Does This Room Make Me Look Fat?

I mentioned thid Tatzu Nishi art project surrounding the Columbus statue of the eponymous Columbus Circle  in New York City with a living room in an earlier post. You could climb up to it on several flights of stairs. When you got up there Chris dominated a room with couches, a flat screen TV, bookshelves with books, some other furniture and kitschy wallpaper depicting American iconic topics such as Mickey Mouse, hot dogs and baseball. 

I like things like this that change a place into an artwork. We made a special trip to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates in Central Park. When I first read about this opportunity to climb up here with Columbus it was to end in the middle of November. They extended it and we were able to see it, but it was only extended because of the disruption caused by super storm Sandy. Life is random, isn't it? And now...it's gone again, I believe, ending last weekend.

Been There, Done That, Got the Souvenirs, got Rid of Them

I'm on a trip to New York City. I like to travel or, actually, I like to be some place else, staying in a hotel, selfishly focused only on my own pleasure. I'm not crazy about airport security although I'm pretty tolerant of the getting there aspect of travel especially if there are no delays.

There was a time when I was checking places off my list. Seeing what was supposed to be seen. Now I'm happy to return to old haunts. To be reasonably familiar with a place. To walk past the guys hawking tickets to the Empire State building or bus tours and go to a favorite restaurant. I don't need to take home a T-Shirt, refrigerator magnet or a little replica of anything. Oh...I've done that. When we downsized some of my souvenirs were given away. Don't miss them.

The photo is taken from the 4th level of Time Warner Center looking at Columbus Circle. That's the statue of Columbus in fact. He is temporarily covered with a 'living room' which is accessible to the public. It's an art project by Tatzu Nishi called "Discovering Columbus."Today we have timed tickets to look the old Italian in the eye. It will be gone soon like Christo installations and the holiday windows we are enjoying on Fifth Avenue. I like photos that are stuck in a certain time although of timeless things.

Well, that's me for today trying to do Holidailies remotely. I love the old familiar feel of this Year's portal. Cheers to Jette and Chip. Last year when we visited NYC around this time we had a breakfast meet-up with Jette who was visiting, too. That's another thing I like about travel...meet-ups, planned and unplanned. More on that tomorrow perhaps. I have to go look Chris in the eye.

That Hair, Attention Deficit and Whatever

My head has been stuffed lately. With ideas. About 'doing work.' By which I do NOT mean dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing. Rather art. Novels and photos. Ideas abound. Action is lacking. In spite of the fact that, with certain things off my plate and the fact that I'm retired...I do seem to have some nice blocks of time. I'm very lucky.

Last entry I talked about my clothes. But. Then there are other things about our appearance. Hair, for example. Note here: it sticks up in a (somewhat unpredictable, I like the word insouciant) way.

I struggled for years. With curlers and hairdressers and hair dryers. With long and short. And, finally, I have short hair ("it makes you look younger" someone said once, I never looked back). I wash every day (every time I shower) and put some gel on and let it dry naturally and if I want to later I put some dry hair goop on it to make it stick up in even more unpredictable ways. I no longer think about it. And then, in my self-portrait reflection pictures, I'm happy with it. It's me.

Our lives are charmed. I'm starting to think about writing. And making collages. Or digitally altered photos. Or collages of digitally-altered photos. But. Right Now. I need a nap. Life is good.

The Opposite of Prosopagnosia

I am fascinated by our ability to recognize ourselves and one another from the tiniest fragments. My series of photos of shop windows and what is displayed and reflected in them plays off this fascination while making abstract art of the intentional goods for sale, the street scene, the passing parade. In this shot, almost nothing of me remains. But there I am, a crown of spiky hair. And in my mind I'm quite confident it's me. My mind is, in fact, filling in the rest of the head and face.

I think one reason I take these pictures is that, in spite of my age (somewhere in the twilight or at least the late afternoon of life), I'm not sure who I am. I want to discover that I'm fat or thin (more the former), old or young (more the former as well) and whether my spiky hair is as insouciant as I hope (yes, I think so, sometimes).

Oliver Saks has a disorder called prosopagnosia. He has difficulty recognizing faces, sometimes even his own. I think I have an ability, once I know someone pretty well, to recognize not just their faces but their voices, body language, gestures from the smallest hints.

This heightened ability that I believe I have does not mean that I can describe a person accurately when they are not present. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you their hair color or eye color accurately. The ability seems somewhere beyond description and into instinct.

As to knowing myself. All one has to go on for the physical is looking at the parts of the body that one can see from the vantage point of one's head, looking in mirrors and looking at photos. (And reflections.) Mirrors (and reflections in general) reverse the image. Is this important? Not usually, I don't think.

Examining this image we have a wire chicken (although that isn't too obvious) some circle shapes and that hair. It's me. There is an, um, emptiness. But in expressing that maybe this picture is a very accurate self protrait.

For the second picture of the day, I offer a self portrait of me along with himself. Shapes and patterns abound. FFP is in profile with tip offs of glasses and nose. Certainly it's him. But my head and shoulders? Obscured by shop window clothes? It's definitely me. At least I can see it for sure. Can you?

Are these art? I don't know what you think...but they are my art. They are Multiply Appropriated Portraits and Landscapes. I've been thinking about this for a long time. See my original artist's statement and critic's comment. There are many more entries in this blog slogging through this subject. And these entries are illustrated with what I call art.

