Praeterita

From the Tate Channel , artist David Hockney was filmed at the end of 2010 answering questions submitted via Twitter.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Because everyone likes pictures of cute babies doing cute stuff. There’s a political blogger who I read regularly called Jonathan Bernstein. He frequently writes posts entitled ‘Read Stuff. You Should.’ Most of the time he’s directing people to read stuff on other websites. But the phrase came to mind recently when I thought about a change in my own reading habits at the beginning of this year. Or should I say, a renewal of my reading habits. As 2011 began, I decided to start using Twitter regularly. But I also started to regret the fact that I seemed to be reading less, and in particular reading less fiction. So I decided that I would start reading more stuff, as a counterbalance to the crack-addictive pull of social media, but also because, as Bernstein says, You Should. A couple of things have helped me get started on fulfilling this new resolution. One: my wife Patty was briefly in the hospital over Christmas, so I had hours and hours to wait around, which I filled by readi...

I've had a Twitter account for nearly a year, but I haven't been using it the way God intended. When I set up the account, I added some code to this blog so that every time I published a blog post, it would automatically generate a Tweet about it. Starting this year, I decided to venture a little further into the Twitter-verse, limiting myself to looking at it in a specific 15 minute period each day. Among other interesting things, it led me to discover the work of two artists whom I might not otherwise have come across. The first is Kesha Bruce , a mixed-media artist who I think now lives in France. Here's one of her artist's books: HOUSES TELL STORIES 2008. Edition of 10. 3.5 x 3.5 x 2 ins. Commissioned by the New York Foundation for the Arts. If you live in Chicago, her work is currently on show at the North Central College Library Gallery in Naperville. The second artist is a British chap called Paul Normansell . He creates figurative and portrait paintings out of ...