Say something! And it says, “I burn.”

 

Papier d’Arm���nie : Unique.

 

It is still the only interior air-freshener that works by burning paper, and the only one that uses Benzoin, a substance normally

 

Renowned since Antiquity for its antiseptic, healing and expectorant properties, benzoin balm was formerly applied externally to treat asthma, coughs and hoarseness. It became popular with those suffering from stress, because of its positive effect on the psyche and the emotions. It is believed to have purifying powers, and be able to eliminate all impure and coarse emotions and thoughts.

Title Quote // Robert Burns

The heart is a strong shore and the ocean has many moods. // Mark Nepo

Prayer Tablets 

“Thousands of wooden prayer tablets, ema, hang outside Meiji Jingu, a Shinto shrine. Japanese are not normally religious, but during times of crisis they often revert back to traditional beliefs. Prayers for disaster victims and the nuclear crisis are written and hung around a divine tree. In a special ceremony, Shinto priests burn the prayers as an offering.” //  Susie Rain

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.

Link: Alabama Chanin – About Us
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Title Quote: Jean Cocteau

I wish to enter her like a dream / Leaving my roots here on the beach.

Christine J. Brandt.
Organic, raw … sublime rings by Christine J. Brandt
Title Quote: Anne Sexton

 

What haunts are not the dead but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others. Nicolas Abraham, L’ecorce et le noyeau

Link: cathy mclaurin | what haunts.

 Via Dynamo

Inspired by my own family secrets, what haunts… is an interactive art installation that explores secrets and their universality. Viewers respond and participate by reading and adding, in anonymity, their own – often-intimate – secrets to the installation. The varied secrets evoke sadness, horror, shock, humor, and reassurance. They “are riveting to read, telling stories of abortion, adoption, and affairs mixed with more universal confessions, like, ‘my heart is broken and I am terrified.'” -Cathy McLaurin

(1)

The installation consists of a wall papered with secrets and a booth where participants add secrets to the project. Written in pencil on hand-cut 4″x5″ newsprint rectangles, the secrets have the visual tone of a whisper, on an intimate scale. The newsprint yellows over time, evoking remnants of the past, old family letters, and nostalgia. The first 150 of the more than 2000 secrets in the project were collected by mail and exhibited in a 2002 exhibition at Artists Foundation Gallery in South Boston. The booth component was created in 2002. The spare wooden structure (6’9″x3’x3′) and muslin curtain create a private and meditative space – a confessional. Participants write and then deposit their secrets into a locked box. During the time in which the project is installed, I periodically unlock the secrets and add them to an adjoining wall. Thus, participants experience the power of having written their secret and then seeing it posted alongside those of previous participants. “Viewers often spend hours reading all of the secrets posted on the walls and often come back multiple times to view the project… what haunts… demonstrates how much people have in common and how common their secrets are. It is a snap shot of what makes us human and of the human condition.”…. -C.M.

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

Link: Ariana Page Russell.

“Each body becomes an index of passing time.  Bones shift, muscles loosen, freckles and wrinkles form, bruises appear; skin is the forum for these transitions.  Most immediately, it may evidence sensitivity, embarrassment, love, discomfort, fear, excitement, infection, health, attraction, and energy expended—reflecting vulnerability and conditions we’ve inhabited.  My own skin is extremely sensitive and reactive—blushing and swelling easily. Dermatographia is a condition in which one’s immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched.  Although it may appear to be, it is not painful as I adorn my skin.  For the wallpaper series I cut photographs of my skin into various pieces simplified from wallpaper and other decorative designs.  Then I attach each individual piece to the wall, or onto board, forming shifting crimson patterns to embellish these surfaces. The patterns I use range from adaptations of Greek and Etruscan vases, Medieval diapers, and Renaissance pottery designs to contemporary wallpaper found in domestic spaces.  Although the basic elements of the designs remain constant, the configuration and placement of decoration is continually shifting within varying spaces, just as skin reveals the passage of time with its transitions. I am investigating where one surface ends and another begins, the bloom of adornment, and how exteriors reveal as they conceal.”

Title Quote: John Dryden

In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.

Link: Somersaults Life Archives.

Somersaults™ Life Archives
your life – full circle

“The genuine little details of everyday experiences when collected and curated add up to the eternal essence of our loved ones’ lives. Hand-me-down moments with the click of a shutter become frozen in time and our hearts. Sand between our toes. Tears of joy at the alter. That certain aroma from the back seat three days into the trip. The impossibly soft strip of satin on that tiny blanket. Fresh cut grass filling our every breath. The nervous first kiss and lingering last dance. Our dreams, loves, fears, triumphs and defeats captured in sights, sounds and words to be relived for generations. Somersaults™ Life Archives collects and protects all of your moments and memories in artfully produced products designed to make sure your loved ones’ lives come full circle.” -somersaults

Design by Eric Kass, Funnel
Title Quote: Robert Aris Willmott

Another world is not only possible, She is on her way. And on a quiet day, if you really listen, you can hear her breathing.

Link: Daydreamer: Couture et Bricolage.

Title Quote: Arundhati Roy

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me

Link: raumge

stalt.

“Wishes – the ring

Right from our childhood, the power of making wishes is familiar to us: be it Aladdin rubbing his magic lamp, reciting magical poems to banish frightening nightmares, or the major or minor yearnings in our lives –the power of our wishes always seems to influence the way things work out. The plain ring invites you to listen to your wishes, irrespective of whether it is with words made available by others or self-created magical words – the wishes will be with you from now on.”

Title Quote: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The poem is a little myth of man’s capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

Link: It’s Nice That.

“The results of an extensive exploration with shadows, the One Day Poem Pavilion demonstrates the poetic, transitory, site-sensitive and time-based nature of light and shadow.
Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilion’s surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, which–during specific times of the year–transform into the legible text of a poem. The specific arrangements of the perforations reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar: a theme of new-life during the summer solstice, a reflection on the passing of time at the period of the winter solstice. The time-based nature of the poem–and the visitor’s time-based encounters with it–allow viewers to have different experiences either seeing a stanza of the poem or getting the whole poem. All of these possible experiences are equally valuable and have meanings unique to the individual. This technique has the potential for producing particular effects and meanings within an architectural environment. Without the use of a source of power other than the sun, this project uses light and shadow to push the boundaries of communication and experiential delight.” –One Day Poem Pavilion by Jiyeon Song

Title Quote: Robert Penn Warren