Upon reading the title of Michael Glier’s new book, “Along a Long Line,” you might be wondering if he has changed his artistic focus from modernist abstract landscapes to the creation of tongue-twisters. Rest assured he hasn’t.  Rather his book documents his Longitude project part of a series that was on display at MASS MoCA in Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape last year. For Longitude, he has painted abstract-style landscapes along the 70th parallel starting just south of the Arctic Circle and working his way to tropical climes.

This new publication includes reproductions of Glier’s pieces as well as the detailed blog entries documenting his journey and personal photographs that reveal his impressions of the varying habitats. The result is at once a collection of breathtaking visual renderings in paint and photography as well as a mindful lesson in awareness of the diversity and fragility of this planet so few of us ever get a chance to fully experience.

Glier is familiar to MASS MoCA having just been featured in the exhibition Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. He is also a graduate and professor of Art at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. Currently he has begun work on another project, Antipodes, where he will be traveling to opposite sides of the globe to create sets of contrasting painted landscapes.

It’s been way too long since I have posted a Flickr Finds blog. I’m going to try to make it up to you by posting two this month. For this first Finds I decided to collect photos of Simon Starling’s Nanjing Particles, which will be closing on October 31.  I love the way the reflections in the silver particles distort the interior of our building.  Enjoy!

Please note all photos shown in Flickr Finds blogs retain the copyright of the original photographer. To learn more about the photographer and the licensing of their images, click on the photographer’s name to visit their Flickr profile or webpage.

Akemi Ueda

anobjectn

aperf8ectcircle

senatorfrisky

skissel

trailerfullofpix

Range of Light

hargo

Cheers,

Brittany

P.S. If you would like to see your photos featured here make sure you add them to our Flickr Group for consideration.

Hope you caught Guy Ben-Ner in the NYTimes Men’s Style Magazine this past Sunday.

And, the next Kidspace show, You Art What You Eat, was one of Sebastian Smee’s “Critic’s Picks” for fall in the Globe. It opens October 3.

This new product from an Australian designer just came across our desk.  Its called the Sky Planter and its by Patrick Morris. The website touts the Sky Planter’s ability to save water, floor space, and your plants, but we already knew the benefits of upside down plants here at MASS MoCA.  We’re checking our records to see if Mr. Morris has ever been a visitor….

Artist Joe Zane who’s work is included in our current exhibition This is Killing Me, just received a big prize from the Fund for Art and Dialogue at the Artadia Awards2009 Boston.

Artadia supports art-making in local communities providing financial support and relationships, embracing the local, becoming an integral part of communities, and helping connect these communities to the national stage.

MASS MoCA Director Joe Thompson also spent some time on the Hudson River with Simon Starling.  Here he details his role in the creation of the second phase of Strip Canoe.

My job was logistics support on Friday, Day 2, from Hudson to Kingston: actually, my job was to provide lunch.  I had the brilliant idea of using a high tech rotomolded sit-on-top 17′ Hobie cat, which boasts outriggers and a 17′ self-furling mainsail and would allow me to run 2009 circles around those canoeists, caught up in 1909.

But it didn’t work out that way.

No wind.  Not a breath.  The Hudson was like glass for most of the 25-mile trip.  Which meant I worked my tail off trying to keep up with the old technology, and even then failed.  Simon and Dante were polite and kept their boats in eyesight, or maybe this was  because I had the food.

We had a great time: hawks, eagles, herons, and lots of fish hitting at the surface.  The bridges from below are magnificent: Rip Van Winkle, in particular, is a structural marvel.  We noticed that 9/11 angst has infiltrated the river in the form of signage threatening 5 years imprisonment or a $50,000 fine for loitering under the bridges.  Strangely, the closer you get to NYC, the cleaner the river seemed.

This was the only part of the trip that I participated in, but there was one lesson I’ll never forget: on the river that flows both ways, it’s all about the tide.  With the draining tide, we made our first 22 miles in about 4.5 hours, and were still pretty fresh.  We lost the ebbing tide during lunch, however, and the horrible flooding tide slowed our rate to 2 miles over the next 2 hours, and we weren’t loafing.  I bailed at that point, on the north side of Kingston, and the canoeists carried on for another mile or two to complete the Hudson-Kingston reach.