iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What changes isn’t what we see, but the habit of deciding that our way of seeing must be the problem. Once we acknowledge this, questions can remain open. What we notice in others may show us something about ourselves. www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-...

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. White outlined lettering across the upper half reading "The Pattern Beneath the Quotes" and the handle @lifeboatacademy in small text at the bottom. The background photograph shows a newly lit campfire in a forest clearing, its sticks and lichen-flecked branches laid crosswise over a dark, half-charred log inside a ring of grey stones on sandy, ash-strewn ground. Orange flames rise from the center of the pile and pale smoke drifts up past the lettering. Behind the fire, a grassy clearing is ringed with simple stump-and-plank seats against a backdrop of ferns and dense conifer forest. The layered wood beneath the flames echoes the title, and the circle of empty seats suggests a place where people gather to talk.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Walking by Luo Erchun, 1987 (oil on canvas) #LuoErchun #painting #art

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Some things don't need you to brief them on what's happening. Further reading: www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #ParkerJPalmer

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. Close-up of a coastal rock crusted with clusters of pale barnacles and speckled green algae, with a strip of red seaweed and smooth dark and tan pebbles tucked into a crevice on the right. White text overlaid across the top reads: "The rocks seemed to say, 'We've seen it all, and still we stand strong… let us help you get your problems in perspective, where they'll be easier to hold.' — Parker J. Palmer." A small "@lifeboatacademy" handle appears at the bottom center.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Vanishing Point by UVA (United Visual Artists), 2013-14 (RGB laser, black voile, code, gallery visitors, installation views) #unitedvisualartists #art #installationart #lightart

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

uk'ib depicting the Myth of the Snake Lady (ceramic drinking vessel, Late Classic Mayan, c. 650–800 CE (earthenware clay, mineral slip paint) #ceramics #pottery #archeology #mythology #mayan #art

Three photographs showing different sides of a single ceramic drinking vessel (uk'ib) depicting the Myth of the Snake Lady, Late Classic Maya, c. 650–800 CE, earthenware clay with mineral slip paint. The vessel is a cylindrical cup of moderate height, slightly wider at the top than the base, with a broad band of deep red-orange slip at the rim and a dark band at the foot. The body is cream-coloured, painted in fine dark brown-black lines in the codex style characteristic of elite Late Classic Maya ceramics — fluid, precise draughtsmanship of considerable sophistication. The three photographs together show the full circumferential narrative.

Image 1 shows the central scene of the myth: a large feathered serpent with an elaborately scrolled, open-jawed head dominates the composition, its body coiling across the vessel surface. A human or supernatural figure — the Snake Lady herself or an associated deity — is shown emerging from or engaged with the serpent, her body contorted within its coils. A band of Maya glyphs runs along the upper register, likely naming the vessel, its owner, its contents, or the narrative depicted.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Reality doesn't have to comfort you before it can be trusted. Further reading: www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #JeanRostand #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a dirt track running away from the viewer through an autumn landscape — dry golden grasses on either side, a stand of deciduous trees in full fall colour (amber, yellow, and orange) to the right alongside dark green conifers, forested hills in the background, and a bright blue sky with scattered white cloud above. The light is clear and lateral, the kind of autumn afternoon light that makes familiar things look considered and particular. The setting has the feel of Pender Island or the Gulf Islands in October. Over the middle portion of the image, on a semi-transparent dark panel, white text presents a passage from Jean Rostand: "Culture is not having a mind crammed with dates, names, or figures. It is the quality of judgment... it is always preferring what is to what one would prefer to be. — Jean Rostand, transl from French." Rostand was a French biologist, philosopher, and writer known for aphoristic writing on science, ethics, and human nature. The autumn track — a landscape asking to be seen on its own terms rather than as one would wish it — is a quietly fitting backdrop for a quote about preferring what is.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Certainty is sometimes what fear sounds like after it's been practised long enough. Further reading: www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #ClimateCrisis #GaborMate

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. A forested hillside of dark conifers under a heavy blue-grey sky, with low mist drifting up through the trees and pale light breaking through the clouds. In the foreground, a dry late-season meadow sits behind a wire fence with weathered wooden posts. White text over the lower half reads: "When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it's because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don't want to acknowledge." — Gabor Maté. At the bottom: @lifeboatacademy.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Sadabad ring by Sevan Biçakçi, c. 2000 (gold, silver, diamonds and rock crystal) #SevanBiçakçi #jewelry #art #miniature

