Yep :)

On being teleological

Teleology–noun. Philosophy.

1. the doctrine that final causes exist.

2. the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature.

3. the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent in nature.

4. (in vitalist philosophy) the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of self-realization.

I first came across the word "teleological" last semester in my aesthetics philosophy class of DEATH, and it was one of the few words, besides Logos, that really warmed my soul whenever I read it, after I first figured out what it meant (as opposed to deconstructivism, which still just makes my soul feel like a tired, sad little raisin every time I see it).

In case the above dictionary.com definition doesn't do it for you, here's the Lindsey watered-down version: when you describe anything as teleological, you are recognizing that it has a purpose, and that it is en route to achieving its final destiny. You say something is teleological when you believe you see it mid-journey, whizzing towards some ultimate (hopeful) awesomeness. You go hiking in the woods and see the world's most amazing sunset and are moved to exclaim, "What a teleological phenomenon!" because you feel that this sunset is not only following its regularly scheduled scientific retirement into night, but it is also kindly fulfilling its God-given mini-purpose of letting you know that He loves you, specifically, in that moment (and also letting you know that He loves beauty and His whole earth, too).


The reason I was thinking about teleology today is because I fully embrace the idea that nature, people, time itself, and everything that surrounds me has a final purpose in the grand scheme of things. Up until this week, I myself was teleologically barrelling towards my finals and the successful close of my first year of grad school. All my thoughts, time, and most of my emotions were wrapped up in securing myself some good grades and in really doing the world a solid by giving it 29 pages worth of my bebe thoughts about Frederic Edwin Church's 1865 painting, Aurora Borealis, left.


And now, there is no endpoint. I feel a little empty. A little deconstructed even (NOOOOO!!!!). I came home Thursday after 1.5 hours of sleep in the past 48, having just handed in my last paper, and what did I do? I cracked open a textbook. I hadn't really gotten to peruse it this semester, and I was mocked considerably when caught.

Just call me Hermione. On finals week crack.

So, the big question is, am I teleological anymore, now that the gauntlet has been successful run? I sincerely hope so. I can't stand the thought of sitting still, or just meandering around aimlessly. I have an internship, yes, and I will learn a lot therein... but nothing quite gives you the same sense of heady direction as a semester's curriculum to be learned (except maybe the act of dating someone... haha :).

As I pondered this favorite word of mine, snapshots of select modern artworks began to crop up in my mind's eye. This seems perfectly reasonable, in retrospect: no longer commissioned by kings or the privileged class, no longer able to act as the world's source for visual stimulus (that role has been usurped by youtube and modern advertisements), modern art, as opposed to the art of centuries past, simply screams out, in its very un-understandableness (un-understandability?) for you to help define its end point, its purpose. I AM A MONOCHROMATIC CANVAS WITH SLASHES IN IT! DEFINE ME! (Google Image search Lucio Fontana for more of that sort...)

I can think of no better, more... calming adjective for this work, Condensation Cube, 1963-2008, than teleological:



It was one of my favorites to visit when I worked at the Hirshhorn. What you see is pretty much what I saw: a clear plastic cube that comes up to the middle of your thigh, it has about an inch and a half of supremely clear distilled water in the bottom and an ever-varied pattern of condensation droplets streaking the sides, which changes depending on the time of day and the season (although in my experience, these streaks were almost always grouped into the corner of the cube that was nearest the window. Methinks this photographer cheated to get this all-over condensation look). Despite its simplicity, it is a work that really stops people in their tracks, and I think that is because they sense immediately that it is making bare its own destiny, its own journey. Behold! I am a never-ending variation on the theme of water condensation!

As you look at it, you are caught up in the simple patterns, imagining what it would look like if the whole thing were covered in drops. Or you stare closely at it, trying to see if you can spot any drops rolling down the sides. Or you are wondering what would happen and what the cube would ultimately look like if you gave it a giant shove down the escalator... :) By making itself so plain, by revealing over and over again the trick that will continue to be its reason for creation and also its reason for continual adoration by visitors and curators, Condensation Cube, 1963-2008 is a really (dare I say it?) beautiful example of the simple idea of teleology, as it always is, in action.

