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Posts Tagged ‘light’

From the Moroccan Pavillion {Milano Expo 2015}

Posted in art, art,poetry,writing, Photography, Poetry, Traveling, wanderlust, tagged , , , , on February 18, 2017| 2 Comments »

The Prophet described iman, or faith, as such: “Faith is to acknowledge with the heart, to voice with the tongue, and to act with the limbs,” (Chittick 6).

This outlines the hierarchy of bodily domains that human beings consist of: the heart, signifying innermost awareness; the tongue which articulates and expresses; and one’s limbs, the source of action.

The art of poetry incorporates all three of these, for one cannot compose a poem without the cognizance of the heart, the use of speech or the physical use of limbs to write out the words.

Poetry channels the three spheres of the body so that awareness, thought and activity fuse to create one product.

Beyond Words: Chronicling Spiritual Ecstasy and Experience in Sufi Poetry

Kate Van Brocklin 

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Coming Back {Halloween and Diwali} 

Posted in art, Mexico Lindo y Querido, Photography, Quotes, San Diego, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 4, 2016| 4 Comments »



Dear Single Reader (as Stephen King used to say),

I fear you might have given up on me.

Here is what I have to show from the months of June – September: the publication of my first academic research paper, presented to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) International Conference in Santiago de Chile.  I went there in June, and from there onto Buenos Aires.

This, and irresponsible happiness.

Late September was Baja California, Mexico, and its searing sunrises.                 Halloween saw me as Frida; Diwali, the Indian Festival of Light ( October 30- November 3) saw my home, and heart, ablaze.

…

“Being a candle is not easy; in order to give light one must burn first.”

Rumi 

Happy last night of Diwali, the Indian Festival of light. This is a time where light banishes darkness,a time of renewals and new beginnings.

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Happy Diwali! { The Festival of Lights}

Posted in art,poetry,writing, Artuesdays, Experiments, Photography, Spontaneous Constructs, tagged , , , , , on November 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

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Last night, between November 10 and November 11, and all day today we celebrate Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights. I had fun arranging light
‘sculptures’ and enjoyed the presence of so many candles and lit lamps in every room, till the wee hours of the night.
Magical, powerful fire and all manners of colored skins, screens and effects to spread, diffuse, and scatter light…I loved this night.

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What is Diwali ? – you might ask.

Diwali is the Festival of Lights in India, a day to celebrate good triumphing over evil and light over darkness.
It is in, fact, the end of darkness.
Diwali is a day to honor your inner light and bless your home. It is a day for  new beginnings, as it celebrates the start of the Indian New Year.

H  A  P  P  Y     D  I  W  A  L  I 

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Light up all the candles! Hang your lanterns and luminaires…string all the lights.
….
Diwali is called the Festival of Lights and is celebrated to honor Rama-chandra, the seventh avatar (incarnation of the god Vishnu). It is believed that on this day Rama returned to his people after 14 years of exile during which he fought and won a battle against the demons and the demon king, Ravana. People lit their houses to celebrate his victory over evil (light over darkness).

The goddess of happiness and good fortune, Lakshmi, also figures into the celebration. It is believed that she roams the earth on this day and enters the house that is pure, clean, and bright. Diwali celebrations may vary in different communities but its significance and spiritual meaning is generally “the awareness of the inner light”.
Source: http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/diwali

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Lights at Lulu’s

Posted in digital collage, photography, writing, architecture, Drawing, Ink, Poetry, sketchbook, sketching, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Luminaires- Café Lulu. San Diego, May 9, 2014. Ink, marker, digital collage.

Luminaires- Café Lulu. San Diego, May 9, 2014. Ink, marker, digital collage.

 

 

On Being an Artist

Noelle Kocot

 

Saturn seems habitual,
The way it rages in the sky
When we’re not looking.
On this note, the trees still sing
To me, and I long for this
Mottled world.  Patterns
Of the lamplight on this leather,
The sun, listening.
My brother, my sister,
I was born to tell you certain
Things, even if no one
Really listens.  Give it back
To me, as the bird takes up
The whole sky, ruined with
Nightfall.  If I can remember
The words in the storm,
I will be well enough to sit
Here with you a little while.

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{Everything will turn into flowers}

Posted in art, art,poetry,writing, Digital Manipulation, Photography, Poetry, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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San Diego, April 20, 2014

Open the windows of your soul,
And let the light in,
As a house shuttered for months
Receives the Sun.

San Diego, Easter Sunday 2014

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Shadows, Math, Truth…Ephipanies

Posted in Architecture, art,poetry,writing, Cures for the Nothing, Design, Desk Crit, digital collage, photography, writing, architecture, Drawing, Lectures, Quotes, school, School Work, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Platonic Solid Exercise. Graphite on Paper. 2007

Happy September. Post coming late today, but it is a new month and I hope this, my birthday month (yay) will be better than the last- and all summer for that matter.  Lots of challenges and growth but…they don’t call them growing pains for nothing.

