Meant to post this at the time, but here’s an image I created for a Valentine’s Day back in February. Which in late May, mid-Covid, now seems like 14 years ago…
Still Exploring...
Just received my copies of Exploring the Invisible, a much-expanded and updated second edition. More than fifteen years ago I worked on the first edition (left) as assistant to my mentor, Joel Avirom, and so I was very happy when Princeton University Press approved my “homage” version of the cover (right). The image of a petri dish (Objectivity [tentative]: Sound to Shape by Nurit Bar Shai) seems eerily prescient, though obviously Covid-19 was not on my mind nor author Lynn Gamwell’s when she suggested it!
A Little Helpful (?) Propaganda
Going into third week of stay at home… Like everyone I’ve been working, reading, binge-watching, binge-eating, etc. Getting lost in something creative definitely helps. This poster is an homage to the classic WWI US Army recruitment poster by Harry R. Hopps: https://tinyurl.com/trvz5pn.
Beauty and the Soul
The Great Hall is a nonprofit gallery in Springfield, Vermont, located alongside the Black River. It’s part of the 100 River Street mixed-use development, formerly Fellows Gear Shapers factory, that also features a medical center, a brewery, and other businesses. The Great Hall occupies the old “Mills and Drills” department and reminds me of a post-industrial cathedral, a huge space with a soaring ceiling of whitewashed girders, illuminated by a double row of skylights running the length of the room. (Full disclosure: my mom Nina Jamison is the Great Hall’s curator, and I’ve been enlisted to provide promotional and information materials for just about every show since its founding in 2012.)
As I write this under the looming shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new show has opened, Beauty and the Soul, featuring the vivid paintings of Chester, VT watercolorist Jeanne Carbonetti. Unfortunately far fewer people will view it than past exhibits, though as the Great Hall acts as an atrium for the Springfield Medical Center, it makes me happy to think Jeanne’s paintings will perhaps provide some comfort to its patients.
Tastes as good as it looks?
I could feed an army with the stuff I’ve purchased over the years just for the packaging.
Back to the Future
Lynn Gamwell’s Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual (Princeton University Press) is a revised and expanded second edition to the 2005 original, as well as a companion to Gamwell’s Mathematics + Art, a book I designed in 2016. I worked on the first edition of Exploring as assistant to designer Joel Avirom — who knew I’d have the opportunity to redesign it 15 years later! The book officially pubs in March but I got a peek at an advance copy courtesy of the author.
