Walking in a Winter Wonderland

I woke up this morning to over six inches of snow here in Denver. I have a bit of a break from work but my eyes were wide open at 6:30 am like a kid on Christmas morning. I took the dog out for a walk and came home with the urge to share some of my favorite snow related artworks with you.

From the book, It Looks Like Snow. Remy Charlip, 1957.

The book above was a picture book tribute to John Cage by Remy Charlip. It's a twenty-four page book with beautifully illustrated depictions of snow as seen above. For those unable to see the snow, here are a few more wintery works for you:

Everything that stands will be at odds with its neighbor, and everything that fails will perish without grace. Robyn O'Neil, 2003.

Robyn O'Neil's large scale drawings often use the backdrop of snow, a quiet, desolate place full of meaning, emotion, and signifiers of her family, friends, and personal experiences. This tiny picture won't do this piece justice so I recommend visiting her website where you can find out where to see this work in person..... big, big drawings, I'm talking seven by twelve feet wide. Her work so obviously reminds me of Bruegel. It's that rounded Dutch winter contrast, moody, cold and gray. With tiny deliberate figures and details that you may miss if you don't spend some time really looking.

Hunters in the Snow.  Pieter Bruegel, 1565.

Snow may have a mood, it certainly has a sound. Snow brings a muffled quiet that centers inside your ski hat or jacket making you aware of your breathing. It reminds me of hours and hours of building snow forts, snowmen, and snow balls; of sledding, falling, and skiing. Snow may be one of the only weather events that not only brings out the sublime in terms or beauty and temperature, but also properties of play. For that reason the following works are some of my favorites.

Snowball Track. Richard Long, 1964.

Snowball drawing. Andy Goldsworthy.

In Michigan I was able to see a different snowball drawing by Mr. Andy Goldsworthy in person and amongst all of the amazing contemporary works of art that Maxine and Stuart Frankel have collected throughout the years it was one of my favorites. At first glance I thought it was a giant spit bite aquatint until I realized it was the remains of a melted snowball; simply dirt and water outlines so simple and beautiful.

And perhaps it is the way that snow seems to simplify the world with its blanket of snowflakes covering all of our industry and commerce lumping it into simpler, larger shapes that makes me love snow so very much. It slows us down, quiets our lives, and gives us an untouched material in which to kick up, form, walk through, play through or simply watch sparkle away from us again and again.

Snow Flurries. Andrew Wyeth, 1953.

Holiday Cards

My favorite Christmas card that featured a good friend of mine sitting on a bench with a sculpture of a man, both of them in Christmas scarves proclaiming "Happy Holiday from the two of us!" has been surpassed.......

Jorge Santini, mayor of San Juan takes the cake this year with this Christmas card featuring his family, and also a taxidermy diorama with a leopard attacking an antelope......

The caption reads "That you may illuminate your dreams this Christmas."

I wish I had a big family and access to a variety of wildlife dioramas for my holiday photos. The concepts makes me chuckle, and although I don't know how much it will fulfill its intended purpose, which was to support the San Juan Wildlife Museum; It will frighten, delight, and puzzle people throughout 2012. 

Here are some of the other photos that didn't make the cut:

A Beautiful, Social Experiment

"Joshua Bell is one of the world's greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played it for spare change, incognito, outside a bustling Metro stop in Washington, would anyone notice?"


Read Article Here: Pearls Before Breakfast, Washington Post Article by Gene Weingarten


This is one of the most beautiful examples of our inability to stop and smell the roses. In my own work this is one of the most common questions that comes out of making things that requires a viewer who will slow down long enough to notice that what they originally perceive as one thing, is actually something quite out of the ordinary. And although I make things with the intention of capturing a passer-bys imagination, I too wonder if I had been on my way to work if I would have realized what I was listening to in this instance. I wonder how many extraordinary things we miss because we are all far "too busy."


This also brings up the question of presentation, ways of elevating art through the mechanism of presentation; a pedestal, picture frame, or stage. It gives me some comfort to think that some of the greatest works of art may be things that are never even considered, and therefore missed. To me it inspires, much like the children mentioned in this article, a wonder for discovering things regardless of presentation.

The Erratic Man 'Back in the Day'

This little gem was shared on one of my favorite blogs Ravishing Beasts: Taxidermy

Entertaining, creepy and most certainly art.

Masters of Camouflage

What is this, watercolor? Some sort of painting?

Nope. That's a cephalopod's skin.

And those little dots grow and shrink like they are breathing. Check out the video below to see it in action.





One of the most amazing videos I have seen in a while. Thanks Science Fridays for this gem of information and stunning visuals.

Welcome to The World is Teeming

If you are reading this post, you are one of the first, welcome.

The intent of this blog is to share the plethora of amazing things in this world, from art and design to natural phenomena and people. These things in short are what makes my world go round. I hope I inspire you readers to check back in again from time to time and share your thoughts.

"The world is teeming; anything can happen." John Cage (Silence: Lectures and Writings).

John Cage: Every Day is A Good Day

That's right, the title of this blog came from the John Cage quote above. The brilliance of John Cage cannot be understood in a solitary blog post, the man was a genius. But, I will do my best to at least explain my enthusiasm for a man who helped to shape my artist practice and general enthusiasm for life.

I was first introduced to the work of John Cage in a music appreciation class in college. We listened to a recording of 4' 33". For those of you unfamiliar with this work,  John Cage, around 1948, sat down at a piano with a full orchestra and continued to sit in silence for four minutes and 33 seconds. Silence of course not really being silence, but a performance of sound; people shuffling in their chairs, breathing, coughing, sniffing, etc. This composition has been performed many times since and as you can imagine it varies every time. And variation, or "chance operations" is a truly Cagean passion. Much like his pal Marcel Duchamp, Cage took the artist's hand out of the work and let the mark making, or in the previous case, the music making, happen through chance.

One great example of his work with chance operations is the work he did at Crown Point Press in San Francisco. In this visual work he used chance operations using the I Ching, and a variety of inks, and mark making to create many works that were created by these chance equations. The results are amazingly beautiful and fascinating, abstract expressionism from a somewhat anonymous source.

And the amazing things he accomplished in his life go on and on....It's amazing to me how amazing people find other amazing people and the amazing things that they participate in.  Black Mountain College, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, Happenings.... I really feel like I might be doing the man a disservice by posting such a brief bit of information here. But, let it be understood that we all would be better off in this world if we learned a little from Mr. John Cage.