Its kind of amazing how most people don’t know about Joe Kittinger, the first man in space. August 16th 1960 he jumped at the near edges of gravity almost 20 miles from the ground.

“Then I found myself on my back watching the balloon recede above me. The sky was almost black. It was a beautiful thing to see. I had a sensation of lying still while the balloon raced away from me. I didn’t feel hot or cold, just the right temperature. There was very little spinning. At 18,000 ft., the regular chute opened automatically. Ten minutes from then I was down.”

You can watch his jump and hear him speak here.

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Florentijn Hofman thinks big and in color. He inflates large animals, imitates delivery men to get their parking spaces and paints the brick road yellow. Oh and he made a giant sleeping muskrat out of hay in a place where they seem to cause a hulabaloo.

Here he highlights a forgotten building - slated for demolition. Renewing interest before it is erased, it is now one of the most photographed buildings in Rottterdam.

Met vriendelijke groet,

Jessica

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I saw Ma Jun’s work in a book in the 768 in Beijing & fell in love. He takes porcelain casts of modern objects and sends them to a factory where they paint China in a traditional way. Genius.

lagallery-frankfurt.de/majun.html

This would go great in my broken Chinese Wedding cabinet. That is another beast of a story all together.

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I have been researching residencies all over the world for the past two days. The most interesting organization I came upon is the Center For Land Use Interpretation. Their goal is to explore the human interaction with the land through multiple lenses. I love the complexities that arise from exploring our relationship with something as as seemingly simple as the ground we stand upon.

“Dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.”

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