Maira Kalman- An Uncertain Principle

Maria Kalman is a self discribed daydreamer, growing up in a house where facts where not allowed.  Which is part of what makes her such a wonderful artist.  She is truly open to any kind of form, while maintaining a definate voice of her own.  She blogs for the New Yorker and has done several covers for the magazine.  Her current blog is called "And the Pursuit of Happiness" (Link to blog: http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/ )  which is a more politically focused blog that started during the last presidential election.  But in 2007 Kalman was working on a blog called The Principles of Uncertainty, (Link to blog: http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-principles-of-uncertainty/page/12/ ) which was later published into a book. 

 

 The book itself is a whimsical recording of her life in a year.  She starts in the month of May talking about the Dodo bird, Spinoza, Pavlov's dog, and her mothers wonderful interpritation of the United States.  She continues the year the same way, recalling things that happend to her; such as her visits home to Tel Aviv with her sister, the death of her husband, and her love of extravagent hats. Anything that is possible to experience in a humans life she records in an almost non-sensical way that is liberating. Even though her account on life is whimsical it is also more true than anything that you can read in a history book, because she focuses so much on the human aspect of what it is that she is talking about. The works that illustrate the book fit her writting well.  The drawings and paintings that fill the book are textural, imperfect, delightful but at the same time serious.  But above all the book is inately human.  Who better to writte a book on existance than a self declared daydreaming free spirit. Kalman is some one who has managed to maintain a realistic yet positive view on the world that we all live in. Yet behind all the presumed sillyness, the book is truly thought provoking, bringing to the surface questions that we should be asking ourselves more often. Just as in life the book is an experience. 



"Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in."

In 2007 Kalman also lectured for TED talks (an annual convention) about simplicity in life and her blog The Principles of Uncertainty amoung other works she has done (the lecture can be seen in the video screen below or directly from the TED talks website).  Beyond The Principles of Uncertainty she has also written childrens books and before that she illustrated The Elements of Style a classical grammer book written by William Strunk and E. B. White, which she also talks about in her lecture. In The Elements of Style  Kalman was able to turn something so normal into something extrodinary. She took examples from the book and illustrated them in a way that no matter how rediculose the statment or the image, it made sense on that same human level she used in The Principles of Uncertainty.

"His first thought on getting
out of bed—if he had any
thought at all–was to
get back in again."

 She not only colaborated with the writters of the book, but also introduced a contemporary musican to writte an opera that went with The Elements of Style; Which was hosted at the reading room in a library in New York Citiy.  NPR hosted a discussion on her colaboration in 2005, including excerpts from the opera (Link to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4985137 ).