Selling the Work

 I stopped in at a local store recently and asked about displaying/selling my photography.  The woman at the counter asked if I had a portfolio on line that she could look at.  Boy, am I outta date.  So now I'm researching on-line portfolio sites to find something that works for me.  This one is pretty cool and enables slide shows with music.



I've got oodles of framed photos...now I just have to get them out there.  Wherever 'there' may be.  I've tried on-line sales but I've only put a half-hearted effort into it.

Watching American Masters last week with Mel Brooks being interviewed, it occurred to me what a unique and wonderful vision he brought to millions.  He was just a goofy guy (is) who wanted to have fun.  He decided he was going to live his life that way.  No desk or factory job for him, no sir.  Just think: if he didn't have the courage and the drive to put himself out there, we would miss the treasures he created for us:  Young Frankenstein, The Thousand Year Old Man, Blazing Saddles and the like.  His life and work inspires me to see what could be with my talents.

Self censorship is bringing me down.  I want to be uplifted.  It's a start.

Deep Down

So what did you love to do as a child?

I loved to write "books" on 8 1/2 x 11 paper folded in half and stapled.  I loved to sing and make up musicals that I could play in with my friends.  (Lights, camera, action!)  I loved playing 'make-believe' with the neighbors: we would be the cast from F-Troop or some other television show.  I loved to draw and paint.  I think it was my first grade teacher who recommended to my parents that they enroll me in a summer visual arts program at the local college.

Love the "About the Author" at the end!

I think I find blogging so satisfying because it lets me use the writer and the visual artist aspects of who I am.   Are all of us bloggers writers deep down in our souls?

The idea for this post came to be after reading today's article in Tiny Buddha.  It's a lovely site that I read daily.

Educational Models for the 21st Century

This is going to be a meaty post, if you're up for it.  It involves three 18 minute videos.  My class yesterday viewed three TED talks and discussed the ideas presented.  All three involved education of the masses (children) and suggest a very different learning paradigm than the one we all grew up with -- and technology actually really helps lead the way.  Really.  I was fascinated, truly.  And inspired.  Then again, I think it would take a bloody miracle for the educational system to catch up and make changes that would excite student learning.  What do you think?  Don't be put off by the time it takes to watch these, both gentlemen are extremely engaging and funny, despite the seriousness of the subject.  You'll be laughing your way through these.


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On Photography

print making day!

Somebody recently asked me what kind of photography I do.  I had a hard time answering that question.  What kind of photography do I do?

In the beginning I was primarily inspired by Ansel Adams, Sonya Noskowiak, Edward Weston,  Imogen Cunningham.   All members of the f.64 group. The f.64 group of photography born in San Francisco as a reaction to the Pictorialism that preceded it.  Pictorialism used a lot of soft focus, specialty lenses and props, and was a romantic view of the subject. The tenets of the f.64 movement, also known as Straight or Pure Photography, were defined as being the elimination of any "qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form." In practice f.64 photographs are characterized by lack of image manipulation, careful rendering of delicate tonalities and image details, extreme depth of field, and the refusal to use softening filters or lenses.  They also shot full-frame, no cropping, and so the eye had to get it right, compositionally, from the beginning.

When I first took photography classes I shot in black and white only.  My eye developed this way, and I saw the world in terms of a black and white translation.  When, after many years, I moved into color photography, I had to learn to see all over again.  The intimidation of learning to develop and print color kept me in black and white a long time.  Finally, a college course requirement moved me into color work.  Now, that's mostly what I do.

My shooting style is essentially spontaneous.  I know a lot of photographers who do beautiful landscape photography, plan their locations and shots meticulously and are brilliant technically, both with the camera and with editing/printing.  I am not any of those kinds of photographer.  For me,

- camera is used handheld
- photography is spontaneous
- I move around  and work the subject from multiple angles
- I pay close attention to details when composing in the viewfinder because my goal is to create images which will be printed full frame, without any cropping
- my goal is to capture the "decisive instant", the moment when disparate human and non-human elements in the scene suddenly come together to form a coherent whole

- I frequently take my camera with me during walks or when running errands, in case I see something that visually grabs my attention

- I don't (currently) have very many human subjects in my images

The question posed to me really opened up a long-dormant thought process about my photography.  It was a great question, and has got me thinking and looking at my work.  I've been pulling out images from the 1980s and seeing how different my subjects and style were back then.

