13 Comments on “Today’s Picture, 11/9/13”

1. That looks like something you’d see out at the coast here, at Makah Bay, La Push, Kalaloch, or really any of the beaches somewhat north of Ocean Shores.

2. Someone needs to wrap that in a cast quick so that it can be transported safely where paleontologists can figure out what sort of dinosaur it was. And why is that guy staring at the wall?

3. Or are they playing with the light switch?

4. “That guy”? The hair looks like Athena’s…

5. Yes, I thought it was Athena too. I assume she’s reading an information plaque of some kind (?)

6. I like the photo, but it leaves me wondering where the “art” is.

7. This piece is actually pretty amazing in person. The artist became obsessed with a fallen tree, and ultimately had it transported, then hired sculptors to replicate the while thing, segment by segment, in carved wood.

   It’s a monument to obsession on a gigantic scale.

8. That’s an awesome photograph in its own right Mr. Scalzi. Thank you it makes me smile & ponder.

9. Dude… Are you seeing this wall?

10. Tough call, but I think that the something with the puppy dog tail is going to eat the snake, which looks like it just struck at the something. Which dodged and is now in an awkward position.

11. @ Canyon42 – Sometimes the art is simply in the juxtaposition of a found object in an incongruous room, like Fiona Banner’s Harrier and Jaguar, where two decommissioned warplanes are placed in a neo-classical art space, one hung by the tail from the ceiling, the other placed upside-down on the floor. (In her case, though, she also polished the surfaces to remove the practical paintwork of an operational aircraft and add a feathery or a silvered look.)

    As she mentions in the linked video, it is spectacular to be walking in North Wales or the Lake District and suddenly get overwhelmed by a low-flying jet zapping out of nowhere.

    On the wood-as-art front, I saw a great Guiseppe Penone tree thing in Tate Modern earlier this year, where a 12 metre sawn beam was unpeeled to reveal the inner history of the growing tree.

12. I love this photo, particularly since its simplicity reminds me of Grant Snider’s work. This comic in particular: http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2013/11/people-of-art-museum.html

13. If it were just some driftwood, I might muse on the impulses that lead some people to save particular bits of driftwood as furniture or lawn art or coffee table conversation pieces while burning the rest, but blink in wonderment at a place so profoundly disconnected from its own nearby body of water that driftwood could find a place in the Art Institute.

    But a painstakingly carved replica of a fallen tree? That’s just plain awesome.