Sankta Lucia 13 Dec

Today Sankta Lucia is celebrated in Sweden. It is a festival of light during the darkest time of the year.
It is a beautiful celebration. Young girls dressed in white holding candles follow the Lucia also in white with a red sash and a crown with candles. They sing and walk in a procession during the early hours of the day as if to ward the darkness away.
Natten gaar tunga fjaet runt gaard och stuga, jorden som sol forgaet, skuggorna ruva.
Daa i vaart moerka hus stiger med taenda ljus Sankta Lucia Sankta Lucia
It feels like such an honour to be Lucia. I was once and loved it!
Lucia also brngs saffron buns and hot coffee-God Morgon med lussekatt!

Marianne Hauser

If Marianne were alive today I would be in NYC visitng her for her birthday! I love her and the times we spent together. She was an inspiration to me of what I can look forward to in ancient age!
To all of her fans out there - celebrate Marianne! Love and example is what we can give and be given!
A really good writer and I can recommend her work completely and totally. Her work kept on getting better.

Mark Tobey

Mark Tobey born in Centerville, Wisconsin 11 December 1890 and died in Basel, Switzerland 24 April 1976. Co-founder of the Northwest school of painting and considered one of the "mystical" painters. He was certainly involved in his evolving spiritual life and expressing it in and through his work, as well as spending time in the Far East and living in a monastery for a time. I see a connection with Gustave Moreau not in the subject matter but the spiritual content.

Snow

December tenth in 1929 in Toronto, Ontario a Michael Snow was born. One of the most interesting creative people in Canada he works in film, art, visual and 3D and whatever else he finds appropriate for his ideas.
His film Wavelength, which I saw in London at the Filmmakers Co-Op in the seventies and then again later when I was a student at St Martins, was a groundbreaking film. If you ever get a chance to see it, you must.

In Fort Wayne, Indiana

In 1941, today, Bruce Nauman was born. His work has always intrigued me.
I saw once a full on one man retrospective at the Basel Kunsthalle and was blown away. He lives in the desert in New Mexico with Susan Rothenberg the painter.
Glass made out of sand and neon which is a gas. Ephemeral. Yet with messages of so called statements in the English language, quasi-truths, mindbogglers in gorgeous colours. How do you respond? Does it make you think or feel or...?
What if you do not know English, then what? Art for the English speaking only?
Jenny Holzer is another word/text/moving light artist.
Barbara Kruger, Lawrence Wiener, Jack Pierson, Ed Ruscha all work with text, words, meanings, political messages...We are surrounded by words and we live in a very oral/aural world as well as a visual one too. I can not help but read practically every word I see, therefore it is wonderful to go on a word vacation/holiday in a foreign country where your ears can rest and your eyes too. No bombardment of concepts or none, no meanings to think about or not.. A cleansing.
Mind you, have you ever tried spotting typos and find that you fill in the blanks?

Happy First Birthday to Aiel!

Aiel is turning ONE today in California and we send her all our love and congratulations and also to her parents Seth and Lena too of course.
She is mega cute!

Happy 60th Gillian!

This is to wish Gillian Mcmullen a very Happy Birthday today!
Hipp hipp hurrah!