BirchLane.net

June 2005

Tuesday 28

Sick Day. When I woke this morning, my stomach was in a knot. It was raining. I called the studio and said I could not come in today. Much later in the day, my mind started wandering, but first this photo:

My mind wandered around the world; in a few short years Danielle will be out of school and Daryl will be in school and I wondered about moving some place near water.

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.

-Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
 

Mark Edward Harris

Jack Guy

 

Monday 27

Life is Unpredictable. Little did the three of us know when we had our dinner together a few short months ago, that their friend, Paul Winchell, would soon pass away.

February 2005, Studio 19

I read this today in the letters section at The Painter's Keys:

"The nine areas of creative thinking must be working together to allow full expression and a positive creative experience. First, we must have divergent thinking, this is a willingness to freely associate and let your mind go off on interesting tangents. Second, we need to process the idea while relating it subjectively to ourselves. Third, a return to the naiveté, a willingness to take a fresh look or perspective. Fourth, we need to be risk takers. Fifth, we need to integrate our technical skills with originality. Sixth, we need to allow ourselves autonomy from peer standards and be prepared to deviate from accepted norms. Seventh, we must be willing to resist being too critical of ourselves while trying to be creative (my personal demon). Eighth, the pursuit of the right medium, a willingness to search for our personal creative channels. Ninth and last, a distinct style, allowing oneself to be unusual, to develop a unique voice." ~A Mind At A Time, Dr. Mel Levine

Hirotaka Kasuga

Sunday 26

Ibby and Abby. When I woke this morning, I read at a friend's online journal:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11

A fitting verse this morning; I woke in a rather peculiar and weakened physical state--maybe it was the consumption of the house specialty  last night at Corrine's party; Jello Shots. I had never had them before and they seemed harmless--wrong. And this state of being was not all physical, I felt spiritually depleted off-and-on last night; I had moments of feeling sad and lonely watching the fireworks alone among the thousands of people.

These feelings of sadness and loneliness did not first burst upon me at the fireworks; they had flared up earlier on my walk to Corrine's party. As I walked toward Corrine's apartment, I found myself getting deeper and deeper lost in thought. Usually a scent brings a memory forward; tonight, it was simply the act of walking alone. And I wondered if it was the throngs of people; parents, partners, lovers, teens, children--two by two and four by four. I became preoccupied suddenly with reaching my destination and I quickened my pace. Perhaps it was because of this heightened state of awareness that I became preoccupied with the dates on the fence beside me. It was then in my mind an old black-and-white movie played--slowly. 1952. 1970. 1974. 1976. 1986. 1999. 2001. 2003. 2004.

"It's all good," said the young man who I photographed at the studio yesterday. "It's all good." And when I arrived at Corrine's apartment, it was all good and the approaching dark clouds I saw earlier lifted and disappeared and Corrine said, "Bruce!" She was carrying two trays of jello shots and insisted that I take a few, which I did; one red and one blue--this was our town's 4th of July celebration. There were hotdogs and hamburgers, potato salad and macaroni salad, and a cooler of beer. A few photographers from the studio were there as well as her neighbors.

Winter is her name. Her parents arrived in an old VW bus, which reminded me of the trip I took out west with Beth many years ago, long before marriage and children.

A great joy of the evening at Corrine's was being with children. Divorce brings many changes to a life and one big change is the absence of children. And although Daryl and Danielle are young adults, and getting on with their lives in a ways that are brilliantly positive, I think it is the memory of innocence which fades more dramatically; I have few photos of them as children and again I think back to my walk along "the fence of years."

And at the party we missed Ibby and Abby.

DianeAckerman

Saturday 25

OH!  I saw the painting below late last night at Artdaily and was entranced by its flowing line, color, beauty. I am unfamiliar with the artist but he was apparently influenced by the work of Hiroshige (more here)

John D. Graham, Blue Bay, 1927. oil on canvas. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

