Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

Kaneko Tomiyuki

Paintings by Kaneko Tomiyuki

Japanese artist Kaneko Tomiyuki was born in Saitama prefecture, 1978. Since childhood, he has been particularly interested in Japanese folklore and the spiritual world. His interest has led him to study in the Tohoku prefecture, which was the birthplace of “Legends of Tono”. As an undergraduate student he studied Japanese style painting in Tohoku University of Art & Design and graduated the postgraduate of the same university in 2009. Even after he finished studying, he continues to “substantiate” mythological creatures such as: yokai, spirits and the gods by painting.

Kaneko believes that the stratum of unconsciousness called the “Manas-vijnana” in Sanskrit (the seventh stratum of the eight within the world of Yogacara) is the origin of “evil” in everyday life, beginning with Yokais and many other evil creatures. Compared to the animalistic nature of the eighth stratum, “Alaya-vijinana”, “Manas-vijinana” is the unique feature of human and the unconscious emotion of attachment. It is always around us and constantly puts us into trickery. However, this unconscious emotion of attatchment is what makes humans human. The human’s strength to struggle is where all art is created, and by intercrossing with localized imagination it has formed as the yokai.

Calendar: April 3

A Year: Day to Day Men: 3rd of April

The Railroad Yard

On April 3, 1882, Jesse Woodson James was shot in the back of the head at his home.

After the failed bank robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, on September 7, 1876, only Jesse and Frank James remained alive and free, escaping to Missouri. Later in 1876 Jesse and Frank surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee, area using the names Thomas Howard and B.J. Woodson, respectively. Frank seemed to settle down, but Jesse recruited a new gang, leading them on a spree of crimes. A law enforcement posse attacked and killed two of the outlaws but failed to capture the entire gang.

By 1881, with the local Tennessee authorities getting closer, Frank and Jesse James returned to Missouri. James moved his family to Saint Joseph, Missouri, in November 1881, not far from his birthplace. Frank made the decision to head east and settle in Virginia. Both intended to give up crime.

With his gang nearly annihilated, Jesse James trusted only the Ford brothers, Charley and Robert. For protection, he asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. By that time, Robert Ford had already conducted secret negotiations with Missouri Governor Crittenden to bring Jesse in and secure the $5000 bounty reward from the railroad.

On April 3, 1882, after eating breakfast, the Ford brothers and Jesse went into the living room before traveling to a planned robbery. Jesse had learned from a newspaper of one of his gang members who was captured and had confessed to a murder. Jesse was suspicious that the Fords did not mention the news; but he did not confront them. Robert Ford believed that Jesse James had realized the Fords were about to betray him. When Jesse turned his back to them, Robert Ford drew his weapon, and shot the unarmed Jesse James in the back of the head.

The Fords acknowledged their role in Jesse James’ death; Robert wired the governor to claim his reward. The Ford brothers surrendered to the authorities and were dismayed to be charged with first-degree murder. In the course of a single day, the Ford brothers were indicted, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to death by hanging, and were granted a full pardon by Governor Crittenden. The governor’s quick pardon suggested he knew the brothers intended to kill James rather than capture him. The implication that the chief executive of Missouri conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public and added to Jesse James’ notoriety

Suffering from tuberculosis and a morphine addiction, Charley Ford committed suicide on May 6, 1884, in Richmond, Missouri. Bob Ford operated a tent saloon in Creede, Colorado. On June 8, 1892, Edward O’Kelley went to Creede, loaded a double-barrel shotgun, entered Ford’s saloon and said “Hello, Bob,” before shooting Ford in the throat, killing him instantly. O’Kelley was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was subsequently commuted because of a 7,000-signature petition in favor of his release. The Governor of Colorado pardoned him on the third of October in 1902.

Hendrick Goltzius

Hendrick Goltzius, “Four Studies of Hands”

Hendrick Goitzius was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, noted for his sophisticated technique. He arrived in Haarlem at age nineteen. Two years later, he set up a workshop. He left Haarlem only once to visit Germany and Italy in 1590 to 1591, bringing home a more classical, naturalistic art that shifted Dutch artists away from the eccentric Mannerist style. His panoramic, open-air drawings of Holland’s scenery, among the earliest Dutch landscapes, paved the way for younger artists like Rembrandt van Rijn.

Famous for his printmaking, Goltzius worked in secret and never showed an unfinished work. By 1600 he had abandoned the burin for the brush. His eyesight was failing due to years of painstaking work with engraving tools, and, like his contemporaries, he believed painting to be superior to printmaking. He died in 1617, never achieving the same quality on panel as he had on paper.

Calendar: April 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of April

The Scarf with Fringe

On April 2, 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon first sights land in what is now the United States state of Florida.

In September 1493, some 1200 sailors, colonists and soldiers joined Christopher Columbus for his second voyage to the New World. Ponce de León was a member of this expedition, one of two hundred ‘gentlemen volunteers’. The fleet reached the Caribbean in November of 1493, and their primary destination of Hispaniola, now Puerto Rico. In 1504 the appointed governor of Hispaniola, Nicolas de Ovando, assigned Ponce de León to crush the rebellion of the native Tainos people. For this service, he was awarded a land grant and became the frontier governor of the defeated province.

