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S. K. Riley

@skriley.bsky.social

4.5K followers 6.3K following 390 posts

Writer, PhD, gardener, educator, tree planter, and so forth.
www.skriley-author.com
Lover of Australian wildlife, re-wilding, mythology, music, cinema and democracy. 🇦🇺

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S. K. Riley @skriley.bsky.social · Mar 8

Dingo Roaming

Dingo was roaming, seeing, feeling − falling toward the stars.

- JP Quinton

#Dingo #Stars #Dreaming

Seen from above, the tracks a dingo makes when it runs across shallow water on a desert clay pan. Overlapping, concentric circles that look like a painting stretch out in a single line behind a dingo, running ahead. Photo credit: Greg Robertson, while mustering cattle in far north western New South Wales, Australia.

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Michael

@mdstamper.bsky.social

“Crown Jewels” by Crystal Miller (American) - Mixed media on canvas / 2023 - Discover the Promise: Impact, Legacy & Perspective, Cleveland City Hall (Ohio) #WomenInArt #Afrofuturism #BlackArt #CrystalMiller #MixedMedia #art #artText #BlueskyArt #MixedMediaArt #WomanArtist #WomensArt #WomanArtist

Created in 2023 as African American artist Crystal Miller completed her BFA at the Cleveland Institute of Art, “Crown Jewels” crystallizes her Afrofuturist practice of imagining Black life forward through materials associated with beauty, craft, and communal celebration. Elevating glitter, beads, and rhinestones to the status of paint, she reframes “glamour” as a technology of survival and self-definition. The title asserts sovereignty because jewels are not merely worn; they emanate from the self.

This portrait-scale mixed-media canvas layers beadwork, glitter, rhinestones, and foam over painted forms to stage a luminous crown near the work’s center. A dark-skinned figure emerges from a pink surface like low relief, edges catching light as textures sparkle and scatter. Points of the crown radiate above the brow as patterned strips, sequins, and faceted marks travel across hair and garment, suggesting braids, textiles, and jewelry without fixing a single tradition. Saturated fields and crisp outlines hold the composition steady, while reflective accents like full jeweled lips invite eye-level drift. The surface is tactile and celebratory, yet grounded through adornment rendered as presence, protection, and self-possession.

Miller has described dreaming of “a world that accepts me…protects the lives of Black people…where my Black sisters…feel empowered,” a vision that animates the work’s radiant surfaces and regal bearing. Installed as part of an exhibition at Cleveland City Hall, “Crown Jewels” functions as a civic proclamation that brilliance belongs in public space, and the aesthetics of adornment, often coded feminine, become instruments of memory, dignity, and futurity rooted in Black womanhood.

October 29, 2025 at 1:12 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

phoenixmcarthur

@mmcarthur.bsky.social

Leonora Carrington :
Bird Superior, Portrait of Max Ernst, 1939

Oil on canvas
19.75 x 10.5 in. | 50.2 x 26.7 cm

National Galleries of Scotland

More info in the alt text 👇

Leonora Carrington first met and fell in love with the surrealist artist Max Ernst at a dinner party in London in 1937; they immediately started a relationship. Soon after Carrington moved to Paris to be with Ernst, where she met many of the Surrealists.

In 1938 they moved to the village of Saint-Martin d’Ardèche, near Avignon, where this painting was made. In it, Ernst is shown holding a lantern containing a tiny horse. Horses often appear in Carrington’s early paintings and short stories, acting as her alter-ego.

The meaning is ambiguous: the horse could be guiding Ernst forward, or could be imprisoned and at his mercy. The painting captures some of the ambivalence in their relationship at the time. The outbreak of the Second World War effectively brought their relationship to an end.

Ernst, who was German, was imprisoned first by the French as an ‘enemy alien’, and subsequently by the Gestapo. Carrington fled France for Spain, where she was hospitalised, having experienced acute mental stress. Eventually, both escaped to New York where they exchanged portraits of each other, with Carrington presenting this work to Ernst.

November 14, 2025 at 5:40 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Cristian

@cristianpintos.com

BTS of the carving behind this months print.

printclub.cristianpintos.com

#art #print #linocut #illustration

November 11, 2025 at 5:56 PM

S. K. Riley

@skriley.bsky.social

Emu Travelling Dreaming, 1972

TIM LEURA TJAPALTJARRI
powder pigment on composition board
30 x 50 cm

#Art #Australian #AboriginalArt #EmuDreaming #NaturalPigments #Painting

TIM LEURA TJAPALTJARRI
Emu Travelling Dreaming, 1972
powder pigment on composition board 30 x 50 cm

SOLD at Auction 2025: AUD $55,000

November 14, 2025 at 6:58 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

The Partial Historians 🏺

@partialhistorians.bsky.social

✨The Seasons✨

This #FrescoFriday we travel to Block 10, Regio IX of Pompeii to enjoy some of the details from the blue room unveiled during archaeological work in 2024. The room is thought to have been a sacrarium — “a shrine devoted to ritual activities and the storage of sacred objects”.