Do I have to do something more with them? Do I have to offer prints? Make physical objects (perhaps mirror-lined, reflective glass shadow boxes with prints in them or prints sliced and made into collages)? Do I do something further with them digitally? Make digital collages of them with varying opacity or animated slide shows of them? With appropriated music? The choices overwhelm. I think I'll take a nap and ponder it.

In the Abstract

I like abstract art. I like collage. I like pieces that use letters, words, portions of words, torn paper. I like this piece. Only...it's actually a photograph of a window in an abandoned store front that has had posters adhered to it then ripped away.

Still, I like it very much. It's accidental quality, curated by me with a digital camera, makes me like it more, maybe, than a painting in a gallery. Or less.

I love collage. Not every artist, of course. I've been a fan of Lance Letscher for a long time. We didn't discover him until he was famous and expensive. But we did recently acquire a piece. It's small, but that's OK because we would have had to give up some other art work if we had gotten a large one. We don't really live large any longer. Except in our heads, of course. Or reaching out into the World Wide WEB to fill our heads with news, facts, images, opinions. And we couldn't have afforded a large one anyway.

I also like Laurie Frick. She created a collage that is in the lobby of our condo. At the recent 5x7 fund raiser for Arthouse at Jones Center, I spied a couple of pieces that Laurie had donated. You aren't supposed to know the artist before buying but I identified the work by its style and, when I bought one of them and turned it over, saw I was right. (Someday we have to explore this whole thing about how we identify an artist's work, people's images, etc. again.)

I want to create collages. I sometimes make homemade greeting cards that are collages of sorts. I put them together with rubber cement which makes for easy work but fragile ephemeral results. I don't know anything about physically making collages that last. I have made some digital collages. I made one of photos I made of assemblages of stuff. I have made simple ones layering on the scanner. I have made them by manipulating ephemera on the computer. I've made them manipulating letters and words and colors and shapes and ephemera on the computer. Not that I consider any of this art, really. It's more practice looking, learning what I like free of the influence of others. It's not unlike looking at work and seeing what I like about it and learning something new about myself.

I'm constantly learning, really. What I like, how I react to art and what art work I might someday is constantly evolving. Can you be unfinished, still, in the year when you plan to apply for social security checks? I don't know if you should be, but I think I am. I think I'm growing and changing every day. And learning. And finding out what I like. Maybe that's how I cheat death until, like everyone else, I don't.

I have been trying to finish this for days. But, I looked up Laurie Frick for the hyperlink (does anyone call them hyperlinks anymore?) and ended up having to look at everything on her site, friend her on facebook and have a chat over there before I could wind up writing this. Then I look it over and I haven't really said much. So it goes. But there is the 'artwork' up top.

It's Right In Front of Me

Sometimes the answer to all your dilemmas is right there. In front of your face. Sometimes the answer is as simple as this: do your own thing, let others do theirs. That might take the form of not going along with FFP to workout at the country club and rather pretending to workout across the hall in the condo gym and really sitting here and working the Sunday NY Times magazine crossword and then blogging. It might be more complicated than that. Not trying to make others love what you love and not trying to be more than the audience for others' efforts, rather than a cheerleader and promoter. Not trying to be all things to all people, to be every place at once and to get people together who can allegedly help one another.

The head picture today was shot on South Congress at Uncommon Objects. I like it, particularly the way my face is pretty distinct except obscured by the ornate candelabra.

I was trying to work the aforementioned crossword puzzle in a printout from the Times digest (rather than in the magazine itself). There was a typo that caused puzzlement. (Or, you know, extra puzzlement.) Last week there was one also. Why always look for other people's typos? (Even if, as in this case, it interferes with your pleasure?) Mother's Day is driving me crazy as people keep saying "Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's [sic] out there." I had an e-mail the other day where an accusation on a heated topic used an adjective where and adverb belonged. For some reason, both FFP and I leapt on that. Just like we always do with something in print. Ignoring the meaning, ignoring the accusations, going for the syntax.

But I digress into my digressions. We were talking about art (were you here the last few days?) and what it represents and I mentioned we might discuss the delicious whiff of criminality that some art carries.

Today's picture has triggered my discussion above about things that are right in front of you or "as plain as the nose on your face." I was looking at how my obscured but recognizable face is an element of the 'meaning' of my 'art.' When I made an artist's statement back in 2006, I initially used a picture with the reflection of people, but absent myself. My partner in artistic pretending, SuRu, offered that the artist often makes an appearance and I added this revision. I appeared in that shot, although you have to look twice since the (non-reflected) person and shop window are so distracting. And, my face is obscured by a camera. (My jeans, hiking boots and black blazer are recognizable, though. My tramping about in other cities outfit. Paris in this case.)

What happens to obscure my face, what interferes with a pure mirror image, is important to the messages of the pieces. I love this picture because the whimsical irregular painting on the wall obscures the face. (It's reflected in the window of the sales center for the W condos, with part of the model building.) Whether obscured by folds and sparkles or partly by the camera and a pig's head or by light streaming from an opposite window, it's me. For sure. I love this one where my hubby is completely recognizable (to me) from the back with his head turned slightly.

