Looking at the sky but ending up somewhere else
some titles—
limitless undying love
I can’t breathe
you are my flower, you are my power
fighting with cudgels
it’s love and sympathy
trampled under foot
let me see you smile again
kneeling on a protester
but anyone whoever had a heart
one morning two butterflies play
under the sky
#starntwins #dougandmikestarn #mikeanddougstarn
National Academy of Sciences in DC has a group exhibition up through May next year.
“One does not photograph something simply for ‘what it is’, but ‘for what else it is.’” – Minor White
Drawing from the art collection of the National Academy of Sciences, this exhibition explores how metaphors can be powerful tools for discovery, and help us see the familiar in unfamiliar ways, spark insight and open doors to new ways of thinking.
Unfortunately the building is closed to the public, but you can contact them for a private tour possibly.
@cpnas #starntwins
cpas.org
500 5th Street, NW
Washinton DC
new work, some titles
anybody sweet and good and kind in the world
view of bombed residential building
it’s a beautiful day
bullet holes in the cemetery wall
be courteous to all; bow down to none
to hate them and fear them
be a friend to the weak and love justice
people searching a building after an airstrike
inexpressively delicious
interrogation II
unlimited beautiful combinations
#dougandmikestarn #mikeanddougstarn #starntwins
Big bamboo, installation, art, that’s been constructed in different locations around the world makes one feel when they walk through it the experience of something larger than one’s self. It is a feeling of being part of all of it. Artist, brothers, twins- Doug and Mike Starn, address with this work what it is to be alive, to grow, to change. Constructed this week in Aspen at the Aspen Ideas festival..Especially in this natural mountain environment, one can experience how art examines the tension between chaos and order. My friend actor, writer, director Fisher Stevens was visiting and tried to step into the photo as one of the Starn twins, but the real Starn brother appeared! Ha ha. @aspenideas@dmstarn@fisherstevens
in 1992, NASA invited us to join it’s art program, we asked for photographs of the sun. NASA’s raw material shows the constantly exploding mass, billions of years old but constantly new in unimaginable and ambivalent violence
We’ve long been fascinated by Shinto myths in Japan. Amaterasu is the most important of the Shinto pantheon, the Sun deity. We combined Shinto animism w/NASA’s imagery and made a series of light boxes. But we also needed to make a sculptural piece—photographic and active, mesmerizing, out of control
The action is from only two motors: one rotates the pipeclamp sphere of spectroheliographs on color film, the other is for the large outer square gimbal. With the gyroscopic inertia created by the rotating sphere, the simple act of creating opposing rotations requires the sun-sphere to flip, and inner rings tumble chaotically
To load the machine with human character—with kami, we used a photograph we took at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Petrus Christus’ Jungen Frau. In the darkroom, we printed it on ortho film and glued it in the heart of the inner gimbal. In the chaos of finding equilibrium, she occasionally breaks the wild gyrations and is still and calm, casting an indifferent gaze
It’s important that the machine is clearly cobbled together, the vestiges of its creation and the experiments, the electrical wires abandoned/replaced, notes written on tape, attempts to create balance remain
Interesting alignment of science and myth, just last week, researchers from Osaka Met U announced the discovery of the 2nd most powerful cosmic ray ever observed and named it the Amaterasu particle. Scientists do not know where it came from or exactly what it is. link in bio
The last video shows it in underexposure looking like moths under a porch light from or the timescale of stars in orbit around a black hole—a 17 year timelapse created by the ESO
First shown in NY at our exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in April 94. When Leo saw it, he told us he was never happier than when artists surprised him. The last picture is an extended time exposure portrait we made of Leo in 95, with Amaterasu filling in as his nimbus, our patron saint of art dealers
new work. sky with clouds- negative capability- make something without being constrained to preconceived want for how the art will be finished. because, like all art, it’s never finished, people put their own interpretations on something and the art continues. cloud like a thought in a cleared mind, changing on its own and just let it do its thing, watch it closely and figure it out. no mind not thinks no things. learn to forget, learn to forget. #starntwins #dougandmikestarn #thestarns
Burt Bacharach did so many great movie soundtracks, and Casino Royale is a particular favorite on our Bambu playlists while working, it’s a great movie to watch tonight… this is the 1967 album of the soundtrack with great cover art and design by Robert McGinnis, based on the film poster. The original vinyl release of the soundtrack (Colgems #COSO-5005) is still highly sought after, at the time it was regarded by some music critics as the finest-sounding LP ever… This piece is from our After Franz Kline series, 2019-, using Franz Kline as an archetype for AbEx. AbEx spread into Beat culture that became rock and roll and changed the culture of the world since.
@BurtBacharach@OfficialHerbAlpert #DustySpringfield #TijuanaBrass #UsedRecords #1967 #JamesBond #007 #PeterSellers #TheStarns
These works are Color Carbon prints with gilding, our photomicrographs of snowflakes as the nimbus behind photographs of Guanyin, and were made between 2004-2009. To print the photographs of these ethereal sculptures, we remembered the color process we'd wanted to work with since we were in art school, the Color Carbon process, which is almost never worked in any more.
It was the very first color printing process in photography, in use before autochromes. Each color has its own negative and is printed as an individual layer of gelatin with pigment, no substrate at all. While wet, these are layered onto a piece of paper, to physically build the full color image. These tissues are very delicate, and they often rip and tear.
Through that imperfection, through those tears, the color building up is apparent. And, of course, by seeing the color’s absence in a torn area, you notice its presence in other places.
This really worked for us, demonstrating the idea of Interdependence that we always like to have involved in our work in some way or other.
Slide 7 is of two of our former assistants— Lisa Elmaleh @elmalayheehoo , who very likely worked on these pieces, and Chuk @chukamok . Lisa’s passion for her work is obvious, and this year she was recognized for her own wonderful and important work on the US/Mex border - winning the Arnold Newman prize in portraiture. Lisa's an amazing person, working very hard to help people on the border in so many ways, not only with her ongoing photographic series. Her work exhibits her intensity, love and commitment. She's also a lot of fun, we hope you will follow her posts.
She works with a view camera and wetplate. She's an excellent instructor and you'd be very lucky to take her classes. Learn something new and enriching next year. Very highly recommended! #starns #starnbrothers #mikeanddougstarn
Bambu double helix experiment in studio 2011. The second image is our first album painting made during the Metropolitan Museum exhibition in 2010. Our nicknames in high school were Cheech and Chong.
#cheechandchong, #bigbambu #dna #doublehelix #starntwins #stairways
