January BLAHHHHHHS

"I have of late -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire -- why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.  What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!  And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?"

 -W. Shakespeare, Hamlet 

(Painting by Ed Ruscha)

Lost a friend to the sea

See more paintings by Kris Lewis here: http://www.krislewisart.com/

A "crunchy" start to 2010 (no I'm not talking about hippies)

Photo montage from our low-key New Year's Eve dinner. I've included the recipe for this amazing simple yet delicious salad we made. (P.S. I know it looks like I'm trying to slip Gabe tongue in that one photo on the top right. I was. My apologies.)

(Jamie Oliver's) Moorish Crunch Salad serves 4

Ingredients
300g carrots, peeled
150g radishes
2 crunchy eating apples
1 small handful of raisins or sultanas
1 handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped
1 handful of fresh mint, roughly chopped
4 tablespoons sherry or red wine vinegar
8 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon tahini
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted in the oven

First of all, finely slice your carrots into matchstick-sized batons. Finely slice your radishes – you can leave a little of the tops on if you like. Quarter your apples, remove the cores and finely slice. Add all these to a bowl with the rest of the ingredients, apart from the sesame seeds. Toss together, carefully checking the seasoning, and serve with the sesame seeds sprinkled over the top. Eat straight away.

Try this: Turn it into a warm salad by adding some pan-seared chicken, prawns or scallops which have been dusted with a little paprika.

And this: Make it more of a snack by frying some halloumi cheese until golden with some chopped fresh chilli and crumbling this over the top.

Or this: Grill some pitta bread and serve stuffed with the Crunch Salad. Crumble in some feta cheese too. Lovely.

There's a place for us.

Somehow we gotta get these kids together in the new year! Dontcha think??

2010 is the future

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

~T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

Chris Eigeman Quotes-Part Two

Kicking and Screaming-Max
1.
Max: I'm too nostalgic. I'll admit it.
Skippy: We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?
Max: I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory... and I didn't have a good time.

2.
Max: What I used to able to pass off as a bad summer could now potentially turn into a bad life.

Victorian Photocollage

Overview: Sixty years ahead of the avant-garde, aristocratic Victorian women were already experimenting with photocollage. The compositions they made with photographs and watercolors are whimsical and fantastical, combining human heads and animal bodies, placing people into imaginary landscapes, and morphing faces into common household objects.

With sharp wit and dramatic shifts of scale akin to those Alice experienced in Wonderland, these images stand the rather serious conventions of photography in the 1860s and 1870s on their heads. Such images, often made for albums, reveal the educated minds as well as accomplished hands of their makers, as they take on new theories of evolution, the changing role of photography, and the strict conventions of aristocratic society. Together they provide a fascinating window into the creative possibilities of photography in the Victorian era and enduring inspiration for photographic experimentation today.

(Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art February 2 – May 9, 2010,)