East Meets West: Hiroshige at The Phillips Collection will present the exquisite Tokaido Road landscape series by Japanese master printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), who dominated popular art in Japan for decades and inspired many 19th- and early 20th-century Western artists. On view June 25 through September 4, “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” series (Hoeido edition) will be displayed along with works from the museum’s permanent collection by European and American artists influenced by Hiroshige, including Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Maurice Prendergast, John Twachtman, Oskar Kokoschka, Morris Graves, and Milton Avery. To be shown in its entirety, this poetic and world-renowned set of 55 woodblock prints was the first of Hiroshige’s picture sets about the Tokaido Road and the one that catapulted him to fame in his native Japan. The famous series depicts stops along the fabled Tokaido Road, the Eastern Coast highway linking Edo—present-day Tokyo—with the imperial city of Kyoto. In the 19th century, the nearly 300-mile road was dotted with inns, teahouses, and souvenir shops and had become associated with the “floating world” of travel and the pursuit of transient pleasure. Depictions of the Tokaido prior to Hiroshige focused on people engaged in familiar activities with conventional landscape views relegated to background scenery. Hiroshige revolutionized the approach to these scenes by showing the lyricism of the landscape as the true subject. For the first time, the whole range of Japan’s scenic beauty was depicted, emphasizing the changing aspects of nature—the effects of time of day, weather, and the seasons—rather than merely recording topography. “Hiroshige was the first Japanese artist to express the humor of travel,” said exhibition curator Susan Behrends Frank, assistant curator at the Phillips. “His prints include amusing and fanciful distortions and exaggerations of the people depicted, as well as of the landscape itself.” About the artist- Hiroshige, the son of a fire warden with the family name of Ando, was born into the samurai class in Edo in 1797. Orphaned at age 12, two years later the young Hiroshige entered the school of Utagawa Toyohiro (1763?–1828), who was a master printmaker and painter. In 1812, Hiroshige was given the artistic name Utagawa Hiroshige, his teacher’s name and an indication of his graduation. His first print was published in 1818 and during the next decade he created traditional prints of kabuki actors, courtesans, and samurai warriors. In 1830, he turned his attention to landscapes. Interested in traveling to places famous for their beauty, he is thought to have purchased a position in the official entourage of government officials escorting the ruling shogun’s annual tribute gift of horses to the emperor in Kyoto. This official retinue traveled the Tokaido Road from Edo to Kyoto each summer. Hiroshige began his masterwork “The Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido” around 1832, with individual prints published the following year. The complete series was published as a two-volume album in 1834. Hiroshige continued to concentrate on landscapes for the next 20 years and, along with fellow ukiyo-e artist and master printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), he dominated the popular art of Japan for decades. Hiroshige created an estimated 4,500 prints by the time of his death during the cholera outbreak of 1858.

I am now reminded of the show, "Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan, The Architect's Other Passion," which I saw at The Japan Society in 2001. Wright said:

Japan and Japanese art were important to Wright throughout his professional career as an architect. When he died at the age of almost ninety-two, there were six thousand Japanese color woodcuts in his personal collection, not to mention some three hundred Chinese and Japanese ceramics, bronzes, sculptures, textiles, stencils, and carpets, and about twenty Japanese and Chinese folding screens. ......he appreciated Japanese prints as designs and collected images of enormous graphic power, whose color, composition, and linear rhythms struck him as inherently modern. He often asserted that "intrinsically the print lies at the bottom of all this so-called modernism." ......he once explained to his apprentices how he was consumed by the collector's passion to see more and more of these masterpieces, and by the artist's curiosity to learn from their secrets of design.

Friday 24

JuliaKomissaroff

PeggyWashburn

Thursday 23

Bike Ride.  This afternoon was my first off from work in three weeks; a perfect day, I thought, to get outside. I went for a long two-hour bike ride; one-half hour through hidden trails (photo above).  Came home and did a load of laundry, two-hundred sit-ups and 20 push-ups; a beginning begins somewhere.

Meditate.
Live purely. Be quiet.
Do your work with mastery.
Like the moon, come out
from behind the clouds!
Shine.

Buddha

Wednesday 22

Where Angels Fear To Tread.

Tuesday 21

Summer. It was a very long day.

Daily Words of the Buddha
June 21, 2005

One is not low because of birth
nor does birth make one holy.
Deeds alone make one low,
deeds alone make one holy.

Sutta Nipata 136

And this:

"So how does unity, oneness, step beyond itself and become the many? How can the Monad generate the other principles, other shapes, other numbers? How does the "same" produce an "other"? How does the primeval "I" generate its "Thou"? "With a mirror. It simply needs another circle identical to itself. The circle replicates a mate for itself by contemplating itself, reflecting its light, and casting its own shadow." -- Michael S. Schneider The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science

A page for Courtney here.

