Tag: art

driving in the driving rain

Yet another day with few moments of downtime. I got home not too long ago from a round-trip drive to southern Vermont to return daughter and friend to school. I brought my mom along for the ride, since she hadn’t seen the school yet. I knew it would be largely dark by the time we arrived at the school, but what I hadn’t anticipated (due to failure to really check my weather app) was that it was going to be very rainy. And foggy. Whereas we did get to see a bit of Brattleboro before dark and the heavy rain fell, there was not a lot of visibility thereafter.

I think this mural is pretty recent. I don’t know why I hadn’t particularly noticed it before, even though it’s right across from the lot where I usually park.
We stopped in to a gallery, where we enjoyed artwork by Vermont artists and artisans. I was quite taken by the still lifes by Julie Baker Albright. In particular the lower one in this image featuring turnips. (Perhaps I do have a thing for root vegetables.)
We also got some coffee at a little independent coffee house. I appreciated the flower in the foam of my soy latte. (I also appreciated having the caffeine in me for the drive home.)

After dropping off daughter and friend at the school, I evaluated the drive home. Usually I take a route up that involves some steep winding roads that take me out of cell phone range. I was considering taking the Pike home instead, which is a longer but straighter route. But then upon seeing the traffic on my map app, I thought I’d try a third option. While not so steep and winding, it was still exhausting with the rain and fog and barely visible road lines. And tailgating drivers. Did I mention that it was exhausting?

I opted not to get stuck in the traffic on the Pike.

Tomorrow will be another busy day. Heading into Boston to see a talk by a friend/colleague about recent changes in pronoun use. My mom will be joining me, and I’m looking forward to the excursion. (But also wishing I had a day of down time in between.)

Sitting still (for a bit)

Once again, I forgot to post yesterday. It was a long day of activity, ending with a trip up to Maryland for a visit to a close friend from high school. I fly back home tomorrow. After several days of lots and lots of walking, it was nice to have a day mostly sitting around today. On that note, here is a photo I took yesterday of some people sitting around on benches in the Hirshhorn museum sculpture garden in DC.

Ceci n’est pas une peep.

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Ceci n’est pas une peep.

Or, perhaps, the Treachery of Marshmallows. (After Magritte’s Treachery of Images, in case you don’t recognize it.) ceci-nest-pas-une-peep

A few years ago I had a sudden inspiration to create this image, by posing a Peep on a piece of card stock, and writing with a brown Sharpie.  A few weeks ago (though it also feels like years), in a fit of stress-induced work avoidance, I decided to revive and revamp the design. I cleaned it up a bit to make it into an image I could put on a t-shirt in time for Peep season.

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In case you need more surrealist t-shirts in your life, too, you can find it on TeePublic. (I ordered one for myself, and it came at least a week ago. But I haven’t washed it yet, and almost forgot about it. What with life taking on its own surreal quality.)

posing and perching

When I travel, I enjoy admiring public works of art, and have many pictures of statues in my photo library. I am also often amused at the way that pigeons will adorn the statuary, especially in parks. Here are a few photos from our 2017 visit to New York City of  a few statues at an entrance to Central Park.

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I actually have accumulated a collection of photos over the years of statues with birds on their heads. But putting together a retrospective is beyond my capabilities for tonight.

chocolandscapes

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I’m sure anyone who regularly eats chococolate has had the disappointing exerience of having some that was exposed to heat before you had a chance to eat it. You eagerly open the package, and find that instead of a silky smooth and evenly dark brown surface, you have a blotchy discolored mass. Even more disappointingly, the texture of the chocolate is usually a bit changed, and not for the better.

I recently had several such moments, but instead of unadulterated disappointment, my disappointment was tempered by surprise and admiration. Somehow, my chocolate had transformed itself into little canvases, with fascinating abstract landscapes.

I ate them anyhow. After taking a few photos.

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What do you see in these? In the first one (shown once cropped, and once in a hand), several people saw a winter scene.

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What else do you see? I mean, aside from chocolate?

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Somehow, I have made it to day 29 of (almost) daily blogging.

concrete composition

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In spite of the many hours I spent working on it over the last couple of days, the abstract I was working on last night failed to completely materialize. I did make substantial progress in bringing about the substance of the study, but my co-author was not available for the final push before the submission window closed.

The good news is that the project is much more substantive, and I was able to scare up some concrete data that will move us forward.

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And on the theme of concrete, since that’s the way my mind works, I figured I would share these photos of some concrete art. The installation pictured was one I saw at Heritage Gardens and Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts back in June. I really wish I could remember and/or find the name of the artist and the piece (or pieces?) because I found the installation quite enjoyable. What looks from afar like a field of gray rocks, upon closer examination turns out to be varied little concrete forms, created by pouring wet concrete into little cloth bags. The resulting abstract figures have a lot of character.

 

When in doubt, post a trout

 

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A fish sculpture in Paris. 2007.

When it gets late, and it gets tired, I typically find I don’t have the energy to do actual writing. All too often, this is what motivates me to post photos. Not to say that I don’t often have photos that I want to share, but posting photos over text has been my default when I’m tired.

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The Majestic Cod of the Massachusetts State House, Boston. 2016.

And then I try to come up with a catchy title. But sometimes, a catchy title catches me. And makes me laugh a little inside. And makes me hunt down (or in this case, go fishing for) appropriate content to go with it. When in doubt, post a trout.

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A gleeful boy taking a grouchy fish for a joyride. As seen on a bridge in Paris. 2007.

And so it was that I remembered that I have quite a few fish photos. Even more specifically, I have a bunch of photos of fish statues and sculptures, taken over quite a long period of time, and in quite a few different locations. (I was sorry to not find any fish sculptures in my photos from Asia, so it looks like I have only 2 continents represented. Unless you want to consider this startlingly shiny gold fish furniture from my hotel in Shanghai.

 

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A shark shack in small town near Dublin, Ireland. 2014.

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A surprised looking fish in Boston. Probably not a trout. 2016.

But I have a terrible confession to make: while I may have lots of photos of fish, I really don’t know whether there is a trout among them.

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A deranged looking fish in London. Almost certainly not a trout. 2005.

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A fish bone sculpture from the DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts. 2012

So, what say you? Can you find a trout among today’s catch?

rust blossoms

I’ve said before that I love the patterns produced by rust and weathered paint. The bold compositions produced by the elements working away at metal surfaces covered in their flimsy dressing of paint can rival those of some of the most venerated abstract expressionists. These canvases, however, are not so much the kind you find in museums, but rather on dumpsters, storage containers, parking lot barriers and such. Here are several examples of compositions of rust and weathered pain that caught my eye, several for producing patterns that were almost floral in appearance. (I realize that what these also look like are inkblots. What do you see in the pictures?)


The base of a lamp post in a parking lot in Providence, RI.


This was in Dublin. I think it was some sort of a garage door.


A parking lot barrier post in New York.


A parking lot post of some sort. In Massachusetts.


Some sort of wall at the Völklingen Ironworks, in Germany.

wet windshield impressionism

In a variation of my recurring theme of fall leaves in the rain I offer you photos of fall leaves taken through the rain. In this case, through a rainy windshield. We went apple picking today, and while it mostly did not rain, there were a few minutes at the end when the rain came down in bucketloads.

Happily for me, the rain happpened to fall most heavily while I was sitting parked in my car, facing some beautiful fall foliage. I always enjoy looking at the patterns formed by rain on the glass, and the view of the pretty fall colors did not disappoint.

In fact, the distortion of the view made the trees look like they were painted in thick, blobby brushstrokes, reminding me of an impressionist painting. But much wetter.