the vague

the present, however it is, cannot be poetic; and the poetic, in one way or another, always turns out to consist in the distant, the undefined, the vague

giacomo leopardi, from zibaldone
(found on page 379 of canti, notes)

circles - tristesse engraved

how soon unaccountable i became tired and sick,
till rising and gliding out i wander’d off by myself,
in the mystical moist night-air,
and from time to time,
look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.*
capturing light - walt whitman -
when i heard the learn’d astonomer

images -
séraphine louis - fruit (frucht)
william langenheim and frederick langenheim - eclipse - 26 may 1854
susan derges - chladni figures - 1985
anders ritter von ettingshausen - section of clematis - 4 march 1840
rosalind franklin and r.c. gosling - x-ray diffraction patterns of a and b forms of sodium salt of dna - 1952
amédée guillemin - polychrome interference patterns, le monde physique - 1882
susan derges - hermetica (detail) - 1993
giuseppe pellizza da volpedo - the rising sun - 1904
alfred stevens - the milky way - 1885-1886

various image selections of mine have been included in the september issue of tristesse engraved - please take a look at it .
(many thanks to jez riley french for his generous efforts in helping to get this all out on time)

667djp

jules janssen - photographies de la surface solaire - 1884

rounds

richard serra - out-of-round VII - 1999
(paintstick on hiromi paper)
from richard serra: drawings, work comes out of work
kunsthaus bregenz - 2008

the walls are excellent & high & upon an horizontal line

in 1795, when shirley, massachusettes, was a community of 200 shakers living on three thousand acres, an outside observer recorded, "the walls are excellent & high & upon an horizontal line, & as straight as they can be laid."

inspired by visionary experiences, the gift drawings bridge the heavenly and the earthly spheres.
...imaging heaven as a perfectly balanced array of circles, squares, and rectangles that signified walls, architectural structures, and roads (cat. 38). others depicted delicately rendered trees, fruits, flowers, and other natural forms, as well as shaker meeting houses, chairs, tables, clocks, chains, necklaces, and other human-made structures and objects, rendered more decorative than those common in daily life on earth. other gift drawings are replete with esoteric symbols, including masonic symbols such as the all-seeing eye and checkerboard patterns. gift drawings are also typically distinguished by their precise graphic quality, which links words elegantly written in upright, noble scripts with their delicately rendered visual counterparts as unified elements of thoroughly structured designs. portraying heaven as an idealized image of the earth, the gift drawings exemplified the shakers' view of their community...

images & text from shaker gift drawings and gift songs, the drawing center, ucla hammer, & university of minnesota press, 2001

view titles of images here ***

another fine book to consider:
shaker design, whitney norton - whitney museum of american art, 1986

the sphere ca. 1890 charcoal

from the new book: as in a dream: odilon redon, hatje cantz 2007

cosmos, κόσμος

hubble image, carina nebula

the ancient and medieval cosmos as depicted in peter apian's cosmographia (antwerp, 1539).

or, nebula & hubble