Paper cutout sculptures by Jen Stark. Thanks to Paul for pointing these out. It seems paradoxical that geometry can create a visceral response, but it does.

Jewellery by Dina González Mascaró, an Argentinian Vancouverite. Her shop on Main Street in Vancouver, Jeweller Bau, is itself a sculpture. Website, blog and Flickr. And this is her CV:

These photos of The Dome Show, an exhibition by art collective Intermedia at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1970, are all from the web archive Ruins In Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties. (See another post on this absolutely amazing site here.) The Dome Show was an experimental art show involving architecture, sculpture, performance, music, improvised happenings, a giant public dinner party, bonfires, public home movie nights and many other things over the months of its exhibition. Above, Installing the Dome Show at the VAG.

From the site: “The unifying structure of the Dome Show was Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. Each Intermedia member who was interested was invited to build domes individually or communally for the exhibition. Before the exhibition installation Intermedia members constructed their domes in a variety of public spaces, including the Maplewood Mud Flats, at 4th and Arbutus, Kitsilano Beach, in front of the Bentall Center in Downtown Vancouver, and outside of the Vancouver planetarium.”

Buckminster’s geodesic dome was obviously at the height of its popularity then. Now, forty years later, there seems to be a revival of interest in its utopian promise or its grooviness or its sheer architectural difference or what, exactly? It reappears during times of environmental crisis, war, or general turmoil? Or when staid protestantism makes you want to flee to a stately hippie pleasure dome? Whatever it is, I like looking at these structures and I’m grateful to Ruins in Process for the documentation. The website is particularly valuable not just because of the beards and the fashions, but because it covers a period of art that for all its notoriety is actually not all that well known, not just because it was pre-internet, but also perhaps because of the tendency of the work to be temporary, performative, process-based and dependent upon happenings, and in so many other ways difficult to document. Also, as Carole Itter says in her interview on the site, if you were present at a happening and were documenting, it meant you weren’t in the moment, and that wasn’t cool. Her comments on the role of women in Intermedia are also pretty interesting.

Above, an art insert in the Vancouver weekly The Georgia Straight. Below, construction of a dome in the Mudflats, Vancouver.

Above and below, dancers in a dome near the Burrard Street Bridge.

Above, meeting of Intermedia on Beatty Street. Below, “100 flutes” performance in aluminum dome.

Above,”Bingo,” an event at City Feast, a city-wide public dinner to close The Dome Show. Below, End of the Dome Show – burning of a dome out in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, on the night of City Feast at the close of the show. A bonfire on one of Vancouver’s main arteries could so not happen now.

I feel badly stealing these pictures from 2thewalls, because I know how much time KEEHNAN, its author, probably spent scanning these photos. I don’t know what it is about scanning but it’s an intensely boring process during which time seems to actually drag backwards. Never mind this self-indulgent preamble, you should look at KEEHNAN’s post, which intelligently mixes Jenny Holzer textual art pieces, quotes from Milan Kundera, and these amazing rooms by Kelly Wearstler (and many more photos). Considering that his post is about the way we historicize things and create meaning (even through decor, which is deeply suffused with historical references), it is silly that I’m decontextualizing his post here by just posting the photos. So here’s his excerpt from Kundera:

“People are always shouting that they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten.”

It’s too early for Christmas, I realize. But this art object has such a pleasing geometry you could actually leave this tree out all year, minus the Christmas decorations. And I mention it know because if you want one for Christmas, you probably have to order it now if you’re outside the USA. It’s called the PossibiliTree. At Christmas if you wanted that Christmas tree smell, it would be simple to get a few boughs and tie them to these branches. I really hesitate to encourage people to buy things on this blog, because I’m anti-consumerist and DIY, but this is one of those objects that’s so well made, so well-conceived, and so environmentally friendly that I think people should have one. It has a midcentury modern feel, and I seem to remember that one of the Eames playing cards had an image of something like this, which is maybe partly why I like it so much. There are different sizes; this is the smaller one which can stand on a table as well as sit on the floor. The largest one is suspended from a hook in the ceiling – very easy to do.  (There are only a few suspended trees left.) There are different colours too – walnut, birch and cherry. The tree arrives in a mailing tube and you assemble it yourself, which is apparently not difficult. If you don’t like chopping down a tree every Christmas, this seems like a great idea, so much better than a synthetic tree. It’s made on this continent, too, out of local hardwood trees. You can order these from Possibilitree.

The blog YOU HAVE BEEN HERE SOMETIME does, as its title suggests, provoke an uncanny feeling. If not a feeling of deja vu, then at least a sense of the mysterious life of objects. No snapshots of the blog that I can include here will reproduce the feeling you get from the way David John, its creator, exhibits photographs and information; you just have to go there for yourself. YHBHS’s atmospheric collection of dopplegangers and doubles and triples is part of the effect. How does he find these art and design objects that echo each other in this way? The simplicity is deceptive, and the geometry is mesmerizing. I also appreciate the way he combines design with art – mostly midcentury, 60s and later sculpture. And with lamps, because on his blog everything is illuminated. And the white space, which the internet virtually never allows you. Sometimes when I can’t stabilize my mood, I just go to you have been here sometime and I feel better. David has remarked on the importance of art in a community, and he’s right. YHBHS is from L.A.