Tips from a Maestro of the Spray Can 3 History Lesson in Abstraction
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Tips From a Maestro of the Spray Can 3 History Lesson in Abstraction, Cutting Across the Americas 6 The Torrent That Flowed in Picasso’s Final Years 9 Disaster Awaits Cities in Earthquake Zones 12 A Sticky Little Lizard Inspires a New Adhesive Tape 16 When It Comes to Salt, No Rights or Wrongs. Yet. 19 Transplants That Do Their Job, Then Fade Away 22 Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much 25 Asteroid Astronomers Get Unprecedented Amount of Telescope Time 27 Technology and Culture Determine Our View of the Brain 29 More Tropical Cyclones in Past Could Play Role in Warmer Future 31 More Evidence on Benefits of High Blood Pressure Drugs in Diabetic Eye Disease 33 Genes Responsible for Ability to Recognize Faces 34 First Images from European Space Agency's Water Mission 36 Scientists Find First Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality 38 Sound of Melanoma: Ultrasound Can Help Doctors Find Cancer More Accurately 41 Stem Cells Restore Sight in Mouse Model of Retinitis Pigmentosa 43 Physicists Discover Odd Fluctuating Magnetic Waves 46 Zen Meditation: Thicker Brains Fend Off Pain 48 Stitching Together 'Lab-on-a-Chip' Devices With Cotton Thread and Sewing Needles 49 Cassini Finds Plethora of Plumes, Hotspots on Saturn's Moon Enceladus 50 'Rubbish patch' blights Atlantic 52 Ocean robot 'plans experiments' 54 Ovarian transplant double success 55 Way to 'boost' breast cancer drug 57 GPS vulnerable to hacker attacks 59 Joyce Carol Oates: A Love Letter to Libraries in Longhand 62 In Obesity Epidemic, What’s One Cookie? 65 Screening May Save Athletes 68 A Drug Trial Cycle: Recovery, Relapse, Reinvention 69 Processing Alex Katz, From Sketch to Finish 74 The Teen Brain: It's Just Not Grown Up Yet 76 The Aging Brain Is Less Quick, But More Shrewd 79 Egg shells illustrate human story 81 Ice deposits found at Moon's pole 83 New scan could nose out criminals 86 Diets 'can help blocked arteries' 88 Gene test aid to cancer treatment 90 Pain 'should be seen as disease' 92 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Lasers lift dirt of ages from art 94 Heart warning in obese children 96 Imaging Studies Reveal Order in Programmed Cell Death 98 Mental Activity Could Stave Off Age-Related Cognitive and Memory Decline 100 Leaf Veins Inspire a New Model for Distribution Networks 102 Teens With More Screen Time Have Lower-Quality Relationships 104 The brain scanner that feels your pain 106 Where do atheists come from? 109 A Convincing Mimic: Scientists Report Octopus Imitating Flounder in the Atlantic 112 Shopping for Happiness? Get a Massage, Forget the Flat-Screen TV 114 Mitochondria May Be at Root of Dangerous Complications from Injury 115 New Insights to Master Signaling Switch Identified Using High Throughput Technology 118 Sea Squirt Offers Hope for Alzheimer's Sufferers 119 How to Hunt for Exoplanets 121 Elderly Patients Who Survive ICU Stay Have High Rate of Death in Following Years 122 Aerial Surveillance Technology Could Keep Soldiers Safer 123 History Detectives' Investigate the Case of the Mylar Mystery 125 Artificial Bee Silk a Big Step Closer to Reality 126 Coffee Associated With Reduced Risk of Hospitalization for Heart Rhythm Disturbances 127 Sorting Device for Analyzing Biological Reactions Puts the Power of a Lab in a Pocket 129 Canine Morphology: Hunting for Genes and Tracking Mutations 131 Bringing Bison Back to North American Landscapes 133 Prefrontal Cortex May Help Regulate Emotions 135 Online Cure for the Nursing Crisis 137 Turning Off the Lights 139 'Harnessing America's Wasted Talent' 142 The 'Prior Learning' Edge 146 State of Humanities Departments 149 'Pompeii-Like' Excavations Tell Us More About Toba Super-Eruption 152 Researchers Issue Outlook for a Significant New England Bloom of a Toxic Alga in 2010 154 Previous Melt Contributed a Third Less to Sea-Level Rise Than Estimated 156 Where Will the Next Food Crisis Strike? 