In my classes today we shared links on artists, visual notes, wonderful quotes, and great books.  I can’t wait to tell you all about it.  Things are getting really exciting and we are all growing by leaps and bounds. Good stuff and a great feeling of accomplishment at the end of this intense summer quarter. 

Few unrelated topics that I have been mulling over lately:

1.  Working out shadows in axonometric settings, like solving algebraic equations, helps to solve ourselves and gives us mathematical certainties (certainties that cannot be so cleanly and clearly found in real life).  I always heard math is not an opinion, and I am appreciating its impartiality, its justice even. I know now its compassion.

Still, a solution is relative to the light angle  we construct a priori, a philosophical question if there ever was one.

Shadows, like math, are either ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ relative to the established angle of light;  no room for fuzzyness, approximation, guessing. How refreshing. How pure the solution.  These (platonic) objects exists in an utopian airtight chamber or world, and the light is absolute, the light of truth.

The ‘real’ world (and ‘real’ shadows), like all matters of architecture and design and their ‘solutions’, are much more subtle, nuanced, grayscale— as opposed to black and white.
And so even truth is relative in our confounded orb.

2.  I am thinking of ways to design the freehand drawing classes to transcend drawing as transposing what we ‘see’ and help it become a design tool (depicting what may be, or possible scenarios).

It is a challenge, because the basic drawing techniques still need to be mastered, but the course could be imbued with and define a research path, becoming not only a stronger vehicle for learning, but generating material for publication. Exciting stuff, now it’s just a matter of  tightening up my interest areas and plan for action.

The Freehand Drawing and Rendering and Delineation classes will meet again next summer, and I have held some meetings to design its contents(more on this on coming posts) . Some words buzzing in my head are collages/assemblages, words, poetry, architecture, grayscale abstracts, visual notes/sketchnotes, inventories, data gathering quests, urban scavenging, pattern and in-formation.

3.   The more I grow as a passive designer- passive because I have been in an observing, absorbing mode for a while now…just storing information until the right moment comes- the more drawings i do, I am realizing that the challenges of design are not additive ones, but subtractive.

Learning what to remove, what to take away, leaving just the essential, is the challenge. Architecture is a matter of reduction, not addition.    Let me try to explain myself better. During our architectural education and pedestrian work experiences we are taught to include so many details, turn in complete drawings, complete construction documents sets etc. All of this is techniciams’ stuff. It is the drafter’s realm, or the CAD operator’s realm. It is not the Architect’s or designer’s province, which should aspire to loftier expressions. Design is abstraction of thought and ideas. It is reducing your concept to your most pure expression, cutting away all the fat and the unnecessary. Even the best art, I am finding, is painfully created by reducing your concept, feelings, ideas, to the most clear image, the prime number, the denominator. Significant work is created through ruthlessly leaving out all unnecessary data, information. Including too much is just self-indulgence; the disciplined designer pursues truth as she or he defines it and does not or cannot have time for self-indulgence. The purity of the idea is what one needs to be faithful to, everything else is interference by bureaucrats, technicians, pencil pushers.

Am I sounding like Howard Roark? WellI am in the process of defining a design philosophy and given the person that I am, this definition comes first in words , which will guide the action.  As my dear friend Lamees said, one is not to do without being first.  Be first–then do– then have…it all happens spontaneously.

Part of being an architect is accepting an elitist role, necessary not to set apart one from the rest of humanity, but to preserve the purity of the design idea, its drive and execution. Part of being an architect and an artist is learning to let go of many things once thought necessary and just rendering our work in the most pure, direct, potent way.

Finally, a quote that is driving my days, these days:


“What we think or what we know or what

we believe is, in the end, of little

consequence. 


The only consequence is what we do.”

 

John Ruskin

 

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Swimming in Precarious Gossamer

Posted in art,poetry,writing, Experiments, Photography, Portfolio of Work, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2009| 3 Comments »


All photos taken using Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera with Leica wide lens


Mother of Pearl, translucent

Wispy, cloudlike, ethereal

Ephemeral, iridescent

Gossamer.

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My Father’s Kimono (stolen)

Posted in art,poetry,writing, Photography, Spontaneous Constructs, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Photograph Feb. 09

Photograph Feb. 09

This is an example of extemporaneous art.

Art happens all the time, on the edge of our consciousness.

The difference between the artist and the art-aware, is that the artist captures the object of wander and preserves it for future use.  We do not/ cannot let go of  a moment in which Art manifests herself.  We need to posess it, not only experience it.  We are collectors, time keepers.  We are greedy.

This play of light happened as I hung my father’s japanese robe on a window.
I appropriated this robe few years ago, as it was stored inside my parents’ armoire and had never been used since my father received it as a gift, sometimes in the 70′ s or 80’s.
The light streaming through the silk yarns made it alive. Red light bathed the room.  What was captured with the camera is, at best, an approximation, as are all emotions “collected in tranquillity” (Wordsworth).
The robe- and the air in the room- was on fire.

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