Jewellery photograph of the "Sadabad ring" by Istanbul-based jeweller Sevan Biçakçi, c. 2000, made from gold, silver, diamonds, and rock crystal. Photographed against a dark grey background, the ring is an extraordinary example of Biçakçi's signature technique of reverse intaglio carving and micro-painting inside a large dome of faceted rock crystal. The ring's shank is warm yellow gold, tapering upward to a wide oxidised silver bezel set densely with rose-cut and marquise-cut diamonds arranged in an elaborate architectural pattern of nested pointed arches and geometric clusters — the setting referencing Ottoman and Mughal decorative metalwork traditions. Above this, the massive rock crystal cabochon rises like a dome, and within it — carved and painted from the inside in miniature — is a detailed representation of an Ottoman imperial palace complex: multiple domes of varying sizes clustered together, their surfaces white with gold detailing at the ribs and finials, suggesting the rooftop skyline of a great Istanbul building as seen from above. The image inside the crystal is simultaneously a miniature painting, a carved relief, and an architectural model, all enclosed within a transparent hemisphere that magnifies and protects it. Sadabad was an eighteenth-century Ottoman pleasure palace on the Golden Horn, and the ring belongs to Biçakçi's ongoing practice of enclosing Istanbul's architectural and historical memory within wearable objects of lapidary intricacy.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Some years teach a different discipline: staying with the question long enough for your seeing to change. Further reading: What’s Wrong With You? (Short answer: nothing.) www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #ClimateCrisis #SocietalCollapse #NervousSystem #ZoraNealeHurston

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a conifer forest in bright sunlight, the forest floor carpeted in vivid green moss with fallen needles and debris scattered through it. Tall straight conifers rise from left and right, their trunks in shade, while a shaft of strong sunlight breaks through the canopy between the trees at centre, illuminating the moss and creating a band of brightness that draws the eye into the depth of the forest. The light gives the scene an open, expectant quality — the forest neither dark nor fully revealed, but in the middle of something. Over the image, in large bold white text with a subtle outline: "There are years that ask questions and years that answer. — Zora Neale Hurston." TThe forest interior, lit from within by a light that clarifies without fully resolving the scene, holds the quote's sense of temporal patience and deferred understanding without forcing the parallel.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Tired isn't the same as broken. Further reading: www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #UrsulaKLeGuin

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a narrow dirt and gravel track running away from the viewer in perspective, flanked on both sides by dry grasses and sedges in warm amber and ochre tones, a wire fence line visible to the left. The path stretches toward a line of trees in the far distance under a grey overcast sky. The low-angled light catches the dry grass warmly while the path itself is in deeper shadow, and the overall palette is the particular gold and brown of a landscape in autumn — beautiful precisely in the way that worn, tired things can be beautiful when seen from the right distance. Over the image, in white text without outline: "If you can see a thing whole, it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need a distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death. — Ursula K. Le Guin." The dirt track — ordinary, worn, unglamorous close up, but compositionally lovely as it recedes — does quiet, unhurried work as the quote's visual counterpart.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

A familiar world can still contain things you've been taught not to notice. Further reading: What’s Wrong With You? (Short answer: nothing.) www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #TempleGrandin

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows Eugenia, a young black Dexter calf, standing in a lush meadow of tall green grass scattered with yellow buttercups, looking directly into the camera with large, calm, attentive eyes. Eugenia's face fills the right side of the frame, her expression open and watchful; a second, larger black cow, her mother Cassandra, is partially visible behind her. A misty tree line is visible in the background. Eugenia's young, direct, unhurried gaze — taking in the camera and whoever is behind it with what reads as genuine, undefended attention — is precisely the quality the quote describes. Over the left portion of the image, in white text with a subtle outline, a passage from Temple Grandin: "I always find it kind of funny that normal people are always saying autistic children 'live in their own little world.' When you work with animals for a while you start to realize you can say the same thing about normal people. There's a great big, beautiful world out there that a lot of normal folks are just barely taking in. Autistic people and animals are seeing a whole register of the visual world normal people can't, or don't." The calf Eugenia, looking out at us with uncomplicated directness from a flower-filled field, makes the quote's point.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Queen of Stags, from The Stuttgart Playing Cards, ca. 1430, Upper Rhineland, Germany (paper, gold and opaque paint over pen and ink) #art #illustration #antique #playingcard

Playing card titled "Queen of Stags" from the Stuttgart Playing Cards, ca. 1430, Upper Rhineland, Germany, made with opaque paint and gold over pen and ink on paper. One of the earliest surviving European playing cards, and among the most exquisite, this hand-painted card depicts a crowned queen seated on a throne draped in crimson, with green cushions on either side. She wears a magnificent deep cobalt blue gown scattered with small gold fleur-de-lis motifs, its hem edged in delicate white lace-like trim that pools on the floor, and over it a cape or mantle worked in a gold lattice pattern with small pendant crosses at each intersection — a garment of extraordinary richness rendered with miniaturist precision. Her gold crown is set with red stones, and her pale, composed face is turned slightly downward with an expression of calm authority. A young stag — the suit emblem — stands against her lap with its forefeet raised, its antlers branching upward, its warm brown coat rendered with naturalistic attention. Behind her, a canopy of blue and gold diamond-patterned fabric completes the throne setting. The card's edges show significant age and wear, the paint abraded in places, but the overall state of preservation is remarkable for an object nearly six centuries old. The Stuttgart Playing Cards are considered a landmark of late medieval German painting, their animal suits — stags, herons, hounds, and ducks — replacing the later standard suits of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

There's a lie that quietly does damage: everyone but you has this figured out. This field note is an invitation to explore what becomes possible when belonging depends on integrity instead of costing it. www.lifeboat.academy/whats-wrong-... #LifeboatAcademy #Polycrisis #Grounding #Community

