Lifes Rich Pageant

Rumi

Mohammad Balkhi, commonly known as Rumi, was a Persian philosopher and mystic of Islam. His doctrine advocates unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. To him and his disciples, all religions are truth and his peaceful and tolerant teaching has appealed to men of all sects and creeds. It is one way in which he described himself:

 

My Mother is Love                  My Father is Love

My Prophet is Love                 My God is Love

I am a child of Love                I have come only to speak of Love

 

Rumi began his career as a preacher and theologian but after meeting Shams-e Tabrizi, he became a mystic or Sufi. Rumi wrote the largest corpus of lyric poetry in the Persian language, amounting to 40,000.

When the Rose is gone

When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. 
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth

 

 

From: Mathnawi I, 23-31 ~ The Teachings of Rumi

By: E.H.Winfield

Rumi was more than just a poet. His poems were more down to earth than the great master poet Hafiz and thus have been easier to translate as well, being more easily digested into the English vocabulary. The popularity of his poetry has spread in the west because of its heart-felt themes of lover-beloved mysticism

A CEO to admire...

Japan Airline’s (JAL) President and CEO Haruka Nishimatsu rides the bus to work, has a desk among many and lines up in the cafeteria like everyone else - All this while his airline is one of the top ten in the world.

When JAL recently cut back like every other airline over the last few years, it’s CEO cut back all of his perks, including his pay. In 2007 he made about $90,000 USD - That’s less then a JAL senior pilot.

He shrugs it all off as something that just has to be done in tough times, and laughs at the notion that many US Airline CEOs make so many millions of dollars.

He says “Businesses who pursue money first, fail…”

And while JAL shares have like all airline stocks declined in recent years, it is down 19% compared to Continental's  (argueablky the best US major airline) 42% over the same period.

KAWS

KAWS (born Brian Donnelly) graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA in illustration in 1996. After graduation, KAWS briefly worked for Disney as a freelance animator painting backgrounds. He also contributed to the animated series 101 Dalmations, Daria and Doug.

He began his career as a graffiti artist growing up in Jersey City, New Jersey. Later moving to New York City in the 1990s, KAWS started subverting imagery on billboards, bus shelters and phone booth advertisements. These reworked advertisements were at first left alone, lasting for up to several months, but as KAWS’ popularity skyrocketed, the ads became increasingly sought after. In addition to New York, KAWS has done work in Paris, London, Berlin and Tokyo

In the late 90s, KAWS began to design and produce limited edition vinyl toys. More toys and later clothing were made for Original Fake, a recent collaborative store with Medicom Toy, in the Aoyama district of Tokyo where an original limited edition product is released each week. KAWS has also participated in other commercial collaborations with Nigo for A Bathing Ape, Jun “Jonio” Takahashi for Undercover, snowboard projects with Burton, and sneakers with Nike and Vans. His most recent collaboration was with Comme des Garçons.

KAWS’ acrylic paintings and sculpture have many repeating images, all meant to be universally understood, surpassing languages and cultures. One of KAWS' early series, Package Paintings, was made in 2000. This series, entitled The Kimpsons, subverted the famous American cartoon, The Simpsons. KAWS explains that he "found it weird how infused a cartoon could become in people's lives; the impact it could have, compared to regular politics."

 In addition, KAWS has reworked other familiar icons such as Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man and the Smurfs.

Through all of his projects, KAWS has successfully blurred the line between fine art and mass-produced merchandise. He uses his products to allow his imagery to infiltrate a larger audience than that of the fine art world.

The artist is currently an active member in both the commercial and fine art communities. Recent solo exhibitions include OriginalFake at the Bape Gallery in Tokyo (2003) and Tokyo First at Parco Gallery in Tokyo (2001). KAWS has been periodically showing both paintings and products at Colette in Paris since 1999. His work is included in the traveling exhibition Beautiful Losers, which started at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center and will be traveling through 2009 throughout the US and Europe.