158 'Missing Link' Fossil Was Not Human Ancestor as Claimed, Anthropologists Say 161 Back Talk: Martha C. Nussbaum 163 Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force 166 Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets 169 Study Says Undersea Release of Methane Is Under Way 172 Clues to Antarctica space blast 173 Gut microbes hold 'second genome' 175 Dinosaur's oldest relative found 177 Gadget may offer migraine relief 179 Here's to the small print: The past and future of compact literature 181 Boys read as much as girls, but prefer the simpler books 184 Warning: Your reality is out of date 186 A room temperature of one's own 188 Gilbert Sorrentino’s Last Novel 191 The Comforting Notion of an All-Powerful Enemy 193 Having a Nose for Degraded Documents 195 Something for Everyone 196 How Bright is Orion? Take a Look 199 2 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 106 March 2010 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Tips From a Maestro of the Spray Can By JAN ELLEN SPIEGEL FAIRFIELD JASMINE JOHNSON is sprawled on the floor of the Thomas J. Walsh Gallery at Fairfield University here, her red high-tops in the air as she intently sketches on a two-foot-square sky blue canvas. Nathaniel Jefferson is on a nearby bench, equally intent as he mulls the possibilities of a green canvas. Israel Medina, who goes by Tony, is outside in the cold, energetically spraying paint to transform a pink canvas propped against a tree. “The wheels are turning,” says the artist John Matos, surveying the work. These three art students from Bridgeport high schools will be joined by two schoolmates the following day as they work on a project designed by Mr. Matos, who goes by the name Crash (as a student he crashed his high school’s computer). A child of South Bronx housing projects, Mr. Matos was younger than these teenagers when he began honing his art in the 1970s by breaking into a subway yard at night and spray painting the cars for hours in the dark and cold. On this January day, in more law-abiding fashion, he has brought top-of-the-line spray paint, acrylics and brushes for the students to use on a mural that is to be part of a retrospective of his work here. Nearly three-dozen Crash pieces are scattered about the gallery. Photos of subway cars represent his beginnings, but mostly there are huge, brightly colored, mainly spray-painted canvases that are Mr. Matos’s signature cross between graffiti and Pop Art. The retrospective is a first for Mr. Matos, now 48, and a sobering reminder, along with the flecks of gray in his hair, that he has been at his craft for 35 years. “It’s fascinating, but it’s spooky,” Mr. Matos said while taking a break in the gallery office. He said he had never imagined this back in his subway days, although he had “felt that there was something powerful there.” 3 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 106 March 2010 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila His plan for the students is a three-day project he has named the Fairfield Square: 16 two-by-two squares arranged four-by-four on the gallery’s back wall. He has painted 10; the rest will be done by the students, who will also rearrange the squares. “So you’re not just adding to it,” he tells them. “The piece is more about you guys than what you think.” The students are at once awed and unfazed by Mr. Matos as he describes his early days, when he would wear his jacket inside-out and use roach spray and the grease from bags of egg rolls to remove any telltale spots of paint. “I used to come home like sparkling clean,” he tells them. “But smelled like roach spray.” Talking to a visitor as they worked, Jasmine, 15, the only one who had Googled Mr. Matos, said his paintings were “awesome,” but said she would be sticking with brushes and acrylics for her square. Tony, 18, said he saw spray painting as art if “there’s nobody in the place and nobody’s really taking care of the place and it’s all abandoned.” But trying to duplicate Mr. Matos’s subtleties proved frustrating, and at the end of the first day, after struggling with unfamiliar cans, one of which clogged, Tony was not pleased with his drippy arrow. Mr. Matos’s technique, apparent in the few minutes he worked on one of the squares, is a light touch — though he has a permanent circle on his right forefinger from years of pressing spray can triggers. He uses an aerobic, full-arm motion — faster for thinner lines, slower for thicker. He cautions against getting too close to the canvas. “It’s a very hard medium to handle,” he said, during a break the next day. “But when you got it, you can pretty much do anything with it. I’ve had people ask me and challenge me, ‘This is not spray paint — airbrush or something?’ No, this is spray paint.” Mr. Matos usually sketches before painting freehand, making limited use of stencils and straightedges. He also does watercolors and drawings, and will paint just about anything: vases, cloth, handbags, furniture, and guitars, perhaps the best known. A gift to his friend Eric Clapton of a painted Fender Stratocaster turned into multiple series of painted Fender guitars dubbed Crashocasters — one of which is on display here. The exhibition came about because Mr. Matos’s daughter Anna is an art history student at Fairfield; the retrospective was suggested by two of her professors: Diana Dimodica Mille, who is also director of the Walsh gallery, and Philip Eliasoph.