Monday 20

What Did She Know. And When Did She Know It.

Sunday 19 (editing sunday & saturday)

The Mandala, The Movie, and Father's Day. Danielle came over and took me out for breakfast to Treydon's here in Easthampton.

After she left and before the film crew arrived I got caught up on journal reading; I found this:

MYSELF What, younger, felt was possible, now knows is not - but still not changed enough - Walked by the sea, unchanged in memory - evening, as clouds on the far-off rim of water float, pictures of time, smoke, faintness - still the dream. I want, if older, still to know why, human, men and women are so torn, so lost, why hopes cannot find better world than this. Shelley is dead and gone, who said, "Taught them not this - to know themselves; their might could not repress the mutiny within, And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night Caught them ere evening . . ." ~Found at In A Dark Time, a favorite journal She writes: "...middle stanzas that I like best, I'm also attracted to the final quotation from Shelley, a quotation from "The Triumph Of Life," the poem Shelley was working on at his death. The recognition that this same question has preoccupied past generations adds resonance to the feelings expressed here. We realize it is the human condition to fail and to despair in that failure unless in the end we are able to truly understand ourselves and our needs."

Jordan, she was my first true love and responsible for me studying Art History and, I suppose,
for Studio 19 and Bruce Barone Fine Art Photography.  Her Dad (I think his name was Robert) was an avid art collector and it was he--and Jordan--who encouraged my new passion.

The producer arrived at 12:30 and

More photos here.

Saturday 18

(notes for sunday writing: today in the studio i shot a girl in her cheerleading outfit, a girl in an rotc uniform, and girl and a guy in saris, a girl out of a thomas eakins painting--and more; necklace)

Friday 17

____________.

I wake early and watch this.

Working with Courtney is a joy:

As a crystal reflects objects that are nearby,
So does the face reflect what is foremost in the heart.

What is more perceptive than the face? For whether the heart
Is angry or glad, it is the face that expresses it first.

-Tirukkural 71:706-707

Cig Harvey

When I loved from Birch Lane to Pleasant Street, I threw away a collection of old newspaper clippings (many Daily News front page headlines). I know this because I looked for a specific one today; the headline screamed "Headless Man Found in Topless Bar."

And my car broke down last night--in the rain, on King Street, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Thursday 16

Notes.

"Mostly, we speak to be heard and, when heard, to be answered. Language is essentially a dialogue." ~Mary Oliver

I found the following "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" at a friend's journal today:

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. 2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth. 3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there. 4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. 5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. 6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. 7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit. 8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism. 9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere. 10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead. 11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications. 12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice. 13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves. 14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort. 15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant. 16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential. 17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others. 18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world. 19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for. 20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. 21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again. 22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. 23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better. 24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it. 25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight. 26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. 27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.” 28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions. 29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent. 30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.' 31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed. 32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same. 33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment. 34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove. 35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique. 36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words. 37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it. 38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential. 39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations. 40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields. 41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves. 42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself. 43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free. Bruce Mau Design "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth"

My Senior Prom:

Wednesday 15

Life Goes On. Thursday, tomorrow, is Bloomsday. All our paths interweave.

Tuesday 14

"I love it here. I don't want to go home." A long day: on location high school senior portrait training from 7--12:30. When a student would not smile, Jackie put on a big red clown nose and surprised the person, running up to the camera position, getting on one knee and looking toward the student, and pretend to plea and pray for a smile. A short break during which our "boss" bought us all ice cream. Back at 2:30 and shot till 10:00. One of the things that makes the sittings so rewarding is when--in this case a young women; track team captain and cello player; personality plus--exclaims to us, "I love it here. I don't want to go home."

Note: standing for these long period of times is a constant reminder of how out-of-shape I am. And I need new shoes/sneakers.

Last June:

Monday 13

Treasure Hunt. When I arrived at work today we were all teamed with a partner. My partner was Jackie. We were told we were going to have a Treasure Hunt. A Photo Treasure Hunt. Each team had one hour to shoot:

Person outside not in shade will fill flash both 3/4 length and full length Person in shade with fill flash Person outside with the reflector A group of four people Person in the building entrance using only available light Person sitting in chair inside Person sitting in chair outside Person with their car Person on stair case Group of 2 people outside Person with one prop in their hands Classic pose number 4

What matters, we learn: lighting and composition are key.

