Advuli

So once again it has been too long since I sat down to write for this here blog. There are many reasons, but since they all sound like a lame excuses, I will not name them here. Instead, lets talk art and visual satisfaction.

Nice Things Ive Seen

This year, I used winter break to visit family and friends in Israel. My birthplace, Kibbutz Hatzor and favorite city of Tel Aviv tend to turn very beautiful in the Mediterranean winter. The light changes and makes colors sharper and clearer, especially after it rains. Tel Aviv also has a beautiful balance between old and new. It has a tendency for nostalgically preserving past elements while constructing the new. The ports of Jaffa and Tel Aviv have been renovated over the last few years and are a perfect example of this old-new balance.

Jaffa Port.

Tel Aviv Port.

Heck, just a walk down the busy Dizingoff street on a sunny and pleasant winter day tends to supply one with sights of beautiful Bauhause houses and new construction using the old as base. The fact that it is all done in carefree (or perhaps careless) and uniquely israeli work methods (see below photo) just adds to the fun…

They have their ways…

The new is inside the old.

When I left Tel Aviv for NYC, the city was a young, happening, ever busy, never sleeping, cultural breeding ground with a certain dirty charm to it. Three and a half years later, it managed to retain all of the above, adding an awakened appreciation for the beauty of the city, which had been covered with dirt, smog and frankly, just too much 1960s concrete construction and is now starting to show itself. Apart from the city being cleaner, there are scores of young designers and creators who are celebrating the uniqueness of it all, mainly by following the original Bauhause intention of simple, stripped lines.

The Tel Aviv skyline is unique and contains many shapes and sizes against a predominantly blue sky. Having a ball with this is Eran Manor, the man behind Urban Outlines, who manages to bring the eternal beauty of the city to the front through a few simple lines and a limited palette of colors. His choice of taking the people out of the frame and concentrating only on the buildings and their immediate surroundings is necessary to maintaining the beauty. 

Eran Manor, Urban Outlines: Ehad HaAm Street.

Eran Manor, Urban Outlines: Bograshov Street.

Eran Manor, Urban Outlines: Levanda Street.

I know that Israel is a problematic subject to bring up. There are many elements related to my birth state that are at the center of many current heated discussions, but they dont belong here. In this particular venue, I wish to only relate to the beauty that can be found wherever you go, be it a slum in Rio de Janeiro, down a shiny avenue in New York or in an ally of a thousand year-old Mediterranean port town. When I go to visit Israel, I try to strip it from all of its problematic elements and look at it as a place of constant change and creation. This does not mean I forget all of its problems (there are simply too many of them for me to do that), it just means I put them to the side for a few days and try to absorb it as it is.

March 20, 2011

What an interesting time I’m having building my word press site.