Published since 2002, an Ocean and Pounds publication
Sometimes I wish I could live in another land, a place where fingers are not just for keyboard tapping, but for sowing seeds, digging holes, planting trees - a return to a primitive, and simple life. I saw one Burkina Faso man, who appeared in a documentary, in which he helped build a nascent forest of baobab trees. He was holding two young baobabs in his hands - a pay cheque for his daily labour; smiling, showing a band of pearly teeth; he declared they would be gifts for his two wives. Even in his wildest dreams of becoming a king, he would not give them gold necklaces or diamond rings. For these trees are far more beneficial. Their leaves are edible like spinach; the roasted seeds, a coffee substitute; and, when pressed, a good cooking oil. Baobab leaves and flowers are food for animals, and monkey bread is the name of the fruit. One can make juice, jam from the pulp, or, after fermentation, a refreshing beer. Their roots are red dye material; the tough fiber of the bark, a wonderful substance for making ropes and baskets. The list of medicinal properties of the baobab tree is truly long. As habitants on this planet, among other species, we owe a great deal to the benevolence and strength of the baobab tree. Being the biggest and longest-living flowering tree today (most of them can live up to over a thousand years), it is sad to learn nine out of 13 oldest baobabs have died in the past decade, and mature trees are suffering from drought and fire. The young baobab trees the Burkina Faso man helps to cultivate would take a long time to grow, and beyond doubt, far surpassing his, and his children’s, time on earth.
CHEEZ
by Fiona Smyth
The Air is like a Butterfly (Holly Lee)
The Diary of Wonders (Tomio Nitto)
Twenty Twenty (Kai Chan)
CODA (Lee Ka-sing)
Greenwood
by Kai Chan
Drawing #1 2021 Watercolour, ink on paper
The Photograph
coordinated by Kamelia Pezeshki
Banovan project by Bahar Kamali
‘Banovan’ is a photo-based project that examines the role of photography in how we understand and make personal, familial, and collective memories. Originated out of the desire to connect with an inaccessible family history in Iran, the project employs found family snapshots and combines them with images from a popular Iranian women’s magazine. By layering and juxtaposing the female subjects pictured in family photographs and within the magazine pages, the interventions create a collision of meanings where personal and socio-political narratives intersect. The project also addresses the complicated relationship between familial, cultural and historical contexts that have influenced women’s lifestyle in Iran.
Poem a Week
by Gary Michael Dault
Condor Air
you saw
the condor bliss
of big timeless
mileless wings
beating towards
any continent you fancied
you chose Antarctica
the bird offered you
a ride
in the huge lift
southward
over many
patchwork countries
over brittle
breaking cities
over melting
glaciers
until you arrived
at Condor City
where the screaming
and whipping
of a million wings
strangled your hearing
cut your breath away
and you
dove back
into the mute sea
intent on
swimming
all the way
home again
a new photograph every day
by Lee Ka-sing
Aotearoa
by Madeleine Slavick 思樂維
tree, home, pole
ART LOGBOOK
by Holly Lee
1
Warawar Wawa (‘Son of the Stars’ in Aymaran) a video created by Bolivian artist River Claure. Using the notion of *Chi’xi as its catalyst, Claure seeks to recontextualise the classic story of The Little Prince, a novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry written in 1943.
*In Aymaran, ‘Chi’xi’ translates as ‘grey’ and denotes an indeterminate colour. It also refers to a method of knitting whereby two colours thread together creating a third as a result. This third colour is what Claure understands to be his identity, and it has formed the basis of much of his work. (excerpted from British Journal of Photography)
https://vimeo.com/587426850
2
From border politics to vintage NASA gear, WIRED magazine's 12 favorite Photography Books of 2021.
https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-photography-books-2021
ART LOGBOOK is a new column with contributions by various authors.
Taking Notes
by Jeff Jackson
“ Red High Heels “, Christian Dior Exhibition, McCord Museum, Montreal, 2021.
Travelling Palm Snapshots
by Tamara Chatterjee
Canada (May, 2011) – Dinosaurs are an integral part of my human experience. When asked at school what I wanted to be when I grew up, unlike most in my class, my greatest desire was to be a t-rex. I won't go into the psychology of a four year old, but in the end there was a realization of its impossibility. I can say that wandering the glass encased galleries containing bones of a species lost long, still pulls at my imagination, whether it is the majestic t-rex or something else.
From the Notebooks (2010-2021)
by Gary Michael Dault
From the Notebooks, 2010-2021.
Number 119: Cow (May 21, 2021)
Leaving Taichung Station
by Bob Black
CHILD
He stood above the vein’d river and clawed at the cloud stiffening beneath his trickling feet
Atilt
And gawking as he, pick after pick after pick, pully’d against the water
To bring to his mouth the cotton white that was crystalline and tasteless.
Just damp and fecund and breezy,
As each finger-prick point pushed the shape away and away and away,
As a mid-sentence comma periscopes its button of pause and shrinking
leaving behind, though afore, the drum beat of a first syllable planted.
Spilling and deconstructing and fishing, the chalking light.
She, below the coppery leaf smudged by his size 2 boots,
Wondered:
To skin the pieces of the cumulus together like a stitched sweater for him
Or recoil from a too-concerned touch and transplanting
to skin to sky to shape what lay just out of his reach.
But in that beat, a small click of the first piece of her heart tumbling away from her
The sound she would learn to abide and cadence.
He was but 3 and now she was learning the true fist of loving.
To set him adrift and away, like that river cloud coming apart seamless
mirrored in his hope of netting and frustration.
By the overly-chatty river, she understood that.
All that he would become, what she must forever allow,
lay distilling and breaking apart as their connection and chemistry rivered on.
And this music, like a break over a bereft bone, grew while the horizon receded.
ProTesT
by Cem Turgay
MONDAY ARTPOST
ISSN 1918-6991
Published on Mondays, with columns by Artists and Writers
Published since 2002, an Ocean and Pounds publication
mail@oceanpounds.com
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