Ringing in 2012

Wishing one and all a happy new year...hope it brings shiny interesting sounds into all our lives.

Portfolio Postscript, 2011, Part I

In the weeds is the title that came to me here. It's a weird shot that might work. Creating the series (now called The Recollection) I've been messing up the foreground a little. My photos can be a tad too tidy. This image was made the day Hurricane Irene blew into town. Lots of wind and excitement. The long weeds waved and moved like currents in water.

The Portfolio Review in New Orleans ran round the clock from Friday morning until late Sunday afternoon. There's a lot to digest. The event felt BIG and WHIRLLY and included everything from an accidental karmic trip to the haute fashion show at the Ogden Museum to gumbo to a book art lecture to the main event - images.

Three quick lists -- what I got, what I didn't get, and what got that I didn't expect to get.

Got: subjective and confusing readings of my work. One liked this, the other that. Underneath the subjective stuff, I got that my work is divided into two expressions - more crisply focused documentary work and surreal dreamscapes. I am revising. I plan to lean hard into the dreamscapes.

Didn't Get: Clarity, contracts, fame, a mentor or a clear signal that pushing the work is worth so much hoo-hah. The outer world -- it can mess up these inner creations.

Got that I Didn't Expect to Get: A deadline extension. A patron in Pensacola, Florida. Several very talented and cool friends. And a look inside a woman's mouth to see the word LAUGH tattooed along her lower gum. She folded down her lip, unfurling her message that made us both laugh.

Final thought: be serious about the work, but don't take things too seriously. Laugh.

Two for Tuesday: Cutie Booty

Two nameless beauties arrived at the house and met for the first time. They totally bonded when they discovered that just that day, just that morning in fact, they'd each found a vintage belt in a relative's closet.

The colorful, slightly Latin belt on the left, came from a grandma's stash. The one on the right, a western leather classic with name, came from a dad's holdovers.

Not all women will turn around and let you shoot their booty, but this twosome supports me through and through, and, let's be real -- they have nothing to hide front or back!!

The Vision x Two

Watch out, ladies and gentleman, here comes the IT woman.
She's coasting down the cobblestone on a bike freshly painted green. Flowers flopping out of the basket. Boots up for anything. A pair of reading glasses, wrapped around her black fur collar, dangling with the unlikely elegance of a necklace.

The woman is aging with her groove still in tact. This is my dream too. I just love having her as a model, a mirror, a muse.

At the time I took the photograph, I didn't expect to see my inner dream realized. All I was hoping for was a classic Dutch bike rider gliding down one of Amsterdam's classic bridges. I'd waited at the base of the bridge, waiting for car traffic to clear and a biker to show up.

The sculpture on the left isn't anything I noticed at the time. But once I did, I fell in love with the man with the wooly mustache named Multatuli. The name is Indonesian and fun to say (try).

I thought, maybe, like the lady on the bike, this man who appeared in the frame might also have something to teach me. I googled him. Turns out, Multatuli was a wit, a poet, and a visionary. Here's a quote that kind of says it all: There is only one evil, one crime, one sin: lack of heart.  

Two for Tuesday: Thing One & Thing Two

Here's a twosome that stopped me in my tracks while window shopping at an outdoor mall in Holland last week. I mean, really. Those blondish white Afros so big and puffy they shade the mannequins' eyes. The irritated lips. All that scrawling text with no spaces and no easy way to comprehend what's being written across their wiry, athletic bodies.

They reminded me of a 21st century, tricked out version of the dynamic duo from Dr. Seuss, Thing One and Thing Two.  

Ho, Ho, Ho in Dutch

So here's a seriously jolly scene from Amsterdam. Mister Ho Ho Ho himself standing by hunks of cheese, legs apart, smiling out the window at the passersby such as yours truly. Check out the quality of his shirt - that weave and lace hemline- and his silky beard.

More images and stories from my time away in The Netherlands, a country that sounds like a novel.

Tricky Move

Had to share this cool moment teaching at Forest Park Elementary School.

This was the beginning of a move in which the ball rolled from hand to hand with a sweep around the shoulders along the way. Very cool. And just about as cool....a fourth grade student made this photograph.

Love the chance to teach and see what happens. 

Here She Goes

Heading to my first portfolio review in less than 72 hours.
Taking off, but not quite there.
Maybe I'm projecting slightly, but there's an anticipation in the shoulders here suggesting that what's expected could go either way.
I can relate to the frozen inhaled breath.
There's no sure thing, but giving into hope seems a good way to look ahead.

Here's to The Recollection.

Two for Tuesday: Boa Love

Thanksgiving day my special friend Hermione and her family came visiting. At some point I began digging in the dress ups and found some festive holiday ware. We are a twosome lost in the glam and tickle of feathers, feeling ever so fluffy and delicious. Girls will be girls, you know.

The Details

Thinking and rethinking and revising and revisiting. It's a wonderful process of discovery. You pick the place, get there, unpack your bags, walk the sidewalks, hike the trails, smell the smells, eat the food, and then discover what's underneath the first impression.

This image is a piece plucked from an edit. It may work. Not sure about that, but I do like the leg and the elbow and the left right wave of fabric.

Francis Ford Coppola said a writer should write without editorial consideration. Don't even look at the words for 30 days, he said. Just drive the highway headlights on, no rearview in sight. Write and wait. I'm extrapolating here, embellishing a tad. But still, good advice. Coppola also said something I agreed with so much, I grabbed a pen to scribble it down: "Rewriting is just the middle name of writing."

Thanks to Blake and Ronnie for today and the moment that led to this discovery.