Sunday 12

Alternative Income. Tomorrow I start working (shooting) six days a week. Sundays off. But I still need to find some other sources of income. LULU is an option as so many people have said they want to purchase a book of photos of Courtney, and a book of New York City (@1970s/80s; Times Square) photos, and a book of New York City porn theatres, and a book of nature photos. I also MUST get back to Art Deadline and apply to art competitions/exhibitions. "The Drop" for example. And Courtney and I have another idea for a series.

Inspired by the cult classic movie "Carnival of Souls," we plan to go to an abandoned fairground and shoot.

In 1965 Life magazine featured on its cover Balanchine and Ms. Farrell as the Don and Dulcinea. Inside he stated his credo: "Woman is the goddess, the poetess, the muse. That is why I have a company of beautiful girl dancers. I believe that the same is true of life, that everything a man does he does for his ideal woman. You live only one life, and you believe in something, and I believe in a little thing like that." This "little thing like that" spawned the greatest body of work in classical dance history. ~"Because Mr. B. Told Me So,"  The New York Times, 6/12/05, Toni Bentley

And maybe a book of new portraits:

Donovan

Elina Brotherus

A friend writes in his journal today:

I also like the story of a contemporary woman, Lisa Wagner. She finished college with a teaching degree from Emporia State in Kansas. Her goal, though, was to be a professional actress, despite the fact that Emporia, Kansas is a mile or two off the great ways of such things. She did not "end up" in Los Angeles, trying out for soap commercials and grade Z specials, though. She instead went to Chicago, and co-founded a group called the Still Point Theatre Collective. Now she tours the country with one woman plays, such as "Haunted by God", about the Catholic Worker "radical" Dorothy Day, or a play about Jean Donovan, a religious worker murdered in El Salvador. Rather than a doctrinaire dogmatist, she hunts for the intersection of the spiritual in the broad culture in her writing and performing. I don't know her from Eve, but I like the idea of someone who builds something and takes it on the road herself. I also like that various net locations specify her needs--a fairly modest fee, round-trip travel, a half-workable place to perform, and oh, yes, let's see, she's a vegetarian. Apparently, she does not specify which M & Ms must be in the post-show candy dish, and her goal is to perform her work as many places as she can. I like to remind myself that so many things are built from the grass roots, from the ground up. I like to imagine how I could build things like that myself.

Me, too.

It is not yet six o'clock. The sky is a fish-scale gray. It is raining. Hard. At last. And there is thunder, too. And lightning. It had been hazy, hot and humid all day and earlier I packed my camera equipment and a book and left the studio for a hike but soon returned; it was too damn humid--I felt rather lethargic. I worked on some photos. Studied a few museum/gallery photo competitions. And I read.

Saturday 11

Becoming.  Better.

I returned from work this afternoon to learn that my poet-friend, Lorinda, who was coming from Eastern Massachusetts to see my show would be unable to attend due to car problems (Note to Lorinda: this is not a blog; it is a journal). There was soon a knock on the door and there was Melissa, somewhat the centerpiece of my show. I had been trying to contact her for the past few months to invite her to the opening but my e-mails were always returned; it was quite a joyful surprise to open the door and see her standing in the hallway. She was on break from work and said she had stopped by a few times but I was not at home. We talked about what we had been doing for the past few months. She recommended the book, "Zen of Seeing."

Ellen at her opening. GalleryTk, Northampton, MA.

A favorite artist who works in a studio here in Eastworks, Kathleen Treska, talked with me early Friday night about her paintings for a short independent film.

In the closest in a  box I found two old photos of Dennis and me. They were taken by Cindy Deubel when the three of us were students at Manhattanville College. And I felt a sense of sadness. What happened to those boys, those brothers, in the photo? Thirty years later they hardly speak to each other and rarely see each other. I need to find the answer to this. When we were children we spent every weekend with relatives and their friends. What happened to this tradition? I remember very clearly spending many nights at my Aunt Mary's; people partying and playing horseshoes. We live so close and except for what seemed like an obligatory invite one time every summer, that was all we saw of each other except for an occasionally holiday get-together. It feels tragic to me. Indicative of many unfortunate changes.

