How are you doing? Well, I hope. I spoke at Interesting 2023 this week and it was the most fun talk I have ever done. Then I got to watch eight other incredible talks! Here are two of the women who featured on the lineup so you also can enjoy their work.
Stef Posavec talked about log books and on-paper visualisations, and I love this extension to her dataviz practice - working on how data happens rather than the data itself:
For the majority of my career, my projects centred around the visualisation of a specific dataset, where the work’s aesthetic and message are created through faithfully translating every data point into graphic elements and visual form. However, I've recently started working with data in a different way, where instead of working only with data visualisation I am instead exploring how to visualise the processes of acquisition, preparation, storage, and analysis inherent in every dataset.
Clem Hobson introuced us to Manuela Sáenz, who was a revolutionary and who MAYBE HAD A PET BEAR? I don't understand how domestification works well enough to understand why we can't have tiny pet bears that don't try to eat us, and I love that Manuela Sáenz also tried to break free from this convention:
Sáenz defied societal convention. She was a spy. She protested for women’s rights. She wore a custom-made Colombian colonel’s uniform. She threw fantastic parties, loved dogs, and maybe even had a pet bear. In a letter, Bolívar referred to his favorite mistress as “that gentle, crazy woman” and eventually gave her an official government position as his archivist.
I've been having one of those weeks and you know what that means, it's either time for the medieval age or time for delightful imagery. OR HOW ABOUT BOTH. It's Feminist Friday, but tapestries!
Let's start with the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, owned by Bess of Hardwick who "married four times and got richer with each wedding." Here are some details on the fashions of the times, both in the image and described:
'Boar and Bear Hunt' shows the fashions of the early 1430s: the women in high-waisted gowns with collars wider than their shoulders and wearing heart-shaped headdresses; the men in bulky garments with large drooping sleeves and low-slung belts. 'Falconry' and 'Swan and Otter Hunt' show slightly later developments; while 'Deer Hunt' displays fashion which emerged in the 1440s: a higher curved headdress for two of the women, the men having square shoulders, higher waistlines and more pointed shoes.
Here's an absolutely classic gift to ask for - a tapestry of you as a goddess doing something impressive (rescuing/inventing). That's what Diane de Poitiers asked for and got from Henry II:
The version of the story shown here is not precisely that found in the writings of any classical author, and the invention of the net by Diana does not seem to be a classical idea at all. It is here in order to glorify Diane de Poitiers, who is portrayed in the guise of the goddess.
I'm looking at a list of search results now and there's this website calling tapestries "easy to hang wall staples." Are tapestries making a comeback? Do you have them? What are your favourite scenes and themes? Excited for your feedback on this.
How are you? I went to Naples recently, it was quite amazing. Have you been? Definitely bump it up your list if not, it's an incredible place.
Of course two of the things they are big into in Naples are San Gennaro and Diego Maradona - both men - however there are women in the Naples mythology so here is a Fem Fri about them.
Let's start with Santa Lucia, patron saint of sight who gives her name to the church of Santa Luciella ("little Lucy"). The church was build with really hard stone so the masons who built it were risking their eyes. Here's more about it:
Its underground crypt was used as a burial site. Adherents to the Neapolitan Cult of the Dead often came here to pray. They often offered prayers especially to the “skull with ears,” hoping this anatomical curiosity would act as a messenger between the worlds of the living and dead. The skull lives up to its name—it has two pieces of mummified cartilage, one on either side, which resemble ears.
I saw the skull with ears. It really does look like it has ears.
You might have noticed the interesting phrase "Neapolitan Cult of the Dead" in the above pullquote. Let's get into that a bit because it's about women adopting the skulls of the unknown dead and keeping them clean and named in exchange for intercessions in heaven:
a spontaneous cult of skull adoption developed after parish priest Don Gaetano Barbati encouraged the local community to assist in bringing some order to the bones in 1872. Since then, local women have taken it upon themselves to assist the souls in reaching heaven, cleaning the skulls and assigning them names which appear to the women in dreams.
St Clare (also patron saint of television btw) is one of the fifty (fifty!!!) patron saints of Naples and the cloister attached to her convent is entirely lovely:
The Santa Chiara nuns lived in seclusion which meant that few people ever saw the beautiful cloister. In 1924 the nuns swapped convents with the nearby Franciscan friars who led less restricted lives. The Friars gradually invited philosophers and intellectuals into their garden and finally, in the 1970s, the public was allowed access.
