she just wanted to blend in

Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science...In this beautifully illustrated book, drawn from his Nature essays, Martin Kemp explores a wide variety of visual images to reveal underlying themes shared by art and science. The images range from Leonardo's Mona Lisa to diagrams in modern physics, and in each case Kemp provides a fresh interpretation. --

artists' dentrites.......
This neuron has two parts very interesting to us, called the synapse and the dendrite. The dentrites are extensions of a neuron which connect to other neurons to form a neural network, while synapses are a gateway which connects to dentrites that come from other neurons. A biological neuron may thus be connected to other neurons as well as accepting connections from other neurons, and so we have the basis of a network--Biological Neural Networks--
later people, Im off to drink- You know, I recently read a study saying that alchohol does not actually kill brain cells, it damages the dentrites that carry impulses inside the brain, but those dentrites grow back (think of the slowness you have when you're drunk and youll understand what I am saying, no dentrites=slow nervous responses), however, the study said that they do not grow back the way that they were before (at least in the animals they studied). But, of course, thats just what I read, who knows.--Dentrites: part of the neuron that conveys signals toward the cell body. One neuron has many short dentrites.--

feeling raw
lyle carbajal raw art like this cat--Maggie is a Scottish artist originally from Glasgow. She has lived and worked in England for more than thirty years. Maggie studied 3D design at Wolverhampton polytechnic and a postgraduate diploma in art psychotherapy at the university of Sheffield--Welcome to the offical homepage of infamous geek performance artist/visionary painter JOE COLEMAN, whose twisted world of serial killers, sideshow freaks and outsiders prompted Charles Manson to call him... "a caveman in a spaceship! --
author: J?zef Szajna --alessandro bavari official site--I'm Asya Schween. 22. Immersed in incarnadine-hued twilight of my mind. Alone. I read no poetry but mathematical manuscripts and the Holy Bible...Gallery One......
Eileen Doman's Premiere Artist Portfolio--Sam Doyle was born on St. Helena Island, South Carolina in 1906 and attended Penn School, the first school for freed slaves. He lived in an area with a long and sustained African and African-American history and culture. He is one of America's most famous African American folk artists. His paintings depict people from his island including both legendary and local characters. --carol es--Nikifor--
The Mexican poet and philosopher Ocatvio Paz has said of Martin Ramirez, "He is neither a precursor nor a predecessor: he is a symbol." Ramirez’s life offers an emblematic image of the artist’s will to communicate at all cost, against the most difficult obstacles. Most of what is know about his life comes from psychologist Dr. Tarmo Pasto, and not from the artist’s own lips. For sometime around 1915, according to Pasto Ramirez ceased to speak at all.--
"Official webpage of presently living American self-teaching expressionist painter Matt Sesow. Updated weekly with new work and news" --Here it is! Check out this wild, unique and imaginative collection of recycled mosaics and
Shylene's "West Coast Driftures" sculptures. --Welcome to my folk art page. It's a place where you can view my work, which I call Bohemian Rhapsody for lack of a better word. I create joyful, intuitive art that is a result of my creative spirit spilling open. Hope you enjoy it.--Ben WILSON GENIUS OF WOOD--

Outsider Art Web Sites--24 HOUR CHURCH OF ELVIS--KITSCH TOUR U.S.A.--
In 1919 Bagasse Mumblestoats, fresh from his WWI tour in France with the famed Lafayette Espadrilles, returned to his home town of Redbone with a fair and balanced burning desire. It was eventually cured with liberal doses of salvarsan and mercury, which allowed the young Bagasse to wed his childhood sweetheart, Gematria Pulverington-Wheatwhistle, heiress to the fabled Wheatwhistle tinsel-mining fortune. Gematria shared her husband's fair and balanced vision of a museum in Redbone that would attract worldwide attention and "really put the place on the map," as she so often put it.
--Creative Heart Gallery

