Ursula von Rydingsvard makes huge sculptures out of red cedar. The 70-year-old is one of the few women working in wood on such a scale.
Her pieces are in the permanent collections of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art. And now they're also part of a new show at Manhattan's Museum of Arts and Design. It's called "Against the Grain" — a phrase that could just as well describe the sculptor's life and career.
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Crushed blossoms at the end of the summer: teach me
how to coax nectar from the bloom of another.
Burned rice on the stove again: what's to love
but my imperfections — you'll forgive me another.
Butter by a kettle always melts, warns the proverb.
Heated, greased, we slip one into the other.
When, inexplicably, you enter my prayers,
I hear messages from one god or another.
Me encanta cantar, cuando estoy sola, en el carro.
My mother tongue dissolves. I speak in another.
Heart-thief, enter the fields like a woman in love,
vase in one hand, shears in the other
From Dhaka Dust, copyright 2011 by Dilruba Ahmed. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
The Saudi Arabian movie Wadjda has been on a winning streak.
The film, about a young Saudi girl who hatches a plan so she can ride a bicycle in her conservative country, has been honored at the Venice Film Festival, the Dubai International Film Festival and the Gulf Film Festival. Haifaa al-Mansour, the first woman to direct a film in Saudi Arabia, was feted a week ago at the Tribeca Film Festival.
So how's the film doing in Saudi Arabia? Well, there are no movie theaters in the desert kingdom.
Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam is the backdrop for most every aspect of the film. Females are not allowed to ride bikes or drive and they cannot travel abroad without the permission of their male guardians, usually a father, brother or husband.
The absence of theaters means Saudis have not been able to see this movie, unless they view it abroad. Most Saudis will have to wait until it becomes available on DVD or is shown on a satellite channel they get at home.
Making any movie in Saudi Arabia is not easy. It was especially difficult for a women, and al-Mansour had to go to great lengths to make it happen.
If you visited the Shanghai and Detroit auto shows in recent years, you could sense the auto world's center of gravity shifting from West to East.
Around the time of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, I covered a show in Detroit where GM was actually shedding brands. Displays for Saturn and Hummer, which GM tried and failed to sell to a Chinese company, were pushed to the side in Detroit's Cobo Center like leftovers at a yard sale.
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