#structural frame

[optikes]

an Australian painter in the streets of New York...

John Firth-Smith (born 1943) Australia

1 White Street # 3 (1982) acrylic on stretched 300gsm rag paper, 104cm x 104cm

2 Black Street # 27 (1982) pulp paper and mixed media, 35cm x 35cm

3 Place, Orientation and Navigation (1983) oil on linen 305.0 x 335.5 cm

4 Winter Rounds (1982)

5-7 the artist connecting dots & lines in New York

8 the artist’s photo-documentation of line and shape on New York streets

9 Marshall Islands stick chart

A   Professor Peter James Smith   from  menziesartbrands.com

In 1981 John Firth-Smith travelled to New York to experience the city, to paint there as a local and allow the powerful New York art scene to wash over him. It was a time in the city (that the writer experienced first-hand) when graffiti clogged West Broadway and adorned the walls of the cross-town subway platforms. The locals were producing abstract paintings that had active, brushy surfaces. The curator Barbara Rose, in 1979, produced a show of such work called American Painting: The Eighties that looked like Abstract Expressionism with a college education, and heralded the rise of art stars Susan Rothenberg (1945- ) and Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007). It was the perfect time and place for Firth-Smith’s painterly surfaces to evolve.

From his studio on 20th Street, Firth-Smith could look down on the first winter snows in the city. In the early morning the snow appeared as a soft white blanket, a shroud that covered everything, but later in the day it was stained and marked by the black tracks of car tyres and the footfalls of passers-by. He became fascinated by the ethereal gothic nature of what he saw: steaming ventilators were often to be found in the middle of busy streets, their smoke stacks rising through the traffic, their warmth contradicting the presence of winter snow and sludge. Such is the sensibility that is vividly painted in Winter Rounds 1982, an attractively-proportioned canvas that effortlessly supports the New York dynamic.

Winter Rounds 1982, is ingrained with the gritty, wintry ambience of the city. Like schematised patterns taken from a subway map, or a diagram drawn in an attempt at directing a stranger, there is a frenetic congested intensity in the work that is broken by dots and splashes of colour.’

This painting shows Firth-Smith’s familiar arabesque line, sweeping through the rising red veils of smoke and graffiti, to challenge the gridded infrastructure of the city. Notions of infrastructure usually revolve around trains, bridges, roads and buildings; however with a different kind of infrastructure in mind, the artist deploys a series of connected straight lines and dots to the heart of his picture. In his monograph on Firth-Smith, writer Gavin Wilson describes how the artist had become fascinated with the Victorian cast iron manhole covers found at street level. They often had elaborate decorative surfaces and had holes drilled through them. Firth-Smith tied small weights to the ends of strings, and dropped the weights down the holes making the strings pull tight between the holes; so the sequences of dots and connected lines were born. He later photographed these microcosms, and like an industrial espionage operative, these found their way into his painting process. Ironically, these patterns are reminiscent of stick charts from the Marshall Islands – structures formed by tying small sticks in a gridded pattern to represent the sea, with shells knotted at the intersections to represent the locations of islands. The sea is never far away from the artist’s concerns.

Only in New York could Firth-Smith have had such fertile exposure to the early stages of neo-expressionism. He embraced many deterministic methods of applying paint with drawn lines and dots, then overpainting, then re-positioning more gridded lines and dots; but these methods always relied on chance and randomness. He painted and repainted layer upon layer. ‘The effaced surfaces of the completed work were like a palimpsest, leaving only the faintest trace of his earlier marks.’  It is the beauty of those effaced surfaces that captures the imagination with their daring trails of snow-lines, and the monochrome expanse of restless white.

search @ www.khanacademy.org    www.smithsonianmag.com

[natashaferguson7]

Design

(via e7c630bb82157de697cc6dd58816af7e.jpg (736×1104))

[signageaccessoriessupplier]

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[nevenvc2]

" you're coming to the meeting this afternoon. "

instagram

[arc-hus]

Haus am Sürcher Wald, Laterns, Austria - Bernado Bader

[wisteriagoesvroom]

interesting soundbites you might've missed from the op81 & howie games podcast in melb

(did this while procrastinating at work... we are so back i guess.)