Meanwhile, a friend sends me this:

We survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the LAW ! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

Studio 19 Photos

Friday 10

Old MacDonald. I woke up this morning singing:

Old MacDonald had a farm,
Ee i ee i oh!
And on his farm he had some chicks,
Ee i ee i oh!
With a cluck-cluck here,
And a cluck-cluck there
Here a cluck, there a cluck,
Everywhere a cluck-cluck
Old MacDonald had a farm
Ee i ee i oh!

Old MacDonald had a farm,
Ee i ee i oh!
And on his farm he had some cows,
Ee i ee i oh!
With a moo-moo here,
And a moo-moo there
Here a moo, there a moo,
Everywhere a moo-moo
Old MacDonald had a farm,
Ee i ee i oh!

Old MacDonald had a farm,
Ee i ee i oh!
And on his farm he had some pigs,
Ee i ee i oh!
With an oink-oink here,
And an oink-oink there
Here an oink, there an oink,
Everywhere an oink-oink
Old MacDonald had a farm
Ee i ee i oh!

There was a children's book (I miss having these books in my presence.) I would read to Danielle and Daryl. "Old MacDonald" was in it and I can dreamily see the beautiful colorful drawing illustrating the song. There were dogs, too--and cats, geese, horses. I need to find this book.

Sandra Kantanen: Black Landscapes. More.

Read today:

A BOAT ABOUT A POEM

All the men I've ever loved are living
with me suddenly. This one has your mouth,
lush drag of lip, that one your olive skin.
And this your sidelong look, and that
your throat, your laugh, your hand.
And you--deep V of hair, light
crises of your eyes, the way
you settle me.

The rain racks barricades
around the house.
It nails us in. We're soldiers
at a border post,
cradled in air, in metal, in leaf.
It's raining inside too, cascading
down the steps of stairs.
I rain. So do you.

There's nothing to do.
I strap and unstrap my shoes.
Fill up the sinks and empty them,
shower, wash the clothes.
I know nothing about boats,
their congress with the sea and wind.
Nothing about taut line.
Nothing of poetry.

~From Nelson & the Huruburu Bird by Mairead Byrne. Another interview here. Her Blog.

Went to an art opening for Ellen and Shari in Northampton:

And, here, again, Courtney:

Thursday 09

Patience. Like my father I am a very patient person.

Wednesday 08

Note to self. Remember to check the f-stop during a night of shooting. What I learned in a few days of shooting at the studio is that these high school seniors trust you are going to create a great photo and when I realized late today I shot a few pictures at the wrong f-stop (over-exposed) I was so mad at myself. Note: check camera settings throughout the day/night. When I got home, this:

And Danielle and Mike came over for an hour tonight which was wonderful; we sat and talked about my job, shooting weddings, Danielle's internship (sometimes she can be so funny: "I pulled a Maureen today." Maureen is her supervisor), and baseball.

Courtney:

Tuesday 07 

Senior Pictures. High School Seniors. Today I photographed high school seniors for 6 hours. It was very rewarding, fun. Each person is different but hopes you create a great image of them. Trust. I work with Courtney:

Monday 06

Dear Diary. I promise to write. I work with Jessica.

Piacer e popone
Vuol la sua stagione.
--Italian Proverb, Chap. 7, Middlemarch

I ought to continue working on this story from a few years ago:

