Christmas Time 2009

Creativity on Demand

At ArtStar where I also blog it's been decided that Thursday is gonna be the day to post photography; it's good to have a guide line to try to stick with. Discipline is good; I don't have a day job so things can get a bit drifty unless I create order. But, what about coming up with stuff on demand?

That's the fun of the process.

David Lynch, the eccentric director of the tv program Twin Peaks a million years ago, Eraser Head, Blue Velvet, Mulhollen Drive and other films, has a theory about creativity that I like a lot.
He says that ideas are like fish swimming in the ocean...all you have to do is go fishing. Yup, drop your line down there and pull up an idea. The best fish swim deep down, so you gotta get down there for the best ones. He meditates regularly, oh by the way. You can find some interviews with him on YouTube. I still don't know how to link sites, so sorry about that. I also came across his book about this when I was at City Lights Bookstore in SF last month. I forget the title, but it's probably at the big bookstores or Amazon too.....I'm not gonna do your research for it, 'cause, again, I can't link you up anyway. I promise I'll learn how to do it soon. How can one call themselves a blogger without this basic skill?

Last year I came across a comic book software in my Mac....called Comic Life (Lite) that's fun to play with...the piece at the top came out of that. (My ex-husband, a "serious" artist, unlike the photographers in this world, warned me not to show anyone these that I call "Late Night Comics" at the risk of being deemed shallow....)

Honestly, I don't care, and find it really fun to combine photos and thought bubbles.

Wet

Stuck inside last week.... Not really, but not wanting to go outside much during the days and nights of wetness, I enjoyed my cave-like experience... listening to the rain... shooting photos through the windows and skylight....staying dry.

Tree Porn

Yes, this is sophomoric, I know. It was just one of those weeks... I'll leave it up to your imagination....just don't jump to obvious conclusions....errr, well, maybe. sort of.



On the afternoon of the week in question I was heading off to a poetry reading on UNC campus. Parking is a nightmare experience, so after checking out some church parking lots, and deciding not to jam my head worrying about getting towed, I opted for an available place a long distance away, but a nice walk. The area I walked through is the historic district here in Chapel Hill. As it implies, there are wonderful restored homes replete with large old trees of various varieties....most of which I have no idea of identity. This little stand of trees will go unclassified (probably better, considering their public indecency.)

Collard Greens

Growing up in Pennsylvania, collard greens were not something I knew about. Life went on...I lived in other places...discovered greens somewhere along the way, but didn't go out of my way to find or eat them. Moving down here to Chapel Hill from LA about 8 years ago, Southern cooking started creeping into my diet.
Actually, after surviving the shock of my first splayed out pig in that big cooker at a pig-pickin' party, I became a pulled pork slut.
As a point of perspective, I've been buying my greens - collards, turnip and mustard - at a supermarket or farmer's markets bundled in tidy bunches, or loose, small leaves to stuff in plastic bags to take home.
Today when I saw the homemade sign saying "collards for sale" by the side of the back road I was driving, I turned into the driveway along the garden of greens growing there. No one was around outside, so I knocked on the back door I saw was ajar. The lady you see in the photo came out and asked how much I wanted, and did I want to pick my own....I said it's just for me, so not too much, when she wanted to know how many people in the family, and she could get it for me, thanks. She then explained that the collards freeze well, so I should get a full portion for my $3 a bunch....Ok then. Out into the field she went, knife in hand. While she was looking around over there I pulled the camera out of my handbag figuring I'd so some shots while she picked me some greens....next thing I realize, she's got that huge plant draped over her arm, and is heading back with it intact. She was a bit hesitant to let me take a photograph when I asked, due to the fact her hair was all up under a scarf because she's going to Greensboro tomorrow and had to wash it today...but she agreed without me having to push too hard...she liked when I said I'd bring a print by.
When you bring a plant that size into a kitchen, you can really appreciate the size to which those collards grew.... elegant, vibrant, tactile, green elephant ear size leaves flopped onto the counter as I separated them. I ate many of the smaller inside leaves then and there, raw... fairly bursting with life energy from just being brought from the soil they just left, minutes ago. What a rush!
Btw, I usually don't combine color with black and white; I think it looks tacky, but I shut off one layer while working on the image and saw that I could selectively erase the black and white filter I had added, so I did....I think it accentuates my experience out there today.