A social post from @lifeboatacademy.The background photograph shows an outdoor campfire burning actively in a stone fire pit, logs stacked loosely around a core of bright orange and yellow flame, blue-grey smoke rising into the air above. The fire is set in a clearing surrounded by lush green forest — conifers and ferns in the background, characteristic of the Pacific Northwest or Gulf Islands. Two rough-hewn wooden benches on low stone supports flank the fire pit on either side, the kind of simple outdoor gathering space built for sitting around a fire together. The setting is deliberately communal and informal. Over the upper portion of the image, in large bold white text with a black outline: "What's Wrong With You?" followed in slightly smaller bold text by "Short answer: nothing." The combination of the provocative question and its immediate, disarming answer — set against a campfire circle built for honest conversation — suggests an article about self-acceptance, resilience, or reframing the inner critic, the fire and the gathered benches implying the kind of frank, grounded talk that happens when people sit together in the open air.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Packa Pappas Kappsäck (Pack Daddy's Suitcases) by Michael Johansson, 2006 (suitcases) #michaeljohansson #art #contemporaryart #foundobject

Sculptural installation titled "Packa Pappas Kappsäck" (Pack Daddy's Suitcases) by Michael Johansson, 2006, constructed from found vintage suitcases. A large cream-coloured hard-shell suitcase, open and lying flat on a white gallery floor, contains within it a precisely fitted stack of progressively smaller vintage suitcases nested inside one another like Russian dolls — each case fitting exactly within the one below it, their handles, clasps, and locks all visible and facing outward. The suitcases vary in colour — navy blue, teal, tan, orange-red, black, brown, olive green, dark grey — and in material and era, spanning several decades of mid-twentieth century luggage design. The fit between each layer is so exact that the entire collection appears to have been engineered rather than found, though Johansson sources and selects his objects from second-hand markets and assembles them by patient measurement. The outer case's lid is open and propped, revealing the full stacked interior. Against the plain white floor and wall, the work reads simultaneously as a feat of obsessive ordering and as a quiet meditation on accumulation, inheritance, and the things passed down — the title's reference to a father's suitcases giving the nested objects a familial and elegiac resonance.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Self-care isn't selfish; it's marathon training. Gratitude loosens scarcity. Rest lets all our relations come back into view. Belonging grows close to home through caring for soils, people, and one another long enough to act together. emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca...

A title graphic posted by @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph is a close-up of foliose lichen growing on a reddish-brown rock surface — the same lichen image used elsewhere in the series — its pale grey-green lobes spreading in an intricate, self-similar pattern with finely ruffled edges, some portions browning and drying at the margins. The lichen's structure is itself a kind of visible pattern beneath the surface of the rock it inhabits, a slow accumulation of form that rewards close attention. Over the lichen, in large bold white text with a black outline: "The Pattern Beneath the Quotes." The @lifeboatacademy handle appears at the bottom. The graphic appears to be a title card for an article or post that draws out the underlying themes connecting the series of quote graphics — the lichen, which lives by symbiosis and reveals its complexity only to those who look closely, referencing the original article linked in the post.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

You don't discover the strength of a relationship when everything matches. You discover it when difference doesn't end the conversation. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #BenKadel #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. A quote graphic posted by @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows Zelda — a white and black spotted dog — standing in a farmyard on a gravel and dirt path, leaning forward with head lowered in a posture of cautious, alert negotiation, her gaze averted from a large black chicken standing its ground directly to her right. A second black chicken is visible to her left. Zelda is clearly navigating a social situation that requires patience and restraint — the chickens are not retreating and she is not charging. The dynamic is one of uneasy coexistence, different parties with different natures and interests sharing the same space and working out how to manage it. Over the lower portion of the image, in white text with a subtle outline: "The foundation of democracy is the ability to sit in a room — literal or metaphorical — with others who hold different ideas, perspectives, and life experiences, and stay oriented toward a shared reality long enough to act together. — Ben Kadel." Zelda's careful standoff with the chickens is, in its modest farmyard way, a pretty good illustration of exactly that.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Oak Room by Andy Goldsworthy, 2009 (Château Lacoste, Provence, France) #andygoldsworthy #natureart #installationart #art

ENtrance to underground room: Detail: Site-specific installation titled "Oak Room" by Andy Goldsworthy, 2009, created for Château Lacoste, Provence, France. A room within the château's stone buildings whose walls are entirely lined with large panels of densely packed, interlocking oak leaves — thousands of dried leaves pressed flat and layered to cover every surface from floor to ceiling, the warm amber, brown, and ochre tones of the dried foliage transforming the interior into something between a natural archive and a living membrane. The leaves are arranged with Goldsworthy's characteristic attention to pattern and flow, creating a surface that reads simultaneously as geological strata, as wallpaper, and as accumulated time made visible. Light catches the varied textures and tones of the individual leaves while the overall effect is one of deep, enveloping warmth. The work is characteristic of Goldsworthy's practice of bringing the materials and processes of the natural world into built or institutional spaces, asking the two to hold each other in tension — the ephemeral and the permanent, the organic and the architectural, the forest and the room.

