Genesis

Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors:
First, nature, which works upon us by its laws;
second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials;
third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world.

Of these three components only one, the medium, is material.

-Hans Hofmann, 1948

Makerial and Space

Early music in a modern museum

This afternoon, while walking on my way from one place to another, I happened to enter the Berkeley Art Museum and heard vocal and instrumental music. The University Chamber Chorus with early-period instrumentalists were performing dramatic work by Henry Purcell written in the late 1600s. The acoustics in this concrete building are very live and suit this type of music. Sends chills up the spine.

The Berkeley Art Museum, designed by Mario Ciampi in the mid-1960s and located on Bancroft Avenue just west of College Avenue, continues to excite me. Every time I see the building, enter and experience the space and see the exhibits, I am invigorated. And the space - well, it is sculpture in itself, yet allows the art within it to be shown on its own merit.

Music, art, sculpture, architecture and structure - blew my mind.