Blackboard

6 days left. My 25 page paper looks like this ^ so far.

Yes, it's almost 7 pm on a Friday night, and I am blogging. Because that's the point of these things: to be myself, in writing, on the web. Well, the above picture is most certainly me at the moment. Forcing myself into the close quarters of the library all weekend so I could get some real headway on this final paper. As I explained to my missionary brother this week, I like to think of my assignments as my "sheep." ("I wanna be a shepherd." "A Shepherd?" "Ya. I wanna get some sheep and tend to them." "Get out of my office." What movie??) Ahem. Jesus told--no, invited-- us to pray over our flocks and our fields, well, these little things are what I cultivate, just one sliver of all I dream of adding to the world. So, I'm praying. And brainstorming like H***!

I got a queer sense of enjoyment out of this exercise- scratching out postulations with chalk on a board like some math geek (only my theories revolve around art and beauty). What do you know, the old school method has a few advantages! Mapping out my arguments across a planar surface, erasing and rearranging them where necessary, actually helped smooth out a lot of the mental road blocks I had on the path to that glorious "A." Knock on wood.

I should be getting back to work now.

Friends, I have some news for you: maybe one of the other reasons why I felt oddly delighted to be at that chalkboard this morning is that, in the middle of my scratching, I got a phone call from a staff member at the National Law Enforcement Museum, who was pleased to offer me the summer archival internship that I interviewed for earlier this week. I am THRILLED with this opportunity! The NLEM is essentially a "museum-without-walls" right now; it has a staff, and a collection, and a very important mission, but no permanent building. They're in the middle of a capital campaign to raise the money to build a permanent home, underneath a park in downtown DC (in a similar fashion to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin by Peter Eisenman, which is amazing...). The NLEM will be right near the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial, a beautiful space directly across the street from the National Building Museum!

"Archives??" you are thinking. You don't know me that well. I actually have a fairly decent background in working with primary documents and collections from several jobs past, and it is only about to get better! I am juuuuust OCD enough to really be good at organizing thousands of documents at a time, although the stack of papers and books scattered around my apartment argue otherwise. I am so excited to tell you what I see and what I learn as I go along this summer. GO COPS!

I'm just a wee bit thankful this evening for the opportunities that I have at the moment... and I feel like I am almost ready to start building up a newer, bigger, and more fantastical set of dreams. (AFter fiNaLS). Because if there's one thing I've learned in the past few weeks/months/years... life is always going to surprise and delight you. If you ask it to.

Time to go.

PS A big, heartfelt cross-country hug to DaniandDave, MeganandJared, and Mike, Jess, Lilly, and new baby Peter! I love you guys SO SO MUCH!!!!! (And to Jess, who has been steadfastly offering up her brother's hand in marriage this past month so that I could come home to Utah this summer :) Sorry to disappoint... next year maybe. PS I love you!

Rock, Hard Place

Yesterday I started writing about the crazy volcano images we're all looking at, then I switched in quick succession to such meh topics as my archival work, the Owl City concert I'm attending in two days, faith, how to efficaciously commiserate and simultaneously commemorate the scourge known as finals week, and, again, how much I miss my family, particularly the funny ones. None of it made the cut ("ODviously!" What movie??).

This morning I crafted a near-perfect facebook status, but my reluctance to actually join the human race in their online drivel-reporting prevented me from hitting the button and committing to its publication. (The status, in case you're dying to know, reflects my somewhat jaded view of online social media. It reads, "I love/hate the Lakers/Jazz/finals/sunshine/my boyfriend... [random inspirational or movie quote]... listen to my bands X,Y, and Z... [narcissistic link to my blog]... and the worst thing ever: Look, FB- my baby pooped!")