To loop back around to the whole criminal element of these shots: I have actually been approached by a security guard at least once (at the fancy Domain shopping center) about it not being 'allowed' to take pictures of shop windows. This is the merchants, shopping mall people not wanting competitors to rip on show windows, I think. Because he said that it was OK to take pictures of people or the art work (outdoor sculpture, etc.). He really didn't know how to respond when I said I was taking a picture of myself in the window. Of course, when passersby appear, I (almost) never ask their permission. Photographers take crowd shots or details or full-on individuals. Sometimes they have permission, often not. With my shop windows, the art of them and the things they reflect may well belong to someone else. As does most everything but the sky and plants. Even domesticated animals are a 'possession' of someone else. Like graffiti artists putting their work on things, photographers and even painters take away images of things.

For all that I feel like this work is mine alone. Especially when it's stamped with an image of me, however obscure.

Art, cont.

No, you aren't getting off that easily. I'm going to keep hammering on these ideas until I bore myself silly. Which may be before you lose interest but more than likely will be well after. We like to listen to ourselves talk. We can take more of ourselves than others can tolerate. At least I can. I have just this instant decided to call this picture 'More of Me.' This reflection was shot in April at a fancy downtown apartment building. It was cropped and retouched for the header. There is me, recognizable as always. I'm looking especially, um, robust partly due to the backpack and jacket (still cool in April, sigh) and partly due to the full head-to-foot image. But it's me, three times. Really, there is no question, right?

Below is the picture again, after the crop, before the retouch. I now think I like this one better. I am definitely more recognizable but the loss of detail to the darkening above really didn't do that much harm to one's ability to identify me.
Since last I wrote I received a notice through social media that there was a show at a local gallery. The work intrigued me and I also thought how it meshed with this discussion. The work is at Big Medium and is by Jason Urban and I thought 'Wow, this idea of making pictures and then rearranging them on three-dimensional objects. Cool. I could steal that." Not really. But it is a little like my idea of printing my reflection pix and putting them in shadow boxes lined with reflective material or objects. Jason's work has that element of art that is the whole 'idea of it' that we so often see these days. Oil painters? Well, you can move beyond the medium and have an idea of it but often it's one someone else already had. (Lump up the paint, drip the paint and make friends with Peggy Guggenheim, add non-paint to the canvas, paint mostly all one color, etc.) Anyway, how much of art is the idea and how much is the execution? There's always some of both.

I promised that today we would trudge through some old reflection pictures and my comments about them. If you don't feel like linking, then stop reading now. Sometimes words without pictures are so boring.

Going back over four years, I want to call your attention to a picture replete with meaning and unintended consequences. There we are, of course, obscured and reflected (mirrors! yeah, more layers) but ourselves. I weighed eight or ten pounds more. (Don't ask how I know. The answer reveals an occasional streak of OCD.) The shop window is one at Uncommon Objects, one of my favorite places to shoot because I can rip off the fun objects they put in the window. The church across the street provides a shape and, in this case, a religious symbol, too. Pointed to by the hand of, well, of something. There are many 'frames within the frame' on this one. That is an attraction to photographers according to some words I've read from great ones. (Maybe they said amateur photographers.)

That church across from Uncommon Objects has appeared in so many shots, for so many different effects. Here is just provides a shape, cutting the corners of the photo. Here some shape and texture. Here it once again plays a church sort of straight up.

Some of the work also evokes an idea of a place that isn't Austin. In this picture there is an icon of the city I was in at the time, reflected in the distance. But somehow I like this self-portrait one at the same spot better.

Here's a shot where I intentionally (nah, probably accidentally) reflected something in the window object with my stance, hand up with camera, sort of evoking the statuary. I don't usually try to imitate the objects, but hey it's an interesting idea.

That's all for now. But after slogging through so much of my old 'work' I'm thinking of addressing this issue: why, when there is already so much writing and so many photos (a bunch of it your own), why create more? Now here is a (free idea alert) notion: a novel about a society that decided that there were enough texts and images and that no more could be created for purely artistic purposes until the collection had been adequately studied and cataloged. This would mean that texts would be limited to news stories, government documents, technical papers and that images would be purely for historical or personal identification. Naturally people would start trying to sneak the invented and inventive into the mundane. Doing art illegally. Which always makes it better somehow. Maybe tomorrow we will talk about how the whiff of crime can enhance art and how that applies to my 'work.'

More or Less Art

Today's picture (taken over on W. Sixth a couple of days ago) is not an all-time favorite. But it does represent a couple of the topics I'm flogging here.

I contend that the reverse images of FFP and I are recognizable although reflected and therefore backwards (note position of wedding ring if you take a closer look at me) and with parts obscured by objects in the shop windows (e.g. most of my face). I liked this better after I cropped it and adjusted the saturation to make us more black and white in contrast to the pink car (which was actually brighter pink in the real shot). Whenever you see those bank robber pictures in grainy security photos with caps pulled down, etc. don't you wonder how anyone would recognize them? But if you knew them well, I bet you would. Often when I'm on the tennis court I catch sight of someone on another court or walking by, not facing me, etc. I know immediately who it is from tiny clues. This line of thought makes me wonder if anyone ever appropriated those bank robber photos to make art. Wouldn't interest me, but who else is interested in my line of inquiry?

