Home Late, Thought I'd Blog

Just home from a Holiday weekend party, have a bit of a buzz on. Before turning in, I found a memory stick that contained photos of old work and images of ideas that I had not executed. I have not really looked at most of these things in years.

Thought I'd share them with you as I enjoyed them tonight, jumping from image to image, no real narrative or conceptual thread, except they were all concocted by the same person. And of course, Happy Memorial Day, thinking of all that serve and have served out country.

Digital File - 'The Fatigue  of Memory #4'

Digital File - 'The Fatigue or Memory #6'

Digital File - 'We Welcome Our Alien Overlords #2'

Digital File - 'Night Train, March 22, 2013'

Drawing - India Ink on Paper - 'Branches 17'

Digital Photograph - 'Magic Hedge Black and White 6'

Digital Photograph - 'Underpass Near Belmont Avenue, Chicago' 

Drawings - India Ink on Stonehenge Paper - 'Symmetrical Hosta Studies'

Crosshatch Drawing - 2009

Watercolor Drawing - Untitled

Digital File  

Crosshatch Drawing

Drawing - India Ink, Molowtow Acrylic Paint Pen, Arches Watercolor Paper

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Sunday, January 25, 2015

It was one of those mornings when everything was out of sync - awake too early, scratchy throat, and it was beginning to snow. The final indignity was missing my bus by 20 seconds despite the app on my phone assuring me I had another two minutes until it arrived. A snowy Sunday morning, and of course the next bus was not due for another 25 minutes. I had a good five minutes of feeling sorry for myself, not sure why that feels so good, but walked to the train and was heading up to my studio pretty quickly. It was while riding the train that I realized what a beautiful morning it was. The snow was just beginning to collect in some areas, and the city was deserted and quiet. I happily stared out the window, mesmerized by the landscape the entire fifteen minute trip.

The problem with taking the train to my studio is once I arrive at my stop (Berwyn) I still have a walk of five blocks, which at times can be a little dreary. But, in actuality it was a good day for a walk. Yesterday in the studio someone had asked me about an old panoramic photograph of mine that depicted a wall of graffiti. I had not looked at the photo in awhile but I remember where it was taken - the west wall of the Berwyn El station, where I was now disembarking. I knew the painting on the wall had evolved over the years, such is the nature of graffiti. The neighborhood may have even had a program where they encouraged young artists to work on that wall. I also knew that up until a few years ago, at least one element of the old graffiti depicted in the photograph, a large cartoon-like head, was still visible. Now, in a better mood despite still not having a coffee, I took detour to visit what remains of the graffitied wall. I'm happy to report my favorite head is still there, changed, a little duller in color, but still with a spark in its eye. And the rest of my short trek to the gallery was equally as inspiring, not for any specific reason other than it was lovely to look at the world covered with the light coat of snow on a not too cold day.

A few photos from this morning. The original panorama with the graffitied wall, and then a quick shot of the section of the wall as it exist today. Then a few photos I snapped on my walk to work. Gathering ideas, reacting, but not really over-thinking.

The snow continues to come down, and I may be less sanguine about this in five hours when I head home, but for now, lovely morning.

Addendum - February 1, 2015

The proposal in regard to the Graffiti panorama continues to move forward. The space where the photograph will resides has specifications that require reworking the proportions - which in some cases I am able, and happy to do. And we will be scaling up the image which is always exciting. Below is the reworking of the original photograph in its new cropped state. And then a playful juxtaposition of the wall ten years ago and now. 

Hello Old Friend, I Haven't Seen You In Years!

Back From Vacation....

...Hard at work on the photos of the trip, and hoping to get a few sketch book pages up on the blog soon also. In the meantime, one panorama from the rain forest, El Yunque, in Puerto Rico. Michelle took me on hike to the river and we swam/hiked from pool to pool. Other than the four family dogs, we had the place to ourselves. Remarkable, and a very special afternoon.

