Mary Snyder Behrens | Gape

Gape (2005) © Mary Snyder Behrens

Above Selected work from a series of intricate handmade bundles (called Trammels), with undisclosed contents, about palm size, made in 2004-2005 by Iowa artist Mary Snyder Behrens. Copyright © the artist.

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Virginia Nicholson, Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 73—

…Quentin and Julian Bell [sons of Bloomsbury writers and artists Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf] had one special London Game that titillated them more than all the others, and which gave them early lessons in human psychology. They would manufacture a small tightly wrapped parcel, and drop it on to the Gordon Square pavement below; from their upper-floor window they would then watch with fascination the reactions of passers-by to the potential "treasure." Would they ignore it? Would they immediately pick it up and pocket it? Or would they edge it into the gutter with their foot before sidling across to "accidentally" appropriate it? A very few might even seize the package and rip it open, only to find that it contained—nothing.

ANOTHER VOICE | Exhibition Opens Today

Political Illustration Exhibit Opens at MCAD

Above Good news, believe it or not, on a day of infamy. Opening today at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design is a powerful exhibition of satirical political art. Curated by legendary art director Patrick JB Flynn of the Madison-based THE FLYNSTITUTE, the exhibition is ANOTHER VOICE: Political Illustration of the Late 20th Century. Don't miss the opening this evening, with a curator's talk and a panel exchange in early February. Poster illustration above is by Henrik Drescher © 1985 from The Progressive. For more information see Another Voice.

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Frank Swinnerton, Swinnerton: An Autobiography. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1936, p. 24—

We had a maid named Betsy, a fat elderly woman who might have been made amusing by [Charles] Dickens; for it was she who, when the groceries came home one day, horrified the entire family by clapping a vinegar bottle to her lips, drinking with zest, and, as she set it down, exclaiming: "I do LOVE winnidar!"

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David Garnett, The Flowers of the Forest. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1956, p. 40—

[At a certain dinner during World War I] Vanessa [Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf] was put beside Mr. [H.H.] Asquith, then Prime Minister and a man with many burdens, including the conduct of the war. Vanessa rarely read a newspaper in those days, though she was always interested in picture papers…which might suggest subjects for picture. She had missed Mr. Asquith's name, but his face was almost intolerably familiar to her…Yet she could not place him. Giving him the smile of an innocent but daring child, she risked the remark:

"Are you interested in politics?"

Vanessa's best remarks were like that, experimental and haphazard shots in the dark. When she coined an epigram it was often because she had forgotten a cliché.

"In that house you meet a dark horse in every cupboard," she once exclaimed with some indignation. And of Maynard [Keynes]: "It runs off his back like duck's water." But of all her sayings the most withering was: "Ah, that will be canker to his worm."

Baby Hummingbirds Nesting in Mexico

Baby Hummingbird © Craig Ede

Above and below Baby hummingbirds in nest in Mexico a few weeks ago, as photographed by artist Craig Ede (sounds like tweed), long-time friend and schoolmate.

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After living elsewhere for almost two decades, in 1990 I moved back to Iowa, where I had been born and raised. Soon after, as I browsed in a second-hand bookstore, I was surprised and delighted to find a paperback volume of essays by American satirist H.L. Mencken. Even as a high school student, I had read nearly all his writings, and had purchased at the time a series of Vintage paperbacks, the covers of which had been designed by graphic designer Paul Rand. It was one of the books from that series that I suddenly found on the shelf in that store. I felt a surge of nostalgia as I reached for the book; it was not only a touchstone, it was the exact same edition as well. Imagine my greater astonishment when, seconds later, as I turned to the flyleaf—I found my own signature.

I recalled this recently while reading the memoirs of British writer Richard Aldington, titled Life for Life's Sake (New York: Viking, 1941). Although the circumstances were different, I thought of my own experience as he described what happened to him when he returned to London after serving in World War I (pp. 202-203)—

[In a London bookstore] A little further down was a display of French books. One shelf of about forty particularly held my attention. I thought: This is a remarkable coincidence; it's the first time in my life I've ever seen a row of second-hand books, every one of which I've read. Mechanically I pulled down one of them and opened it. On the flyleaf was written: Richard Aldington. I took down another, with the same result.

My first thought was that the house where I had stored my books had been burgled; and full of righteous indignation I plunged into the shop to try to trace the thief. Again the bookseller remembered me, and at once looked up his records. If I had suddenly and unexpectedly been hit between the eyes I could not have been more stunned than when I learned the books had been sold by a "friend," a Bloomsbury intellectual, who had rooms in the house and therefore access to the storeroom. Evidently he had come to the conclusion that I was unlikely to return from the front, and that since the books were no use to him he might as well change them into beer.

Baby Hummingbirds © Craig Ede

Richard Aldington (from the same book), p. 206—

My French colleague, Henry de Montherlant, making a pilgrimage of devotion to the sacred field of [the Battle of] Verdun, found skulls of our dead comrades on which tourists had scratched their names and the initials of their country.

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Rex Beach, Personal Exposures (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940), p. 166 [his recollection of having been attacked by a huge crocodile while making a wildlife film]—

To this day it gives me a chill to see an alligator-hide suitcase with the lid open. I don't trust those creatures even when they have brass fittings and a monogram.

Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf?

Pencil portrait of Renoir © Craig Ede (c1974)

Above Pencil drawing by former student Craig Ede (when he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, we even team-taught foundations design one semester—I got paid, he didn't), based on a portrait photograph of the French painter Auguste Renoir.

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Leonard Woolf [British writer, husband of Virginia Woolf] in Sowing: An Autobiography of the Years 1880 to 1904. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960, pp. 137-138—

Thoby [Julian Thoby Stephen, Virginia Woolf's brother] was an intellectual…But he also, though rather scornful of games and athletics, loved the open air—watching birds, walking, following the beagles. In these occupations, particularly in walking, I often joined him. Walking with him was by no means a tame business, for it was almost a Stephen principle in walking to avoid all roads and ignore the rights of property owners and the law of trespass…In our walks up the river towards Trumpington, we had several times noticed a clump of magnificent hawthorn trees in which vast numbers of starlings came nightly to roost. I have never seen such enormous numbers of birds in so small a space; there must have been thousands upon thousands and the trees were in the evening literally black with them. We several times tried to put them all up into the air at the same time, for, if we succeeded, it would have been a marvelous sight to see the sky darkened and the setting sun obscured by the immense cloud of birds. But we failed because every time we approached the trees, the birds went up into the sky spasmodically in gusts, and not altogether. So we bought a rocket and late one evening fired it from a distance into the trees. The experiment succeeded and we had the pleasure of seeing the sun completely blotted out by starlings.

Thoby Stephen, PicSketch image from G.C. Beresford photograph

What I Most Dread

An entry from the diary of British writer Frances Partridge (1900-2004), associated with the Bloomsbury Group, dated March 19, 1940, as quoted in Simon Brett, ed., The Faber Book of Diaries (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 102—

What I most dread is that life should slip by unnoticed, like a scene half glimpsed from a railway carriage window. What I want most is to be always reacting to something in my surroundings, whether a complex of visual sensations, a physical activity like skating or making love, or a concentrated process of thought; but nothing must be passively accepted, everything modified by passing it through my consciousness as a worm does earth. Here too comes in my theory that pleasure can be extracted from experiences which are in themselves neutral or actually unpleasant, with the help of drama and curiosity, and by drama I mean the aesthetic aspect of the shape of events. The exceptions are physical pain and anxiety, the two most stultifying states; I can't hold intensity of experience to be desirable in them.