disclaimers: (i) i'm paraphrasing here so can't vouch for 100% accuracy, but as much as possible have tried to capture the meaning (ii) the word association game and the carcar soundbite have already made the rounds, but, i feel like, there was a lot more in this interview.

let's go!

on the topic of personal chefs and nutrition etc: host mark howard asks if the menu changes or there's anything special that oscar requests that reminds him of home -- apparently race week thursdays for a while were "chicken parm thursdays" and they might bring this back

oscar's lunch on press day was barramundi and "the big grained couscous with no spices" (oscar... the 1/16th is crying out for help)

one of the reasons he renewed with mclaren is because he felt the infrastructure and people needed to get to the championship in the new set of regs was there, so he was confident

on the reported $22mn bonus last year: oscar denies that it was this high (lol ok sir)

on longevity of career and responsibility: oscar talks about the estimated career in f1 usually being up to 35, maybe into your 40s but "it isn't like a typical career where you've got until your 60s" so financial investing and doing something with your salary to prolong the usability of it is important (wow 20something multimillionaire thinks of his pension. mature)

on the early RC cars: "i drove one around the school [cricket] oval a few times and that got me in trouble" pLeaSe !!!

recounting his first race at oakleigh (he was about... 9? 10?): "i went to a friend's birthday at the bmx track and did the last jump of the day before we went for the race. and i skidded down the down ramp on my face, so i actually missed it" HE REALLY WAS JUST SOME KID

so his real first race was a state race (with a P/provisional drivers' plate) HAHAHAH. he fought his way about half way up the pack in this one

"my first win... i won a club race at oakleigh and it felt like a world championship at the time. and then i quickly realised no one cared" <- once again devastated by his deadpan humour

on aus footie: "i was good in the under 9s cus i was pretty big as a kid up till that point and then everyone else grew and i didn't, then quickly realised i wouldn't become a footballer no matter how much i wanted it. i was playing footie a lot before i started racing and [the demands of racing then] really took up a whole season"

he also fielded in cricket at state level (?) a couple of times here and there. [i don't understand cricket terminology fully so i might be wrong here]

he was starstruck when meeting jackie stewart and alain prost because it was "pretty special, pretty cool. to meet legends of the sport like that."

he downplays the question about whether it was hard to move to boarding school, because he wanted to become a professional racing driver so badly and was always really motivated by this.

but does say formula renault was hard because of everything he felt he had to balance that year, and when things were not going well it feels very pressurised especially when you have only a year to prove yourself

on sponsorship and racing: "i'm fortunate to have a family that are pretty well off and it didn't become apparent until i entered f2 [that it was a big financial strain]. it costs about three million AUD a year [to fund a year in that series]"

credits both his parents for the sacrifices they made to support his racing career and shouts out his mum for making sure his sisters had the same opportunities to pursue their dreams as well

about the alpine purgatory years: "that was a tough thing because not everyone knows the full story and we weren't able to tell it. it was not an easy thing to go through but once i cemented my future and signed with mclaren, it was a relief to know i was going to be on the grid for at least a little bit"

to put the current margins on the cars into perspective: "the amount of difference between me and the car in front is the time it takes to blink".

and on car development being so advanced now: "there being something like a second between first car and last on the grid in qualifying is pretty unprecedented"

does he watch drive to survive seasons? "to be honest not really. i just skim through and see my parts to see if they've painted me as a supervillain. [this year's] is pretty balanced i would say. the mclaren episode is a pretty fair reflection of two competitive guys wanting to win races and it being a difficult situation for the team. it's entertaining but that one is for the most part pretty accurate. i found it quite entertaining."

during the drivers' word association part: "i don't have much for Stroll" FLKJKFJSDKLJSDK he really went *mariah carey voice* i don't know her

race weeks are scheduled down the minute, and on off weeks it's usually training every day at least once or twice a day; they get maybe 2-3 days at home. last year he reckons he spent 100 days at home in monaco last year, and was on at least 48-60 flights for work depending if you count the ones going to and from the MTC

howie told him to share his airline points (ha) and oscar said "qantas is the one airline i don't have platinum status at the moment [though] i used to when i lived in aus"

oscar does not own a boat in monaco (YET)

