Art + Inspiration

Arab Headdresses and the WPA...

Hello and happy weekend. How exciting to welcome so many new people to the newsletter. This is a mostly-weekly list of creative inspirations, designed to remind us all of the never ending human capacity for invention and innovation. May it light you up.

• This trend of videos where young percussionists show their polyrhythmic skills is one I’m very much enjoying.

• A friend shared this photo the other day and it knocked my socks off. The photographer is Bernd Walz, whose work is full of mystery and loss and speaks to the ephemeral nature of time.

  

  Swinging, Bernd Walz

• Check out this thrilling time-lapse video of the new spire of Notre Dame Cathedral going up.

• I love this photo of David Wojnarowicz, taken by his lover, Peter Hujar. Great downtown NYC artists, gone way too soon.

• I want to live inside this improvisation. Or, no, I want that joyful, impromptu feeling he has to move through me. Or maybe, I want to just be him. Honestly, it’s enough to just watch him dance.

• Did you happen to see the recent edition of Vogue Arabia featuring Headdresses of Arabia?

Palestinian shatweh, Zaid Farouki. Photo: Greg Adamski

• I could watch this guy do his thing every day FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

• The story of German Expressionist dancers and costumers Lavinia Schulz and Walter Holdt is not a happy one, but their extraordinary work lives on, and that’s cause for celebration.

• Jean Paul Goude and haute couture milliner, Philip Treacy collaborated on this fabulous bit of fashion from 2002.

• There’s a new mask festival in Benin, exploring their history of mask making and dance. Here’s a video with tons of footage from the parade.

• Isn’t this photo just sublime? Jean Harlow by George Hurrell.

  

  Jean Harlow by George Hurrell, 1930s.

• I don’t think I realized that Edward Gorey made toys. They’re delightfully macabre, as you might expect.

• This is a photo I took of the mural in the old post office in downtown Lancaster, CA, where I grew up (and am currently living.) I went to mail a few packages the other day, hoping the interior would be as I remembered, and it was. A quick bit of online research taught me the name of the mural is, "Hauling Water Pipe through Antelope Valley." Apparently it was painted in 1941 as part of the WPA. Hey, isn’t it time for a new WPA….?

Thanks for dropping by, pals. I hope you’re enjoying these last days of August. Before we know it, September will be here and then it might as well be the new year. It’s going too fast! — Chris