Your hair is on fire!

Yesterday I had the oddest experience. The phone rang and a voice said, "Are you on fire?" I responded that I hoped not and turned to look out the window. There was a fireman right there! I grabbed the dog and ran down the stairs. Unlike last time, there was no actual fire but it was a photo-op for sure. I've included a general view so you can see the entire scene and then two images that that seem worth saving in the name of art.

Text in Art…

Artists include words, letters and written text in their works. Words can be content or form or both simultaneously, speaking in tongues or in ideas we directly understand. Sometimes context is all. In this photograph the text is removed from context and purpose. We ask, “what does ‘Nevada time’ mean?” and images of gambling houses, tumbleweeds in desert wind or divorcees seeking change float into our minds. Or maybe not, perhaps it’s that obliqueness that charms us.



Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with mustache and goatee and it’s inscription L.H.O.O.Q. is an intriguing take on words in art. The Mona Lisa’s serene smile is not disturbed by the accusatory wordplay. When you sound the letters out they say, "Elle a chaud au cul", translating loosely to "she is a hot down there". Duchamp makes fun and simultaneously comments on art.

Perhaps “Nevada Time” refers to blog time…

The Eye of the Beholder

Today I was thinking about how we choose things to photograph. It’s something I often think about since photography (and art) is all about choices. Choices of subject, frame, time and more all affect the final image. Take these rocks for example, Kurt and I chose them because we thought the subject looked like something else. He saw a frog sitting on a gorilla in his and I saw a petrified stone man in mine. I took several shots but selected the frame with the bus so you can see how giant my stone man is by comparison.

And now I have to think about man’s (and this woman’s) tendency to anthropomorphically transform just about anything. Easy to see the anthropomorphic in Hans Bellmer’s work with mannequins. It starts pushing in my salt and peppers shakers that are modeled as weeping onion faces or in Tru restaurant’s chef Rick Tramonto’s tattoo.

As the song says, “Ca me fait du mal jusque a jongler” (It hurts just to think about it).

The Drive-By Photograph

Kurt thinks that I am either crazy or the queen of drive by shooting. I take photos all the time whatever I am doing (about 100 a day). The worst is when I’m driving. I don’t look through the viewfinder, of course, but I shove my hand out the window or I shout at Kurt to stick his hand out with my camera, and shoot blind. I find I love many of the pictures taken this way.

The Corvair seems to typify many of these shots.

Jaunty and hot red, the tilted horizon seems like a lifestyle choice harking back to the swinging ‘60s. Once in a while you get a perfect shot like this winter landscape at Ashokan resevoir. I love this picture for its serenity and cool abstraction belying the conditions under which it was taken..



When I did a search for other photographers who shot out of a moving car some of the hits led me to Jon Rein and Kai-Uwe Gundlach both talented professional photographers. Based on the number of results in the search, I guess it’s a common practice — all in a day’s art.

Street Scene

I first came across Shepard Fairey’s work when an image of a man’s face blew across my feet in NYC. I was so intrigued by the image that I took it home and put it up on the wall. I later learned it was Andre the Giant and that it was part of a work by Fairey. I have come to look forward to his street art, seeing it on sides of buildings and newsstands.

There are many others too, like work featured by the Wooster Collective and work by DAM!.

I like the layered look of this piece with all previous showing through. If you know the name of the artist please let me know—it’s swell!

Our nation's interest in "Art"

I was recently at the Hoover Dam and I was struck by the construction. It certainly is an amazing feat of engineering but the thing that really charged me up were the beauty of the details. There were all kinds of public art including a galaxy set into the concrete, a bronze bas relief tribute to the men who died during construction, another bas relief honoring Mead and countless other details like gleaming golden doors, all in beautiful Art Deco style. I felt uplifted and somehow connected to the artists who created this aspect of the dam. It made me think that an aesthetic life is a possibility and that artists matter--no small feat for a giant hunk of engineering.

What makes a Photograph

Kurt and I together make an almost perfect photographer. He is interested in subject and content. I am interested in the way things look or are arranged within the finite space of the frame. Case in point, two of my favorite photographs from our recent trip west.