I feel energized and inspired.  There is a lot to say and write about, not to mention photograph.  But I'll leave you with these quotes for now:

People don't watch enough. They think. It's not the same thing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson

Every man's work is always a portrait of himself.
Ansel Adams

To be able to really see, one must open not only one's eyes. One must above all, open one's heart.

Gaston Rébuffat, French Alpinist

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I found this posted by a friend on Facebook today. What a brilliant recitation of this Kipling poem.  The lines, 
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same" 

just blow my mind.

And then, because I was watching this clip, I found this one and oh. my. gosh.

How much light have these artists let into the world? I marvel at the human capacity for creative expression. I note how much joy these two video clips have given me today. WOOT!

Rows and Flows of Angel Hair

Gracing the cafe at the NC Museum of Art is this breathtaking piece that is quite large. It is so layered, so intricate and complex, I inspected up close to see if I could deconstruct it with my eyes. I could not. All the pieces that made the whole flow into each other. The artist can be found on the internet and his other pieces are fabulous as well. Can you imagine putting something like this together? This was made of maple saplings.

Patrick Dougherty, American, b. 1945

What We Think We See

Recently, at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, I saw this amazing piece. From a distance, it was obviously the Mona Lisa, albeit upside down.

After the Mona Lisa 2, by Devorah Sperber, American, b. 1961

I ventured a closer look and to my delight, I found the 'painting' was actually made up of spools of thread, cotton thread,

suspended on chains.  My eyes were transfixed on the color variations of thread.  I stayed close for awhile just contemplating as many individual spools as I could.  Then, I turned to walk away and was confronted by a viewing ball on a stand, begging me to take a look.

Spectacular.

Tomorrow I'll share another one of my favorite pieces from this museum.  It, too, blew my mind and required careful and deep contemplation.  Fun.

Wordless Wednesday

Serious artists at Chalk it Up!

More Life in The City

 Remember how excited I was when I first moved to mid-town Sac?  Well, the fun continues and this weekend it was a three-day fund-raiser for arts programs in city schools.  You could 'purchase' a square of sidewalk and have at it with chalk!   I've been going around the park for 3 days now watching the progress and listening to some good live music.  It was a blast.  And the Italian ices weren't bad, either.  Oh, and the $2 tacos with cilantro piled high.

This all happened in the park across the street.  Once again, the best in urban life.

Ah, The Torch Club.  I heart the TC.

First Steps

Thinking a lot about life, love, the creative process.  You know, simple, knowable things like that.

Life, and art, is all about taking risks. In comes the inspiration, out goes the first feeble attempts.  The 12 month old baby takes a few steps forward and promptly sits hard on it's tiny butt, legs simply give way.

I found this early, self-described experiment-song-in-process.  I know the song well, and the rewrites she made really did, finally, turn it into a masterpiece.  But this here, this is the undercoat.

This Is Epic II

Godspeed you Black Emperor - The Dead Flag Blues



I can't believe I forgot The Prayer Cycle, which came out several years ago.  It is beautiful, cross-cultural, haunting, tear-producing.



The story of the Prayer Cycle

Epic Songs

Where have all the epic songs gone? When I was a teenager, sitting around with friends listening to music and reading lyrics was an important piece of the 'growing up' puzzle. We'd pull those thoughts apart as we would later do in college english classes. It was a study, man. Sometimes augmented with marijuana, or peyote, or LSD. Most times not. Just the vibrancy and curiosity of our adolescent being. "Thick as a Brick" is an excellent example of what I'll call "the poet lost in the wilderness of idiots" genre. Of course, as a teen, you are always the poet, and the adults are always the idiots. But still.





Especially in the age of disco, we clung to this 'real' music, this art, this philosophical way of engaging with music. It wasn't about dressing to the nines and shakin' your booty on some crowded twinkling dance floor. Now those were the idiots.


This movie played at the 812 Cinema on Cannery Row, for ever and ever. I worked there. I knew the movie well. It was awesome. All those Celtic influences...how could I resist?










I'm sure if I asked a teenager today what their epic songs were, they could tell me. And why. What, I wonder, would the answers be?

Little Treasures

I'll let in you in on a little secret: I 'work things out' by expressing them verbally, outwardly. Hence, I blog. I photograph things, I write poems, I journal, I sketch, once upon a time I painted. And I'm married to someone who works things out very internally. I suspect I am not the only one to have married my opposite.

