Sea Tree

Here are two blurry photographs of sculpture of a “Sea Tree” that I made early last year.   The medium here is wood, seaweed, shells, other dead sea creatures, plastic dinosaurs, rocks, and titanium, bonded together with glue. 

The Gates of Hell

The doors to Heaven and Hell are adjacent and identical.

                                                                                                         Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ

The Gates of Hell are located at Stanford University, and are part of the B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Sculpture Garden.  Auguste Rodin’s original plaster (which he chiseled away at off and on for thirty-seven years until his death) is showcased in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.  Below is a slideshow of the bronze cast of the massive doors which depict scenes from the Dante’s Inferno.  In the epic poem, an inscription above the gates reads:

Through me you pass into the city of woe
Through me you pass into eternal pain
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:                                    
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love                 
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.                                  
Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

All this reminds me of the old riddle:

You have died and are in limbo. There are two doors. One door leads to heaven, and the other door leads to hell.  There are two guardians, one by each door. One guardian always tells the truth, and the other guardian always lies. What one question can you ask a guardian to find out which door leads to heaven?

Chihuly - A Galaxy of Glass

             Dale Chihuly’s Garden and Glass museum in Seattle showcases gigantic, fantastical glass sculptures.   Words that come to mind are: imaginative, visionary, aquatic, vitrified, glass, smash, bash, baseball bat (I just want to hear a sculpture drop).  In the museum theater, there’s a video featuring an outdoor exhibition that Chihuly put on in 2000 in Jerusalem.  Over a million people visited the exhibition then, and they all got along just fine.  Chihuly mentions how he feels that people, regardless of their religious beliefs, need art in their lives.  He’s right.  Like many human habits, art is a unifying force, and can help our species see past our cultural differences and possibly save us from destroying ourselves (which would be more of a post-modern expressionist thing). 

Dalí Theatre and Museum

       Here are some photographs of artwork from the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, Spain.  The museum is in Salvador Dalí’s hometown, and houses a great collection of his paintings, drawings, and sculptures.  There’s a theme-park-like feel to the museum experience, since some of the artwork is interactive, holographic, or of immense proportions.  Dozens of his drawings hang from hallway walls, there are paintings on the ceilings of eclectically decorated living spaces, and his tomb in there as well.  If you ever get a chance to go, do so in the off season. (One day, Divided Core will live up to its mission statement, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy other people’s art).

A Little Slice of Hell

     The quaint cheese town of Gruyères, Switzerland is home to the H.R Giger Museum, where hundreds of Giger’s (1940 - 2014) paintings adorn the walls.  The paintings, some of which take up the space of an entire wall, are extremely dark and hauntingly beautiful.  Here are some of paintings one can find there.