Vitreosity

Joseph Cavalieri Interviewed by the American Craft Council

Stained Glass, Pop Icons, interviewed by Monica Moses, for the American Craft Council website. via twitterer @IGGAchat

Gina Lollabrigida in Giallo, by Joseph Cavalieri

John Piper - Exhibition and Desert Island Discs

John Piper and The Church

If you are near Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire today (I will be about 4000 miles away, alas), there looks to be an interesting talk by Martin Harrison (author of the very good and hard to find book Victorian Stained Glass) on the stained glass of John Piper as part of the exhibit John Piper and The Church, at Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire, 21 April - 10 June 2012.

I did a short blog post about 5 years ago on John Piper, featuring his Nativity window, Christud Natus Est!, which I quite like. At that time there was a John Piper website, which is now gone (http://www.johnpiper.org.uk - archived page)

But such is the quasi-organic nature of the web that while some things disappear, other surprising things pop up to replace them.

John Piper on Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs is a BBC radio show that has been airing continuously since 1942. In the show, guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, and to choose eight pieces of music to bring with them. Subsequently, as the mix of music and conversation proceeds, you get a mini-biography of the person via their favorite pieces of music. It's a great concept and I can see how it has lasted so long.

All the programs from the past 25 years are now available to listen to online. Recently they started posting episodes from pre-1986, adding an additional 445 programs. Currently they have archived and posted over 1,500 past programs, the earliest going back to 1951.

One of the episodes that came online in just the past few weeks is with artist John Piper who, as far as I can tell, is the only stained glass related personality to be interviewed in the 70 years of the program. He only talks briefly of his stained glass work but the program is interesting nonetheless, mostly as a time capsule into British culture of the mid-20th century.

In general, I'm big on listening to radio shows like this (audiobooks too) when I'm working on the bench.

Let There Be Light Kickstarter Campaign Last Days

JUST 3 DAYS LEFT!!

Been terribly busy or I would have posted this sooner.

Peter Swanson's Let There Be Light Kickstarter campaign, raising money for the filmmaker to finish his documentary on Rowan LeCompte.

It's only 3 days to go and he still has to raise $7000, so I suspect all interested will be putting on the full court press to try to raise the extra money.

It may be a little too late to implement this but I do have one suggestion that might help. I seem to remember Swanson mentioning a figure in one of his promos of editing the film down from more than 80 hours of footage. If this is true then it seems logical that he has at least a few hours, perhaps many, of raw interview footage with Rowan.

I would suggest he offer another level of reward with that raw interview footage on DVD as a reward. It doesn't seem like that would be too expensive to compile, but it would be of real interest to places like archives, and even some individuals. The more footage the better and price it in the $500-700 range. I think there would be some interest, however specialized. Who knows, it could just provide that extra last minute juice to help it go over the top.

In any case, Best of Luck Peter!

Seven Days of Sendak - 7- Humor

One thing that people do forget about Sendak, especially in his final years when he was so dark and curmudgeonly, is that he could be very funny. I find The Nutshell Library one of his funniest books. I also like the more obscure, and some (in Tennessee anyway) would say obscene book, I Saw Esau. Check them out.

Meanwhile, though this has gotten enormous coverage on the internet following Sendak's death, there is the appearance by Maurice Sendak on The Colbert Report (goes to my original post on the original Colbert Report Appearance, with embeds there). Plus here is some additional footage on The Colbert Report Maurice Sendak Tribute from the day he died. They make for a curious, but hilarious epitaph to the life of Maurice Sendak.

Seven Days of Sendak - 6 - Courage

And we get to "Late Sendak", a fearless, curmudgeonly and much darker version of his younger self. Curiously, as his books became less and less mainstream, his fame grew, and the articles, appearances, short promo videos and long interviews grew as well.

At least his darkness, his moroseness, was well earned. Everybody faces tragedy in their life at some point, but few face as much adversity as Sendak did in his childhood. He was a sickly child who was assumed to be on death's door through much of his early childhood. He was involved in the accidental death of a playmate when 6 or so. Worst of all was his relationship to the Holocaust, with the news that his father's family had been killed coming on the very day of Maurice's Bar Mitzvah. I can't even imagine that degree of trauma. That he could take those events in his childhood and use it to celebrate the resilience of children is to me his greatest legacy.

The best interview where Sendak gets into these darker chasms of his story is his 2004 interview with Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers: My Time with Maurice Sendak

Seven Days of Sendak - 5 - Tributes

Some artist tributes to Sendak -
This from last week, in the New York Times -
Thanks, Maurice
and this blog created a few years ago, coinciding with the release of the live action movie version of Where the Wild Things Are -
Terrible Yellow Eyes

This is my own humble tribute, trying to work in Maurice's "late style", but looking back on the young Maurice. This was drawn many years ago and put on my drawing blog.

[update - another tribute just today, rather weird funny one - Avengers on Parade (RIP Maurice Sendak)

Seven Days of Sendak - 4 - Books

Maurice Sendak wrote and/or illustrated about 100 books in his 65 year career. After Sendak's death last week I gathered all the Sendak I have and I've got about 30 or so of his books. They favor the more obscure ones, though I do have a copy of Where The Wild Things Are as well.

Surprisingly, there is no good comprehensive bibliography of Sendak's works that I could find on the web. There is good bibliographic list on his Wikipedia page. but there are only links to a few of the more famous books. To my knowledge Sendak never sanctioned a website of his work. The Rosenbach Library, which is the official repository of his works, does have many small treats on their website but not a big comprehensive, visual bibliography. In time, I hope.

My Vintage Book Collection in blog Form's Tribute to Maurice Sendak - Note the links on the page to scans of some of the more obscure individual books like I'll be You and You Be Me and Hector Protector.

Seven Days of Sendak - 3 - Misc Links

Various links showing up in the last few days -
Maurice Sendak: Concerns beyond just Where the Wild Things are, By Patricia Cohen, September 10, 2008
Remembering Maurice Sendak, by Geeta Dayal, WIRED, May 8, 2012
Understanding Children, Yet Wanting Them to Grow Up a Bit, New York Times
Maurice Sendak defined - STL Today - Although not religious, he was absorbed with his Jewish roots, and his stories were infused with Jewishness.
My Hero: Maurice Sendak, by Neil Gaiman, at guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 May 2012.
Fresh Air Remembes Maurice Sendak. with links to four separate Fresh air interviews from 1989 to 2011. Top notch.
Comic Journal Q&A