creature itself but rather the whirlpool left in its wake. However, Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: “it is said that if [the creature’s arms] were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom.”
“Something in me was responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there.”
The Fontana dell’ Amenano is a carrara marble monument which seperates Piazza del Duomo on the north side from the rough and tumble La Pescheria marketplaceon the south side. It was built in 1867 by Tito Angelini and is a tribute to the River Amenano, which once ran overgroound and on whose banks the Greeks founded the city of Katáne. Behind the fountain is the stone staircase doorway that leads to the fish market, one of the major attractions of Catania.
The Candy Anatomy project by Scottish Mike McCormick, a medical student, continues to learn the human anatomy with colorful candies. An amazing technique that works apparently, since Mike McCormick is now in second year, and continues to recreate his biology and anatomy diagrams with candy