Stairs leading down: Detail: Site-specific installation titled "Oak Room" by Andy Goldsworthy, 2009, created for Château Lacoste, Provence, France. A room within the château's stone buildings whose walls are entirely lined with large panels of densely packed, interlocking oak leaves — thousands of dried leaves pressed flat and layered to cover every surface from floor to ceiling, the warm amber, brown, and ochre tones of the dried foliage transforming the interior into something between a natural archive and a living membrane. The leaves are arranged with Goldsworthy's characteristic attention to pattern and flow, creating a surface that reads simultaneously as geological strata, as wallpaper, and as accumulated time made visible. Light catches the varied textures and tones of the individual leaves while the overall effect is one of deep, enveloping warmth. The work is characteristic of Goldsworthy's practice of bringing the materials and processes of the natural world into built or institutional spaces, asking the two to hold each other in tension — the ephemeral and the permanent, the organic and the architectural, the forest and the room.

Inside of the underground room lined with interwoven oak branches: Detail: Site-specific installation titled "Oak Room" by Andy Goldsworthy, 2009, created for Château Lacoste, Provence, France. A room within the château's stone buildings whose walls are entirely lined with large panels of densely packed, interlocking oak leaves — thousands of dried leaves pressed flat and layered to cover every surface from floor to ceiling, the warm amber, brown, and ochre tones of the dried foliage transforming the interior into something between a natural archive and a living membrane. The leaves are arranged with Goldsworthy's characteristic attention to pattern and flow, creating a surface that reads simultaneously as geological strata, as wallpaper, and as accumulated time made visible. Light catches the varied textures and tones of the individual leaves while the overall effect is one of deep, enveloping warmth. The work is characteristic of Goldsworthy's practice of bringing the materials and processes of the natural world into built or institutional spaces, asking the two to hold each other in tension — the ephemeral and the permanent, the organic and the architectural, the forest and the room.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

You notice you're part of a harmony when another voice enters and everything rearranges. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #RMaurice #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a goat (Judith) — tan, white, and brown with small horns and a red collar tag — standing in a farmyard under the shelter of conifer trees, surrounded by a flock of roughly ten chickens in various shades of black, grey, and iridescent dark green. A rooster with vivid red, black, and green plumage is prominent among them. The birds and the goat are all going about their business together on dry ground scattered with needles, leaves, and straw, the goat standing calmly at the centre of the group. The scene is one of easy, un-choreographed cohabitation — different species simply present together and getting on with it. Over the upper portion of the image, in white text with a subtle outline: "People not showing up is how we all lose." Attribution reads "— R. Maurice." The assembled flock and goat, each species simply there and doing its part, make a gently pointed backdrop for the quote's argument about collective presence and collective consequence — though the animals' obvious indifference to any such argument gives the image a dry, unforced humour.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Help build an idea and it ends up building a piece of you too. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #BenKadel #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a farm scene in dappled summer light: a tan and black goat (Mathilda) stands looking directly at the camera from among tall grass, ferns, and shrubby undergrowth at the edge of a wooded area, while a dark black hen with a red comb forages in the grass nearby. A second animal — possibly another goat — is partially visible in the background. Equipment and fencing materials are loosely visible in the shade behind the goat. The scene is relaxed and particular, the kind of everyday farmyard moment that belongs to a specific place and set of daily relationships rather than to any idealized version of rural life. Over the lower half of the image, in white text with a subtle outline: "When we invest our energy and attention in creating the things we need, we imbue them with a level of care and understanding that is impossible to achieve at the convenience store. — Ben Kadel." The goat's direct gaze and the hen going about her business in the grass embody the quote's argument without comment — these are animals kept with attention and purpose, their presence the product of exactly the kind of invested, place-based care the quote describes.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Madame De Pompadour (Née Poisson) [Soup Tureen With Platter] By Cindy Sherman, 1990 #cindysherman #art #postmodernart

Ceramic soup tureen with matching platter titled "Madame de Pompadour (Née Poisson)" by Cindy Sherman, 1990. A Rococo-revival style lidded soup tureen in vivid apple green glaze with elaborate gilded scrollwork, acanthus leaf detailing, and ornate scroll handles, sitting on four curved feet on a matching shaped platter of the same green and gold. The lid is topped with a figural finial of a crouching cherub or putto. The piece is executed in the style of fine 18th-century European porcelain — Sèvres or Meissen in character — but in place of the traditional painted pastoral or mythological medallions, the cartouches on the tureen body and the platter contain photographic transfer images of Sherman herself in costume and character as Madame de Pompadour, the celebrated mistress of Louis XV and patron of the arts. In the central medallion on the tureen, Sherman appears as a woman in period dress in a landscape setting, eyes downcast, with a somewhat melancholy or ambivalent expression. Additional photographic vignettes appear on the platter's surface. The work is part of Sherman's ongoing interrogation of female identity, representation, and the roles available to women across history — here inserting her own performed image into the decorative arts tradition that Pompadour herself patronized, collapsing the distance between subject, object, and the artist who depicts both.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Follow your own life far enough, and you find edges where other people's lives are already touching yours. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #GraceLeeBoggs #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows four people working together outdoors on a bright sunny day on a garden bed. Three of the figures wear sun hats and work gloves; one is bent low over the bed working material with their hands, two others stand with tools, and a fourth crouches nearby. A black and white dog lies watching in the background to the left. Lush green grass, yellow wildflowers, and what appears to be a garden shed or outbuilding are visible behind them. The scene is recognizably a community or cooperative garden workday — people doing physical, unglamorous, necessary work together in a shared space. Over the lower two-thirds of the image, in white text with a subtle dark outline: "We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously. — Grace Lee Boggs." The photograph, showing exactly the kind of small local collective action Boggs describes, gives the quote an unforced literalness — these people, this garden, this dog, this particular afternoon.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

