"If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy."
-Kurt Vonnegut

Karl Blossfeldt "Wundergarten der Nature"

Karl Blossfeldt is a hero of mine. He was a professor at the "Universität der Künst" here in Charlottenburg about a hundred years ago, and he didn't consider himself an artist or a photographer, but rather took photos of weeds he collected on the outskirts of Berlin to use as subject material in the University.

So he worked for decades teaching students how they could learn about architecture and art just by studying plants, and then Nierendorf, a gallerist from the opposite side of the Hardenbergstraße where he was teaching, went and organized an exhibition for Blossfeldt, who was already 61.

Two years later Blossfeldt's book 'Urformen der Kunst' was published, and he became famous overnight. His second book 'Wundergarten der Nature' was published in 1932, and he died on the ninth of December of the same year.

I admire how unassuming he was. He wasn't interested in becoming recognized for what he had done, he just wanted to take good pictures of plants.

Art that inspires me

Its the details that count. Durer knew it, Rembrant knew it, and so does Claire Scully, of thequietrevolution. Makes me want to draw again.

found through vi.sualize.us

"A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting. "
-Abraham Maslow

My landart has floated to the top of yahoo image search!

This picture of mine was recently 'faved' almost fifty times on http://ffffound.com (here's the link) which resulted in an enormous traffic increase for the original image on flickr, which, in turn, resulted in better ranking for my image in the yahoo image search results for landart. So I am very very pleased with myself, but also a little mystified; why is it that the images that I am most proud of are half as popular as this kind of thing? Don't get me wrong, I like this image, its just that i've done stuff literally ten times as good, but sometimes it would seem as if i'm the only one who thinks so...

What's in a name

I called this blog randomly accesible memories because I often access my own memories in a very haphazard fashion. Mostly through association. The merest wiff of a cologne that's been collecting dust on a shelf for over a decade rockets me onto Cantebury's high street where I bought it on market day lightyears away.

But I don't always know how to get where I really want my thoughts to go.

I have often noticed that unsolvable problems can be best solved by indirect thought.

When I was a child I lived for the moment, and when I thought about my life, which was blessedly seldom, I mostly thought about what lay before me. But the older I get the more I live in memories of the past. And time accelerates like a runnaway train. My memories aren't in folders or lists or any logical order. There might be an index, but I've never seen it. My mind jumps restlessly from one thought to another, randomly accessing my memories.

Experimentation

Everything I do is an experiment. If the picture I make is good or not is of little importance in comparison to what I have learned.

If the experiment 'works' I have the feeling of arrival, of completion, I am finished with the idea. If it doesn't work I often learn far more; it makes me think about why I failed, and often gives me dozens of new ideas.