inherited no. 6

i told myself i had to stay in tonight to work on my ghirlandaio chapter and/or preparation for my class that meets monday. but the thing is, uva just switched to this new student registration system that has things all sorts of wackadoodle, and right now it only looks like two people are enrolled in my class. maybe more people will show up monday, but if not, the class will be canceled, and that makes preparation seem extremely unappealing. so now blogging has become a form of procrastination. that and trawling the internets for new music. to ease the nagging guilt i thought i would at least post an inheritance that's marginally related to what i'm supposed to be doing. you remember muriel, right, she of the watch and pastels and sesame street chitchats?


in honor of the closing days of summer, here's a favorite snapshot of grandmother. muriel kept an entire album of photographs taken from behind, it was her favorite kind, so it seems fitting that among the masses of photos i've collected, there's this one of her.


this tiny book is what i want to show you, friends. its pages are cracked and yellowed and it smells like the inside of old wooden drawers. also, it originally cost 60 cents. can you say awesome? i was only subconciously aware of this book's existence until a few years ago when one of my professors was listing off a short bibliography of general books on drawing i might consult. this was before i had irrevocably signed my life away to the study of these fragile pieces of paper, but when he mentioned this little text, it suddenly came into focus in my mind. oh, yes, i thought, i know that one, my grandmother owned it. and then, when i opened it, and it fell immediately to the page pictured below, well, something clicked.


on the page opposite the opening lines of text was the drawing that had pushed me over the edge into a full-fledged and unabashed love of the drawing hand. this is the one that, more than once, has single-handedly caused salty drops of water to spill over onto my cheeks. and that's all fine and dandy, la ti da, but then, to think that my grandmother must have stared at the same drawing, to think that she knew a piece of me before i knew it myself, before it could be known at all, well, that's just sort of mindblowing for me.

a to the z...p is for pollaiuolo!

so, we all know that i like art, and i like systems of order. that means i was thinking i might do a little alphabet-based series of my favorite artists, because that is SO original. watch out, sister wendy. as i was thinking about the artists i might choose, i started to get overwhelmed. i mean, how am i to choose between bellmer, balla, botticelli, and bernini? and that's just the first four "b" names i came up with. i am therefore trying to narrow it down a bit by choosing artists whose work has profoundly affected me in some way. like in a walk into the gallery and want to die from awesomeness kind of way. and because i don't feel like writing about any of my "a" options, i'm getting a little crazy with it and starting with "p." (does this make using the alphabet kind of pointless?)

p is a nice letter. you know what starts with p? pollaiuolo. yeah, sesame street, you just try and sound that one out. take that, elmo. anyway, want to see what pollaiuolo looks like?

image from wright, the pollaiuolo brothers

before i assault you with a description of how jaw-dropping this work is, i just want to say that i scanned this image out of a ten-pound tome, and it was all for YOU. on to our pal antonio, who never receives the credit he is due, poor man. p was rocking it in the late fifteenth century in florence, and to be honest, i never thought that much about him until i was studying drawings at the uffizi and this one landed on the table in front of me. i loved it from the moment i saw it, and i continue to fight for its relevance with a vehemence i never thought i'd feel for pollaiuolo. please, dear and beloved reader, please click on the image so you can at least see it larger for a moment. then come back to me so that i can tell you that each line is almost incised into the paper, sketchy but sure, executed with a rapidity rarely found in drawing of this time. the subject matter helps, it's saint john the baptist, all decked out in his animal skins, looking, um, ascetic to say the least. the stroke of the pen, the quickness of the hand mirror the intense emotional tenor of the saint -- the image almost seems to vibrate. if you could only see the density of lines in the face, if you could see the way the tiniest dashes of ink create a face that is read as rugged and worn from the elements and the passage of time. this drawing rocks my world not just because it's aesthetically pleasing, but also because it's the kind of drawing that you can feel being drawn, you can see pollaiuolo thinking on the page, the hand and the mind skirmishing a bit, a little here, a little there. to have this drawing sitting on the table in front of me, in the city of its making, with nothing but the sacred air of the uffizi to separate us, is practically a religious experience for me. for a moment my pen could be pollaiuolo's. i am home, i understand.

and now you see why i'm writing a dissertation on this whole business, because obviously i can't shut up. if i keep at it, no one is going to read this blog, even people who are obligated to read it. i am talking to you, m.d. forgive me, i just love it so, and that can't be a bad thing, right?

soundtrack: matt & kim; sophie chewing on her bone

anxiously awaiting...

the posting of this print on giant robot's webshop:

(photo from boygirlparty)

i love, love, love the way susie ghahremani draws. it's a boston terrier on a bike with a cat in his basket and they are wearing SCARVES. it seriously gives me the warm fuzzies.

an ode to flat-faced dogs, part one.

you already know this about me, but i'll say it anyway: i love flat-faced dogs. boston terriers top the list, but i'm also continually charmed by frenchies, pugs, boxers, bulldogs, and any combination thereof. what do you get when you have an obsession with smooshy faces and paper goods? paper goods featuring smooshy faces, such as this painfully adorable letterpress card by sycamore street press:


here it is all framed up and ready to be hung, because i want to look at this EVERY SINGLE DAY. look at that face.

just so we're clear, there are a few reasons why i love the brachycephalic breeds. it all began with the much beloved monsieur mickerdoodle.

that's right, people, mick is here pictured sporting an anthropologie sweater.

two of my greatest loves, mister puppy and hedgie.

and then came romey-roo, the dearest of dears.

sorry, i realize the above photo probably caused you to convulse with shock. never fear, it's just milo the kilo. he has a complex about his flat face and once tried to take off my nose to level the playing field.

and then there was sophie aka soph-a-doph. forty pounds of flat-faced goodness.

sometimes she's a bit of a coy critter.

don't worry, as much as i enjoy captioning photographs of my pets with ridiculous dialogue, i will not morph into a doggyblogger. i just thought we'd get the introductions out of the way. stay tuned for additional odes. xoxo.

listening to: regina spektor, 'dance anthem of the 80s'

your love saves my day

i'm off to an impressive start here, but i feel certain this momentum is not sustainable.

so i sort of have this problem, it's an etsy problem. more specifically it's that i have 69 pages of favorite sellers. it's obscene, and i really mean that. still, despite having more favorite sellers than i know what to do with, i have a few favorites among the favorites, such as pearl and marmalade. hello, awesome name. here's my most recent purchase:

painfully adorable is the only acceptable way to describe this letterpress print. every time i see it, it saves my day.