The Daily Newds 1/22/09

• Melt, the Figure in Clay is the name of Tip Toland's exhibition at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Seattle, comprised of six lifelike figures, one of which is of an old woman lying nude on her side.
  

  Nothing is beautified, but everything about her is beautiful. The way her nipple is submerged in her own sagging flesh, the gently prayerful position of the hands, the twin hollows in the cheek and the hip, labia barely appearing between her legs on her back side. She is alive as deathly, She could be the only object on display at Bellevue Arts Museum right now. She could carry an entire museum on her sleeping weight.

• The Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC is presenting Strange Bodies through early 2010.
  

  "Strange Bodies” provides an opportunity to examine the ways in which artists have exaggerated or altered the figure in order to explore cultural and personal experiences and psychology, as well as formal qualities such as color, shape and texture. The exhibition also traces the evolution of the museum’s particular focus on collecting figuration.

• Jane Toohey travels across the country photographing naked musicians for calendars promoting folk music, and to help them afford health insurance.
  

  John "Mr. May 2007" Flynn, a singer and songwriter who lives in Wilmington, got naked (well, he did have on a teeny-weeny brief behind that log he's splitting with a sledgehammer) after a lengthy courtship.
  
  "I was playing hide-and-seek with her for a long time," he said. "If there was ever a reason God invented clothes, it was probably for folk singers. We're not a group that people are clamoring to see."
  
  Finally, he woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and thought, "It's not going to get any better."

• With winter still holding most of the country in its icy grip, perhaps it's time to consider a nude cruise. If you're gay, you'll find lots of nude recreation options here.
• A group of University of Georgia ecology students have produced a nude calendar which encourages green living.
• A sportswriter calls out the women of the Lingerie Bowl for their nude hypocrisy.
• Striptease queen Dita von Teese is back at the Crazy Horse in Paris.

  "I've always had a real fascination with the Crazy Horse ever since I was a teenager and I found a picture of this line of nearly nude toy soldiers standing at attention," she said, referring to the trademark parade that opens the nightly show.
  
  "I wanted to do something more elaborate this time," she said. "Combine the Crazy Horse style with what I do which is classic American burlesque."

• Colette Bowe, who will soon be chairperson of Ofcom. the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, has a history of nude modeling.
• Lucia Frangione describes the healing power of nudity.
  

  I don’t know about you, but I can feel so inundated with images of women in the media: young, perfectly poised, air brushed, covered in make-up and surgically altered, that when I stare at myself in the mirror, in bad lighting, with no art director in sight, I can be very critical with myself. I also start to feel as though my naked image is only good for a cheap sell for sex, like the media portrays. I start to believe that my body is not for myself, but for someone else.
  
  That photography session completely changed the way I view my body. In a way it was my acknowledgment and “thank you” to God for making me the way I was. Perhaps also it was a glimpse into how God may see me.
  
  I recommend everyone, at least once in your life time, turn your body into a
  painting, a sculpture, a fine photograph. Remember who you are. You’re a work of art. And a fleeting work of art at that. Capture it while you can. Celebrate
  your existence.

• Mark your calendars for February 8 for The Sean Ciall Intensive and Fires of Brigid Ritual in Redmond, Washington. The rituals are performed skyclad, or in the nude.
• On March 16, Rice University is offering a lecture on Nudity in the Middle Ages.
• This article is required reading for any nudist or naturist who believes that rampant pornography is threatening the lifestyle.
  

  In short: we have "normalized the marginal." Starting sometime in the 19th century, and with increasing enthusiasm and speed in the 20th, we have given over much of the public square to pornographic ideas and degrading, humiliating and gory sexual imagery. To the point that the non-stop sexualization of women and children is so common that our conscious minds just shrug it off.

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