What I'm trying to communicate through this list of the past 48 hours' worth of half-baked thoughts is that I am currently suffering from both writer's block and writer's overload. I need a fresh jolt of creativity... and also, less mental stimulation. Maybe at the end of next week, after I have exhaustedly handed in my fatty papers, I will know peace and smart writing again.

It has an end, right, void? If you are reading this and have no finals, are enjoying the freedom to work and earn money, or watch a movie, or use your mind to contemplate whatever you want, give thanks!!!

That being said, here's a few pictures from a recent art event I attended (Hat tip Maggie and Caranine)... because when you've got nothing else to say, when the words come slower than frozen ketchup out of an old school glass bottle, pictures can still spin an interesting story!

Best regards,
Thoroughly Modern Lindsey

Heroes

NOT the tv show.

If you need something to listen to while you read the following, this song was playing in my head the whole time I wrote this bad boy.

We'll start here: who are the people in your life (or in history) whose words and actions really dictate in some way what your thoughts, words, and actions will be? They are probably people you think of as having their hearts set on the same kinds of treasures you do. A lot of my heroes are heroes because they perform the role of motherhood and womanhood so incredibly well; our treasures are conjoined at the family. Most of my other heroes are those who have an insatiable desire to make a difference in the world, who actually DID it. Or at least spent their lives trying valiantly. William Wilberforce comes to mind. My gosh I love Amazing Grace. Tangent.

As I related a few posts down, the big paper topic I'm working on this semester is Frederic Edwin Church, who was the cat's meow in American art from about 1850-1870. My (pseudo)professional opinion: he's a'ight, as far as art historical figures go... not my greatest hero though.

I got a very big research-ical shock last week while I was doing some reading about Church's 1859 voyage to Newfoundland; who should have accompanied him on the first leg of his journey to sketch icebergs and the arctic but (drumroll please...) Mr. Louis Agassiz himself!!!

... None of you found this revelation as exhilarating as I did. Louis Agassiz is one of my heroes, an important man in the history of science (aka'd "The Father of the Ice Age"), whose story has fallen a little bit by the wayside in this day and age, only to be picked up and examined now and again by scientific historians and pedagogues like myself. His is an incredible, and incredibly moving, story. I first learned about him from Vicki Jo Anderson's text The Other Eminent Men of Wilford Woodruff, and I will summarize her version of his story here. I'll bet as I tell it to you, you can see all the reasons why he makes a hero for me in particular:

Born in 1807 in Switzerland to a fifth-generation clergyman and a kind and stalwart mother, Louis Agassiz was never pushed beyond normal boundaries in education. His mother did hapen to notice and cultivate early on his intellectual tendencies and intense love of nature; most of his childhood was spent tenderly caring for a large range of animals housed within his estate, by permission of his parents. At age fourteen he was determined to memorize the Latin name of every single known animal and plant! He attended the University of Munich in pursuit of a medical degree, but his love of nature was already growing and taking a hold of his passion. He flourished under the tutelage of a philosophy professor named Schelling, who cemented in him the belief that the various animal forms could be understood as individual "thoughts" of a divine Creator.

Agassiz later describes himself as the "librarian of the works of God." <3 He wrote over 75 theses on topics in many different scientific disciplines, including anatomy, surgery, obstetrics, and pathology, and after moving to Paris, assisted one of Europe's most prodigious minds, Professor Georges Cuvier of the Center of Natural History at the Jardin des Plantes, in the work of establishing our basic classification system of animals (into four branches: the Radiatas, Mollusks, Articulata, and Vertebrata. FYI. :). When Cuvier died, Agassiz took up his work writing about fossilized fishes, and championed the idea held by his former master that nature was, again, the work of a Divine Intelligence. Notably, Agassiz never took the step in imagination that Charles Darwin would, linking fossils into a grand scheme of gradual evolution. Agassiz stated instead that "the whole history of geological succession shows us that the lowest in structure is by no means necessarily the earliest in time." Aka, according to Anderson, that, "Anatomically, evolution may have looked sound, but geologically it just couldn't work. The mere existence of the well-developed shark (Selachians) family is in direct contradiction to the idea of a gradual evolutionary development because the sharks are found abundantly in the earliest of the Palaeozoic fossil beds." Try again, Darwin. You're missing a link or two. Louis Agassiz instead puts forward the belief that "Facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing til we place them in their true relations, and recognize the thought that binds them together." This thought is the word of God, the world's greatest scientist, who made us, and the world, and all the animals, plants, and natural phenomena therein. Yes, these things may be in a state of continual conflict as Darwin illustrates, but this fact fully aligns with the Christian conception of the world as belonging to a fallen state. Tangent.

