Wednesday's Visual Treat - Day 3/Peep Show (Tycho/dream club remix)

imagecourtesyaperfectgrayblog

Peeps,

The transitory nature of life is not lost on me; my stated preference for interiors where the passage of time is markedly evident has been noted by many of my fellow design-obsessed peeps.  As an artist and lover of beautiful objects, I am especially drawn to the patina of age; the tell-tale signs of extended use and toil; the signs of wear, repair, care, and respect.  Similarly I find buildings and rooms that reveal their histories without guilt and guise to be illuminating and transformative and quite analogous to our own destiny. This beautiful sitting room captures the Cuba of both present and past.  The fate of the owners of these Colonial masterpieces is frequently unknown.  An exit visa to the US or an extended sentence at one of the many work-camps would have had the same result: a home quickly abandoned and entrusted to the vicissitudes of one's family or the vagaries of an increasingly corrupt government under Fidel Castro.  Luckily, some residences escaped destruction from the elements, theft, and redistribution to party cronies; one proud survivor from this period has been wonderfully photographed by Michael Eastman and is presented as today's visual treat.  Hauntingly beautiful, poetic, and expectantly poised between the then and now!!

Enjoy,

Shane

PS:  Today's visual treat is dedicated to the memory of Reinaldo Arenas, perhaps one of Cuba's most talented poet, writer, activist(s) and certainly a story-teller/dream-weaver/aesthete unequalled in recent history and in the literary traditions of Latin American culture.

"A remarkable writer as much for his talent as for his intellectual dignity.  I am his reader and his admirer."  Octavio Paz