THERAPEUTIC ART PROGRAMS FOR SPECIAL PATIENT POPULATIONS

The Effects of Art on the Brain of an Underprivileged Child ....Before considering the physiological effects of art on the brain, let us consider how art influences the behavior of this child and how it can affect their daily tasks. It is not uncommon for a maltreated child to feel angry, out of control or terribly insecure. Through dance for example, the child will not only form rhythmic skills by listening to music and moving to it, but the child can adopt a sense of control and autonomy by controlling their bodies so that their movements match the beat of the music. This discipline can foster self management and impulse control (2). But more importantly, certain music like classical music of Bach or Beethoven can have a soothing and relaxing effect on stressed children whereas more harsh and upbeat music can cause a child to become more hyper. They will soon realize what "tastes" they have for music and how their music affects their moods. Art, on the other hand, can also be used as a self esteem booster when their pieces are displayed or when others compliment their presentation or efforts.

The arts can also awaken their senses and make the child more aware of the surrounding material and spiritual world. Fox and Berry called art a "sensory and exploration activity" (1). Orphans and foster children, if given up for adoption at a very early age, do not receive that close interaction between them and their parents. Hugs, kisses and other physical stimuli are not present. Drawing, by no means can substitute for the hugs and kisses from a parent, can give a child the joy of seeing an image form before their eyes or the joy of stroking colors of paint onto a plain canvas. While this improves hand-eye coordination, this type of tangible exploration can teach him to physically interact with the outside world (1).
Thompson, on the other hand, approaches the effects of sound from a therapeutic point of view. Thompson uses sound to alter the "brainwave patterns and states of consciousness, observable on brainwave mapping equipment (EEG) as well as positive changes in the body measurable with blood tests, bio-feedback equipment and other sophisticated procedures" (4). Thompson has his own recording named the "Inner Dance" which is designed to bring out certain wave changes for several different emotions through his pattern (4). This emotion evoking exercise eventually can help burdened children in learning to cope with their feelings. Once they realize that these emotions are present, the children can then work at coping with the anger, rejection or any other feelings in a way appropriate to their ages.
--

sitting in a shadeless shade
Steven Pinker --How Much Art Can the Brain Take?......One is that the arts engage not only the psychology of aesthetics but the psychology of status. The very uselessness of art that makes it so incomprehensible to the evolutionary biologist makes it all too comprehensible to the economist and social psychologist. What better proof that you have money to spare than your being able to spend it on doodads and stunts that don't fill the belly or keep the rain out but that require precious materials, years of practice, a command of obscure texts, or intimacy with the elite? --Q&A: Steven Pinker of 'Blank Slate' --THE MIND’S EYE—NEUROSCIENCE, SYNESTHESIA, AND ART --
What has brought him most flak, he says, is his attack on modernism in art. Pinker thinks the decrease in the number of "compelling" works in music and painting can be traced to "movements denying that there was any such thing as human taste or pleasure in art".

Art, he says, "is in our nature, in the blood and in the bone," and "artists are sexy". --
Artistic Creativity and the Brain--Why do artists paint "still lifes" and not "still lives"? --

PINKER : Another example is the arts. In the 20th century, modernism and post-modernism took over, and their practitioners disdained beauty as bourgeois, saccharine, and lightweight. Art was deliberately made incomprehensible or ugly or shocking—again, on the assumption that people's tastes for attractive faces, landscapes, colors, and so on were reversible social constructions. This also led to an exaggeration of the dynamic of social status that has always been part of the arts. The elite arts used to be aligned with the economic and political aristocracy. They involved displays of sumptuosity and the flaunting of rare and precious skills that only the idle rich could cultivate. But now that any now that any schmo can afford a Mozart CD or can go to a free museum, artists had to figure out new ways to differentiate themselves from the rabble. And so art became baffling and uninterpretable without acquaintance with arcane theory.

By their own admission, the humanities programs in universities, and institutions that promote new works of elite art, are in crisis. People are staying away in droves. I don't think it takes an Einstein to figure out why. By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture, melody in music, meter and rhyme in poetry, plot and narrative and character in fiction, the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience—the people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification rather than social one-upmanship. Today there are movements in the arts to reintroduce beauty and narrative and melody and other basic human pleasures. And they are considered radical extremists!