Mostly San Francisco

Laytonville, CA
Sebastopol
San Francisco





Anyone following my posts for awhile know that I went to Pennsylvania this summer for a few weeks to do night photos in locations from my past. Since I returned to NC, where I now live, something shifted in my consciousness, sort of curtailing my obsessive shooting style, leaving me with more time on my hands, fewer images in my computer....not that I don't agree with the need to cut back the time behind a camera lens and get a life, but I found it kinda strange that about a month ago, I seemed called from within to San Francisco...another location that I lived for 6 years, back awhile ago.
My reason for making the trip was actually for another reason: to do a particular initiation with a spiritual master from India, on the weekend, up on a mountain top in Laytonville, 3+ miles north of SF. Figuring I was already all the way out there, I planned to stay with friends in the city for the following week.

Although the photographs I've chosen to show don't all have specific connections to the past experiences of living there, the trip did take me back into my past again. Specifically, the apple orchard...I stopped in Sebastopol to visit friends on the way back down to the city, and got lost....pulled into that orchard to call for directions again and spent time shooting photos. The next day, as I was leaving he said, "By the way, that orchard you went into was the same one we all picked apples in for the apple juice we bottled and sold at the farmers market"....being location and directionally challanged, plus many years later on top of that, it was quite a shock to have been deposited squarely into my past, with camera in tow. A few days later, standing infront of an apartment I lived in on Potrero hill, on a whim I knocked on the door, only to have the tenant open the door and invite me in to look around when I told her about visiting previous homes I've lived in. I shot a few frames inside, however it was daytime, and it doesn't count for my night series.

So, another part of my past came forward for scrutiny and enjoyment. I'm not sure what any of this means, if anything, but it was fun hanging out there, exploring places photographically I knew from before and others that were new.

Out on the Streets

Street photography's been going on since cameras got small enough to carry instead of lug. Historically and traditionally, after color film was invented, most streetshooting was done in black and white ...it's the way it is...gritty, immediate, "decisive moment" stuff. A long linage of shooters, such as Atget, Stieglitz, Strand, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Kertesz, Evans, Levitt, Frank, Arbus, Winogrand, paved the way for what now has become a glut of everyone snapping everything every moment of the day in every way on everything electronic and digital. The new world culture is here, and it's pretty much in color. Color photography was presented to the art world when John Szarkowski curator of photography at MOMA put up the first exhibit of color prints by William Eggleston 1976. So much for the outrage that ensued over that breach of tradition...and here we are now.

The problem I myself am having with the color or black and white dilemma of street shooting is that in the "old" days of film, I'd put black and white film in the camera and would go immediately into the zone of seeing in tones....not so anymore with digital; even if you set the camera to black and white, when it's downloaded, those pesky pixels show up as color....you are forced, or at least, seduced into looking at your stuff in color. At bottom of this back and forthing, is that I've been noticing I've begun multi-seeing, or maybe it's multi-level-tasking when I'm shooting on the fly now, and it's annoying and confusing the intentions of being one pointed and focused. It's like parallel universes going on simultaneously as I intuitively shift back and forth between seeing in color and translating into black and white tones...or not, at any given time out there.....(confused and dazed yet?)

Last week I was in NYC and of course went through all this weirdness once again. In sorting through images I converted many that seemed to ask to be black and white, and that was that, and left many that were obviously only color images to remain where they belonged...that left a group that worked both ways, to my eye and inclination, so I put the two versions of each image together and will let you decide which works for you.....any feedback would be interesting for me to hear about. Ok?

Toy Camera

The last few weeks have been hard to pin down as to where my head's been. I've hardly picked up a camera since returning from the road trip productions in Pennsylvania...that just doesn't happen. I think my very cells are rearranging, readjusting, regrouping from the experience of revisiting those homes of my past. I'm not going to post any more of the images from this new series; the two previous posts are all that I can do for now. The rest of the files are in the hard drive (+ 2 backups)....and there shall they remain, sweet little pixels, until I decide it's time to view them with the fresh eye of objectiveness, which now is impossible.

So, in the meantime.. I was going through some toy camera images to gather a submission for an upcoming juried exhibition in Vermont with the subject of the show being "Dreams and Fantasies." By way of explanation, a toy camera is really just that; it's plastic, including the lens. The body doesn't fit tightly to the back, so it has light leaks. I love mine; some people tape their cameras but I don't. Also known as "crappy cameras" they have names like Holgas, Diana, Banner. Mine is a Banner and I've had it forever. it uses 2-1/4 film. It has a little lever that goes "click" and there ya go....

