Brigitte Martin's Page

Dear Friends,

please find attached here the pdf form of the "World Art day Brochure" printed by UPSD the National Turkish Committee part of IAA, world International Art Associations.

The brochure gives the details on the selection by IAA general Assembly in Guadalajara in April 2011 of Leonardo da Vinci s birthday as World Art Day which will be celebrated for the first time on April 15, 2012.

Sincerely

Bedri Baykam

President

 

UPSD

UNESCO A.I.A.worldartday_print.pdf

You have some really impressive work on your website.

i put the wrong tag on the photo but they do all move because of the rivit in the centre, they can splay out like a fan, sit in a single row or be anywhere inbetween.

hi, just looked at the work here and on your site, very good! jan

Hi Brigitte, I look forward to visiting; it sounds like a very cool neighborhood, the kind that makes me wish I lived there.

In terms of my thinking process--it definitely has a lot to do with childhood memory. In fact, I was working on several of these pieces the same summer I was writing a short story set in Johnstown in 1918, during the flu pandemic of that year. The narrator, a young boy, who has grown up haunted by the town's memory of the 1889 flood, contracts encephalitis lethargica, the "sleeping sickness." (You can actually see a reference to the story in the wikipedia entry on the Johnstown Flood!) The story, I think, dwells upon how the traumas of history (i.e., the Flood's destruction) and newly emerging traumas (war and disease) intersect in, and serve as powerfully suggestive forces to, the boy's dreamlife and imagination.

The working title for my series of assemblages, "Musaeum Clausum"--as well as the title "Urn Burial"--comes from Sir Thomas Browne, a writer in the 17th century (prime time for cabinets of curiosities!). "Musaeum Clausum"--which translates as "hidden museum" or "sealed museum"--is a museum catalogue of all manner of legendary/mythical/apocryphal curiosities; it's an imaginary museum, since Browne does not possess--cannot possibly possess--the included artifacts.

"Urn Burial" is a series of reflections on the contents of some Roman urns dug up in England during Browne's time. The miscellany of scraps and fragments contained in the urns sets Browne's imagination on fire, causing him to reconstruct the lives, customs, and belief systems of the people who once possessed these things.

This is to say, I guess, that my assemblages are driven my an urge to collect; the desire for and fear of preservation; the way our attention is perhaps mysteriously drawn to certain objects, which can evoke whole nebulae of associations and serve as indicators of whole lives outside the frame; and the romance of the elusiveness of the things of memory and dream. I often have dreams where I've found some wonderful thing and know, even in the dream, that I'll lose it when I wake up, yet hope I won't; if only there were some magical resin that could fix the object long enough to get it to the other side of that abyss.

Brigitte - thank you for your kind thoughts on my work. Humor is a way to feel less gravity. John

Well done!

Oh -- cool! Just checked out your gallery -- very nice!!! I would like to visit Pittsburgh - it's on my list of interesting places to visit. Will definitely check out your gallery when I do!

Thanks for the friend invite!! I love your work!