EDGE: Why do people still treat art and literary critics as the wisest and most relevant intellectuals? In terms of literature, why is it that in the leading cultural magazines, you can still find a lot more of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Bloomsbury, than discussions about the issues you and other scientists are raising?

PINKER: One reason for the canonization of artists is a quirk of our moral sense. Many studies show that that people hallucinate moral virtue in other people who are high in status—people who are good-looking, or powerful, or well-connected, or artistically or athletically talented. Status and virtue are cross-wired in the human brain. We see it in language, where words like "noble" and "ugly" have two meanings. "Noble" can mean high in status or morally virtuous; "ugly" can mean physically unattractive or morally despicable. The deification of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr. are obvious examples. I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor. Anyone else having some claim to insights into the human condition is seen as a philistine, and possibly as immoral if they are seen as debunking the pretensions of those in the arts and the humanities.

To be fair, there are other strands of the arts and humanities, sometimes brushed aside in the 20th century, that resonate quite well with the arguments that I've been making. Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature. The aesthetic and emotional reactions that we have to works of art depend on how our brain is put together. Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. And the insights we hope to take away from great works of art depend on their ability to explore the eternal conflicts in the human condition, like those between men and women, self and society, parent and child, sibling and sibling, and friend and friend. Some theoreticians of literature have suggested that we appreciate tragedy and great works of fiction because they explore the permutations and combinations of human conflict?and these are just the themes that scientific fields like evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics and social psychology try to illuminate.

EDGE: So what do you see as the appropriate role for art?

PINKER: Good heavens, that's not for me to weigh in on! The most I can do is suggest ways in which the sciences of mind might pipe in with insights that could complement those of scholars in the humanities. Linguistics can help poetics and rhetoric; perception science can be useful for the analysis of music and the visual arts; cognitive science has a role to play in the analysis of literature and cinema; evolutionary psychology can shed light on esthetics. And more generally, the sciences of mind can reinforce the idea that there really is an enduring human nature that great art can appeal to.

EDGE: Who are some of the people exploring the convergence of art and science?

PINKER: Among novelists, Ian McEwan, David Lodge, A. S. Byatt, John Updike, Iris Murdoch, Tom Wolfe, and George Orwell are a few that I am familiar with who have invoked notions of human nature, sometimes traditional ones, sometimes ones from scientific psychology, in their work or their explanations. Among scholars and critics, the list is growing; here are some who pop into mind. George Steiner on biological conflict and drama. Ernest Gombrich on perception and art. Joseph Carroll, Frederick Turner, Mark Turner, Brian Boyd, Patrick Hogan, on literature. Elaine Scarry on mental imagery and fiction. Denis Dutton has been a catalyst for this convergence through his journal Philosophy and Literature and his web site www.ArtsandLettersDaily.com.

EDGE: Does this portend a more general trend?

PINKER: We may be seeing a coming together of the humanities and the science of human nature. They've been long separated because of post-modernism and modernism. But now graduate students are grumbling in emails and in conference hallways about being locked out of the job market unless they perpetuate postmodernist gobbledygook, and how they're eager for new ideas from the sciences that could invigorate the humanities within universities, which are, by anyone's account, in trouble. Also connoisseurs and appreciators of art are getting sick of the umpteenth exhibit on the female body featuring mangled body parts, or ironic allusions to commercial culture that are supposed to shake people out of their bourgeois complacency but that are really no more insightful than an ad parody in Mad magazine or on Saturday Night Live.




Art and Power: Europe Under the Dictators --When Eric Hobsbawn came to England in the 1930s he became a Marxist and began a distinguished academic career. His new autobiography reveals that at 85 he remains an 'unrepentant communist'. Maya Jaggi on the historian who made us fall in love with history again --Fashion lies somewhere between “art” and “consumption”, and for mysterious reasons (according to historian Eric Hobsbawn) often anticipates future cultural tendencies better than both--

Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti book Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-
Kutiv=glance&s=books&vi=reader#reader-link" target="blank">book Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

bookmarks:A Mindful Life: Express, Discover, Renew, Create weblog--Muse Toolbox--The Endicott Studio was founded in 1987 by Terri Windling. --p h o t o s _ o f _ s i g n s--Unbound ... SO CALled Books, an exhibit of artists' "books" at New York's Center for Book Arts. via mysterium--gallery bink-- thsLINKS

"Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are." — Georgia O'Keeffe

and blatantly ripping off from J-walk: Quotes From Sherlock
A nice set of 167 quotations from Sherlock Holmes. A few examples:

"It is a question of cubic capacity. A man with so large a brain must have something in it."
"It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbor, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction."
"What one man can invent, another can discover."
"Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened."
"My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built."