Night Shooting Road Trip - Night 3

Giving me directions to her house in Bath, PA., my friend Ruth said, "Look for an old barn with the word 'Sleep' written on it. Fascinating.The new night series I'm out here working on deals with memory, concealment, dreams...The barn was a really cool location, the image plan hatched, and in spite of a drizzle the next night, a crew of an old photo friend from Allentown, Ruth, and I went off into the late night. The barn is located on a two lane highway in what seems like the middle of nowhere, but is apparently the only way to get to somewhere, judging from the number of cars speeding through. The camera set up on the side of the road opposite of the barn, and time exposure of 30 seconds necessitated no traffic time every time we opened the lens. There are a number of red and white streaked frames, but it wasn't too bad. Coordinating and checking the varied strobe flashes, looking at each frame as it was shot, had me and my assistant Ron, running back and forth across the road, waving flashlights so not to trip into a hidden ditch along the side by the barn. All of a sudden, we see a cop car slowly drive up and pull into a turn out next to the barn by our car...it's past midnight. I'm standing by the camera at this point, dressed in the black night gown I'm wearing for the photo, wondering how to explain what we're doing out here without getting chased away. The cop doesn't get out of his car. I thought they're supposed to approach you, not the other way around, but this is Bath, PA for christsake so maybe it's different here. So there I am, flashlight in hand, traipsing across the road in a night gown in the middle of a drizzly night to face a cop. Weird. I came around the back of his car to the passenger side window to avoid standng too close to the road, and was about to tap on the window, when I looked in to see that the cop was absolutely oblivious to my being there....he hadn't noticed us there at all....not the flashlights, not anything....he was lost in his own world, focusing on the cigarette he was putting in his mouth. I just stood there, peering in at him for a moment, then turning off my flashlight, stepped back from the car window into the shadows to watch him turn off his dome light and drive off. Surreal.

Night Shooting Road Trip - Night 1

Months ago I wrote a grant proposal that I wanted to create night images that went beyond what I have been doing for the last three years, which is photographing scenes lit only by moonlight, or street lights or whatever source was already there illuminating the image I was making. My paperwork stated I'd now be working in a new way, adding my own light sources, and make a limited edition of 16"x24" archival pigment prints so please give me the money for a wide bed printer....and so they did. Now, beyond the steep learning curve of this new printer which is still in its very large box taking up much of my work room because I can't bear to deal with it, I had no idea what was gonna get lit up in the dark...
More about the series I'm about to explore in Pennsyvania, where I grew up, in a few days once I start it, but for now, here is last nights re-shoot of something I did in Maryland where I stayed for a few day earlier this month and again last night on my way north. After a lovely supper with his family, my photo friend Scott Robinson whom I've know since our days in the trenches called Los Angeles, and I re-shot this because I didn't like what I was wearing in the first version...hadn't paid attention to "wardrobe."

The important lesson for me to remember here is the need to sometimes really push yourself into action to get out the gear, set it up and know you'll hit stride, although it's late at night, you've had a bit of wine, and would rather just talk about maybe re-shooting some other time.

The day had just begun

Eating scrambled eggs the other morning....yes, with ketchup...my mind wandering inward as it often does, especially when a cup of chai is also involved, my attention suddenly snapped back to my plate. There, born of absentmindedness and a fork, was the Ketchup Rooster.

In Honor of the Photo Gods

Not leaving the local landscape and routine for about 3 months got to me last week, so I arranged a visit with friends who live in Maryland. The first 2 hours on the road was exhilarating.. feeling the freedom in freeway. Just north of Richmond, VA, everything changed...2 small accidents within a mile of each other slowed traffic to about four miles an hour for too long....then the chaos theory as it pertains to traffic patterns kicked in, and my fantasy plan of breezing along like the dudes on route 66 of yore, were dashed. Deciding to take a momentary break to gas up, pee, and perhaps grab a sandwich,  I chose an exit that boasted a Subway shop. Well, the sandwich place wasn't exactly where the sign near the gas station indicated it was, so, faced with a huge expanse of asphalt and what looked like a truck stop down at the end, I took off in that direction. What I found was the gem of the day. There, in a little grove of trees was a tiny white chapel, replete with pointy tall steeple. Off to the side front a bunch of motorcycles were parked. Looked good to me. Not wanting to disrespect the two scruffy bikers standing around made me decide  not to immediately start shooting photos that included their bikes. Wonderfully, as soon as I planted myself squarely in front of the chapel, the one guy suggested that perhaps I might like to include the bikes in my photo!! "Wow, good idea." I offered in my innocent lady voice. Score. But the best part was yet to show itself...it happened that when I went over to the side where the bikes were - the guy  over there had on a vest with his club's name on the back-----Twisted Souls. It couldn't get much better than that. Except that it did...the first shot didn't show the steeple very well, so I asked him to come over to where I took this shot.