More Sketchbook Work

I make drawings while riding the train. Specifically on my rides home from Wilmette after a dinner with  my friends the Soskins, where most likely I have had a cocktail or three, and a large dinner. The train ride is long by some standards, up to an hour with a change of trains at one point. So I have come up with this series of drawings to make use of the time on the train. They are just a record of the date and time in bubble-like letters that I then crosshatch in a background for the duration of the train ride. I begin at the Linden station and put my pen away a minute before I reach the Addison stop near my home. The level of finish in the drawing it totally determined by the length of the train ride. I give up a lot but not all control, (I can still estimate how much time remains before my stop), but the results can be surprising, and I have a rudimentary diary entry.

Sketchbook Entry - Sunday, November 23, 2014

On this particular night I was reassessing the guidelines for this series of drawings, hence the notes on the page above the drawing - I will try to explain and expand:

- something to do on the train - I have this feeling lately in my life that I'm running out of time. There is much work to do and time is running short. This exercise is about making use of the time I spend riding the train. Some people read, some sleep, I feel compelled to draw, something I do not do enough of, and you have a small memento when you arrive at your destination.

- 2 Parts - a) the outline b) the coloring in - These drawings are a two step process. I make the outlines of the letters and numbers quickly, often as the train is sitting at the Linden station, the starting point for the Purple Line, before it starts it journey. I just get the information down, the day of the week, the date, and then I can spend the remainder of the train ride crosshatching, a mindless, yet to me comforting activity. This work eases all sorts of guilt about wasting time and not working enough as an artist. 

- Time - Fast/Slow - Being busy with this activity can make the time spent on the train fly by - the sixty minutes feel like fifteen. I have occasionally wished I had more time on the train to get further through a drawing!!!! Time is malleable, I experience it on the train! 

- Work on Tight Areas When Stopped - The train is mostly in motion. It rocks, it jerks, it starts and stops. Those movements make drawing a challenge in terms of neatness and technique. So I consciously work on the tighter, smaller areas while the train is stopped or slowed. When the train is moving quickly I cross hatch in the broader areas. 

- Only the Duration of the Train Ride - Explained above but let me repeat, the drawing can only take the length of the train ride. I don't have to decide when the drawing is finished, the Chicago Transit Authority does it for me. 

- Design Quickly If At All - This was the revelation of this most recent drawing. I have been doing this all along but I realized that not over thinking the layout and composition, not really controlling the font, will open this series of drawings up to unplanned, informal and less controlled results. 

- Grown-up Coloring - This practice is no different than what I was taught to do in coloring books as a child, except no color and I make the outlines. Sometimes it is shocking how little my art practice has evolved in fifty years.

- Follow the Initial Outline - I was repeating myself on this one. Make the initial letters and numbers quickly, do not over think. Then live with what you made. 

- Some Choices Base on Practicality and Utility - What I refer to here is that sometimes I will crosshatch in areas that are easy to get at, or feel good in regard the way I am holding the pen. Balancing the sketchbook on my lap on the train can be a challenge and some decisions are based on making the work not too difficult or painful.

On this night three young men got on the train at one of the stops that service Northwestern University. The train car was mostly empty but sometimes one chooses the closest seats and the they ended up surrounding me a bit. We started a conversaion and they were curious enough to ask about my scribbling in my sketchbook. I explained as best I could but I was unclear and self conscience. I did show them the few other pages that had been completed in the sketchbook, but they seemed unimpressed. I ended up explaining to them that I occasionally take photos on the train and would they let me take a panoramic photo that included the three of them. This explanation went on even longer than the sketchbook discourse and it involved me giving them my business card and asking to exchange e-mail addresses. Finally one of them said slightly exasperated, "It's ok, we give your our permission!" From what I understand they were heading downtown to do Karaoke. Good for them for venturing out via public transportation on a cold and wet Sunday night to experience Chicago. 

