Memories of a Dying System

Karen Gunderson in her all black paintings conjures vast landscapes through what critic Gerard McCarthy described in Art in America as “a deft working in surface texture alone.” Over the past eighteen years she has perfected a technique whereby pictorial illusions result from white light reflected off the raised edges of varied brushstrokes.

“My black paintings use a process which calls upon our sense of the haptic, or our sense of touch. When I paint an image, the brush follows the interior contours of the form. It is as if I am tracing the surface of the volume of the image with my brush….feeling it in space. The final effect produced depends upon the angle of light refraction and the position of the viewer; when you move the picture changes. I believe I have made a new way to think about painting.”

“They are beautiful finds, as they represent a snapshot, a single moment in history,” said Nick Daffern, a senior project manager with Wardell Armstrong Archaeology. “It is lovely to imagine some irate person chasing a dog or some other animal away from their freshly made tiles.”

Click here for additional photos and to learn more about this delightful discovery.

[via devilduck]

One-Year-Old Still Waiting For Father’s First Words

“I’d kind of expected him to say a word or two by now, but I guess every dad is a little different.”

Sam Johnson II sent this in.