After Cuvier's death, the renowned naturalist Alexander von Humboldt took Agassiz under his wing, or rather, launched him into the sky, loaning him money to live on and securing him a professorship in Switzerland where he really began to perfect the craft of teaching. He established his city, Neuchatel, as a great European center of learning. Agassiz is known as one of history's most brilliant and passionate teachers (and this statement I have seen echoed in many other texts about education and even a devotional, not just Anderson's mini-biography). Agassiz preferred to take his students out of doors, sans textbooks, during the summer ("If you study nature in books, when you go out of doors you cannot find her"), and during the winter, he insisted on getting students each a specimen to examine. "Look at your fish"; that was his instructions at the beginning of one semester, and each week his students would bring him observations about their specific animal, and he would nod, smile, and simply say again, "Look at your fish." By the end, he had a classroom full of proud students who could rattle off intricate ideas about icthyology and fish anatomy and habits simply because they had to dig deeper and deeper for answers as they observed their single fish. Agassiz believed in obtaining knowledge for oneself, in cultivating a sharp eye and a quick, questioning mind. "The mind is made strong not through much learning," he said, "but by the thorough possession of something."

While in Switzerland, his attention turned from fossils to the mountains, particularly glaciers. Living, sleeping, and teaching on them, he was the first to discover that they were actually moving. Agassiz came up with this unheard-of idea that the continent was once covered in slowly moving ice (perhaps this idea came about after he almost lost his life in an underground river, which he fell into after he convinced his students to let him rappel 80 feet into an unstable glacial cavern). He presented his ice-sheet thesis to the leading scientists of the day at an annual meeting of the Helvetic Society, of which he happened to be the president. His remarks were received terribly; he was actually booed by the participants! His friend Humboldt encouraged him to have more research to back up such wild claims in order to avoid such a presentation disaster in the future. Agassiz took up the advice gladly, eventually proving the now concrete fact of science: that our Earth underwent an Ice Age that radically changed the face of its land formations.

In 1846 Agassiz went on a speaking tour of the United States, and the freedom--and uncultivation-- of education here impressed him so much that he relocated, despite invitations to teach by Emperor Napoleon III and the King of Prussia. His most notable American accomplishments include the establishment of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard, the establishment of the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian Institute, and his work in Washington to establish some governmental ground rules for effective, scholarly scientific work and publication. He chose to become a citizen in the midst of the Civil War, right about the time he was accompanying Frederic Edwin Church on a trip to the Arctic.

While teaching at Harvard, Agassiz and his wife, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, who was noted for her literary and executive talents, began a boarding house for female students. Agassiz arranged for professor friends from Harvard to teach the girls... and eventually Elizabeth and Louis reopened their school as the famous Radcliffe University. Louis was a great advocate for women's educational rights, even employing women in his museums. His student Clara Conant Gilson described her experience with this passionate man of science by saying, "His eyes ... would moisten with tears of emotion as thoughts of his Creator came rushing to mind, while he traced his [the creator's] footsteps in the science he studied. His eyes mirrored his soul. I think there was never but one pair of eyes such as Professor Louis Agassiz." Vicki Anderson notes that he was "easily moved to tears or laughter and made no attempt to hide his feelings." Quel sweetheart!