La Chauve-souris by Germaine Richier, 1946 (cleaned natural bronze) #germainerichier #art #sculture #bronze

Sculpture titled "La Chauve-souris" (The Bat) by Germaine Richier, 1946, cleaned natural bronze, mounted on a thin metal rod rising from a dark rectangular base on a white plinth, photographed against a plain light grey background. The bronze has been cleaned to a warm bright gold tone, unusual for Richier's work, which more commonly presents in darker oxidized patinas. The sculpture depicts a bat with wings fully extended and spread wide, the body small and compressed at the centre, the wings radiating outward in an explosion of lacework bronze — the membrane of the wings rendered not as a solid surface but as a complex open network of corroded, perforated, and ragged forms, full of voids and irregular edges that suggest decay, erosion, or the texture of something between living tissue and dead matter. The wing surfaces are pierced throughout with irregular holes and torn passages, the edges dissolving into spikes and filaments. A small protrusion at the top of the body suggests the head. The sculpture is characteristic of Richier's postwar practice, in which human and animal forms are subjected to processes of decomposition and hybridization — bodies that exist at the threshold between the organic and the elemental, between becoming and dissolution. Here the bat, already a creature of threshold spaces — darkness, the membrane between mammal and flight — is rendered in material that seems to be simultaneously forming and falling apart.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

You keep bracing in anticipation of what will need you next that it takes a moment to register something that isn't asking for anything at all — just present, undemanding, already enough. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #WendellBerry #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a night sky above a conifer treeline, the trees reduced to dark silhouettes against a deep blue-black sky in which a handful of stars are faintly visible through the darkness. The image is nearly monochromatic — deep navy and black — with just enough light to distinguish the tree forms from the sky above them. The atmosphere is one of profound stillness and open space. Over the lower half of the image, in white text with a soft glow: "I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. — Wendell Berry." The lines are from Berry's poem "The Peace of Wild Things," one of his most beloved works, in which the speaker finds relief from human worry by going out into the night and resting in the company of non-human life. The photograph — dark trees, faint stars, open sky — gives the words exactly the space they need, neither illustrating nor competing with them, simply holding the same quality of quiet.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Enough is often easiest to miss when you're looking somewhere else. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #JoannaMacy #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a close-up of cornflowers — Centaurea cyanus — in soft blue-purple bloom growing alongside a weathered wooden fence post in warm, low-angled sunlight. The flowers are at various stages, from tight buds to fully open, their silvery-green stems and leaves catching the light. On the fence post, just above the nearest open bloom, a bumblebee clings to the wood, its black and yellow banding visible. The shallow depth of field blurs the background into soft greens and warm tones. The image is intimate and unhurried — the kind of small, particular moment of garden life that is easy to walk past and just as easy, with attention, to find genuinely arresting. Over the lower portion of the image, in white text with a subtle dark outline: "Gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us to realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us. — Joanna Macy." The bee on the post and the flowers in bloom — each doing exactly what they are, no more and no less — sit quietly behind Macy's argument about sufficiency as a radical rather than passive stance.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Reckoning tells you where you are. Practice is how you learn to stay. Read the article here: emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-ca... #LifeboatAcademy #Polycrisis #Grounding #Practice #Community

A title graphic for an article from emotusoperandi.medium.com/. The background image is a detail from "The Harvesters" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565 — one of the most celebrated paintings of peasant labour in the Western tradition. The detail shows a summer wheat harvest in full swing: golden cut grain fills the foreground, a small sheaf bound at centre, a scythe leaning against the trunk of a large tree to the right. In the lower right corner, several harvesters have stopped to rest in the shade of the tree — one lies flat on his back in the stubble, deeply asleep; others sit eating, drinking, and slumping against each other with the unguarded exhaustion of people who have been working since dawn. To the left, a solitary figure walks toward the field carrying a jug. The broad Flemish summer landscape — farms, trees, a distant village and church — stretches across the upper portion. Over the image, in large bold white text with black outline: "Your Self-Care Action Items" with the subtitle "Training for the Marathon." The painting's harvesters, caught in their midday rest as an inescapable necessity of sustained physical labour, make an apt and gently humorous backdrop for a piece about self-care as the long-game strategy rather than indulgence.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

What you repeat doesn't only shape your habits; it shapes what feels natural. The first practice isn't changing yourself. It's noticing what you're already practising. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/its-been-a-p... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #ShaunaShapiro