finds life in monaco a little bit of an adjustment due to the smaller spaces, but he's been in apartments even since boarding school so it's not a big deal to him. "i'm going to sound like a complete wanker if i complain about living in monaco"

on communication style on the radio, it's kind of about personal preference and he doesn't cast judgment on that – "some people need to be fired up, some people need to be calm and for me it's staying calm. in baku you can see from the onboard and my helmet i got pretty excited but i don't always open the radio for that"

howie closes with any advice for kids. oscar says: "enjoy it. for me, even – we've spoken about how difficult it is being in f1 and how cutthroat – [it's] always taking a conscious moment to reflect that you're doing a thing you love. doing it because you love it is the first thing. that's an important one for me even though there's so much more pressure now than when i started my first race at oakleigh. the second part is always be trying to learn, and improving. it's often easy when you have success early on, you think you're at that [certain] level now. but on my journey i've learned what's good 12 months ago isn't going to be good enough in 12 months time. that's in the car too. if we raced last year's car this year we'd probably be last. continuing to learn and improve is a part i enjoy as well."

[arminthada]

But you don't have any evidence... that I practiced euthanasia, other than my confession. Then will you confess? Only if it's your wish.

SPARE ME YOUR MERCY | 1.08

[remash]

casa ob ~ damiá lorenzato | photos © del rio bani

[ouidamforeman]

I keep remembering various DW expanded universe material where time lords are compared to Christian priests in different ways and it’s like ????? That is Always on my mind. Always. Time Lordism as religion. As asceticism. As being pure and holier than thou and strict and adherent. As puritanism. As deprivation and isolation and devotion. I am Thinking about it!!!!!!

[dcbutinamrev]

There’s people in my neighborhood building a new house a few houses down and they’re in the process of the roof and all I can think about is Darry Shyanne Curtis Jr.

The Outsiders brainrot is real

[grandwitchbird]

Excerpt:

“The death of the author means we do not seek to “resolve” art through its creators. At the end of the day, the death of the author is about the consumer of the art. It’s about the consumption of art without ever stopping to ask the author what they want or what they wanted, at least not directly. The reader can ask themselves what they think the author may have intended, but such a reading or interpretation is still rigorously based on the art itself.”

—

The death of the author isn’t about ‘headcanon’. It’s not about eradicating authorial craft and labor. It’s about interrogating a text for what it is. It’s about resisting the parasocial drive to seek validation from artists. It’s about thwarting censorship and moralization. It’s about interrogating our own interpretive role. It’s meant to get us closer to the text itself while recognizing all the impediments in the way of any kind of ‘pure’ reading.

In a way, the death of the author leads inevitably to the death of the audience. We are not entitled to a position of authority just because we’ve dethroned the author. This is about centering the art itself and asking more intelligent and creative questions about that art.

[vaguely-concerned]

due south is just so incredibly fun is the thing. it's a story that takes such delight in being a story at every turn and on every level.

(something strangely discworld-esque about it that way -- sort of like the fiction version of gender euphoria lol. every episode due south wakes up glorying in being a narrative and getting to do narrative Things and that shameless joy, that lack of interest in courting anything resembling the plausible or more obstructive to the truth yet, realistic, is threaded into everything. yeah of course there's a ghost now. fraser trying to make sense of the story of his father to make sense of the story of himself while being a stranger in a strange land makes the most sense anything ever has. of course they still talk (and fail to talk) to each other all the time. of course he's always here, and never here at the same time. people don't change just because they're dead. fraser in the pilot walking through all the *stories* of his father, still looking for him as he did when he was a little boy, and finding as much of him now as he did then (not nearly enough, even when he's right there). hello. hello. help.)

[sysig]

Do not separate them /threatening (Patreon)

[arc-hus]

Pavilion ∞, Hangzhou, China - Atelier Lai

[finelyagedlemons]

been thinking about protag jessica au again..............i wanna give lady JESSIE a proper witchy outfit one of these days for her game master look but here's her in a cool cape at least

[tubes-the-ann]

A thing about me is that occasionally when I dream, pretty interesting people show up. Today was one of those such occasions because this gentleman decided to appear

pretty sure if other people's brains throw them this they'd be considered haunted lol. Unfortunately this means I have to go design someone for him to hang out with now. Maybe I should stop sleeping in or else someone's gonna send me more demons