How are you doing? Feels like ages since we talked about music, but today is the day because there is a new Avalon Emerson album and she's gone full soppy Magnetic Fields jams. I love it so much. Here's Astrology Poisoning:
I've also been just endlessly jamming on the Caroline Polacek album this year. This one, I Believe, isn't a single so no proper video, but it's my favourite on the album:
I went to the Souls Grown Deep Like Rivers exo at the RA recently. Some of the things I enjoyed the most were the quilts. I thought perhaps you'd like a Fem Fri about quilts and (a) that's what this is going to be and (b) HOO BOY I have really gone down a rabbit hole here. I feel like all of Fem Fri could be quilts now. Let me reign myself in to bring you only the cosiest treats. Mega love to the friend and subscriber who hipped me to this world.
We start at Gee's Bend, which is where the quilts I saw at the RA came from. Here's a photo of my favourite, by Loretta Pettway Bennett:
The quilters of Gee’s Bend, an isolated hamlet situated on a bend in the Alabama River, have a term for designs that break with tradition: they are done “my way”. Like the best jazz, “my way” quilts are guided by a combination of skill, practice and improvisation. For the past century, women such as Annie Mae Young, Loretta Pettway and Mary Lee Bendolph have stitched together fabric in different shapes, sizes and colours, and by gloriously deviating from prescribed patterns or colour schemes they have exercised an unbounded artistic freedom.
You'll need to scroll for it, but please do, because this is a lovely interview with Loretta Pettway Bennett herself:
I will keep things to pass on to someone else, but it turns out to be even better to turn it into a quilt and pass it on to somebody else. Someone loved wearing these jeans or this denim shirt or dress. What a way to share that love with someone else, by turning it into something that they can use.
HEY DO YOU WANT TO MAKE QUILTS. Autostraddle have a lovely guide:
When you’ve never sewn anything quilt-like before, the idea of coming up with something from scratch can be daunting. I mean honestly, where do you start? And once you’ve got an idea, how do you know if it’s even possible to get out of your head and onto a blanket? Luckily, there are centuries of grandmas and just generally grand people who have been making quilts and will happily lend their shoulders for us to stand on.
I have bought a new font for this presentation and I'm very jazzed about it, so today's Fem Fri is about the women of fonts.
We start with Veronika Burian, who started her own font foundry. Here she is talking about how she got there:
Becoming more and more disillusioned with the reality of product design, my interests shifted increasingly towards typography. A friend, who is a type enthusiast, introduced me then to the world of type design. I knew i found something i really enjoyed and felt at home with. […] Encountering type design was like falling in love.
I love history and the 1920s and here's Elizabeth Friedlander who designed her own font in the 1920s! It's not the one I bought but here is an article about her:
In the period that Friedlander was working, although Europe had been wrecked by WW2 – literally, figuratively and economically, it was still more commonplace for every household to own, and be engaged with, “good” design. A sort-of leftover from pre-war ideals and orthodoxy: “People had very clear ideas on design, and were all writing didactic texts on what was good and what wasn’t. They were terribly certain about it and convinced that they were writing from a neutral, objective position, in a way that seems odd today.”
Finally, here is Susan Shaw, who ran the Type Archive well into her eighties:
many in the industry will attest to Shaw’s commitment to all things to do with type. She wanted local schools to have a typeface of the week to educate seven year olds in the aesthetics of type and to understand the role that type plays in modern society. She was also frequently critical of slip shod use of type, print and binding quality, and would not understand how others could not share what she could see so clearly.
How are you? I went to a concert at the Southbank last night, and thought that you might like to hear some of the music from that.
Let's start with Mira Calix's Nunu, an absolute highlight of last night not least because it was accompanied by a video of insects. Apparently in South Africa, where Mira Calix was from, nunu is a term of endearment that also means "little precious insect". <3 I totally get it if insects aren't your thing but they were pretty cute, scrambling over each other and fighting with their antennae. 🐜 Fewer insects in this video though. Here's Nunu:
I've just searched for a YouTube of the next song and found that it was actually the premiere last night. Since I can't share Anna Clyne's Fractured Time with you right now, here's an interview with Anna:
Overflow is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem, By The Sea, in which we experience the ocean’s power over the poet’s imagination - both alluring, unsettling and dangerous. The line from which this piece takes its title “Would overflow with Pearl” reminded me of an image from Jelaluddin Rumi’s poem Where Everything is Music whereby the tiniest motion of a pearl on the ocean floor can cause great waves above. The opening sonority of Overflow also draws inspiration from Rumi’s words of a “slow and powerful root that we can’t see” with a low B-flat, the lowest pitch of the ensemble emerging from silence.