Depicted on the luminous blue walls are personifications of the seasons amid architectural motifs. Here we see a figure identified as related to Autumn.

November 14, 2025 at 6:43 AM

S. K. Riley

@skriley.bsky.social

Sustainable water usage - #DataCentres

“Data centres must make maximising recycled water in their operations a top priority, and source their electricity from 100% renewable sources.”

~ Lord Mayor of #Sydney, Clover Moore

#ClimateChange #AI #Emissions #Renewables

www.smh.com.au/environment/...

Australian cities lead global push to green the data centre boom

The AI boom and the power hungry data centres behind it could transform cities for good or otherwise.

www.smh.com.au

November 14, 2025 at 5:09 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

jaykeeley

@doomedparade.bsky.social

“Farewell and adieu to you
fair Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you
ladies of Spain;
For we've received orders for to sail for old England / back to Boston,
and so never more will we see you again"

— Robert Shaw: Buccaneers / Jaws

#filmsky #cinema #jaws #seashanty

October 21, 2025 at 6:46 PM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Rob Watkins Photo

@robwatkinsphoto.bsky.social

#humansofbluesky #humans #eastcoastkin #dance #swing #tallships #åland #photography #storytelling #reportage #dancing #happy #joy

Swing time on the tall ship Pommern
Mariehamn, Åland, Finland, 2023

Photograph © Rob Watkins
Find more Rob Watkins Photography at  www.alamy.com/portfolio/photorobw

Swing time on the tall ship Pommern
Mariehamn, Åland, Finland, 2023

Photograph © Rob Watkins
Find more Rob Watkins Photography at  www.alamy.com/portfolio/photorobw

October 16, 2025 at 12:13 PM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Alex Maile

@anoplogaster.bsky.social

POV you’re in a crabby mood

🦑 🌊 🧪 🦇

November 13, 2025 at 3:07 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Milena

@milenarejc.bsky.social

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” Rumi

November 13, 2025 at 12:44 PM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Carolannie

@carolannie.bsky.social

I want a delicate pink sea anemone hat waving its tendrils in the wind
#Ecology #NaturalHistory #Animals
news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

Sea anemones and hermit crabs form a mutualistic relationship in Japan

Japanese researchers have described a new species of sea anemone that appears to share a mutually beneficial relationship with hermit crabs. The pale pink sea anemones, now named Paracalliactis tsukis...

news.mongabay.com

November 13, 2025 at 6:35 PM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

John Blanco

@johnblanco.bsky.social

“In the punk-rock world, she was thought of as a poet; in the literary world, she was thought of as a punk rocker—exceptional by definition in both spheres.”

Taking Stock: Patti Smith Looks Back on Everything www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/b...

Taking Stock: Patti Smith Looks Back on Everything

www.nytimes.com

November 11, 2025 at 1:49 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Friends of the Earth Australia

@foe.org.au

A historic day for Victoria.

Australia will see its first ever treaty with Aboriginal people signed and formalised as law today.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

Australia's first treaty with Aboriginal people becomes law in Victoria

Victoria's first treaty with Aboriginal people has been signed by members of the Aboriginal community, the premier and state governor.

www.abc.net.au

November 12, 2025 at 10:32 PM

S. K. Riley

@skriley.bsky.social

Hitchcock enjoying the snow with his grandchildren, 1962.

#AlfredHitchcock #WinterScene

A winter scene. Alfred Hitchcock, surrounded by his young grandchildren in a sleigh. In a state of joy, they try to catch falling snowflakes with their open mouths.

November 13, 2025 at 5:26 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Denali Sam

@denalisam.bsky.social

We had our first snow today. The snowflakes were fluffy, lazily drifting down. 4 hours later they were small projectiles, whirling in crazed asymmetrical spirals. By sunset the sky was clearing above the blanket of white.

Winter knows that every year I greet its snowy arrival with this attitude…

November 11, 2025 at 10:25 PM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Paula

@totallypaula.bsky.social

Street Art Masterpieces!

Brazil. A mural of a boy climbing a painted wooden ladder up a wall filled with colorful books. The book spines are individually detailed. It's a wonderful illusion and hopefully encourages reading! 🤠📚🎒

#ArtSky #StreetArt #EduardoKobra #Brazil

Climbing the Library – Eduardo Kobra in Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil

November 12, 2025 at 3:58 PM

S. K. Riley

@skriley.bsky.social

“Going down, going, dow-dow-dow-dow-down now
Ooh, ooh”

#ReleaseTheFiles #WhenTheLeveeBreaks #LedZeppelin #Drummers #JohnBonham #Folk #Rock #MemphisMinnie #KansasJoeMcCoy #Lyrics #Music
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwiT...

When the Levee Breaks (Remaster)

YouTube video by Led Zeppelin - Topic

www.youtube.com

November 13, 2025 at 4:52 AM

Reposted by S. K. Riley

Shantha Mohan, Ph.D., DTM

@shlead.bsky.social

“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.” — Rumi.

#MacroMonday
#MagentaMonday
#dahlia

#dailyflowers 🌱
#flowerreport
#bloomscrolling