Urged by King Ferdinand of Spain, Ponce de León equipped three ships with at least 200 men at his own expense and set out from Puerto Rico on March 4, 1513 in search for new lands and riches. The fleet crossed open water until April 2, 1513, when they sighted land which Ponce de León believed was another island. He named it la Florida in recognition of the verdant landscape and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida (Festival of Flowers). The precise location of their landing on the Florida coast has been disputed for many years.

Although Ponce de León is widely credited with the discovery of Florida, he almost certainly was not the first European to reach the peninsula. Spanish slave expeditions had been regularly raiding the Bahamas since 1494 and there is some evidence that one or more of these slavers made it as far as the shores of Florida. Another piece of evidence that others came before Ponce de León is the Cantino Map from 1502, which shows a peninsula near Cuba that looks like Florida’s and includes characteristic place names.

In early 1521, Ponce de León organized a colonizing expedition consisting of some 200 men, including priests, farmers and artisans, 50 horses and other domestic animals, and farming implements carried on two ships. The expedition landed somewhere on the coast of southwest Florida likely in the vicinity of Charlotte Harbor or the Caloosahatchee River. Before the settlement could be established, the colonists were attacked by a large party of native Calusa warriors. Ponce de León was mortally wounded in the skirmish when, historians believe, an arrow poisoned with manchineel sap struck his thigh. The expedition immediately abandoned the colonization attempt and returned to Havana, Cuba, where Ponce de León soon died of his wounds.

Nicolás Campodonico

Nicolás Campodonico, Capilla San Bernardo Nicolás Campodonico (Saint Bernard’s Chapel), Cordoba, Argentina

Located in the Pampa plains area of Cordoba, Argentina, Saint Bernard´s Chapel rises in a small grove, originally occupied by a rural house and its yards. The rural house and its yards were both dismantled in order to reuse their materials, especially its one-hundred-year-old bricks. The site does not have electricity or any other utilities.

In the limit between the trees and the open country, the chapel´s volume opens up towards the sun, capturing the natural light of the sunset in the interior. Outside, a vertical and a horizontal poles are placed separately and projected towards the interior. As a result, every day all year round, the shadow of these, slides along the curved interior, finishing its tour overlapping with each other. The crucifixion is conceptually completed with the reunion of both poles, recreating the cross. Every day, the shadows of the poles make their way separately to finally meet and recreate the cross.

Architect: Nicolás Campodonico
Architect collaborators: Arq. Martin Lavayén, Arq. Soledad Cugno, Arq. Virginia Theilig, Arq. Gabriel Stivala, Arq. Tomás Balparda, Arq. Pablo Taberna, Arq. Gastón Kibysz.

 

Ken Kesey: “I’m Not a Chicken, I’m a Rabbit”

Photographers and Artists Unknown, All Manner of Easter Rabbits

“Mr. McMurphy… my friend… I’m not a chicken, I’m a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, we’re not in here because we are rabbitsーwe’d be rabbits wherever we wereーwe’re all in here because we can’t adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.”

― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Calendar: April 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of April

Sea Adventure

April 1, 1895 is the birthdate of the American jazz singer and songwriter Alberta Hunter.

In her early teens Alberta Hunter began her singing career in small clubs in Chicago, Illinois. By 1914 she was receiving lessons from the prominent jazz pianist Tony Jackson who helped her expand her repertoire and compose her own songs. One of Hunter’s first notable experiences was singing at the Panama Club, a white-owned club with a white-only clientele. Her act was in the upstairs room where she began her development as an artist in front of a cabaret crowd of patrons. Her big break came when she was booked at Dreamland Cafe, singing with the cornet jazz musician King Oliver and his band.

Alberta Hunter first toured Europe in 1917, performing in Paris and London. Her career as a singer and songwriter flourished in the 1920s and 30s; she appeared in clubs and on stage in musicals both in London and New York. At this time she wrote the critically acclaimed song “Downhearted Blues” (1922). Alberta Hunter recorded prolifically during the 1920s, starting with sessions for Black Swan in 1921, Paramount in 1922-24, Gennett in 1924, Okeh in 1925-26, Victor in 1927 and Columbia in 1929.

In 1928, Hunter played the role of Queenie opposite Paul Robeson in the first London production of “Show Boat” at Drury Lane. She later performed in nightclubs throughout Europe and appeared in 1934 with Jack Jackson’s society orchestra in London. One of Hunter’s most known recordings with Jackson is the famous song “Miss Otis Regrets”. She later moved to New York City, performing with Bricktop, the American female dancer and jazz singer, and recording with Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet.

In the summer of 1976 , Alberta Hunter was connected with Barney Josephson, the legendary owner of the Greenwich Village club, The Cookery. He offered her a limited engagement at the club, which turned into a six year engagement and a revival of her music career after a fifteen year absence from the profession. Impressed by her press reviews, John Hammond signed Hunter to Columbia Records, where she made three albums.

Alberta Hunter was inducted to the Blues hall of Fame in 2011 and the Memphis Music Hall fo Fame in 2015. Her comeback album produced by Columbia Records, “Amtrack Blues”, was honored by the Blues Hall of Fame in 2009.

Topographical Map

Photographer Unknown, (Topographic Map)

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road