Photograph by Kate Riley.
Given a space to inhabit unobserved, I will immediately convert it into a physical representation of the inside of my brain. My annual trip to the old Zillow listing for the farm I bought eight years ago leaves me stunned every time: it was once the kind of house one could list on Zillow! Now it is mine; I have filled the walls with pictures,hung the surplus ones on the ceiling, crowded every surface with dioramas and precarious unidentifiable objects that look like chess pieces from outer space. There is nowhere to sit in the house except on the floor with the dogs (and, every hatching season, with the emu chicks who run figure eights around the obstacle art). Like my brain, itโs a fun place to visit, but you wouldnโt want to live there.
My house, the physical building, is an arranged marriage of two old farmhouses that were dragged from different parts of the country and clumsily conjoined. I decline to speculate on which side is holding up the other. There is a secret spiral staircase, accessed through a cupboard door, with ludicrously uneven treads; the wavy glass windowpanes cast distorted shadows. The two halves of my house must have each accommodated entire families, but the current inhabitants between them, in descending order of population, are: eggs, birds, dogs, me.ย
Every morning around eleven, having done the farm rounds and broadcast feed to the loyal birds, I commence with the small-scale batch production of objects that promise but do not fulfill utility. I tend to work compulsively and repetitively, making hundreds of variations of the same thing until I exhaust my supply of the necessary materials or my own fascination with it. There are blown-out, intact eggshells equipped with antennae or working motion sensors; eggshells hinged to open like boxes, or with latched hatches, lined with poppy red flocking; emu egg dirigibles rigged with ball chains, hanging from the kitchen rafters. Over theย past six months, Iโve manufactured thousands of one-inch hollow resin spheres, each kitted out with some combination of magnets, O-rings, and fishing tackle and beads. Each one of them is perfect, and the only people who see them are the bewildered tradesmen who need access to the circuit breaker in my kitchen.
I love birds most for the combination of complexity and stupidity they exhibit: their deep-seated, unplumbable impulse to perform elaborate, apparently pointless procedures. The contents of my house demonstrate that it is an impulse I share.
Kate Rileyโs story โL. R.โ appears in the Winter 2022 issue of the Review.
For your regular dose of inspiring handicraft, here is a Korean pottery using an embossing technique on a style of traditional pottery known as buncheon ware (characterized by a coating of white slip (ceramics), carved decorative designs, and usually, a blue-green glaze). โ Read the rest
As January draws to a close, our favorite stories this week included a stirring critical essay, a paean to the worldโs greatest boxed meal, a rethinking of psychedelicsโ impact on the planet, a profile of a craftsperson at his peak, and an eye-opener about how humpback whales use air in some unexpected ways.
Ken Chenย |ย n+1ย |ย 11,542 wordsย |ย January 25, 2023
After Corky Lee passed last year, the photographer and community organizer was memorialized in his hometownโs most conventionally prestigious outlets: Theย Timesย offered a sizable obituary, as didย Hua Hsu inย The New Yorker. This week, on the first anniversary of Leeโs death, Ken Chen rendered an altogether different kind of portrait inย n+1. Much of the same biographical information is included, as are a number of Leeโs iconic photographs of Asian Americans in New York throughout the last six decades. Yet, when Chen writes about his encounters with Lee, and about the 14 photographs he selects to represent Leeโs work, the grief that suffuses his words isnโt solely about Lee, but about the many atrocities visited upon the Asian American community, up to and after Leeโs death. Chenโs critical acumen here is reason enough to read: โHis images lack a charismatic subject,โ he writes of Lee. โThose whom capital dismissed as surplus, he saw as beautiful. He commemorated the multitude, the striking waiters and seamstresses whose unruly abundance crowded away any beatific composition.โ But he brings a similar understated poetry to the social conditions Leeโs work served to illuminate โ and with violence against Asian American elders and others seemingly unending (including a horrifyingย recent attackย in my own hometown), that juxtaposition makes Chenโs piece nearly as indelible as the images it contains. โPR
Ivana Rihter | Catapult | January 19, 2023 | 2,261 words
I only discovered Kraft dinners later in life after moving to North America revealed the cult of Kraft to me. A stable lurking in every cupboard; I admired the respect that something so impossibly orange had managed to garner. When Ivana Rihter finds KDs, though, they are much more; cooked for her by her baba, they are inextricably linked to her immigration story. She describes the process of boiling the pasta and adding the sauce with reverence, the memory mixed in with her love for her baba and appreciation for the economic hardships her family struggled through to start their new life. Her baba teaches her to put feta on top, and with this โsecret little piece of the home country mixed in with all-American shelf-stable cheeseโ it remains a food for life, and โ consistently sitting at about a dollar a box โ one that carries on seeing her through hard times. I found this an unexpectedly beautiful essay, more about memory and belonging than cheesy pasta. Food can transport you back in time, especially if, as Rihter describes it, it โis soaked with memories of [an] origin story.โ โCW