SHOE ART via J-Walk Blog

yesterday it rained
BAMS is dedicated to showing box art in all its many forms. --Cerith Wyn Evans started out making short experimental films after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1984 with a MA in Film and Video. During this time, in which his films were screened worldwide, he worked as an assistant to the film director Derek Jarman and taught at the Architectural Association for six years. --This one is a little bit like that old question we used to ask each other in elementary school in Poland. "You arrive at two gates. One gate leads to heaven, the other to hell. Both gates have guards and both guards look exactly the same. You know that one of the guards is a devil who will always give the opposite of the honest answer and the other guard is an angel, who will always tell the truth. You are only allowed to ask one single question. How will you find out through which door to pass?"--This exhibition, a joint project between the late Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti and Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, a seventy-year-old artist from the Ivory Coast, was comprised of works by each of the artists. The works borrowed from Boetti cover a span of the past twenty years, and were primarily embroidered work (woven in Afghanistan to Boetti's designs) including maps, the "1000 longest rivers," and small works. Also included were new work produced by Boetti in Abidjan shortly before his recent untimely death. Bruly Bouabré's work takes the form of small drawings on 4" x 8" cards, grouped into sets of 50 to 100 on such topics as scarification, the alphabet, cosmologies, etc. Books and manuscripts by the artists were on view as well.

The lost art of frescoes recaptured by American artist, Steve Bogdanoff.--FACIAL BEAUTY-- Bert Christensen's
Weird, Strange & Just Plain Bad Art Collection --Welcome to the Web-Gallery of Neo-Ukiyo-e artist Keisai Kinshi.　　　　--The result is the recently-published Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut, which explores the archetype of the slut and the myths that create her, ostracize her, and very often shape her life beyond high school. In the process of writing the book, White interviewed over 150 girls from different ages, class strata, and places in America. “These women were by far the most dramatic, urgent and adamant interview subjects I’d ever encountered as a journalist,” she writes in the book’s introduction. “They wanted to set the story straight, to put the rumors to rest, to calm the rage that the rumors ignited.” --
RETURN TO THE WHOLE

A study of the landscape symbolism of the Bible
as it relates to the spiritual journey--The International Edible Book Festival Gallery Tasty Samples--The BrainWaves Zine was born in the fall of 2001 and has expanded into a 75+ page publication full of art, articles, ideas, poetry, opinions and resources. It is an 8 ½ by 11 inch format, wire spiral bound booklet with cardstock covers and several color pages. --
- BABILONIA 1808 presents THE BROWN MAN'S BURDEN: Selected Works of Filipino Artists from the Babilonia Wilner Collection. Included in the exhibition are award winning artists Santiago Bose, Gabriel Barredo, Gaston Damag, Alfredo Esquillo, Jr., and Jose Legaspi. The title THE BROWN MAN'S BURDEN recalls, 100 years later, a Pear's Soap advertisement in Harper's Weekly which boasts: "The first step towards lightening The White Man's Burden, is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness. Pear's soap is a potent factor in brightening the dark corners of the earth." The "dark corners" in this popular mainstream ad refer explicitly to America's newest colonies at the height of its aggressive Imperialist policies, the longest and most brutal battle being in and over the Philippines. --The Vogue Book of the Dead is a collection of ersatz fashion ads Deen started creating soon after her mother’s death in 1997. “The paintings reveal what I thought she was trying to tell me from the great beyond, and everything got translated into this language because fashion was the only topic we seemed to be able to discuss without losing our tempers,” says Deen. Both series of works, which include paintings and drawings, were developed over a recent three year period.--
craftster.org | --BUST