This expressive self has been going on for a long time: recently my parents gave me some little books I made when I was between 8 and 10 years old. I loved making little books, and this one even has a section at the end "About the Author" I dedicated the book to my family.

I was so happy to see these little books - 4 of them in all! I don't remember making them in particular, but I do remember how I loved making books. I also remember sitting on the front porch with my colored pencils, drawing my mother's blooming iris flowers. And like most children, I loved drawing horses - I rode them, I brushed and fed them, I loved them.

Little treasures that parents save; I've saved some of my daughter's work for her to see sometime. Then she, too, can wonder at the mind and spirit that expressed these things.

"Cathy" Is Leaving Us - sniff sniff

Thank gawd that awful Cathy comic strip is coming to an end. I have never liked it -- neither its drawing style nor its hackneyed stories of this dim-wit's life.

You know another strip I despise? Family Circus. What kind of nut job keep spitting out diagrams of dotted lines and B-O-O-R-I-N-G masking as cute family interludes?

In fact, these two strips have been battling it out for worst ever.

Best ever? Calvin and Hobbes, and Mutts. Apparently I'd much rather read the stories of evolved animals than the stories of banal human beings. As well I should.



This particular strip of Mutts has been on my refrigerator for years. It makes me smile every damned time.

And now, for your consideration

I'm going to send you over to my new blog, wherein I display and hopefully sell some of my images. I've had one order so far!

Cool Stuff

An artist friend on Facebook turned me on to this guy's videos. They are very cool. I get lost in them.

modul / zhestkov.com from Zhestkov on Vimeo.

The Political Scene

Between Bush's behavior at the Press Dinner (what a bastard) and the bitterness caused by the Rev. now, politics and DC seem a dark and sinister place. I can only take a bit of the national news coverage right now...I burn out fast. I'll just let my photos tell my emotional story for now.

I took these photos a few years ago while on a work visit to DC. I have only recently altered them to reflect my present mood about US politics.

Leonard Cohen - Anthem - Nature

This song breaks my heart...and uplifts it at the same time. " There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Some heartbreaking shit going on in my extended family, and the key (last night) was to bbq a steak, talk with my sister, and watch Cohen's "I'm Your Man" again.

Peace.

My Place

Once again, one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems speaks to me about present circumstances:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I am spending time with my dear L., who has always affirmed my basic goodness as a human being. I don't have to walk on my knees for this woman, nor she for me. We are who we are.

She was taken off the steroids and her mental functioning has improved greatly - turns out all the paranoia, mental hyperactivity and visual hallucinations were steriod induced. We've got her back again - for awhile anyway. She was moved to a lovely hospice facility since we lost electrical power during the storm.

I am deeply aware that the world goes on. So is she. She wants the news, she loves having the newspaper read to her. The world is still offering itself to her imagination, and she is willing to still go there and engage. It is a humbling experience to watch the body fail....Puts things into perspective and surely announces our place 'in the family of things.'

The dear woman still has a gleam in her eye when a friend walks through the door.

Good (Photos of) Plastic Bags Are Hard to Find

I challenge you to take an insightful photo of a plastic bag(s). Can you do it? Send to outofthelotus@yahoo.com at the end of October.

Photo by AB Bettencourt

Remember the kid in American Beauty who shot the ethereal video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind? The scene is simple -- a white plastic bag is caught in the wind in front of metal security doors that come down at night in front of liquor stores in tough neighborhoods. The scene is shot in slow motion. The bag goes up and down and left and right and around and around. It could be a bird, or a butterfly, or a cloud. But it's not. It's a piece of litter on a dirty street. And as such it's a metaphor that even in the toughest place, and perhaps most often in tough places, beauty happens. And do you know, some say that use of plastic bags is environmentally preferable to paper? Others say both paper and plastic harm the environment and animals, and encourage us to wean off both ways of transporting groceries, etc.

Have you ever found the beauty in a plastic bag? Or the indignity of plastic bags in the natural environment? Can you capture the sadness that wells up when you view the flotsam and jetsam of human debris? Robin Andrea and Roger began a lovely series wherein they invited folks to submit photos of the natural world around them. This plastic bag idea is the other side of the Good Planets coin.

I have discovered that photos of plastic bags are abundant: There are 15,513 photos of plastic bags on Flickr.com. In order to keep your vision fresh, I encourage you not to look at them if you want to embark on this project.

I’ll compile submissions for a late October post. Charge yer camera batteries…ready, set, go…!