Emma is wearing black and is sitting between two gravestones at Darlington Cemetery. To her left is Sara Lynch. To her right is Grace Stewart. I walk to her. I bend to kiss her long black hair. She pulls me down to her, laughing. I kiss her again, this time on the lips. She holds me and says, "You want to smoke a joint?" "Sure. Why not?" All day I had thought of her and tonight we are here, alone, in our favorite place, where it is quiet and dark, where we can smoke pot, drink beer, and watch the stars. "I was expecting you sooner," she says. "Where have you been?" "I was on my way first to get the beer," I say. "How do you like my dress, Bruce?" She says. "I love it." I held her hand.   I hold her hand. We lay quiet for a long time. We look at the stars. It is June. School is out. I think of this time last year when we worked together. I was a pizza delivery boy. I would pick Emma up on my way to work, drop her off in the parking lot outside the pizza store, far enough away from the door so no one would see her (I was sure we must have been breaking some law.), check in, grab a pizza, pick her up and we'd be on her way to our first delivery. It would go on like this to one, sometimes two, in the morning. She controlled the music and the drugs. Sometimes, she'd wear my pizza delivery boy hat and deliver a pizza or two. She said she like to walk up to the front door and ring the bell to see what story was happening in that house. Once, she told me, she had to deliver a pizza to four wasted adults in a hot-tub. She said they asked her to join them, but she said no. We thought that was funny so we smoked a joint before we went back to the pizza store. "Look at that," I said. "Did you see it." "See what," she said. "The shooting star," I said. "Wow." The happiest hours of my life were when we were together. Like tonight, here at the cemetery. I rolled toward her. I put my arm around her. My mouth touched her mouth. The cemetery was next to a lake where we would often go late at night for a swim; to wake up we would say. We'd run the distance, leaving the beer bottles behind, and as we approached the water, we would turn to each other, and undress. "Last one in is a rotten egg," she'd laugh.   She laughed. And together we dove into the cold, dark water. "Bruce," hold me. She rose up from the water, her black hair wet and long. I swam the ten feet to where she now stood, naked, shivering in the cold, dark water. I reached out under the water and touched her; first her thigh which was under the water, then her waist and as I touched her I rose up to meet her, climbing gently through the water toward her breasts, shoulders, mouth. We were now holding each other. I could hear her crying, softly. I could hear her above the sounds of the lake; the owl in the woods, the water washing upon the shore where are clothes now lay. I could hear her heart beating against my chest. "I want to die," she said. She had often said to me she wanted to die; and sometimes I said it to her. In someway it became a joke but tonight was different; she was different. But back at the cemetery from where we had just ran, we had joked about wanting to die and we wrote the story for the local newspaper; the headline read, "Academic and Athletic Stars Found Dead in Cemetery." She wrote: Honestly, the entire town and its good and respectable citizens was touched at the sight of the young lovers found dead in the cemetery early this morning. We grieved both for the wasted life promised to both our young stars; and we cried when we gazed upon their faces frozen in some never-ending dream of love, and youth, and beauty. "Hold me tighter," she said. "Please." "You fit against me now perfectly," I said. "What are you thinking," she said. "Nothing really," I said. "Just that I love you." I continued to hold her for five or ten more minutes until it seemed morning might soon be upon us. She stopped crying and her heart grew quiet and an overwhelming sense of peace came over us and for a few more minutes we stood holding each other in the cold, dark water swept away from the town and its people and its problems; we were for these few minutes one and motionless and I closed my eyes and listened.   I listened. I held Emma. She held me. It was late. Yet, I heard a piano. I heard Bach's Goldberg Variations. Emma's mom was a piano teacher; and a Sunday School teacher. Once, when I came to Emma's house to take her to a movie, her mom said, "Bruce, Emma is not ready; so I am going to tell you a story." I sat on the couch in their living room. "It's an 18-year-old story. It's a beautiful story. I was teaching a young girl to play the piano. I charged five dollars per hour. Can you believe it, Bruce? Today I charge twenty-five dollars. Her lessons were marvelous. One day I could tell that she was upset. I asked her what was wrong. She started to cry and said, 'this is my last lesson.' She was such a beautiful girl and an excellent student. I told her 'you just keep coming.' I was pregnant at the time. When I gave birth, she and her mother came to the hospital to visit me. Her mother said she would be happy to clean my house and help with the baby; she wanted to repay me. But a few months later the mother died. She was married and had four daughters. The father was a professor and he started drinking and beating up the children. One day when she came for her lesson, her dress was torn and she had a sprain ankle. She came to me. She moved in with me, and Emma, and got a job with the women's clothing store downtown. Soon one of her sisters moved in with me. Did Emma ever tell you about this Bruce? She was a student at Cooper Union in New York City. A gifted painter. Once the two girls had enough money saved, they moved to the lower east side and I didn't hear from them. It is now eighteen years later. They lived with me when Emma was born, Bruce, do you understand this? Emma. And you know where she is now? She lives in France with an artist. She called me a few days ago and told me that she owns a Steinway and was playing it and thought of me. She said she cried. She said she wanted to call me last year during Christmas-time but she was too embarrassed. She said "Everytime I play people ask me who my teacher was. I tell them that I had a great teacher.' She told me that she loved me, Bruce. I told her I would never forget this day. I told her Emma and I would come to France to visit her. When I hung up I was crying." "Bruce," Emma said. "What are you thinking now?" "Are you going to France?" I said.   "France," Emma said. "Oh, Bruce. Make love to me." We ran out from the reservoir to a patch of grass. The night air was moist and Emma's eyes glowed with a passionate yet sad color in the darkness of the reservoir . The reservoir from where we ran sits at the top of a small hill surrounded by thousands of pine trees planted hundreds of years ago when the first settlers came to Tilden Falls. The cemetery is down the hill across the street. We were not alone. We both knew from our town's history and our school's history class, the ground we lay on is alive with spirits which are of dreams, spirits which breathe fire, which freezes and burns, a history of good people, hard-working people, working for Tilden Falls and their families, a history of land, of death, of murder, of love, of blood which is wine, something older which echoes the voice of an invented day, as if the reservoir and the cemetery were one country, drawn by a greater compass, a prehistory without experience, before experience, before innocence, the day when seas and dry land parted, to where love starts and now the breathing seems to stop, another world is turning on, developing a life of its own, and in this region the reservoir, and the lakes, begin to lose the reflection of the heavenly bodies; the reservoir and the cemetery was very important in the life of our town. Emma put her arms around me. Then with a soft and gentle pull I came toward her lips, my mouth on her mouth; she kisses me full upon the lips, moistly, deeply, long--the kiss itself a measure of time. Her skin was still wet and her face was wet with tears. We kissed again and again and fell to the earth in the still dark air, our bodies one, she ran her hand across my back again and again; remarkable that evolutionary twist, breasts that pertain to that fossil in the museum in Tilden Falls, under the glass case, extraordinary these clues to the life of our first ancestors; the leafy universe, weapons, and food and then she kisses me again. Making love with Emma was always like the first time; the time when we cut school and spent the day at my parent's house.