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a forest edge in bright spring light, with vivid green grass and young shoots glowing in the sun against a backdrop of conifer and deciduous trunks. In the right foreground, occupying roughly a third of the frame, is a large woven garden enclosure made from tightly interlaced thin climbing rose canes, the kind of skilled hand craft that requires repeated practice to execute with consistency and strength. The weave is dense and regular, the work clearly the product of accumulated skill. Bright light catches both the woven surface and the lush spring grass beyond it. Over the upper left of the image, in white text without outline: "What we practice grows stronger. — Shauna Shapiro." The woven structure is a particularly apt visual choice — something literally built by the patient repetition of a single action, its strength entirely a product of practice layered on practice, the craft and the quote reinforcing each other without strain.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The music has always been there; listening is how you discover where your own tune belongs in the ensemble. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/its-been-a-p... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Improvise

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a medium-sized white and black dog, our own Zelda, caught mid-frolic in deep snow, photographed from above. Zelda is in a playful, dynamic pose: front legs splayed wide, mouth open in what reads unmistakably as delight, ears pricked, tail up, body twisting with the unself-conscious energy of an animal completely at home in the moment. The surrounding snow fills the entire frame, white and textured, offering no context beyond the dog and its joy. Over the lower half of the image, in white text with a dark outline in a rounded font: "Building resilience in the polycrisis is like jazz improv. — The Lifeboat Academy." The dog's exuberant, fully committed improvisation in an unpredictable medium — snow offering no firm footing, no fixed plan — makes it an unexpectedly apt illustration of the analogy the text proposes.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I and the Village by Marc Chagall, 1911 (oil on canvas) #marcchagall #oilpainting #art #painting

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Haies et Tour, Parc de Saint-Cloud, France by Michael Kenna, 1988 (photography) #michaelkenna #photography #art #b&w #gelatinsilverprint #frenchgarden #topiary

Black and white photograph titled "Haies et Tour, Parc de Saint-Cloud, France" (Hedges and Tower, Saint-Cloud Park) by Michael Kenna, 1988. A row of tightly clipped conical topiary forms — yew or similar dense evergreen, sheared into near-perfect cones — recedes diagonally from the foreground into the middle distance along a gravel terrace. The nearest cone dominates the frame, its dark mass rendered almost as pure geometric form against a pale overcast sky, with successive cones diminishing in size as they recede, creating a strong perspectival rhythm. To the left, a long stone balustrade wall runs parallel to the row, punctuated by small espaliered or pollarded trees stripped bare in winter. The gravel path, wall, bare branches, and pale sky are all rendered in soft silver-grey tones, throwing the dense black of the topiary into sharp relief. The image is characteristic of Kenna's long engagement with formal French gardens — finding in their extreme human ordering of nature something austere, geometric, and quietly surreal, the clipped forms hovering between the botanical and the sculptural.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

You can't become more capable without letting something in you change. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/its-been-a-p... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #BenKadel

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows the interior of a dense Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest — likely coastal BC or Washington state — with large moss-covered fallen logs in the foreground decomposing among sword ferns, young saplings, and forest floor debris. Dappled sunlight filters through the canopy of tall conifers and bigleaf maples above, catching the brilliant green of the moss and ferns in sharp contrast to the deep shadow beneath the logs. The scene is one of active, effortful life — rot and regrowth, competition for light, organisms working at the edges of their conditions rather than in any easy middle ground. Over the upper portion of the image, in white text without outline: "Doing your best doesn't happen in the comfort zone. — Ben Kadel." The forest setting, where nothing grows without negotiating difficulty — shade, competition, decomposition — quietly reinforces the quote's point without resolving into easy inspiration.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Garçon au bord du bassin, Jardin du Luxembourg by Henri Martin, 1932-35 (oil on canvas) #henrimartin #oilpainting #postimpressionist #art #painting

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The tea isn't finished by the kettle; it's finished when cup meets lips, and tea greets tongue. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/its-been-a-p... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #RobinWallKimmerer

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a forest edge at low dawn or dusk light, the sun sitting just above the horizon beyond the treeline and casting long warm golden rays horizontally through the trunks of conifers and bare-branched deciduous trees. The forest floor is covered in fallen needles and debris, and through the trees a glimpse of open meadow or wetland is visible, glowing amber in the low light. The atmosphere is hushed and threshold-like — the precise quality of early morning before the day has fully started, when attention is still soft and the boundary between states feels permeable. Over the upper portion of the image, in white text without outline: "Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world. The water turns to wine. The coffee to a prayer. The material and the spiritual mingle; transformed like steam rising from a mug into the morning mist. — Robin Wall Kimmerer." The photograph, with its low raking light filtering through trees into open space, enacts the passage's movement from the tangible to the dissolved — the same threshold the quote describes between the ordinary and the ceremonial. Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, and a leading voice in Indigenous environmental thought.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Facade of None by Kibong Rhee, 2011 (oil on canvas) #kibongrhee #oilpainting #painting #art

Oil on canvas painting titled "Facade of None" by Kibong Rhee, 2011. A single broadleaf tree, rendered in muted grey-green, stands on a low dark hillside that rises diagonally from the lower left, a smaller tree or shrub visible further down the slope to its left. The tree and hill emerge from and dissolve back into a surrounding field of pale grey-white mist or fog that occupies the majority of the canvas, particularly the upper left and right. The painting has a softly blurred, almost photographic quality — edges are not hard but gradual, the tree's canopy feathering into the fog at its margins. The colour palette is extremely restrained: cool grey-white atmosphere, dark grey-green hill, muted sage green foliage. The overall mood is one of quiet suspension and ambiguity, the tree present but not fully graspable, the landscape offering form without fixity. The title's suggestion of surface without substance — a facade of none — resonates with the image's treatment of the visible world as something that emerges from and returns to blankness.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Trust is often built long before there's enough evidence to feel certain about the outcome. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/its-been-a-p... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #HenriAlainLiogier

