I’m happy to introduce a new feature to the blog called Image of the Week. This week’s image is by Minoru Ohira, a Los Angeles based artist who has won some of Japan’s highest honors for his woodworking. Click here to visit his website and learn more about him.
 

Minoru Ohira, grouping of sculptures, 2017, wood and graphite, wood bases 5″x 5″x 50″ to 65″, wood and graphite tops 5″x 5″ x 8″ to 15″

 
_ _ _ _ _ 
 
What does the Frida Kahlo painting shown below have to do with a Russian Ambassador? The answer lies in this article by Allison McNearney in the Daily Beast last week: What Happened to Frida Kahlo’s Missing Adultery Painting? Kahlo painted The Wounded Table in 1940 painting after discovering that her husband, Diego Rivera, had been having an affair with her younger sister Cristina. 
 

VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Years later, in 1946, after Kahlo and Rivera had divorced and then remarried each other, Kahlo handed the painting over to the Russian Ambassador to Mexico. It was last seen at an exhibition in Warsaw in 1955 where it was purportedly on its way to Moscow. No one knows what happened to it after that.
 
Wouldn’t you love to find that in a flea market someday?

 
_ _ _ _ _

I found a link to this wonderful photo essay, The Minimalist Beauty of a Renaissance-Era Geometry Book, by Julia Friedman on Hyperallergic. The book, Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (Perspective of regular solids), was created in 1568 by German goldsmith and printmaker Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508–1585) and is a study in shapes inspired by the five Platonic solids: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. 

 
Here in the video below, Jamnitzer’s platonic solids, Renaissance statuary and medieval forms of calligraphy are the inspiration for a collaborative mural between Monkey Bird and Said Dokins.
 


_ _ _ _ _
  
 Here’s an oldie but goodie, kunst bar, that resurfaced on my FB feed recently. Enjoy!
 


_ _ _ _ _
  
As you may or may not know this blog is headquartered at my desk in Pasadena, CA. The best thing in Pasadena right now is Tim Hawkinson: Spirit of Invention, a solo exhibition at The Galleries at PCC (Pasadena City College). If you haven’t seen it, go! It’s up through April 14. 
 

Cross-posted from Jane Chafin: Offramp
 
Contact: janechafinsblog@gmail.com