You can pluck and pick from the images in your camera, of course, taking the parts that fit your vision, the parts that give coherency to the things you are trying to say. Another person might eliminate self reflections (by the angle of the shot or in the computer). Here is an example of a another picture, taken from the same original. It could be used by an illustrator for an article about how we are running out of time to save energy. To me it's not art, but to someone else? Maybe. Also, it doesn't have the same coherency with my other 'work' as the head picture. This coherency is important in our response to art whether it's in the comfort of recognition or the upending of expectation. ('LB was in her shop window self portrait period during the early part of the 21st century.")

That's all for today, folks. Thanks for listening. Blathering on about this stuff makes me feel less adrift from the arts which I love so much. I should probably eschew active participation in this world, but because of blogs I don't have to sit on the bench. I can assert my art even to an audience of one. (Me, later.) Tomorrow maybe I'll create pointers to a gallery of old photos that illustrate some of my points. Hmm, what were those points again? Ah, yes. Layers, recognition, art and appropriation.

So Sue Me

This whole intellectual property thing is interesting, isn't it? (And, really, don't sue me. Please. I can't stand the paper waste lawsuits cause.)

Yesterday I talked about all the ownership problems with my reflection photos. Today, let's talk about an artist poet named Austin Kleon. He makes poems by redacting articles from The New York Times. He has published a book (Harper Perennial) of these poems. It's a fun book and it addresses the ownership of ideas in a couple of ways. First it's clear, of course, that the articles, word for word belong to the NY Times. But redacted to words and letters? Well, they don't really own them, do they? Second, he addresses all the accusations about his 'idea' of selecting words from newspapers for art not being 'original' by talking about similar ideas he found with research. So, go buy Austin's fun little book and enjoy some poems. Make some yourself even. He encourages that, too.

And now I'll steal his idea and talk a little bit about how that felt. Here's my first effort:This came from an NY Times obituary. If you like poems about death (or marriage and children) I would recommend using obits. I learned a couple of things doing this one. First, I was tempted to destroy it by simply blacking out every word. (Sort of the blank page poem equivalent of wadding up the paper and tossing it toward the trash can or deleting your file on the computer.) Second, I learned that although the page was full of words, I didn't want to use most of them. I found the blacking tedious at first and then sort of satisfying.

This is my second effort:
I clipped the crossword from The New York Times Digest that I receive on my computer each day. (I print the puzzle sometimes instead of doing it in the actual paper, which I also receive.)

I had worked the crossword. I wish I printed 'SANE' and 'JOVIAL' a little neater. But so it goes. I didn't get the idea to use the puzzle until after I'd been scribbling the answers in while sitting at a lunch counter eating hash browns and a sausage wrap. I didn't get any ketchup on the paper or that could have been part of the charm. I managed to sign this terse work by selecting my initials, conveniently arranged in yesterday's answer.

Is this art? Did I rip it off from Austin K.? First, yes, it is art. But, I'm thinking not great art. I didn't sense in myself the enthusiasm for the medium and the joy in the result that would make me defend it as my art. I must say I had a great time trying it out, though. You should try it. Or, you know, take a shop window reflection self portrait. It's fun to try stuff others suggest. It's much easier, in this case, to defend Austin's efforts as art. Is this just because I started with his technique? No. I simply haven't selected a technique which gives me the satisfaction of, say, collage or reflection photos. Those techniques are ripped off from practitioners aplenty, too. If you doubt this, type 'shop window reflections' into Google Images or study any modern street photographer. But I find myself expressing something with them that is deeply felt, like art is supposed to be, and unique to me, ditto. I freely admit their reductive nature. All art is reductive. Even the abstract painter uses shapes and colors that recall something else.

So what are we to think about the issues of art vs. not art and originality vs. plagiarism? I say we make what we respond to most deeply, that we look at and buy what moves us, that we listen to ourselves not the critics and, you know, wait to get sued. It's a litigious society, you know.

Exploring Creation

I've been silent in this forum for a while. Sure I've been tweeting along and commenting on facebook things and firing a picture a day into the City Daily Photo mist with my helpers. But Visible Woman is where you are supposed to keep up with me, dear readers. Few though you are, I'm supposed to write here and you are supposed to read it and confirm that I'm still here and still not crazy. Well, still here anyway.

I have written down some writing topics that I've gone over in my head, but at the moment I can't find all of that. Was it in a paper journal? A sticky note? An iPhone note? Maybe the sticky note app on one of these computers?

Well, never mind. I'm just going to start dumping out a few thoughts a day here while looking for my own notes and other inspiration.

One thing I really want to talk about is art. I've been supporting the art of others a lot lately and honing my ability to be the critic. (Read: "I know what I like. So sue me.") I've also been thinking about my own art and taking it more seriously. But, what, you ask is that? What art have you produced?

Well, if I may be so bold, this blog is my thing. Its words and pictures. The neglect I've been giving it is representative of how I think I've been neglecting my own creative juices, subsuming them to others.

Of course, I don't consider myself a great artist or writer. I can't draw or paint. My work is largely the act of appropriation with digital photography and collage. I fully understand that it isn't going up in galleries to be oohed and aahed over by the in crowd. Since anything that might be my visual art is going to begin with some derivative work, some appropriation, we are going to be covering that ground. Of course, I'll be arguing for the side that says everything is appropriated and some people try to hang on to things as theirs alone that are themselves appropriated.