One of the biggest reasons why his impact is not well known today is because his works, so enriched by the belief in nature as a second Bible, or a thoughtful work of God, went against the grain of the wildly influential school of thought set in motion by Darwin's Origin of the Species, published in 1859. Agassiz spent the last fifteen years of his life defending his beliefs in "Nature's God," stating that "In our study of natural objects we are approaching the thoughts of the Creator, reading His conceptions, interpreting a system that is His and not ours." His stand on evolutionary issues still has a voice today, and I admire both the theological conviction behind his work and also his intense devotion to facilitating education-- good, solid, passionate education in his chosen discipline-- through research and personal, innovative, teaching methods.

(Most of the above can be found, better written, in Anderson's text, pgs 9-17).

K, hop off the soapbox now, Lindsey. Deep breath. Can you trace all the other reasons why he would be a hero of mine? I love this man. Someday I want to shake his hand in heaven and take an anatomy course from him. I am completely convinced that I will have the opportunity to do so, too. Vicki Anderson's The Other Eminent Men of Wildord Woodruff contains mini-biographies of the fifty other men besides the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the American Presidents who appeared in vision to Wilford Woodruff in the LDS St. George temple in 1877, requesting their temple work be completed. This event holds a lot of historical fascination for me, and I love reading these men's stories, thinking about the positive impact they had in many ways on my own life, and on the world I inherited.

I have many other heroes too, you know. I could go on all day. Many of them will read this blog, in fact. :) But Agassiz is one of my favorites, and I wanted to introduce you to him this Sunday, hoping that it may impel you to look around you, if you haven't already done so, and find those people whose passion, insight, and diligence directs your own. Heroes help us talk the talk and walk the walk because they have done so already. I'm grateful for the abundance of heroes I have in my own life.

Have a great week!

Cartoon me

According to the other attendees at a recent Sunday game night, I am more this character

than this one
I wasn't sure I could fully appreciate this characterization, but then I realized that it pretty much describes me to a T at this juncture. Also, I realized I can be grateful my friends didn't vote me in as this:

Have a wonderful post-Easter week, y'all. I sure love my religion, and my Savior. It's always wonderful to be reminded what great things he really did, and how he really feels about all the people in the world. I want to be like him the most.

.... Ok I'm not done yet. I'd been waiting to see if any picture of the Savior jumped out at me this season that I could share with you, and I found one on another art blog. The author does a much more thorough and thoughtful job of explaining why it is such a wonderful work, and so I'll just link the photo to that blog, no need to add on my superfluous commentary. Again, Happy late Easter!

Elder Marcus

My little bro (serving a mission for our church in Florida) is the BOMB, he is so funny. His letter this week was so classic that I just have to replicate parts of it here. Note that some of it shows we definitely come from the same art-analytical family background:

I also read up on Abinadi and his enduring ever-faithful testimony and sticktoitiveness to preach the gospel. And I've noticed again, that he probably wasn't an old man. Probably a younger guy. And King Noah was DEFINATELY not a big fat dude, with a palm tree on his head, and with babylonian shoes like Arnold Friberg portrayed. The guy has an epic long battle up a flight of stairs. If he was a big jabba-the-hutt man, he'd have a heart attack and die the first 3 steps up the tower. I think we really need to switch all the "famous book of mormon pictures" done by Friberg, and put in Walter Rane's work. He's undeniably my favorite LDS artist. I used to like Liz Lemon Swindle alot, and still do, but Rane's work is verrrrry appealing to me, and have a much broader sense of realism, and a much greater scope of emotion. You should look up his work. Tis good...

...Have a blessed week. Work out your own salvation. (emphasis on the work, not just say, "save me" and your good) I'm getting really tired of born agains. We've talked to alot lately, and I'm tired of proving them wrong. :) YAY!!!!!

SCRIPTURE POWER!!!!!!

Elder M. Dewaine


(Me again) So cute. And maybe a little prideful. And still so cute. My error-laden blogger upload thing won't let me show you the two pictures he's talking about, Walter Rane's Abinadi Had Testified and Arnold Friberg's scene of Abinadi testifying before a very chubby King Noah (couldn't find the actual title of that work, either... there's way too many dodgy blogs out there citing this image improperly). Oh well. Probably for the best. Have a great week!! :)

It's Paper-writing Season. Lookie, Pictures!