Fall - The Climbing Vines Change Color

I'm making photographs of the climbing vines again. Now that fall is in full swing and the colors are changing here in Chicago, the vines are taking on significant color. These vine flourish all over the city, but are often lushest in places where they are mostly neglected. Settings like parking lots and alleys where these plants are left unattended are where they grow best in the urban environment. I shoot them head-on, flattening the composition to landscape like configuration. There is something in them that remind me of the sensibility of Asian folding screens, paintings and scrolls.

Two New Drawings and a Photograph

Some weeks all you can do is show the new work, no comments warranted.

Untitled - Acrylic Paint on Acid Free Mat Board - 32 x 40''

Untitled - India Ink on Arches Watercolor Paper - 36 x 45''

1122 Foster Avenue, Chicago

Rode my bike to the gallery this morning, this building caught my attention for some unknown reason as I went by.

1122 Foster Avenue, Chicago

41 Train Rides #28

Saturday January 25, 2014 - 9:01pm - Red Line from Howard to Addison.
Returning home from Evanston where Laura and I saw the movie 'Her', (Amazing! Best science fiction movie of the year). Quick dinner afterwards then the long ride from the Davis stop with a transfer at Howard Street. It all went smoothly with a short wait at Davis (thank you 'Train Tracker') and a train waiting for us across the platform at the Howard Street stop. Good thing too as the temperature was quickly dropping from 20 to 8 degrees, and three inches of snow forecast for after midnight. I was totally busted by these two taking their photo as I shot this panorama, but I gave them a hand embellished business card and a friendly conversation ensued. I notice the boy on the right had no sock on and I 'mothered' them both from the Loyola stop to Addison. No hats, no long underwear, no socks! Note the condition of the floor, salt and ice everywhere, and the streets are worse, with piles of snow to walk over and around. This winter will not quit. It may be time to quote Albert Camus.

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

Hand Embellished Business Cards

Squaring the Square

Process - Photograph something with squarish proportions (window). Down load the image into your photo editing software, (Photoshop). Add 50% white space to all four sides (Image, Canvas Size). Using spherize filter compensate for the barrel distortion of your camera lens (-10). Using skew transformation (edit, transform, skew) bring edges of window back to orthogonal alignment. Using the scale transformation (edit, transform, scale) make width and length of the window equal bring it back to its original square proportions. Crop down but leave the skewed edges.

The now mutated photograph evidences a corrected camera based point of view written into the elegant slopes and overall geometry of the image.

A second example.

Homage to Japanese Screens

Looking again at some of the Black and White Panoramic Photographs I made at the Magic Hedge in years past. The Magic Hedge is a bird sanctuary near Montrose Beach here in Chicago. The city has let the landscape return to a more natural, prairie-like setting to nurture birds as the migrate up and down the coast of Lake Michigan. It is one of my favorite places in Chicago and I have often made photographs there, most in color but a few in black and white. I came across this panoramic photograph as I was perusing old files and was pleasantly surprised to see it. I can see that one idea I was exploring, both as I shot the individual photos, and as I was assembling them, was Asian folding screens. A shared love a nature is one common denominator. The patterned manner in which the foliage moves across the horizontal format, and the way the flash illuminated individual leaves is a direct reference to some vintage Asian screens. And the still visible edges of the source photographs as the overlap one another, are analogous to the panels that make up folding screens.

A few other examples.