Amber X. Chen | Atmos | January 16, 2023 | 3,196 words
In this piece, Chen explores what the current psychedelic renaissance means for environmental activism, and how synthetic drugs like LSD and MDMA and psychoactive plants like ayahuasca and peyote can stir change within individuals โ and ultimately galvanize social movements. This all sounds incredibly positive on the surface, but not everyone who dabbles in such mind-altering journeys is transformed for the better; psychedelics also fuel right-wing movements, too. (See: โQAnon Shaman.โ) The decriminalization of psychedelics is a step toward making their therapeutic benefits accessible to more people, yes, but as Chen notes, it increases the threat of deforestation, and โ with todayโs psychedelic movement being largely white โ it also takes power away from Indigenous people, who have harnessed the healing power of these sacred plants for thousands of years. (See also aย Top 5 essayย I picked last year: โThe Gentrification of Consciousness.โ) I appreciate Chenโs exploration here, and the questions posed that I havenโt stopped thinking about, like: โHow broken is Western society that we think we need drugs in order to facilitate mass climate action?โ โCLR
Elly Fishman | Chicago Magazine | January 17, 2023 | 4,177 words
Recently, in his late 60s, my dad decided to learn how to play the violin. I respect the choice to try the impossible, especially something as delicate and timeless as bowing a stringed instrument. (My parentsโ cats, who endure the scratching out of notes from beneath the couch or bed, seem to have a different opinion.) After reading this lovely profile, I think perhaps my dad, a skilled carpenter, should also try apprenticing as a luthier. I, someone with zero skills at playing an instrument besides an egg shaker, who curses putting IKEA furniture together, was mesmerized by the descriptions of how John Becker, perhaps the best violin restorer on earth, practices his craft. Elly Fishmanโs profile has a musical quality: It sweeps readers through chapters of Beckerโs personal story and dwells in long, lyrical moments when, with the surest of hands, Becker repairs some of the most revered instruments on the planet โ namely, Stradivari. There are just 650 of the violins left. What makes them so extraordinary? Musicians and scientists may puzzle over that question forever. In the meantime, Becker works โ quietly, meticulously, instinctively. โWe are caretakers of these instruments,โ one of his clients tells him. โWe move on, but these instruments continue to the next generation.โ โSD
Doug Perrine | Hakai Magazine | December 20, 2022 | 1,500 words
Itโs well known that many animals use tools to aid feeding and other tasks of life. Think: otters floating on their backs, cracking shells with rocks. Youโd think it would be hard for whales to use tools, but as Doug Perrine reports atย Hakai Magazine, humpbacks use whatโs available to them โ air and water โ to form bubbles for a variety of activities. โIโm tempted to describe the air in a humpbackโs lungs as a Swiss army knife because Iโve seen whales do so many different things with it,โ he wrote. โIt is not actually a tool collection though, but a storehouse of raw construction material with which the whale can fashion a variety of tools. Lacking free fingers and opposable thumbs, whales are unable to create and use tools in the same way as humans, but reveal their intelligence through the manner in which they utilize other body parts for tool production and use.โ โKS
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There are about 650 Stradivarius violins left in existence today. If one of them needs repair or restoration, their owners โ wealthy collectors and world-class performers, mostly โ call John Becker, a master luthier with a shop in downtown Chicago. How did a man who doesnโt play the instrument become the finest violin technician in the world? Elly Fishman explains:
He was drawn to the idea of working on rare violinsโโโโI could see it was a craftโโโโand applied for a position at the prestigious violin dealer and restoration shop Bein & Fushi in 1979. Also located in the Fine Arts Building, Bein & Fushi ran a cutthroat apprentice program, but Beckerโs talent was obvious from the start. โThey said I was the best person theyโd ever had,โ he says.
When the top restorer left in 1982, Becker was tapped to fill his shoes. His first repair? The Adam, a 1714 Stradivarius violin named for a former collector. The businessโs co-owner Robert Bein had given his employeeย The Secrets of Stradivari, a book by the acclaimed Italian luthier Simone Sacconi outlining the authorโs best practices, and Becker absorbed them all. โI did some great work on that instrument,โ he says.
In 1989, Becker took over as head of the entire workshop. Already renowned, Bein & Fushi became one of the worldโs most prominent violin shops during Beckerโs time there, thanks in large part to his work. โHe was brilliant,โ recalls Drew Lecher, who worked alongside him. โI guess you could say he had a Midas finger. If a violin didnโt sound right, heโd make it sound right. And if it didnโt look quite right, heโd make it look right. He was the standard-bearer.โ