(Click on each one to make them get bigger and more awesome!)

Can you tell this man, this artist, traveled the globe?

In their day and age, these four pictures were literally the kings of the world. They were shipped around the globe as superstars in separate single-work "shows." (Can you image? Instead of dropping $12 to see a 2-hour movie, people in America and Europe dropped their money to just go and stand in front of these babies). The pictures earned their creator thousands of dollars from ticket and reproduction sales. The first one, Heart of the Andes, set a record when it was purchased for the highest price ever paid to a living American artist for one painting ($10,000).

These works showcase some of the smartest ideas brewing among the minds of the Western world's intellectuals around the time of the Civil War: Darwinism. Metaphysical religion. Modern oceanographic, optic, geological, and botanical studies (the last two as championed by Alexander von Humboldt, the artist's hero). They also smoothly integrate antebellum and "bellum" pop-culture interests to keep the little people, the normal ones, talking about and ogling them, too: The mysterious and widely-discussed disappearance of one English explorer, Sir John Franklin, into the Arctic sea in the 1840s. The mania for Niagara area tourism, as facilitated for the public by the new American railroad or "iron horse." The innovative (if extremely un-PC) idea to ship American slaves to South America in order to stave off civil war any way possible.

Art is so neat. So is Frederic Edwin Church, the artist I'm learning pretty much everything about in order to find an angle that no one's covered yet.

One of my favorite, most professionally inspiring quotes seems appropriate here today, mid paper-writing storm:

"A work of art is an infinitely complex focus of human experience. The mystery of its creation, its history, and the rise and fall of its esthetic, documentary, sentimental, and commercial values, the endless variety of its relationships to the other works of art, its physical condition, the meaning of its subject, the technique of its production, the purpose of the man who made it- all these factors lie behind a work of art, converge upon it, and challenge our powers of analysis and publication. And they should be made accessible to other scholars and intelligible to the man off the street."

-Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1946 (One of my heroes- he's the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art; a very influential and innovative voice in the early Modern New York scene. Someday, if no one else has done it, I'll write his biography. He had very interesting things to say about Christian artworks, too.)

Bye bye!

Good Morning, Museum

b

Whether you are a morning person or not, you just need to know: one of the most serene and invigorating experiences in the world (10x better than a caffeine shot) is the act of walking around in a museum before it opens (or, to a lesser extent, after it closes). Truly. Even though I've repeated this action again and again in different museums, I still feel a unique power in just those few seconds of museum "dawn." It soothes my rumpled morning soul like no other. :)

I don't know what it is. A quiet moment of satisfaction as you walk through the oversized doors and look up and around, with nary a soul (except the security guards) in sight. I guess you could say this experience relates to the virtue of savoring each moment, and/or the value of living in the present. You'd be right. In the mornings there are rarely any fantastic changes to greet me, except that the floors have been neatly swept, the stray chairs have been gathered in (thank you, dutiful night custodians!), and all the bright lights that normally crown the displays cases, artworks, and architectural settings with a golden halo are switched off (they lie in wait for the flick of the switchboard by the lead custodian, which was me at the BYU MoA, circa 2006-2007. I did always enjoy turning on the lights...)

In short, museums looks roughly the same in the morning. But as we all know, museums are a special place, and thus their mornings have special powers. They even have the ability to reinstill my commitment to my career at times (which is really useful right now... leisure hours are at an all-time low thanks to my busy schedule. My apologies to those who don't hear back from me as quickly as possible, and my sincere thanks to multiple family members who keep building me up and helping me along this crazy semester!). Many times I have savored my morning moment of stillness, and felt my inner Cinderella well up and say, "This is why I'm here. My gosh this is gorgeous." And all is well.

