Light Study

The sun, reflected from a window across the street, then passing through a bottle of bourbon. Sunday, November 28, 2004. 12:07pm. Boylston Avenue East and Mercer Steet, Seattle, WA.

An Honor

My alma mater - Photographic Center Northwest - has chosen my photo Diving Board and Swimming Pool, Northboro, Massachusetts, 2002 (right) for inclusion in it's upcoming Photographs from the PCNW Collection show next month.

The exhibition will also include work by many other great shooters, including both legendary Magnum photographer Elliot Erwitt and Wes Pope, who made pinhole cameras out of soda cans and used them to document the people and places of Route 66.

There'll be an opening reception Friday, December 3rd from 6-8pm and the show will be on view until PCNW closes for the holidays on December 19th.

johnny divine

Stenciled street art. Mischief. New York City.
Pissing off Yankee fans. Does it get any better?

This stencil of Boston's own "Unfrozen Caveman Outfielder" Johnny Damon has been popping up more and more in NYC, causing much bellyaching on the part of Yankee faithful:

"Breaking the Curse is still no excuse for defacing public property," fumed Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

Having grown up a Baltimore Orioles fan, I can't help but laugh at the absurdity of fans whose team has won, like, I don't know, 75 of the last 80 World Series and yet can't take a little ribbing.

As for the stencil ... perfect! A stylized, eye-popping saviour in a Sox cap, illegally emblazoned across the five boroughs. Enough to flummox any fan of the impeccably groomed clods Derek Jeter, "A Rod," and the like.

Chicago, Il, 11.12.04

Spotted while on a walk from the Wrigley Building to Wrigley Field.

needs some design work

The horror continues in Washington, DC. Madmen with grand delusions of what is right for the people have seized yet another institution and corrupted it with their wretched vision. American civilization continues to decline - witness the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and it's truly awful design of the new $50 bill.

The front I can handle. Grant's swollen head and the addition of stars and stripes is forgettable. A big shrug of the shoulders and a hearty "who cares?"

But have you seen what they did to the back? The U.S. Capitol now hovers in some sort of sealed dome, while a haze permeated with randomly-placed floating numerals threatens to seep in.

At best it looks like you're peering at the Capitol through a fogged windshield, hastily wiped off with the arm of your winter coat. At worst it's only a matter of time before the bubble is breached and the bio-infection wipes out our legislative branch.

Cezanne and the Love of Color

by Stephen Dobyns

Because his wife refused to miss a dress fitting,
she missed his death instead. He painted to the last,
a portrait in profile of his gardener sitting
in a green light, with a sprawling shadow cast
on the wall behind him. His son too arrived too late,
preferring with his mother the rich life of Paris.
Then, thinking his fame wouldn't last and heavy in debt,
they quickly sold his paintings, foolishly reckless
in their acceptance of small sums. "You see," his wife
told Matisse, "Cezanne couldn't paint. He didn't have
the talent to complete his pictures." Her fear
cost her a fortune. At the very end of his life
Cezanne wrote, "Long live those who have the love
of color - true representatives of light and air."

- from Body Traffic: Poems, © Penguin Books, 1990

Stumbling Monk, Seattle, WA, 11.04.04

 

The Mess We're In

Every single night i think of how we used to be decent,
how it hasn't been recent, now look at the mess we're in.

Would you like to see the whole place in ruins
instead of all the things that they keep doing in our names?

Would you like to see the whole place a wreck
and built back as something we all might respect?

Ooh, the mess we're in ...

- lyrics from The Big Beast, found on the forthcoming LP Trials and Errors by Magnolia Electric Co.