New Deal Artists in Santa Fe

The New York Times has a 9-slide show of New Deal Artists in Santa Fe. The slides depict work done by artists in 1934 for the Public Works of Art Project, a predecessor of the Works Progress Administration.

The exhibit at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture has been on since April and runs through August 31.

Here’s background.

Information you can use later this week

How to Photograph Fireworks Displays

Beautiful

That’s the solstice full moon rising above Cape Sounion, Greece, Wednesday.

Click image for larger version (worth it!) and to learn more.

Splinter Galaxy

That’s NGC 5907, about 40 million light-years away. Photo taken from New Mexico.

Click the image for a larger version and to learn more.

Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was born on May 22nd in 1844.

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was a unique artist because she was a woman who succeeded in what was in the nineteenth century a predominantly male profession, because she was the only American invited to exhibit with a group of independent artists later known as the Impressionists, and because she responded in a very distinctive way to their mandate to portray modern life.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Click images for larger version and to learn more.

Oklahoma City Memorial

It was 13 years ago that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168 people and injuring 500. NewMexiKen has been to the Memorial twice. I’ve created an album with 12 photos taken in 2006 at this striking, yet somber place.

Oklahoma City Memorial

Thomas Hart Benton

… was born on this date in 1889.

Named after his great-uncle, Missouri’s first senator, Thomas Hart Benton was born on 15 April 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, an Ozark town of 2,000 people. … In 1935 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Benton directed the Art Institute until 1941, and where he contiued to live for the rest of his life. Albert Barnes, the Philadelphia collector, purchased some of his paintings, which raised the level of public success for the artist. Benton published his autobiography, An Artist in America, in 1937. He completed several murals in the midwest and on the east coast. Shortly before Harry Truman’s death in December 1972, Benton finished a portrait of the former President. Thomas Hart Benton died on 19 January 1975 in Kansas City, the day he completed a large mural for the Country Music Foundation of Nashville.

National Gallery of Art

Click on the painting to see larger version.

Gallery

NewMexiKen took the photo display out of the header, but I have added a gallery at the bottom of the far right sidebar. Each time you load a page you will get one of the pictures formerly in the header (and new ones if I add some). Click on the photo and you will see the larger version (500 X 200) with a simple caption.

As if anyone notices.

Update: Read the comments.

All of the photos are my own.

Morning Branches

Great photo taken this morning by Elaine. Be sure to click for the larger version.

And Elaine paid off the mortgage yesterday.

Moonrise

NewMexiKen caught this photo a little after 1:30 MT Friday as the moon rose over the Sandia Mountains. I took the photo a few feet from the computer. (And just a few minutes later as this is written the moon is lost in the high clouds as the storm approaches.)

Click image for larger version.

Ansel Adams I ain’t.

More great photos

Photographer’s Guide to New Mexico (and a little bit of Colorado).

It begins:

There are three cultures co-existing in New Mexico (if you read the middle third of my Summer 1994 travelogue then you might question the extent to which these actually co-exist). The Indians created interesting pueblos. The Spanish some impressive churches. The Anglos … mostly some houses that look like they could have been imported from Cleveland.

Ho Hum, just another pretty photo

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Golden Gate

NewMexiKen took this photo one year ago this evening. I like it.

The Fall Colors

The Fall Colors nicely done.

Extra-Crunchy Guide to Leaf Peeping

Photojojo has 12 Fantastic Fall Photo Tips.

Link via Lifehacker.

100 Photographs That Changed the World

NewMexiKen seems to post this every September 12, so no need to be different this — the fifth — year. Here’s what I wrote a year ago:

View 28 of the 100 Photographs that Changed the World, originally from Life magazine. NewMexiKen has posted this link each year on this date and I hesitated this morning. I mean, why repeat it for the fourth time?

I then went and looked at the 28 photos and said to myself, “Oh, that’s why.”

Life Books has all 100.

Performance Art

If you’ve never seen Dan Dunn be sure to watch this through to the end.

Thanks to Amy for the link.

More Edith Cullen Shain

Edith Cullen Shain is the nurse in the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo V-J Day in Times Square taken 62 years ago today. She kept her identity secret for 34 years, then identified herself to Eisenstaedt and he confirmed it was her when they met.

From an interview two years ago:

“The street was just wild with people. It was exuberant. They were dashing around and hugging and kissing and we walked in on that. And a sailor grabbed me and held me and kissed me a long time.

“When he grabbed me, I didn’t see him, and when he kissed me, I didn’t see him because I closed my eyes. And then I turned around and walked the other way, and so that was the end of the story as far as the recognition is concerned,” she said.

Shain later became a school teacher in California where she married and had three children.

Sixty years later, Shain, who says she was kissed by only one sailor that day, still has no idea who the sailor was. More than 20 men have come forward through the years claiming to be the kisser but none has ever been confirmed.

A statue in Times Square commemorates the moment. It’s called “Unconditional Surrender.”

Click image for larger version of the original photo.

My Four Suns

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Living up to the hype

Click for larger version.