It is with great respect and love I bow to those laughing photo gods who occasionally offer up to us mere photo-image-hunting-mortals the magical combination of  time and space co-incidence that produce a perfect situation to aim a camera.

Los Angeles - Deep Muck Cultural Concerns

Tearing scabs off the cultural landscape
reveals bloody layers of previously picked
and poked layers of man-made icons,
celebrity bandages, and billboard gauze
barely covering the oozing yellow infection
of our self-inflicted wounds.

Forever recycling endless pretty impostors
not truly believing the lines written for them,
A hint of understanding lurks too deeply behind the surface
of dissassociated denial
to take anything at face value.
The face has been cosmetically altered
anyway,
sabatoging the wisdom of age from celebrating
anything remotely substantial.

Irony splashs shiny glossy over
neo-reality, post-realism, nilism and hip-hop.
A new paint job hurriedly washes the slick
oily walls of current ideas,
leaving barely a moment of fresh, if not quiet,
rectangles of silence, before a new multiplicity of
one sheets, TV sweeps, .coms, or yet unpublished
graffitti take fleeting residence.

Poets move words around each other
searching for new turns and embraces
to end
the pain of separation.
Few can describe the eternity of their recurrent
anguish.

Artists rehash history, reinvent conceptual redundancy
then beat themselves to death for not communicating
their deepest struggle for transformation and ascension .


How many can break thru barriers of their own forgotten making
into realms of the invisible, unspeakable fullness?
Some actions take the courage of outrage
Some, the strength of a whisper
Whatever the form, faith is the master.

Some true mad souls keep reaching
Thru the quicksands of culture.
Not clinging to the seeking,
they struggle.
Not clinging to the struggle,
they seek.

- Ellen Giamportone
1999

More Trash

A couple of months ago I did some macro shots of flower petals when they fell from the vase they were in. The post of those images are somewhere in the archives entitled "Flower Trash." Since then, occasionally a combination of dead flowers, bits of vegetable or fruit debris cross paths in the kitchen before their disposal, coalescing into a flash of visual rapture. At that point, life as it was moving on stops, the Canon G10 is grabbed and the choreography begins....Perhaps this kind of information is damning to the perception I am at all sane, but I'm beyond caring at this point in my life....and no, I don't live with a bunch of cats.

The Poet & The Prisoner

A couple of months ago, my friend, a poet, suggested I take a class being given at the local art center that promised a finished video in 7 weeks......so I went. Ed, my friend and I teamed up, since the class was asked to pair off to work together on what would be an interview of some sort as the basis of their film. Joanna Catherine Scott is a remarkable novelist and poet who lives in Chapel Hill. Both Ed and I agreed she would be a wonderful interview, especially since her involvement with a prisoner on death row created a wonderful story. We struggled through the tech work involved with editing, and since finishing, I've pretty much forgotten what I might have learned, but think that the subject of this video is well worth the 7 minutes of time needed to watch it.

Bin There, Done That

It had been awhile since I couldn't line up my schedule with the recycling pick-up schedule, so the other day, I dutifully loaded up the car with the paper trash and headed out to deal with it. After dropping some magazines into the glossy magazine bin, I noticed how interesting it was to look through the opposite slot of the mostly empty container....apparently it doesn't take much to catch my interest...it's a slow lifestyle here. Hanging with the scene for a moment revealed a little world of it's own... It had been awhile since I could line up my schedule with the recycling pick-up schedule, so the other day, I dutifully loaded up the car with the paper trash and headed out to deal with it. After dropping some magazines into the glossy magazine bin, I noticed how interesting it was to look through the opposite slot of the mostly empty container....apparently it doesn't take much to catch my interest...it's a slow lifestyle here. It was really neat in there....a little world of it's own. The ever trusty G9 camera and I spent some time capturing the feeling of the reflected sunlight and atmosphere created within the rusting structure.



