Last winter there was an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts called "
Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939". The prints were highly rule-based in terms of their arrangement and coloring, many of them referencing war and/or industry in one way or another. Linocuts were one of the most popular forms of printmaking by the artists from this genre and time period (a linocut is a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum, sometimes mounted on a wooden block, is used for the relief surface - wikipedia), and the piece below, "The Merry-Go-Round", is a linocut by Cyril Power from 1930. This image came to mind after completing the
light pendant for Jeff Adams, along with the notion of subverting the traditional understanding of ornament as purely supplemental. It still seems important to consider how within a single composition that which is primary and that which is decorative may become, at moments, so intertwined that they are totally indistinguishable (lingering academic concerns...).
Latin: scraped tablet or clean slate
1__TABULA RASA refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world. - wikipedia, Jan. 2, 2007
Romans 7:21-25
2__The Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 7: [21]So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. [22]For in my inner being I delight in God's law; [23]but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. [24]What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? [25]Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
A New Tabula Rasa, John 3:1-5
3__Jesus talks to Nicodemus about being born again: [1]Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. [2]He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him." [3]In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." [4]"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" [5]Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