Elsewhere:

• Best bumper sticker of the day, so far:
  Impeachment: It’s Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore
• Cool photo.
• What happens when you multiply 111,111,111 X 111,111,111?

Room with a view, but no pool or patio

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Great Mountain Moonrise

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Go fly a kite

The antithesis to Charlie Brown.

Thanks to Debby for the pointer.

Venus Near the Moon

Did you see this Saturday evening? It was beautiful.

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Moonbows

From the Los Angeles Times, Beauty in the misty moonlight. It begins:

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — Aristotle took note of this celestial happening a couple of millenniums back. Ben Franklin bagged a sighting or two, as did Mark Twain. The venerable John Muir, chronicler of Sierra mountaintop and meadow, waxed enthusiastic about the nighttime phenomenon.

The hunt for the elusive “moonbow” has long been a nocturnal lure for dreamy hikers, insomniac seamen and intrepid photo buffs. But in the past, seeing one of these nighttime rainbows — caused when a full moon’s rays bounce off the mist of a departing rain cloud or raging waterfall — has been dictated mostly by chance.

No longer.

A sharper image

For his birthday Avelino got a new macro lens. Nice photos!

The Many Faces of Google

A cool video — despite somewhat annoying martial music — of Google logos.

The most famous unknown artist in the world

Dennis Hwang.

Scroll to the bottom for some samples of his work.

Cheech, a giving person

When we think of art patrons, prestigious names normally come to mind. Medici, Getty, Rockefeller.

But Cheech?

That’s a name we associate more with lowbrow humor than fine art. Yet Cheech Marin, half of the ’70s comedy duo Cheech and Chong, arguably has emerged as the nation’s leading advocate for Chicano art.

Los Angeles Times

Quacks me up

Amusing photo.

And this, amazing photo.

Meanwhile:

An angry Romanian doctor has cut off a patient’s penis during surgery and chopped it into small pieces.

Surgeon Naum Ciomu was operating on patient Nelu Radonescu, 36, to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper.

Grabbing a scalpel, he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theatre at Bucharest hospital.

AOL Lifestyle

Couldn’t he have just counted to ten? Great plot for Grey’s Anatomy, though, especially if the victim is one of those asinine male doctors. Karev, Shepherd or O’Malley, any will do.

Some good advice:

1. Styrofoam cups
Styrofoam is forever. It’s not biodegradable.
* I can’t remember the last time I used a styrofoam cup but for all those takeaway coffee drinkers, it’s worth finding an alternative.

2. Paper towels
Paper towels waste forest resources, landfill space, and your money.
* I couldn’t imagine going without paper towels. I do buy the eco friendly variety but I should probably use old clothes or towels to clean up.

3. Bleached coffee filters
Dioxins, chemicals formed during the chlorine bleaching process, contaminate groundwater and air and are linked to cancer in humans and animals.
* I’m not a coffee drinker which looks to be a good thing if this is what is used to make coffee.

Top 10 Products to Avoid | Buy Organic

And:

Want to stay safe on the roads? Then avoid listening to Guns N Roses, Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen behind the wheel.

The trio are among the artists featured on a top 10 of tracks that get people’s blood pumping and in the mood to drive aggressively.
. . .

It includes classic rock tracks, such as Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” and Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” as well as tracks such as Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” and Guns N Roses’ “Paradise City.”

Reuters via Yahoo! News

Time lapse video of someone painting the Mona Lisa in MS Paint

Link via kottke.org.

Three galaxies and a comet

Click for larger version and to learn more.

Vincent van Gogh

. . . was born on this date in 1853.

Click Vincent’s Room, Arles to enlarge.

Or here for a large copy of Starry Night.

Lisbon Moonset

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Seeing is disbelieving

Finding the Right Angle.

Link via Andrew Sullivan.

Best picture of the day, so far

From last week’s eclipse. Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Ansel Adams

… was born on this date in 1902.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Adams combined a passion for natural landscape, meticulous craftsmanship as a printmaker and a missionary’s zeal for his medium to become the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation.

His photographs have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios, and they have been seen in hundreds of exhibitions, including a one-man show, ”Ansel Adams and the West,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. That same year he was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, and in 1980 he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In addition to being acclaimed for his dramatic landscapes of the American West, he was held in esteem for his contributions to photographic technology and to the recognition of photography as an art form.

The New York Times Obituary

The Ansel Adams Gallery

Photo tip

Rule of thumb to avoid photographing people with their eyes closed: divide the number of people by three (or by two if the light is bad). That means that if you’re taking a photo of 12 people, you need to take at least 4 photos to have a good chance of getting a photo with everyone’s eyes open.

kottke.org

Thor’s Helmet

Click image to enlarge and learn more.

All the news that fits

Not to shill for The New York Times, but . . .

First, a best line from David Carr writing about Monday night’s Golden Globes:

“The Queen” might not have taken home gold for best picture, but its star, Helen Mirren, had enough hardware at the end of the night that she looked as if she’d spent time at Home Depot.

An article on some beautiful pencil and paper drawings by Monet.

David Leonhardt on the cost of a mistake:

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

And Selena Roberts has an interesting assessment of Michelle Wie, though this one is behind the Times Select wall.