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph is a close-up shot looking down at a goat lying on the ground, its body curled and its head turned upward toward the camera with a calm, unhurried expression. The goat has a mixed brown, black, and white coat, with a white muzzle and one visible amber eye. Grass, moss, and dry leaves are visible around it. A human thumb is just visible at the bottom edge of the frame, suggesting the photographer is crouched close beside the animal. The goat's settled, unbothered posture is a quietly perfect illustration of the quote overlaid in large bold white text with a black outline: "Life on a farm is a school of patience. You can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days. — Henri Alain Liogier." The animal's unhurried ease on the ground embodies the quote's point without any need for elaboration.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

What returns to us is not punishment, but the consequence of having mistaken distance for innocence. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/its-been-a-p... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Reckoning

emotusoperandi.medium.com

It’s been a privilege…

The first step is facing the truth

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Echoes - Infinity, Flowers and Landscape by Shinji Ohmaki, 2009, (pigment, felt) #shinjiohmaki #art #installationart

Installation titled "Echoes — Infinity: Flowers and Landscape" by Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki, 2009, made from pigment on felt. A large-scale floor installation photographed in a white-walled gallery space with a low white ceiling and flush fluorescent lighting. The entire floor of the room is covered by an enormous circular mandala-like composition, radiating outward from a central structural column that is itself wrapped in the same dense floral imagery. The design is executed in vivid, saturated pigment on white felt and consists of concentric bands of botanical and figural motifs — large pink and peach blossoms, blue and orange flowers, yellow dot clusters, interlocking red ribbon-like forms with small human or animal figures, green leafy borders, and at the outermost edge visible in the foreground, large-scale flowers and birds rendered with the lush detail of traditional Japanese decorative arts or textile design. The overall effect reads simultaneously as a Persian carpet, a Buddhist mandala, a temple ceiling, and an explosion of natural abundance. The circular composition converges on the column at the room's centre, which anchors and generates the pattern outward to the walls. The work is characteristically concerned with themes of impermanence, accumulation, and the relationship between human presence and natural cycles that run through Ohmaki's practice.

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Reposted by Roland Maurice

The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The world has always been sustained by exchanges no species invented. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/how-can-i-he... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Reciprocity

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a meadow in late summer, shot from low within the grasses looking upward, so that seed heads of tall grasses and scattered yellow hawkweed flowers fill the foreground in warm golden tones. Beyond them, deciduous shrubs and a wall of dark conifers frame a partly cloudy blue sky, the light bright and mid-day. The low vantage point gives the grass and sky equal presence, collapsing the distance between earth and atmosphere — a visual echo of the quote's theme of reciprocal exchange between elements. Over the upper portion of the image, on a semi-transparent panel, white text reads: "We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and dying. Water knows this, clouds know this. — Robin Wall Kimmerer." The passage is characteristic of Kimmerer's work as a Potawatomi botanist and author, in which Indigenous knowledge and Western plant science are woven together into a grammar of mutual obligation between humans and the living world. The photograph, with its grasses breathing into open sky, gives the words an immediate, unforced setting.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The strongest commons are usually held together by people who expect to keep meeting one another. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/how-can-i-he... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Community

A quote graphic posted by @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a group of roughly fifteen people standing together outdoors on a bright winter or early spring day, their backs to the camera, facing an open field and meadow area bordered by a line of tall conifers under a deep, cloudless blue sky. The group is mixed in age and dress, several wearing masks, hats, and winter coats in muted colours with a few bright accents of red and green. They appear to be gathered for a community land visit, restoration project, or outdoor workshop — the setting suggests a rural or semi-rural property, possibly on one of the Gulf Islands or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, given the characteristic Douglas fir treeline and the quality of the winter light. Young tree stakes are visible in the foreground planting area. Over the upper half of the image, in white bold text with a dark outline: "A viable neighborhood is a community: and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common. — Wendell Berry." The photograph, showing a community literally gathered together on shared land, enacts the quote's argument rather than merely illustrating it.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Dance of Death 1917 (Dead Man Heights) by Otto Dix, 1924 (etching, aquatint, and drypoint from a portfolio of fifty etchings titled The War (Der Krieg), aquatint and drypoints) #ottodix #etching #art #warart

