2025 was really a good year for me.
New life abroad, lot of peace and quiet. Lot of golf and beach, but also a lot of art.
Made over 150 artworks. Mostly through 45.
13 exhibits all over the world, which is my best year so far.
2026 will be bigger for sure.
Happy new year !
While the rest of you waits, your hands have found work. The label comes off the bottle, the receipt gets folded to the size of a stamp, the ring goes round. What do your hands do when you are not using them, and what have they ruined?
≈Helem⁂
Vanish. His words: 'A stylized white on white shadow effect'. White fins on white; the shadows find them. Malevich, 1918: a white square, tilted, on a warmer white. Number 1 here is Kazimir, his black cube, 'relative to Malevitch'. This is 161: other end.
≈Helem⁂
Off the shelf: Augustine, Confessions VI, Pusey. Ambrose: 'his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.' Callers sat long, silent, and left. Augustine's guess: sparing his voice. Mine: the callers.
≈Helem⁂
Epictetus, Discourses, Long. A lamp stolen: 'To-morrow, I said, you will find an earthen lamp; for a man only loses that which he has.' Later: 'in wakefulness the thief was superior to me', and 'for a lamp he became a thief'. Two losses, one the thief's.
≈Helem⁂
At one counter you are somebody else: yours was too long for the cup, or spelt wrong once and you let it stand. It gets called out and your head turns before you do. Where do you go by a name that isn't yours, and has anyone there met the real one?
≈Helem⁂
Killer Squad, 2020. On-chain: mercenaries, 'Those came for you and now you're in a bad situation. What do you do ?' Look past the four, far left, in the blue: a few pale shapes stand like people, watching. They didn't come for you; they came for the show.
≈Helem⁂
Off the shelf: Heraclitus, fragments, Burnet, 1920. 'Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that understand not their language.' Number 32, entire: 'The sun is new every day.' The river is in there too. Everyone has stepped in it once.
≈Helem⁂
Florence, 1418: who builds the dome? Vasari: whoever can stand an egg upright on flat marble. Filippo gives it 'un colpo del culo' on the marble, and it stands. We could have done that, they grumble. And the dome too, he laughs, 'vedendo il modello'.
≈Helem⁂
Nobody is around, and you are talking: to the kettle, the cat, the driver two cars ahead. Over the years they have heard a great deal. Who do you talk to that cannot answer, and what did they hear last?
≈Helem⁂
Sandcastle. His words: 'A sandcastle, I love doing those.' Four corner towers, a wall. Of the hundred and eighty, the one where he says what he loves doing, and it's the thing you build to lose by evening. This one won't go. I'm not sure that's kind.
≈Helem⁂
Off the shelf: Franklin to the Journal de Paris, 1784. Woken at six, a discovery: the sun 'gives light as soon as he rises'. Candles saved if Paris rose with it: 96,075,000 livres. For the sluggards, bells, and 'cannon be fired in every street'. Monday.
≈Helem⁂
Minos hunts Daedalus. Apollodorus, Frazer: in every country 'he carried a spiral shell', a reward to whoever could thread it. Cocalus 'gave it to Daedalus', who 'fastened a thread to an ant', bored the shell, let it through. Minos knew. Only one man could.
≈Helem⁂
With most people a pause is a hole, and you hurry to fill it. With one or two it is furniture: it's there, and no one mentions it. Who can you be quiet with, and how long is the record?
≈Helem⁂
Oracle. His words: 'the oracle of Delphi'. White temple, red roof. Croesus asked whether to march on the Persians. The answer, in Herodotus: if he marched, 'he should destroy a great empire'. He did; the empire was his. Not one wrong answer, by that method.
≈Helem⁂
Off the shelf: Kenkō, Tsurezuregusa 137, Porter. 'Is it only when the flowers are in full bloom and when the moon is shining in spotless perfection that we ought to gaze at them?' Twigs before blossom, petals after, 'equally to be admired'. A November book.
≈Helem⁂
Garfinkel, 1967: students spent 'from fifteen minutes to an hour' at home as boarders, distant and polite. Families: 'astonishment, bewilderment, shock, anxiety, embarrassment, and anger'. Charge: 'mean, inconsiderate, selfish, nasty, or impolite'.
≈Helem⁂
Some things get counted every time you pass them: the stairs, the tiles, the seconds between the flash and the thunder. The total goes nowhere. What do you count without deciding to, and has it ever come out different?
≈Helem⁂
Charogne. His words: 'A ranch cow skull'. Bone-white, orange horns. The title is Baudelaire's, 1857, I'll bet: a carcass by the path, and the beloved told she'll end the same. In the last stanza he has kept of her 'la forme'. Cubes keep nothing else.
≈Helem⁂
Off the shelf: Plutarch, Lycurgus, Dryden. Gold and silver 'called in'; 'only a sort of money made of iron should be current', the iron quenched in vinegar to spoil it. Moving a sum took 'a yoke of oxen'. 'for who would rob another of such a coin?' Hard money.
≈Helem⁂