Two for Tuesday: Enough

Found these two snuggling by a driveway up on top of a very steep San Francisco street.  Pure loveliness and grace.

Doors, Floors and other Objects

Pulling together mini portfolios for a couple of gallery owners. We're both interested in each other and I hope we start dating soon. For now, the courtship is fun and I'm loving the chance to assemble heaps of work into units, categories, relationships that build and, hopefully, begin creating meaning.

I remember when I created the show, Wait and See. I did more than a dozen portraits and interviews with people who had experienced expectancy, the knowing act of waiting for an anticipated event or result. All these people. So many faces - a scientist, a minister, a dying woman, a pregnant one, and a man wrongly imprisoned for nineteen years.

I finished that body of work and realized that many of my object images and landscapes, the doorknobs and the fog, fit perfectly with the show's theme. On some level, I'd been working on the series long before I gave it a title and declared a direction. David Hockney speaks well about the way work leads the way. Make enough, he says, and you'll see the trail, the signs will be clear, the direction known.

What about the issue of  color vs. black and white in these doors?  The gallerists I'm hoping to date are serious about their black and white.

Two for Tuesday: Ready for the Road

Meet Will and James Mason. Don't the grandpa and grandson make a dashing twosome with their alternating cherry reds and Carolina blues and those seriously glam straw hats. I saw them crossing Coliseum Road, a six lane beast of concrete where everyone drives at high speeds and pushes across town, streaming with purpose, moving east to west and west to east.

It was in the middle of all that mess that I spotted them happily idling. They waited it out on the little island turn lane. Calm and collected. Looking anything but disabled. They wanted to get somewhere, specifically to the Ford dealership, which is where I ran to catch them.

The moment I spotted this twosome, I pulled the car over and parked. The duo had balls, crossing that wooly street, acting like it was a quiet country road, no big whoop.

Don't they look so connected and Hollywood confident. Check out the easy way their bodies merge and mold together. Their legs alone tell a story.  And their faces, the way they looked out from underneath their brimmed straw hats, each with his lips pressed together in mild curiosity, suggest a familial look of je ne c'est pas.

So glad I met this pair. The Masons definitely opened up my somewhat limited ideas about what's possible.

Landscape

I found this horizontal ode to water, grass, mud, and paint while exploring an abandoned house this weekend. There was a lot of beauty to be found in the swampy messy morning that followed a night of drenching rains.

I think I got about 17 bug bites making this one photograph, but every one seemed worth it.

Two for Tuesday: Mischief Making

It's hard to resist saying double trouble when remembering this twosome floating on the ocean's shore together. They captivated me last summer as I sat on my beach chair, pretending to read.

I loved the boys with the 1950s crewcuts and meaty shoulders. They reminded me of my brother when he was young. Together they splashed and hit each other and wrestled and created antics proving that play is indeed where all creativity resides.

The twins' parents, however, had had enough. The reprimands came one after the other, muted by the ocean winds and ignored by the pugnacious boys with a hundred games up their sleeves.

Ultimately, the boy with the look of surprise - mouth in uh-oh mode, eyes fixed on the authorities - was grabbed by the arm, pulled from the water, and made to sit beside his irritated mom.

A duo separated is like a piano in an empty room.

Open Canvas

This beat up van caught my eye because of it's deKoonig doorhandle. What a story. An invitation. Life in every dot and swirl and dent.

Two for Tuesday: A Given

Up and down, his and hers, this and that, north and south, salt and pepper. Certain archetypal, inseparable twosomes are givens. But not so many are as cute as this tiny twosome, these friends pressed together close and familiar, buddy buddy, standing square-shouldered on the table.

I could wax philosophical about the duality of life and how the churning of bright and dark floods my spirit on a daily basis, but, gosh, these metal-capped miniatures cry out for simple thoughts.

A sprinkle of salt, a shake of pepper.

That's it.

And it makes me happy remembering the day these glass chums caught my eye. It was years ago at Boston's Contemporary Art Museum when I spotted them standing trim and tidy on a cafe table, ready for lunch hour to begin. They looked artful, their spouts harmonizing with the oval holes of the orange chair behind them, nearly as smart and graphic as the Shepard Fairey show I'd gone to see.

Knowing Enough

Loving where I am is what I've been trying to do in a more wide awake and deliberate way. About a year ago, I started exploring the dilapidated South. It's a great part of where I live. I enjoy the beauty of the worn out, the abandoned, the discards such as this numberless rusted thermometer.

Fortunately I live with a man who is happy to press on the brakes and pull off the side of the road at a moments notice. It comes in handy, that's for sure. Yesterday we peeled off somewhere near Stuart, Virginia on a day that was, as you see, as hot as Hades. The red line of heat stretches nearly to the top. One more inch and we would officially be in hell.

The simple thermometer is a mess but it's still keeping track, and that's more than any of our current digital devices could probably manage under these conditions and after so long a time.

I recently read a wonderful definition of visual literacy by a photog and scholar named Christopher James. Visual literacy is the ability to see. More specifically, it is the capacity to interpret, associate, and communicate signs, symbols, codes, signals, metaphors, and marks.

It's possible to know a lot, know enough certainly, without even a word or number. And, really, it's no wonder given the signs, symbols, codes, signals, metaphors, and marks everywhere we look.

Two for Tuesday: Making Faces

Saw this dynamic duo dance last night at Duke. Monica Bill Barnes, the one with the black scarf and squiggly lips, choreographed a riveting duet that she danced in with Anna Bass, the lady with the big mouth. They danced like mad to Tina Tuner's soaring live version of Proud Mary. It's a song that warms up super slow and then burns for about ten juicy minutes.

They walked onto stage wearing sequined dresses and gray sneakers. Their silliness and eyebrows catapulted me into a happy state. Go for it, ladies. Knock yourselves out. Be elegant. Be a goofball. Be whatever Proud Mary wants you to be.

Their dance included long riffs of synchronized dancing, dazzling foot work and hand gestures all done at precisely the same time. Duets always involve tuning into the others' timing. But this couple's performance dazzled with intricate unity. The Monica/Anna duo mirrored with a thousand little split-second moves that clung to the music like a tight dress.

Monica and Anna'd get jamming, moving hard to Tina's voice and when suddenly they'd make a riotous face at each other or the audience. They'd flash an exaggerated look of surprise or love, uh-oh or ecstasy. There's a little whiff of circus performance wafting around this Tuesday's twosome.

During the post-performance Q 'n A, I asked Monica what it's like working as a twosome? How are duets different from solos? Her answer was very non-technical.

I danced solo for five years, she said. I was all I could afford.
I was so relieved to have someone else on stage. Anna and I have danced for ten years together. We have a movement, information that we understand together. 
There's a sense of not being alone in performance. I'm less lonely and vulnerable. It's more assuring to have the duet to work with.


Later I ran up to the foot of the stage with my shaky hands and phone and asked for a photograph.  I asked them to make one of their faces and they slid right into this pose.