Building Study

I was looking through some old photos this week and I came across this panorama of an alley off of Devon Ave. in Chicago. This study, showing the overlaps and the uneven edges of the source photographs, was constructed quickly to test an idea and preview a potential panorama. I have been constructing panoramas in photoshop for years now, and I have some skill doing so. Now that every iPhone has a photographic panorama maker bundled in its software, it forces me to ponder the arguments for making imagery in this format. The horizontal proportion in art making has always seemed natural to me, as if this is the way I most often view the world. I happened to be walking the dog when I came upon this facade, and walking could be described as a horizontal experience. My background in architecture leads me to look at buildings and facades critically, and I'm particularly interested in architecture that derives from function more than 'design'. Hence my fascination with walls like this one; it expresses a  practical use of the building in a way that does not have much to do with proportions, materials or beauty.  It strikes me that there is a collaging aspect to architecture that becomes evident in mundane buildings - a window where needed, conduit here, a vent there. This idea of architectural collage is mirrored nicely in the collaging of the photographs that make up a panorama. By not hiding the overlaps and not cropping the edges, this photograph declares itself as a 'hand-made' digital image.

Muybridge Variations

I have recently pull out some old work that was based on photographs by Eadweard Muybridge. His photographic career was long and varied but Muybridge is probably most well know for his studies of 'Animal Locomotion' where he used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, an early precursor to motions pictures. At the time I made this images I was drawn to his work for a variety of reasons, but one engaging aspect was the background grid against which he photographed many of his subjects. When I discovered his work I was already making photographic panoramas using multiple digital images and 'Photoshop' software. In order to fit separate photographs together I would often have to align them with one another and this made me consider how the idea of two and three point perspective is indicated in lens based image making. As a reaction to that I would often flatten my images, that is, in my mind make the photographic image parallel to the picture plane of the camera, (See my recent post entitled 'Alley Photograph'). Muybridge was indicating this concept by using a grid in the background of his motion studies, essentially flattening the image for scientific procedural purposes. I felt a connection with these studies and from a process standpoint these photographs called out to be digitally manipulated.  By selecting individual images and manipulating them, my intention was to create something that Muybrige could not have anticipated, and to bring my own sensibility and sense of play to the final product.

                                     An original Muybridge sequences photo.

Wikipedia entry on Muybridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge

Alley Photograph

I've been biking the Chicago alleys again, not sure what I'm looking for but occasionally a spot calls out to me to make a photo. Pictured is one such spot, don't know what I'm after, but it does cross my mind that this space is a bit of an urban collage.

New Photo Subject

It has been a cool and wet spring in Chicago. Hence very lush and healthy foliage. The vines crawl over everything. And when the surface is flat and graphic it catches my eye. Mostly abstract but I think I see a landscape in there.

41 Train Rides #25 - April 20, 2013

Looking Up In Las Vegas

I have just returned from a weeks travel. My journey began and ended in Las Vegas where my dear friend Steve is ensconced, working as a waiter. I will admit I had trouble wrapping my mind around the place, and artistically it was impossible to grasp. The scale of the place is unimaginable. You see it on TV or in photographs and you cannot grasp how immense these structures are. The street is such chaos and there is no urban plan to speak of. So I began looking upwards and most of my photo reflect that perspective.

Garages of Wilmette Redux

It is spring break in the north suburbs of Chicago and I spent the week in Wilmette dog sitting. It took me five days to get into the grove of the north shore; big houses, cable on demand and driving everywhere. The dog walks were the pleasant exception to an otherwise uneventful daily routine, but once again it took me about five days, and a warm-up in the weather, to figure out my take on the experience. Frankie (the dog) and I found ourselves walking the alley as much as the streets. Walking the dog actually legitimizes what otherwise might be considered slightly irregular suburban behavior. If anyone glared at me aggressively I would mime dropping off the dogs 'little package' in the nearest trash container and we would continue on our way. The alleys are such a unique take on the suburban experience, literally the behind the scenes view of this privileged way of life. It is as if they let their guard down a bit, you see their garbage, and many of the standards that are upheld in the front facade are allowed to relax a little in the back. I use the work 'redux' not only because I'm reading John Updike right now, but because I made a similar photo essay about the garages of Wilmette back in December during my last dog sitting stint. Three months later the snow is mostly melted away, a few buds are appearing on the trees, and the light has changed dramatically. Below are three photos I made last week.