My 'art?' (Maybe we should always use the quotes around it since if the artist isn't sure and confident, and I'm not, then it's certain no one else will be.) Most of it consists of quickly shot reflection pictures. Usually of shop windows, although any extra lens will do. I also dabble in digital collage. There are three ideas I'm exploring. The concept of life in layers, most unlike sharp photo portraits with simple unobtrusive backgrounds. The realization that we recognize other humans (and indeed objects) with the tiniest visual clues and yet have trouble describing people (or things) if they aren't in front of us. The notion that the appropriation that occurs in photography and collage leads to the breach of the intellectual property rights of others.

For example, today's lead-in picture. I have given it a title: "Self-Portrait, Spring 2010." However I haven't used a field of Bluebonnets with me in the middle, smiling at a time release shutter. No. I have shot my reflection in a window with fancy spring clothes that I'd never buy. The clothes were no doubt designed by someone. They are on mannequins designed by someone. In the play of layers in this reflection shot, you have a bit of me and my camera. Enough to recognize me. (At least I could do it even if I didn't remember taking the shot.) The shape of the head and hair. The stance. There are layers here. The reflection of the 'architecture' of the strip center and self storage across the street. The street itself. I chose a shot without a passing car (though I shot several versions with one). No other people are obviously reflected as often happens in these pieces. I didn't do much 'work' on this in the computer. But I sometimes do.

Is it art? Does it explore the idea of Spring? The ideas of transparency and opacity and layers? The idea of recognizing people from small cues? Does it toy with the notion of what is my work, my vision and what belongs to someone else?

Anyway, that's all for today. We will be exploring this further in the days to come unless it is like most of my projects and I run quickly out of steam.

Lost in the Swirl

I am nothing. That's not the utterance of an incredible depression. It's just that I don't identify myself as some one thing to really get rabid about it. Other people perceive that I am incredibly serious about something: tennis, downtown, walking, writing, blogging (a different thing than writing in my book), food (especially odd food), certain performing arts, travel, certain causes. But really I don't feel very focused on any of these things. Perhaps that's just fine. Perhaps, however, I should have a position to flog, a cause to support, a passion (or two). Maybe it would be satisfying.

I see people in the real or virtual world who have become experts on something, out of passion or necessity and focus a lot of their life there. Maybe they are parents addressing a specific problem their kids have. (A friend's daughter has a new blog about cooking a special diet for her autistic son, for example.) Maybe they so love an art form that they dedicate a blog to it and get a book contract and give seminars. Maybe their job is writing about technology or social goings on. (I follow a couple of guys at the local paper who've buried themselves in these activities.) Maybe they are experts at film or a certain area of technology and really spend tons of time on it, get a job in the field, etc. etc.

I don't feel like I've ever done that. I've had ideas about how, if I dedicated the time to just one thing I could do this or that wonderful project like no one else. But I don't ever do it. Now that I'm retired and living on what I made during a long, haphazard career doing what was in front of me, maybe it's OK to be entirely unfocused. Just rocking along and not making a mark. I hope so.

[Photo is a reflection in a botanical gift shop trailer at the complex of trailers on S. First including Torchy's.]

Pleasing the Public

If you had a store, what would you sell? (Here we have some of the wares recently on display at Mercury Design Studio on Second Street.)

If you wrote, would you blog, twitter, make facebook notes and updates? Would you labor quietly in your corner on the computer or in longhand on legal pads writing short stories, essays, novels? What would you give the public?

If you were a visual artist, would you make photos, collages, oil paintings, acrylics? Would you represent things realistically? Abstractly? Small works? Big? Sculpture? In what?

Would you insist that people pay to read or look? Or would you just be happy to create and give it away?

Art is a series of choices, but a lot of them, I think, seem pre-ordained to the chooser.

I've been working on a novel that I've been kicking around for a long time. Over two years. The main character is clear in my mind. However, the secondary characters are not. And I apparently can't keep up with the main character's given name. I am working on it, though, not for the public but just as a project that keeps me thinking and researching the peripheral ideas.

I am writing this blog entry, however, why? Because some people don't won't to read twitter updates, facebook comments and look at a blog that is largely about straight-up pictures of Austin. And you have to give your audience something even if it's a weak effort and even if there are very few of them. Not producing anything? Yeah, that's a choice, too. But it seems weak to me.

Contradiction

I have been on facebook more than I'd like to admit lately. Why, after all, do we need to be that in touch with friends? When we went to see "The Wrestler" and we were leaving we saw a friend who was first in line for the next show, smart phone in hand. "I knew you were here!" she said. And, indeed, I'd said I was off to see the movie a few hours before. This is what the kids have been doing for a while, starting with their voice calls "Where are you? Oh, I see you..." and ending up texting a continuous stream to one another and now, with Twitter and facebook, to everyone they know. I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I don't use the phone that much and I tend to pull back eventually from chat streams to write entire paragraphs for you to read (or ignore) at your leisure. I'm tantalized by the immediacy of things and by all these smart phones in the hands of my smart friends. But I resist as well. (I have a stupid phone. It does text messages but don't send me one. I don't know how to read it.) This is typical of my contradictory nature.

