Beginning today, my “photo-of-the-day” can be found by clicking on “365” under the banner at the top. Today, I’ve added a panoramic view of my studio. This is not strictly one photo, but rather it was created from six photos using Photoshop.
Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to collect my photo-a-day photos in a gallery, here and on my webpage. But here’s my black-and-white for the day.
I’ve always been fascinated by bulletin boards. They are a window into the minds of those who create them. “Create” may, perhaps, indicate an intentionality that is not necessarily intended, but creativity is, I believe, mainly a subconscious event that is manifested in a tangible way at some point. The bulletin boards I like most are those that are communally created in public places, like laundromats and grocery stores. They have a natural beauty and structure that most artists would be hard-pressed to recreate from scratch.
My photo for today is a portion of my own bulletin board (more pronouncements than announcements) and as an added bonus, I’ve included a photo I took some time ago of a coffee shop bulletin board.
Tired of clean up after the kids? Need someone to take your kids away for the day? Looking for a new house? Looking for a roommate or a lawnmower? Whatever you need is right here, just a phone call away.
I’ve just started reading “Just Kids”, Patti Smith’s memories of her days with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti is an illuminating writer, recounting events, sights, sounds and emotions in a detailed and often melancholy way. The detail is what throws me off a bit. Some people have an ability to pull up intricate memories from the depths of their consciousness and describe the minutia of earlier experiences. I remember John Dean, during the Watergate hearings, replaying word-for-word conversations he had had with President Nixon and thinking at the time, “Wow, what a memory. Or, what a great creator of those conversations.”
When I was doing the research for my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed thirty people about their experiences living in historic parts of their communities. I used two tape recorders and took notes during those interviews and I still think that I missed a great deal of the conversations. Not everything stuck in my mind as it would have John’s.
So Patti Smith’s ability to remember exactly what she said and felt and did when she was six and fifteen and twenty-two impresses and perplexes me. I read her words with not a little skepticism, but I have developed a strategy for approaching this book that I think will help me through it: I’ve decided to read it as if it were a novel rather than a remembrance. I can read the conversations she recounts and think of the events she describes the same way I read Proust or Hemingway or Doctorow. What she tells me doesn’t have to be the literal truth; just truth on the different scale.
It started out as a typical gray winter day. Then the sun came out and the poinsettia on our kitchen table exploded in color.
I’m starting a new photo project today: I’ll be taking at least one photo a day for the next 365 days. Many photographers do this to challenge themselves to step outside their comfort zone and seek out new views of their world. Here’s my first entry… 1/365.
Hello Art, a local arts organization, is hosting its first member’s show at the Kansas City Arts Incubator. It’s being called a “creative shopping experience” because all the art in the show will be for sale at reasonable prices; most pieces will be priced under $100. The show and shopping opportunity will be this Friday, December 3 from 5:30 to 8:30 at the Arts Incubator, 18th and Baltimore. If you are looking for a unique gift for that special someone, come down to the show. It’s also First Friday in the Crossroads, so there will be lots of activity, with galleries open late.
Here are a few of the pieces I will be showing Friday.
I shot this magnolia bud a couple of years ago in color, but the structure lends itself to a high resolution black and white treatment.
A daisy shot in very low light and rendered in black and white.
This railroad bridge near Liberty has interesting lines and provides a variety of textures.
A couple of years ago, Suzanne had a conference in Atlanta, and I took this shot inside the hotel we were staying in. I liked the contrast of light and dark… and the cleaning cart in the hall.
Art Unleashed, the annual fundraiser for the Greater Kansas City Humane Society will be Friday, August 27th at Hale Arena (in the American Royal Complex). Here’s the website for more information:
http://www.hsgkc.org/artunleashed.html
I’ve had the opportunity to donate art to this event for the last five years and it’s been fun trying to come up with a creative pieces every year. I started borrowing iconic images and adding photos of my dogs, since even paintings of the masters can be improved with animals. Here is this year’s piece:
I’m pretty sure that Sargent intended to put a dog in the picture, but probably just forgot or ran out of time. He was notoriously late.
When Suzanne got up this morning, she discovered that “Ladders” had been vandalized. During the night, someone had knocked it over, though I have to admit, it looks like they did so very carefully. None of the top limbs were broken and there doesn’t seem to be any damage anywhere else. Still, it’s disappointing that this would happen. But, given what has happened in the four years we’ve lived here, not all that surprising.
This is not the first incident we’ve experienced. During the 2008 election, we had three Obama signs stolen from our yard and just this past March, we had a “War is not the answer” sign that we’ve had since the first days of the Afghanistan War back in 2001 taken. I’d like to think that these are all pranks by neighbor kids, but they are irritating, nonetheless.
I reported the latest incident to the police just so they will keep an eye on things. For now, I’m going to leave my sculpture in its “prone” position and treat it as a crime scene. One of the things I learned last year was that these pieces evolve in the time that they are on exhibit, whether by my hand or by the hand of nature. Now, I see that they can also evolve by the hand of others.
Let the waters come... 