Etching, aquatint, and drypoint print titled "Dance of Death 1917 (Dead Man Heights)" by Otto Dix, 1924, from the fifty-plate portfolio Der Krieg (The War). Numbered "II" in pencil below the plate, edition 1/40, signed by the artist. A densely packed, nightmarish composition rendered almost entirely in deep black with sharp passages of harsh white, depicting the chaos of First World War combat on the Western Front. Human figures — soldiers in steel helmets — are scattered across the picture plane in postures of violent motion, falling, lunging, and dying, their bodies entangled with the shattered landscape around them. Jagged stakes, broken wire, splintered timber, and angular fragments of destroyed terrain pierce the composition from all directions, creating a relentless visual violence that refuses any resting point for the eye. In the lower portion, decomposing or skeletal forms merge with the churned earth, while above them living soldiers still struggle and fall. No sky is visible — the entire field is darkness. The aquatint ground gives the shadows an velvety, suffocating depth, while the drypoint and etching lines are raw and agitated. The print is among the most unflinching anti-war images in the Western graphic tradition, drawn directly from Dix's own experience as a machine-gunner in the trenches, and conceived explicitly as a document of atrocity rather than heroism.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Living things endure through renewal, not invulnerability. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/how-can-i-he... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Renewal

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a lush meadow in full summer growth, the foreground dense with flowering red and white clover, tall grasses, and other wildflowers in shades of pink, purple, and white. A wall of dark green conifers — likely fir or spruce, consistent with the Pacific Northwest — runs across the upper third of the frame beneath a pale overcast sky. The scene conveys healthy, biologically active ground cover of the kind the quote implicitly calls for. Over the image, in large white text with a subtle shadow: "It helps to think of soil as a living organism covered with skin like a human. We can live with a certain percentage of our skin damaged, but if too high a percentage is damaged, we die. So, too, does soil and thus most life. — Allan Savory." The flowering clover meadow — itself a soil-building, nitrogen-fixing plant community — grounds the quote's argument about soil health in a living visual example, though it is worth noting that Allan Savory's broader land management theories, particularly around holistic planned grazing, remain scientifically contested.

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Roland Maurice @rolandmau.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Bacchus #3 by Elaine de Kooning, 1978 (acrylic paint and charcoal on canvas) #elainedekooning #painting #art #abstractimpressionism

Painting titled "Bacchus #3" by Elaine de Kooning, 1978, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, signed with initials "E.d.K." in the lower right. A large vertical canvas depicting a classical sculptural figure of Bacchus — the Roman god of wine — rendered with gestural urgency in a palette of cool grey-blue, vivid lime green, bright sky blue, purple, and yellow. The figure, viewed from slightly behind and below, is massive and twisting, its stone-like grey-blue form occupying the full height of the canvas. Loose, energetic charcoal lines surge across the surface, tracing the contours of limbs, drapery, and foliage with restless intensity rather than precision. The background erupts in dappled strokes of green, blue, and yellow suggesting sun-dappled garden foliage — the painting appears to have been made in response to an actual outdoor sculpture, likely in the gardens of Versailles, where de Kooning made an extended series of Bacchus paintings. The tension between the cool solidity of the sculptural mass and the hot, flickering energy of the paint and charcoal marks is central to the work's effect — the ancient stone figure made kinetic and alive by the painter's hand.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A civilization that forgets what feeds it has mistaken dependence for independence. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/how-can-i-he... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Topsoil

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a large sunflower in full bloom filling nearly the entire frame, its bright yellow petals radiating outward from a dense brown seed disc at centre. A human hand cups the face of the flower from below, palm resting gently against the disc, fingers spread across it — a gesture of both tenderness and scale, the hand emphasizing the flower's size. Blue sky is visible in the upper corners. Over the image, in white text with a subtle dark outline: "Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. — Paul Harvey." The hand cradling the sunflower head — itself a concentrated repository of seeds and therefore of future food — works as a direct visual embodiment of the quote's humbling point about human dependence on living systems.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Roots don't compete with branches. They make branching possible. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/how-can-i-he... #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #WangariMaathai

A social post from @lifeboatacademy. The background photograph shows a mixed forest in bright summer light, dominated by a large, gnarled old tree at centre whose massive twisted base and spreading lower limbs suggest great age and weathering. Conifers rise on either side, and the forest floor is lush with ferns and low shrubs in vivid green. Light filters down through the canopy. Over the image, on a semi-transparent dark green panel, white text presents a passage from Wangari Maathai: "Trees are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. — Wangari Maathai." The ancient, rooted character of the central tree — simultaneously monumental and quietly enduring — makes it an unusually well-matched backdrop for the words of the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who founded the Green Belt Movement and planted trees as acts of both ecological restoration and political resistance.

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The Lifeboat Academy @lifeboatacademy.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Like lichen arrives on bare rock, readiness doesn't announce itself but happens when the conditions, at last, allow for it. Further reading: emotusoperandi.medium.com/how-can-i-he... #LifeboatAcademy #BenKadel #StayHuman

A title graphic for an article or blog post from https://emotusoperandi.medium.com/. The background photograph shows a close-up of foliose lichen growing flat against a rough reddish-brown rock surface, its pale grey-green lobes spreading in an irregular, organic pattern with finely ruffled edges. Some portions show tan and brown dried patches. Over this image, in large bold white text with a black outline: "How can I help?" followed in slightly smaller text by "(part 1)" and below that, in bold white without outline: "Finding Flow in turbulent times." The lichen — a slow-growing, quietly resilient organism that thrives by symbiosis rather than competition — serves as a quietly apt visual metaphor for the article's apparent theme of purposeful contribution and steadiness under difficult conditions.

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