Down Town Abbie

No drama Annie cleans up!

Geek Stuff: Found paper mâché Abbie a dozen years ago and snagged her with my Canon 40D. Lancaster County's home to a score of high-end antique outlets. Dealers and buyers come to Adamstown to  pick stuff for chi-chi city galleries. Estates from all over the northeastern slice of the U.S. consign goodies to weekly auctions. Sometimes I go to photo-bag characters like Abbie along with toys, jewels, and gee-gaws for my inventory of augments. 

Abbie's sellers boasted her resemblance to a well-known monarch. Me? I don't see it. But then, the U.S. doesn't do Royals. Regardless, it struck me that this gal'd make terrific business cards, posters, and other ad gear for a trendy business. 

Downton Abbey wasn't aimed at me, but lots of others, particularly ladies, are delighted with the TV series and movie. So  I'm thinking that Down Town Abbie'll have explosive name recognition, huh? 

Anybody wanna buy their very own franchise? 

Grab - Puerto Madryn, Argentina Duo

1. Free carousel on the Puerto Madryn, Argentina beach.

So it's possible that art's about memories? That memories are the ultimate filter? 

But memories go goofy. Lots of people, like me, rarely dream in color. Something sucks away everything but shades of grey. Which is like emotional liposuction. Hmmmm.... Invented in 1983, the prefix to the word... "lipo" comes from the Greek word "lipos" for fat.

What's it mean to surgically remove all but various shades of one color? Is only fat gone? Or has the operation become... profound? While I've got color-blind cousins, I see what I call colors. And you do the same, right? So removing all but say, B&W shades strips away...? Is it possible, in any way, to do an accurate picture of anything without some commonly accepted agreement over the identity of say red from green? Green from blue? And all of what our brain defines of every gradation resulting from any possible mixture of RG and B?

Is all black and white representation... illustration... as opposed to say, photography?

Are your non-color dreams photography or illustration? Are your conscious memories, for that matter. photographic? Or are they something else each time you take them out for review? Tried another way... Is the mere act of "remembering" a... in photographic terms... a lossy process? Like jpeg images, they suffer a loss of information each time they are compressed and recompressed, and... 

2. Free carousel on the Puerto Madryn, Argentina beach.

Of course memories are filtered through a lossy screen each time they're examined... and they have a shelf-life problem even in their storage bins. Who can argue that their images are "representational" in any sense in the face of infinite contrary evidence? At best our memories are illustrative. And to the degree that we assemble them to draw conclusions - which after all is what art does - well,,,

Note that word, "draw". We're back to sucking. Huh? To draw is to what? To represent something with tools, words, or such. Or to pull something out. I can draw blood from your vein, draw gold from its vein, or draw a conclusion. But, a conclusion from whom?

Say what? Well do these two images draw any conclusions from you? About what? Or have I drawn conclusions that I'm representing in either one or the other of these images? Representing to whom? Me? You? 

Are we each sucking on the same story vein? Does color liposuction cause us to draw... different conclusions, me with my tools, you with from your own emotional vein? 

Are either of these images illustrations of reality? Or has the lossy process of art sucked away enough of the sculptor's stone that maybe a goofy angel gets released? Sigh... 

Enough questions for a crisp November night? 

Summer + Winter - Fall

It's cold outside. 

Summer's green went memory last week and now? Winter stalks don't know they're dead when only last week sun made air green. Summer's a memory, even in summer. But winter's real... hard as a grant tablet. Even in summer, winter's hard. 

Y'know?

GEEK STUFF: That stalk shivered in front of my Canon 7D MkII. It was the day before night flash froze it. And this technique is new to me. I've rendered the image almost entirely with brushes in PSCC in an attempt to place each feeling. 

Flower pictures are hard to understand. It's so hard for an artist to deal with their form, color, line, texture... So hard to let them say anything more than the immensity of what they come to us with. Only the greatest artists can speak through flowers... can find in them a metaphorical doorway to something else. Not something more necessarily, but something other than what they scream into our brains through our eyes. 

Flowers are loud. Thoughts and feelings are subtle. It's easier to change a blinding klieg light than it is to change, bend, influence... the meaning of a flower. Flowers mute the artist.

You ever done a picture-perfect image of a flower? Shown it to someone? Hear them murmur, "How pretty. You are a good photographer." And if you've rendered it in all of its beauty, well you are a good photographer. But if all that an audience sees and feels is flower... You are not an artist. 

Art without wonder is merely craft. Flowers prove that more forcefully than any other subject except... except for babies, dogs, and Hustler centerfolds. 

Working on my Christmas Card....

Um... ChristXmas card... Sorry...

Wuddaya think? Got everything covered here? Wait... did I write Xmas? Darn... Meant to write HOLIDAY card. Now... now I gottit all fixed, huh? Suggestions? Lots of time to get it to the printer... I'm going to mail the things on April 1, that way I won't seem sectarian, y'know?