It felt to me like I had stumbled upon an artist's installation. A simple joke almost...placing this piece of artwork into an environment of it's own kind...amidst recycling bins for "mixed paper," "brown glass," etc.

OR: Maybe I can claim these photos as being the visual documentation of it being my own installation.


I hearby elevate into its new status as an ART INSTALLATION, this common dumpster, located at the Recycling Center, behind University Mall, Chapel Hill, NC. Entitled "Glossy Magazines," it was conceived and documented on April 8, about 1pm.

So be it.

More from the previous post

Last night the photo file upload gizmo was messed up and only the last photo would stay on the server....it was late, so I gave up trying to redo it again, hoping "this time it might work." Naaa, it didn't.

Today it's working, and since paying with some of my life source to those damn ticks while making images, the least I could do for my own piece of mind is post a few more from that day. Also, the chicken wings Kenny made were incredible. The pork loin was amazing, as I mentioned, but far less photogenic...

When following after photos might not be worth it.

A couple of weeks ago when my friend Kenny decided to have a bar-b-que at his new digs I noticed the back yard was a treasure trove of stuff his housemate relegated to being strewn helter- skelter. While an amazingly good smelling pork loin was cooking on the charcoal grill, I headed down off the deck to make images among the plethora of textures, colors and shapes laying about on the ground. What I didn't know until the next day was that there were also ticks out there in the yard....and I am a magnet for them....omg.

A few days later, after plucking these nasty things off my legs, and feet, still itching like hell, I went off for a scheduled trip in NYC. Not more than a day later of walking around there, my right foot was swelling up and one of the places where I'd removed a tick began to look like something biblical...along the lines of the plague of boils. I finally gave in and spent Saturday night waiting to see an attending doctor in a Manhattan ER. Not fun.

North Carolina has more ticks than I'm willing to deal with to go off shooting in or near the woods here again, at least until I get whatever that evil smelling stuff is that wards off pestilence.

Night Again

Last evening while leaving the Common House of a co-housing community in Carrborro, where I was meeting with photographer friends, I notice a large dark yellow wagon to the side of the door, looking quite interesting in it's setting of fence, houses and darkness behind. I mentioned to my host that I was going to stay around and photograph the scene, but had to go to my car, parked outside the walkways, to get a tripod. It was rather late, and I spent a quiet 15 or so minutes shooting the wagon. I wasn't all that excited about the results in the camera viewer but thought something might look better larger....turns out, they sucked.

Lately, I've not been so drawn to shooting at night, and this less than satisfying experience with the wagon solidified the notion I was done shooting at night, at least in the way I've been at it for the last 3 years.

The walk back to my car was very sweet; the night was quiet, still and damp from the Seattle type weather we've been experiencing lately here in our part of NC. When I got to this area, my awareness heightened and soared....I sensed a soft coalescence of air, space and some unidentifiable quality that drew me to stay and photograph.

The night still calls me.

Flower Trash

In a vase where the roses died, there were some live filler flowers that lingered for many days longer. I don't know the name of what they were. At the time of their demise, petals, leaves and stamens fell on the counter in a lovely arrangement.

It was evening and I didn't have anything much pressing to do, so I got the camera and eventually, after shooting some straight compositions using the ugly overhead kitchen lighting, grabbed the only flashlight handy and began again. The low batteries created a soft addition of shapes and shadows, making everything much more intimate and dramatic.

I really like when situations seem to create themselves as I go about my daily life. For the last year or so, almost each day I shoot at least a frame or more as I move through my day and night. The Canon G10 is always at ready.....like a gunslinger always has his pistol on his hip. It's a weird analogy, perhaps, but I've discovered that sometimes it's like that...the constant practicing...the quick draw when it comes to instantaneous people shots that happen when I'm out and about, sitting in a cafe, on the road, wherever. Then there's the other practicing, which is more like this flower trash situation....the inanimate stuff of life that shows up, or makes itself known if you remember to keep your mind quiet, your eyes new and alert. That becomes what I think of as "sketching". These kinds of studies are fun, playful, and often quite satisfying.
 
These kinds of images may not directly inform my "serious" work but they consistently go the distance for me, filling my heart with the joy of wandering in the boundless realm of creativity.