sometimes the easiest thing to post (when jump-starting one's blog) is nothing at all.

or at least nothing of my own.

i haven't posted in quite some time, but rather than punctuate my blog with this same metronomic thesis, i might include that my (weak, summer-vacation style) return to the internet has filled my new life with lovely images and computer clicks and gasps. in the past few days, i've managed to stumble (oh thanks, google reader!) across various aesthetic means of conveying the impact of the written word, and immediately felt that such treasures could hardly remain trapped on my own internet island.

jonathan callan, for example, is a london based artist that often utilizes books and paper as sculptural mediums. some of his pieces combine books into large masses, while others rely on the paper to create singular forms -




meanwhile, joseph egan and hunter thomson are recent graduates of the chelsea school of art and design that created this marvel of typography and perspective -



i've been wondering, lately, at what it takes to elevate a piece of work from something that heartily satisfies the quotients of a great piece of art, to something that makes your heart beat a little faster and your breath a little more strained - something that makes you reexamine the components of whatever paradigm you've been happily subsisting in and wonder if maybe the world could be something entirely different. perhaps this delves exactly into our paradigms, exactly into those subjective inner levels that determine for us what has merit and what fills our bodies with longing and empathy for the human condition. but perhaps there's something else?

at the moment, i'm convinced the greatest of things probably just have grand mutual connections to something absolutely preposterous, like sprinkles of crocodile tears or dustings of fairy dust. at least that's what i tell my students when they need an extra boost of confidence, or when they don't understand how something works.