People (including FFP) have been writing notes on facebook with "Twenty-five random things about me." They are fascinating, but I haven't done one myself in spite of being "tagged." I don't take to tags or tagging others. If I inspire someone to write or comment, fine. Otherwise I'm on my own spouting nonsense, usually here. (Or, you know, one blog or the other.) These lists, though, are conduits of contradiction as people find themselves writing that they are one way but act another or desire some other path.

The above photo is a house in Old West Austin. Dramatically modern and different from its neighbors it would be patina-less but for the winter-stripped tree in the yard. I love patina, actually, but I find the house and its modern, sterile aesthetic appealing, too. We adopted a very modern look for our condo decoration albeit softened with art and books and some whimsical toys and collectibles. We left the concrete pillars and ceilings with their patina of seams, nail marks, wood grain from the forms. We used wood which has its endless swirls of grain but we have some sleek glass and chrome, too.

My personality is full of contradictions. I like to go places and see people but I'm shy and have spent a lot of effort over the years trying to get comfortable in social situations especially with strangers. Yeah, I'm the person who will invite fifty people to a party and then be exhausted, not by the effort to entertain them but by the effort to interact with them. (Of course, we won't be throwing parties for fifty in our new digs. Maybe twenty tops.)

I'm constantly yo-yoing between getting out among folks and retreating to my recluse mode.

I like to talk and I like to be listened to, but social situations still feel like work.

My love of patina extends to art where I'm a fan of abstract or the slightly fantastical realism (but nothing too fantastical, mythical or comic-like). I love collage and found object sculpture and assemblage and well, whatever you choose to call it. Mixed media. I love clean modern lines, glass and chrome. But take some paper ephemera, arrange it artistically and it grabs me. Rusty junk? Priceless.

I'm a bundle of contradiction. We all are, I guess. Collage appeals because we see ourselves in the complexity.

It Dawned On Me

That's this morning's sunrise, captured by himself, FFP.

Lots of random things occur to me (and happen to me) that don't get recorded because, in spite of having three blogs, they don't fit into a coherent (yeah, right) whole to slip in anywhere. Well, today, I'm just going to catch up with a few random threads.

I actually finished a book. Marcel Bénabou's "Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books." If anyone else finds it amusing that I managed to finish that (short) non-book (according to its author) while several other books lurk (half-finished, half-started, bought recently but not cracked open) then go on, laugh. And I'm not doing a good job of keeping up with newspapers either.

One book I bought is Diana Athill's "Somewhere Towards the End." It's about growing old, approaching death. I hope I finish it before I die. I keep thinking the title should be "Somewhere Toward the End." Yeah, I can't stop trying to edit myself or others.

That's really a problem, the constant editing. I sometimes even spend a bunch of time writing and re-writing an e-mail. Today FFP wrote a draft of an e-mail, sent it to me for editing then sent it. Sometimes editing gets in the way of writing.

Last night we went to a very hip opening of a very hip show at Arthouse at Jones Center. This British artist Matt Stokes created a film about punk rock and collected a bunch of Austin punk rock ephemera to display with it. I realized that, while I am not (and probably never will be) a punk rock fan that I loved the exhibit and the people at the opening. The film was a very santized way to experience the art of punk and art made from punk. Cool. I talked to a venture capitial biggie who is a friend of mine and told him I read his blog. He said he read mine, too. (Yikes.)

After the opening we went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. I had a glass of Pinot Noir and the very excellent carpaccio.

Today I played tennis. The cold swirling wind lessened my enjoyment and I made too many mistakes but I enjoyed it. We got out in the wind again to go to Whole Foods and buy limes, mango sorbet (some mango margaritas are in the offing), yogurt, bananas, vegetarian barbecue, hot tofu dip, green onions and a tomato. A few groceries and not so much we couldn't easily carry it home. It was cold and windy, though, and we decided that even though we had said we'd go to a cocktail party at Long Center that the sniffles would win out...we are staying in the rest of the day. And...I'm going to get some things done even if it's just read the newspapers or even a book!

Get Serious

Yeah, I won't be buying the little red dress in the shop window of Estilo on Second Street. Get serious. (And yes photographer LB does seem to be positioned, camera in face, to make a shot that I won't call by name for fear of attracting the wrong WEB searches.)

Yeah, I'll continue to wear blazers and slacks (pants suits they are quaintly called for women) and dressier tops and slacks and sweats and shorts and jeans.

I need to get serious, really, about something which is why I gave this title today. Picking the photo was just a matter of randomly picking one I took yesterday and had edited. But I need to get serious about my photography if I'm going to do it. If it's going to be shop windows with my reflection, then fine, but I need to stop using years-old point and shoots and old software (which I haven't learned that well anyway) and get fancy equipment and wait for the right lighting and I need to call it art and make an artist's statement and make quality prints and frame them in shadow boxes surrounded by found objects and mirrors and reflective things and put high price tags on them. I need to nod indulgently when people are attracted to them but repulsed by the prices. Because really, just snapping these eccentric pictures isn't a worthy endeavor without all that.

I need to get serious about organizing my space and my files and my finances. It isn't good enough to shrug my shoulders and act like I don't know WTF to do about investing my retirement funds. I need to be confident like the guys on TV who just know what stocks are beaten down to a low from which they will ascend without setback or scandal or obsolescence of their product. I need to be a serious investor who reads prospectuses and studies financial sheets. Have you ever seen a prospectus that wasn't a yawner from the get-go? And you know all those pretty people pimping the investments aren't capable of interpreting them either. This new Madoff scandal is amazing. I don't believe any of my investments are affected, but it gives you pause, huh? Yeah, I must get more serious about investment.

