Findings 48
On the radical imaginatory, reading recommendations, summer outings
Wishing you moments of space, possibility, perspective this season.
As ever, here is this month’s collection of recent Findings: creative gifts, many books, and things worth anticipating.
THE CREATIVE ACT
A gift from the universe (and PBS): a documentary on the life of Mary Oliver, out in August
A beautiful new book from the multidisciplinary artist, Alyson Fox.
Reading and rereading Julie Mehretu’s commencement speech to the graduating class at RISD:
“[You are betting] on the belief that conjuring something into existence that wasn’t there before is not a waste of time, that it matters, that it might be the thing that matters most. That choice was the beginning of the work — the hard, necessary, endless work of reaching into what I can only call the radical imaginatory, that place of deep creative possibility where what doesn’t exist yet becomes thinkable, where the world as it is starts to give way to the world as it could be.”
SUMMER, HOME & AWAY
We’ve been welcoming the first week of guests to experience Vince Skelly’s “Sentinel,” this summer’s outdoor exhibition at Antica Terra, with the artists’s series of redwood and cast bronze sculptures installed in our native oak woodland, among the Table in the Trees. If your summer travels find you in this direction, we would love to host you; the show is up until August 31.
+ in conversation with Vince, here.
Moments on Mallorca at Jørn Utzon’s Can Lis, beautifully photographed by Cecilia Renard.
Inside Södra Kull, the Swedish summer home of Karin and Bruno Mathsson.
Bookmarking this for future Berkshires forays.
READING LOG
Have you gone to aimlessly wander around a bookstore recently? Here is a very incomplete list of a few places we love for discovering books and periodicals:
First Light Books, Austin
Parlour Books, New Orleans
Perfect Lives, London
Cow Books, Tokyo
Monograph Books, Portland
Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris
Bart’s Books, Ojai
Point Reyes Books, Pt Reyes
De Still, Montreal
And a few titles on our bookshelf:
Helen Garner, How to End a Story
Robert Mcfarlane, Mountains of the Mind
Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies
Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