My museums are organizations kept up by (hopefully) the best intentions of many people's hearts and pocketbooks. They are beloved, highly visible, and sometimes sensational institutions visited by publics coming from far and wide with a really wide range of reasons for making the pilgrimage. Museums house surprising, creative, and intriguing collections of curios and valuables, and they rotate these objects under the public's gaze through the means of various well-selected (aka "curated") exhibitions. I've loved these big, beautiful spaces since I was little, when my dad would take me to the exclusive grand openings of libraries, museums, mansions, casinos, and the like (Viva Las Vegas!) and I would "feel the power." (Totally unrelated note: I heart Emperor's New Groove).

However, the moment is really quickly forgotten, even by me (And I mean quickly- give or take two minutes). After I reach the museum and bask in its morning glow, there are classrooms to set up, tour details to recall, training sessions to attend, colleagues to chat with, blah blah blah... and of course, the inevitable onslaught of the day's visitors: bring on the crying babies! And the shrieking and sprinting children, and the harried-looking adults, and the uncertain yet excited tweens moving around in little herds, snapping future facebook profile photos in front of the most picturesque pieces of the museums. These are glorious places during the day, too, in their own way.

Today I escaped my afternoon lesson with the memory of my morning reverie still in tact for once, and thus I decided to record it for posterity here.

http://www.nbm.org/about-us/historic-building/360-degree-tour.html

This link takes you to a nifty little 360 degree tour of my current haven, the National Building Museum. In this "tour" all the lights are on, so you can't get quite the same morning view, but you can still definitely get a sense of the emptiness, the clear light, and the beauty of the space... and hopefully a sense of why I go on such random fancy tangents about it, too. If you were to come visit me out here, ps, I would shower you with all of the interesting historical information printed below the tour window. And I would deliver it in my best, most entertaining and mysterious teacher/tour guide/docent voice. We would have a great time. :)

And with that, I bid you good afternoon. Wherever you are.

Re: The Approaching Summer

Dear Spring,

Oh, you are a good friend to me. The best. Holy cow I'm a whitey!! However (and I'm just bringing this up cuz I don't want to lead you on), you need to know, and I'm sure you already suspect: I am waiting for Summer. I only have eyes for Summer. Review my summer obsession in posts a, b, c, and d.

It's coming. Blue skies and clear water approach. I could sing!

With a lil' bit of luck... my summer adventure will be in the West. As a student, I am free to bounce around the globe in off-campus months, and so I am in search of summer jobs in the Rockies, preferably in the Salt Lake or Utah valleys (or Vegas...). I want to come HOME!!! :)

And for whatever reason, I keep thinking it's a good idea to let you, the blog buddies, know! I guess if anyone knows of a good four-month job that I, a very flexible, enthusiastic, and patient part-time teacher, computer cataloger, research assistant, customer service representative, former executive assistant, writer, Excel spreadsheet maker, receptionist, and cookie-baker extraordinaire could do, and do well, please by all means, email me and let me know! It would mean so much to me. Thank you!

Enjoy the day! PS Winter. You're outta here. :)

Blown Fuse

"What are you thinking right now?"
"I'm going to blow a fuse. Our ward is too cerebral. Have hope, talk to God, and enjoy your life! That's all we really need to hear."

-My itchy emotions during a nebulous, too-theoretical discussion in Marriage Prep last Sunday.



Introducing some American Tonalist painters: Homer Dodge Martin, Thomas Dewing, and George Inness (well, technically, Inness was only Tonalist at the end of his career, but that's getting a little too deep...). These artists were all about venting their emotions, too. But theirs are a lot more peaceable emotions, I think. And certainly more picturesque:


Homer Martin. A North Woods Lake. 1867. Oil on Canvas.

Are those two mini sailboats or just whitecaps at the bottom, center? I'm intrigued... Also, way to go on those clouds, Homer. Me likey.






Thomas Dewing. White Birch. Ca. 1896-1899. Oil on canvas. Washington University (St. Louis, MO) Gallery of Art.

Can you see the white??? I'm a little blindsided by all the green. But, as always, I am a fan of any poetic and illustrious-looking ladies running around wildernesses :)






George Inness. Lake Nemi. 1872. Oil on canvas. MFA Boston.

