notebook

Bill Crandall


photography, urbanism, music, the world


home
November 15

I close my eyes
Every night
And I dream that I can hold you
They fill us full of lies
Everyone buys
About what it means to be a soldier
I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel
About all the blood that’s been spilled
Look out on the street
Get me back home
On the day after tomorrow

from Day After Tomorrow, by Tom Waits

I think artists have struggled to make meaningful statements about the Iraq War. Certainly compared to the Vietnam era, artists have been surprisingly quiet, even after early problems with speaking out (ask the Dixie Chicks) subsided. Movies about Iraq have pretty much bombed, no pun intended. Tom Waits got it right by stripping things down to a soldier’s poignant and ambivalent letter home. Great song.

November 5
Obama Victory Celebrations on U Street I get a nice mention in the second paragraph.
+
Around the World, Praise for Obama
+
14th and U St, Washington DC.
14th and U St, Washington DC.
October 26
Strindberg+Helium: At Home with the Kids Genius. There are a few others but I thought this was the funniest.
October 20
New work from Romania, made during an international art symposium near Timisoara (in the west, near the Hungary border). Click on the little fullscreen icon at bottom right for best viewing.
October 14
What really matters — The Iceland Weather Report Interesting personal take on the situation in Iceland, teetering on the brink of national bankruptcy.
September 29
I’m honored to be part of the International Center for Journalists’ silent auction and exhibit called The Power of Elections, showing at the Paley Center for Media in NY from October 1 through November 5. Bidding on the auction prints ends on November 12 at the ICFJ Awards Dinner in Washington. The bidding page for my Orange Revolution print is here.

I’m honored to be part of the International Center for Journalists’ silent auction and exhibit called The Power of Elections, showing at the Paley Center for Media in NY from October 1 through November 5. Bidding on the auction prints ends on November 12 at the ICFJ Awards Dinner in Washington.

The bidding page for my Orange Revolution print is here.

September 15

East exhibit

Tomorrow is the opening of my East exhibition in Warsaw, the gallery info is here. In Romania at the moment, flying to Poland later today.
August 2
This just in to my archive - a recent series called Portrait of an Artist, about Belarusian artist Zoya Lucevich. Look for the green ‘view slideshow’ button on the right. I met Zoya and her (then) husband Pete Pavlov in Minsk last fall. They’re among the counterculture royalty there, she as an established artist related to Belarus’ early 20th-century poet, Yanka Kupala. Pete as one of the country’s top rock musicians, as guitarist for NRM and as a solo artist. (There are a couple of photos of Zoya and Pete mixed into my updated Belarus series here.) A friend and I have a little nonprofit and decided to bring Zoya to the US this past spring (she’s known in Europe but it was her first time here). We found her free studio space courtesy of A. Salon in Takoma Park, where she created an impressive new body of work in about a month. We got her an exhibition at the United Nations and a couple of smaller shows in DC. Art sales from the project will help establish arts programs for young people in Chernobyl-affected areas. Zoya is a unique soul and an amazing person. Her work and personality reflect both her old-world roots and a playful modernism. I hung out with her in DC and NY and tried to capture a quiet, non-literal sense of her as an artist, and as a person taking in and channelling all kinds of new impressions.

This just in to my archive - a recent series called Portrait of an Artist, about Belarusian artist Zoya Lucevich. Look for the green ‘view slideshow’ button on the right.

I met Zoya and her (then) husband Pete Pavlov in Minsk last fall. They’re among the counterculture royalty there, she as an established artist related to Belarus’ early 20th-century poet, Yanka Kupala. Pete as one of the country’s top rock musicians, as guitarist for NRM and as a solo artist. (There are a couple of photos of Zoya and Pete mixed into my updated Belarus series here.)

A friend and I have a little nonprofit and decided to bring Zoya to the US this past spring (she’s known in Europe but it was her first time here). We found her free studio space courtesy of A. Salon in Takoma Park, where she created an impressive new body of work in about a month. We got her an exhibition at the United Nations and a couple of smaller shows in DC. Art sales from the project will help establish arts programs for young people in Chernobyl-affected areas.

Zoya is a unique soul and an amazing person. Her work and personality reflect both her old-world roots and a playful modernism. I hung out with her in DC and NY and tried to capture a quiet, non-literal sense of her as an artist, and as a person taking in and channelling all kinds of new impressions.