I ducked out of the annual Glenwood Avenue Arts Fair in our old Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park today to visit the Black Lives Matter shrine, which I had started to document back in July of 2020, when it was brand new. By April, 2021 the simple shrine area had been elaborated with the addition … Read moreThe Rogers Park Black Lives Matter Shrine, revisited
I came across this small vernacular shrine dedicated to those lost to the Covid pandemic on my riverside walk this evening. The shrine features simple dedication messages in English and Spanish as well as bouquets of flowers, scatterings of flower petals and some candle jars.
As part of my annual Memoria activity during late October and early November, I enjoy attending the Día de Muertos exhibition, staged each year by the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen. Here’s a gallery of some of the 2022 displays:
Tim Bunting writes for Psyche on the grueling death and rebirth rituals of Shugendō, the ancient Japanese discipline of mountain asceticism. I first learned about Shugendō as a teenager, and was inspired to undertake some ad-hoc ritual wilderness excursions/vision quests of my own at Red Rocks beach, a rugged stretch of shore along the southwestern … Read more“More radical and practical than Stoicism – discover Shugendō”
Mywindpone.com offers resources for creating and locating wind telephones inspired by Itaru Sasaki’s original concept: I read about Itaru Sasaki and his Phone Booth of the Wind. I imagined sitting in his white phone booth surrounded by Itaru’s beautiful garden, holding the phone to my ear, dialing Emily’s number, and listening as the rotary dial … Read moreMy Wind Phone: Let the Wind Take Your Words
Click here to learn all about Seven Stones, a Denver cemetery/botanical garden that will – hopefully – provide the aesthetic and conceptual model for future institutions. Here’s a presentation by Seven Stones co-founder Doug Flin –
The notably arts-friendly Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City has hosted a number of artistic installations including works of sculpture, dance, poetry, photography and ritual.
Concept art for the planned Temple of the Heart at Burning Man 2023, including the Rose Altar which will feature wooden commemorative roses created by community members. More at the Temple 2023 website.
A short video preview of the upcoming Beyond Granite project, which will invite visionary artists to create special commemorative works, performances, and installations on the National Mall and throughout the District of Columbia.
Jesse Dorris writes for The New Yorker on the newly-unveiled permanent memorial for the six teachers and twenty young children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012: The memorial’s spatial poetics—the balance between circular pathways and blocks of granite, its enduring engravings of names in stone and perennials for texture and color … Read more“The Contemplative, Unnerving Beauty of the Sandy Hook Memorial”