No words for this one.


To be a Tonalist, one must be concerned in painting with achieving harmony in colors; no jarring contrasts, no flaming bright switchbacks between light and dark. In 1905, Clara Ruge, early art critic, put it succinctly:

"Here, then... is the motive that the Tonal School has made its own. The arrangement of colours must be kept in harmony because it must reproduce not merely the facts of the landscape, either separately or in mass, but, rather, the effect of the scene upon the painter's feelings, the emotion it evokes. Not alone the grass and the trees, with whatever delicate recognition of gradation of colour, but the mood, of which they are the embodiment and cause, is to be transferred to the canvas."

I'm really feeling little in my writing-about-art powers. Writing-- powerful, descriptive, assertive paragraphs and prose-- is the tool of my trade, and I can't concentrate long enough on any art article to learn anything about it from the masters! I blame the Internet (as I go back to Googling my Tonalists... when I'm supposed to be researching them :)

Have a fabulous day!
PS. Click on these images to get them really big. They'll blow your mind!

Probably belongs in a journal but Hey! Why not?

Do you ever meet people that just make you feel smart? Not because they are praising your intelligence, but sadly, because they have a view of the world that seems... uninformed, or just dumb to you?

On the flipside, do you ever meet people that make you feel like a country bumpkin, or a child, or a plain old idiot? Not because they're slipping facts about their ivy-league education into your conversations (although I've come across a few of those in my day...) but because their ideas seems grander and their capacity to DO seems like 1000x bigger than yours?

I've met people that made me feel like both sides recently, but I don't really like separating them in such an unfair dichotomy! These are my own weird stereotypes, and that's all they are, I know it. In the base regions of my heart, I fully believe that all people are created by a God who absolutely loves them for who they are, for every unique strength they have, and even for the weaknesses they have, because He made them that way (like Punchinello the Wemmick in that one book that's awesome that I can't remember the title of...). I need to recall that people have the potential to work through their weaknesses and work towards Him, and for that and myriad other reasons, He loves his kids. My gosh, lately I just really want to see people like He does.

Right now my only weapon is to pray for charity (I can't go wrong with that, huh? :). "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature... for the Lord seeth not as man seeth. For a man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." That's how I'd like to be. But how DO you get to see people's hearts when you're meeting them at parties and they just fill you in with brief stats like where they grew up and what they do and where they went to college... and that's all?

Here's one more Lindsey stereotype coming down the line: East Coast people don't like to let their freak flags fly. I think that's what's bothering me right now. I like to be a little bit different than everyone else, and I usually don't care who sees it. In the west I surrounded myself with friends who do likewise, and we pretty much lived out one of the colorful, fun Owl City songs I've got stuck in my head this week. I think I just need to get a grasp on how other people like to be out here. I also need to quit whining :)

Because none of this really, truly matters. Today's post is a wee bit o' gibberish that just needed to come out. I'm growing up, ironing out what is best in my character, and what is not. Welcome to my bumpy road. Someday soon, mark my words, I'm going to make a break-through in connecting to this hard-as-rock East Coast lineup of acquaintances. I'll see people better, light them up, and hopefully look on their hearts! Maybe they'll see mine, too, and like what they see.

Fact/Resolution: It does not matter what you wear (annoyingly trendy or disturbingly outdated), nor does it matter if your parents are rich, if there's a MBA behind your name, if your bag is genuine Fendi, or if you speak only in sign language. I should not, will not care if you never rise to prominence, gain notoriety, amass spectacular levels of wealth, or if you have limited language capacity, education or wit. You have the capacity to love. And thus, you are amazing. That's really what counts. Hopefully you use that capacity. I'm certainly going to try better to do so. Dear hipsters, bums, clueless tourists, and overbearing business-y folk who are too grown-up for their own good, I'm sorry for the rolled eyes I have shot your way recently. I'll try to smile next time. You probably deserve it, what do I know? Until then, I remain,

Some contemplative girl in your midst