I need to get serious about exercise, too. There have been times when I actually kept exercise logs. Online. When I seriously thought about how much I was doing and when. Similarly, with diet. I have been known to at least write down all the junk I ate in a vain (but serious) attempt to reform.

I need to get serious about writing, too. It is not good enough to make up jokey business cards that say "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." Either take it seriously or don't do it, right?

But retirement for me just doesn't seem seroius. It is this frivolous 'becoming something soon' time like childhood. All the serious decisions are somewhere in the future when you will be smarter and more in tune with your body, feelings and talents. Maybe it is a second childhood after all. And what could be serious about that?

Hats Off to Art

We have discussed in this space how important my friend SuRu thinks it is to take your art seriously before others will do so. Hence this is an intimate reflection of the relationship of fashion in head wear, character and meaning. Or not. Big Bertha's on South Lamar provided the second lens.

While many, many others were watching a football game, all dressed in burnt orange, a color that I don't find attractive in and of itself, FFP and I went on an art gallery crawl. [FFP did have the DVR dutifully recording the game so he wasn't indifferent.]

We were lucky enough to actually hear from four artists who were being exhibited. At the Davis Gallery they were hanging patinings for an opening in the evening and all three artists were there. None had a profound explanation for their work with the most being said by Miranda Gray and that about the medium (egg tempura). They seemed more voluble when questioned individually by the tour goers. I like all the work in different ways and degrees. At D. Berman gallery the artist (Jeffrey Dell) had come to the gallery especially to talk to us. He is a teacher and printmaker and, as befits a teacher, he had lots to say. He explained the use of hair in his current work and the emergence of violence in his Venice work. He talked about how tedious printmaking can be and how he thinks that he gravitates to things that are hard. I thought, "Boy, not me!" For me, art is easy or not at all.

These tours always leave me wanting to make art, though. Not on the terms of the artists I see, but on my own terms. Yeah. Shop window pictures and blogging. Oh, I'm also interested in collage. Or shop window collages. Or blogging collages.

I left the tour early, getting a friend to pick me up in my car at the next to last stop so that we could go to a bad neighborhood and retrieve her car after the people in our building had it towed from her assigned place when some idiot who is supposed to have a different place complained to them that she was parked in the wrong spot. Long story and all part of the excellent way this building is operated. But it's improving. Really. Repeat that to myself.

In the evening we had a belly full of sports, watching the UT game's recording, some other football, the World Series.

In the Yellow

I shot FFP the other day at UT 'inside' a sculpture that invites walking into.

I was in a funk all day. It rained. I felt powerless to do anything positive in several arenas. I wanted to be excited about going to the film festival, but it didn't really feel right.

Then I had a computer problem with connecting printers on my VMware Windows. I hate it when something quits working. Particularly when it quits workig by hanging tasks all over the place. I dreaded trying to boot to fix it because I've had some issues restarting with VMware and I'm wary. So I backed up stuff all over the place so I could go back to a Snapshot and restore data. Then the restart worked and fixed the problem. It's funny how something working for a change makes one feel better. I hate that it matters that much to me, though.

We had a pretty good time this evening. We started over at the Butler Dance Education Center by going to a presentation about the ballet performance next week. There were dance demonstrations, portions of the show presented and lots of good educational stuff to help you appreciate it more. After that we walked over to the Driskill for the Film and Food benefit for the Young Film Makers Program of Austin Film Festival. They had a couple of dozen restaurants passing out great food and lots of Tito's Vodka martinis and Dos Equis Beer. We saw people we knew, met some new ones and except for it being too loud to talk here and there we had a great time. Still I was a little miffed at the computer until I got it working again the way I wanted.

I thought of two other books I didn't write (or four depending on how you count). I was going to write a book or a screenplay (or maybe a documentary) called The Nancys. And, long, long ago I was going to write a set of three novels that would have references among themselves. There would be a novelist in one who wrote a novel that would actually be one of the other novels. Stuff like that. Yes, I actually thought it was clever. I set one of these novels in a future where everything was run smoothly with technology, but some people still choose to live 'outside.' Yeah, I believe I thought that was clever and original, too.

And so it goes. I'm going to go to the film festival and the ballet in the next ten days and I'm going to see the result of other people's artistic efforts and visions. And I will continue to be 'pretending to write but really just blogging.'

When Things Aren't As They Seem

What have we here? Two iMacs? With very Windows XP appearing screens. There are also more wires in this photo than I'd like. These babies operate wirelessly just fine, but when making backups to their time machine it's faster going over a wire. I really like the wireless keyboard and mouse except that there's no number pad. For that you need a wired one. (Oh, I could have tried my USB wireless number pad I suppose but it isn't all pretty and aluminum and all.) I didn't catch it in this picture but there's a camera wire peeking around from the back of the right one. Last time I bought a digital camera I made fun of people who would buy one with a wireless feature. (Now they also have SD cards with wireless built in, I think. Seriously.) Now I'm thinking...hmmm.

