Director of Training & Knowledge Management + Educational Researcher + Professor + Poet + Wikipedian = Liminality + Actor-Network Theory + Open Education
Technorati Tags: Cindy Adams, Michael Storrings, Cynthia Nixon
A colleague of mine recommended a documentary film that was just released on DVD, Into Great Silence. The filmmaker, Philip Groning, lived for six months with the Carthusian monks at the motherhouse of the order, the Grande Chartreuse, in the French Alps. Unlike most Catholic religious orders of monks, the Carthusians have maintained their strict discipline for almost 1000 years, after being founded by St. Bruno in 1084. The film is very strong, as it invited me into a world I knew existed but which I had never seen. Carthusians do not entertain visitors, and there has never been a documentary about their lives. This is not so much to be secretive, but rather to maintain the quiet needed for the contemplative. The video captures their work, prayers, community, and humanity in a way that has never been captured and shared so openly before. I wonder what effect this may have. Will they have more vocations? Attempted visitors? Donations? Influence among dedicated laity looking for a more reflective religious meaning to life? For me, I felt almost like a voyeur; one so riveted by seeing the heretofore unseen, I was mesmerized. I wonder how this may affect me in the long term?
Technorati Tags: Carthusian, Philip Groning, St. Bruno, Grande Chartreuse
He will also sign his ornaments and mugs at the Lincoln Center Tree Lighting on 11/26 at 5:00 (located in the Metropolitan Opera Shop at the Metropolitan Opera).
Additionally, he has a new, limited edition book of watercolors depicting various sites of Christmas throughout all 5 Boroughs of NYC. This is available exclusively at the Top of the Rock Shop at Rockefeller Center and Saks Fifth Ave.
I am planning to attend most of these signings to assist and offer support, so perhaps I will see some of you there as well?
These are the postcards he created to promote the events:
Technorati Tags: Michael Storrings
I missed seeing Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib paintings when they were in New York last year, and just learned about them in the current issue of GQ Magazine (sorry, there is not an article on their own site about this; how odd). Wow, they are strong. Amazing how the pain in the normally playful figures central to his work is depicted, and after reading about the struggles he had early in life in the violent Colombia of his youth, I can see how the depiction of the prisoners in the Iraqi prision moved him to represent this through his art. The juxtaposition of his style and this subject matter is disturbing, just as are the photos of the soldiers humiliating the prisoners themselves. I find it interesting that the painter has chosen not to sell any of the fifty or so works in this set; quite telling of how he views torture and those who profit through it.
Technorati Tags: Botero, Abu Ghraib