The story behind Julia Wolfe's Tell me everything is delightful, I'm going to copy it from the programme for you here:
The piece was inspired by a cassette tape that a friend had given me. The tape was of a South American band that had recently acquired brass instruments and were roughly playing together. It was a messy sound, cacophonous - everyone playing together and not together. It was joyful and unwieldy.
Do you remember that blog, dunking on the tasteless houses of the rich, McMansion Hell? This Friday I'm here to remind you that this blog still exists, is still really excellent, and also, is written by a woman so totally on theme for Fem Fri.
Here's the sort of thing you can expect:
In an attempt to not be too off-putting (indeed, having a ceiling full of religious symbolism seems a bit overzealous even if its purpose is to scream “I HAVE MEDICI-LEVEL AMOUNTS OF MONEY”), the house is furnished, well, normally. It cannot decide whether it wants to sell (it will never sell) or if it wants to lean into being an eccentric millionaire’s house. This is very cowardly.
On a more serious note, I loved this article about living, as an architecture critic, in a place that is very "designed". As someone who has stayed in AirBnBs that feel like this, I can confirm - yes, it's very unsettling in a way you don't expect. I can't imagine what it would be like to live full time in what amounts to a weird museum with a micromanaging landlord (ugh ugh ugh ugh):
As soon as we moved in, an unsettled feeling crept in. I can place it now as the sense that this apartment was too nice for people like us – people with particle board furniture and student loan debt. That it wasn’t really ours, we were just borrowing it before someone worthier came. Subconsciously, we knew this. We never hung anything on the walls save for the Mondaine clock my husband bought at the MoMA Design Store and the Giro d’Italia jersey signed by Tom Dumoulin, which I’d had framed. The walls were a blinding white. Putting tacks in them felt like an unlawful penetration. Our landlord fussed over the stuff we had on the back porch. One time he criticized where my husband had situated the soap on the kitchen counter, the living material which, in reality, is just a fancy term for “stains easily.”
Finally, where do trends come from anyway? Here's an analysis of how that has changed:
While previous eras of design (think midcentury modernism) were spearheaded by architects, interior designers, and other tastemakers, in the late ’90s, capital-A Architecture lost interest in the home — deconstructivist ideas and new, high-tech forms were better suited to museums and universities — and a coalition of real estate developers, home improvement and furniture stores, and TV decorators stepped in to take their place. The worlds of high culture and popular consumption in residential design have never been more separate, and, in this critic’s opinion, both suffer as a result.
Some days only poetry will do. That's today. HULLO to Marianne Moore, who wrote what I believe to be the definining poem on poetry. Note that I'm not usually into things that refer to the things they are - show me a film about films if you want to watch me stalk out of a cinema in disgust - but what we have here is… aaaahhh, you've got to read it:
I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the
same thing may be said for all of us—that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base—
ball fan, the statistician—case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents and
school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
“literalists of
the imagination”—above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, in defiance of their opinion—
I had an idea for Fem Fri, then I found the art of Nahoko Kojima and my preconceptions about what to write just went right out of the window. Look at this awesome whale (that's Nahoko Kojima looking at it too so you can see it is lifesize):
Using techniques that are unique to her, she transforms washi (a type of artisanal Japanese paper) into […] a 32-metre-long whale. […] the whole surface is covered with complex patterns that demonstrate Nahoko Kojima’s dexterity. The immense sculpture made from cut paper therefore appears, in spite of its size, to float just above the ground.
And finally, here's Karen Hattman talking about her commission for the Bonehenge (great name) Whale Center:
In the abdomen you will find a full stomach of the sperm whale’s favorite food…squid. Deep in the belly is the “new moon” to symbolize the waxing and waning of the tides of the ocean in which the whale frolics. Above, along the top, are the ribs capturing the air brought in through the blowhole and down the back is the spine leading to the feminine tail. The tail contains small bird spirit representations to give lift to the tail as it moves the whale through the ocean.