I found something the Apple OS doesn't support, by the way. (Besides a bunch of software I'm just used to and could probably 'replace' with substitutes.) It's a gadget called Times Reader which brings a facsimile of The New York Times to your computer. They only have it for XP and Vista. Unfortunately, it requires .Net 3.0 Framework for XP. This software seems to have made my VMware image of XP slow to restart (after a little hiccup installing where I had to give it a boot to the head). As usual, 'a version for Macintosh users is planned.' How very quaint, spelling out Macintosh.

I love the poster in this picture, by the way. It's a reproduction, but it's a great one and beautifully framed, I think. I think it works with our color scheme for the condo. Maybe I'll keep it until we prove we can't hang it there.

The Seduction of Words

As much as I love pictures (I have a problem posting a blog entry with words alone and love to see pictures elsewhere, too), I love letters and the infinite possibility of words and sentences. Every book represents to me the times that I've felt the binding and paper on my fingers and have been thrust into another world by the squiggles on the page.

I also have a soft spot for blank paper, for the possibility of filling the pages with brilliant sketches and words.

The picture, before I continue this ramble, is from inside The Arthouse at Jones Center on Congress Avenue. They are doing a show on a collaboration between Ballet Austin, the artist Trenton Doyle Hancock and the composer Graham Reynolds called Cult of Color: Call to Color. Trenton Doyle Hancock's art is an elaborate story. He has written some of the story on the window of the museum, writing backwards on the inside. I found it very compelling. Especially taking pictures of the street through the words. I like pictures of letters and words!

I've been going through books with a vengeance. It's slow work. I look up availability of the book through online sources and what the editions and prices are. If I haven't read the book (the majority I'm afraid) I have to flip it open and read bits of it. If I feel I'd like to read it any time soon, I have trouble tossing it. If I decide to keep the book, I try to catalog it in my database and on Library Thing. I am leaving a lot of them on my database even though we are giving them away. That way the info is there should I decide I need to order a copy at a later time.

But back to blank paper. I found a box full of blank books plus a few more that were partially full of scribbles. Even though I have all these that I either bought or other people gifted me with because they know I'm a sucker for them if I see some cool ones in a store I have trouble resisting. Weird, huh? Of course the notebooks written in and the lined tablet sheets filled with doodles or notes are hard to discard. Some I've transcribed and managed to eliminate. I've even scanned a few. If I were a famous writer or artist, someone down at the Harry Ransom Center would have to carefully catalog them one day. But I'm not. Famous. Or a writer or artist. So they are just cubic feet of 'stuff' I suppose. Where am I going with all this? I'm not sure. I've been working on this entry sporadically over two days and I don't seem to know where I'm going! So I think I'll wind it up by saying that a blank book, not yet written in, is like starting life all over again.

Lost Souvenirs

First things first: If you came here yesterday looking for a post because LB was as regular as the tax man, sorry. I got busy goofing off and it's harder to displace from goofing off than from reconciling bank statements, filing, shredding, downsizing, etc. to blog.

Photo was taken while on a wander with my buddy SuRu yesterday in downtown Austin. We went to AMOA where they have a show "Twenty to Watch" which supposedly touts upcoming local artists.

SuRu was encouraging me to pursue my reflection photos as art. This entry was up on my computer, blank except for the title: "Lost Souvenirs" and when I saw this seedy souvenir shop on Congress that just keeps on keeping on, I had to get a photo to illustrate the entry. (Which I hoped to finish someday.)

As I sort through old stuff and ponder the demise of paper with my two readers (thanks FFP and Deb), I got the idea to title an entry "Lost Souvenirs." To talk about how our words and pictures from 2008 may not get preserved. First, we are getting more and more loath to save things. Second, so many things take a digital form. Third, some things just aren't as collectible any longer. Tickets to even the most expensive events are generic and ugly with bar codes for hand-held readers.

Things are getting tossed into the trash or recycling as soon as they show up these days unless they really cry out for keeping. I may find a 1994 copy of The New Yorker. But I'm much less likely to find one from 2006. Paper ephemera we might have once kept for months or years are dismissed to the paper sack for recycling post haste.

We take a lot of pictures these days. But print few. When SuRu was encouraging me to present my reflection pictures as an art form, I said "But I'm not making prints."

"Because of the cost?"

"No, because it would be more stuff. I'm going to present them as a WEB page."

However, how permanent is a WEB page under the aegis of some possibly itinerant WEB host? And if you leave the bits on your own computer or backed up on CDs or something, how permanent is that? Will there come a time when reading JPEGs will be hard because there is a newer, better format? Worse for words that are committed to MS Word...how long before the software will go beyond the format it is in?

As I promised a day or two ago, I located some stories about preserving the digital stuff. This one is about efforts at the Smithsonian. Here's a quote from it:

The problem of preserving digital archives is complex. Not only do computer hardware and software quickly become obsolete, but the durability of storage media is also limited. ''We know about paper disintegrating, but the digital world is so much more evanescent,'' Dr. Billington said.

This one talks about preserving digital works of art:

''It's certainly been a problem since the first time we decided to keep something,'' said Richard Rinehart, director of digital media at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive of the University of California. ''That's what museums do: they are society's memory banks. Digital art is different because it essentially can disappear.''

''I like to joke that digital art can last forever or for five years, whichever comes first,'' he added.

Life is fleeting. More so today than ever. I think that's why blogging suits me.