Sunday 05

Today's Traffic. Today was slow but it was so hot outside; maybe people simply stayed home and stayed cool or decided to work in their gardens. I did get a commission to shoot a family portrait and I sold a painting of Kim's:

Photos at Easthampton Savings Bank.

Saturday 04

Four landscapes sold, three portraits commissioned, one wedding booked.

In today's mail:

Your portraits and photos are truly works of art and I wish I knew how you do it. I also wish I could see myself through your eyes. I always end up looking horrid on photos, so I avoid them. As an artist who paints and draws, I understand what you do, but as a person I am startled and wondrously amazed by what I see through your lens.

I work with Corrine:

Friday 03

The Opening. Success.

Cassie (she is in my exhibition), Shari, and Ellen:

The Artist's Statement/Bio.

Jody (from Treydon's), Bill (her husband), Briana (artist), Tony (her husband). Tony and Bill are business partners: cdeVision.

Rachel and Sidney.

Thursday 02

Goods News. I had a great photo session with Courtney today and also learned that a photo I took of Nava's watercolor will be on the cover of American Artist Magazine.

Wednesday 01

"I was a girl on the verge of womanhood... not an icon, not a freak."  A friend of mine, Lorna Anton, says of her brush with Diane Arbus, in a Philadelphia Inquirer story:

Lorna Anton says she's still the free spirit she was when, as a 13-year-old girl, she had her modesty compromised famously and forever. She was the subject of a Diane Arbus photograph taken at Sunshine Park, a nudist resort in Mays Landing, N.J. Anton was working her first summer job as a server in the camp's dining hall when she posed for Arbus wearing only a silver hair band and a white apron. The photograph, A Young Waitress at a Nudist Camp, N.J., 1963, has been part of a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The show ends today. The young waitress spent much of her childhood in Mays Landing and graduated from Oakcrest High School. For a few years in the early 1960s, she lived with her mother, father and younger brother year-round at Sunshine Park. The camp was more than 100 acres off Somers Point Road along the Great Egg Harbor River. Anton is 54 now and lives in Pensacola, Fla., with her husband of 29 years, Chris; their 21-year-old son, Erik; two dogs; two cats; and a tree frog that sought refuge from last year's hurricane in her bathroom and decided to stay on. Anton, who once managed a small daily newspaper in Northern California and worked for the online service CompuServe for 11 years, has led a normal life. Health problems have severely cut her mobility and ability to travel in recent years, and that was why, unlike some of Arbus' other subjects, she did not attend the retrospective. Had she been healthy, she would have "in a heartbeat." Until an article about her appeared this month in the New Yorker, the Arbus photograph was little more than a footnote in Anton's life. "Until I outed myself to the curator of the Arbus exhibit, I didn't think much about it," Anton said last week. "That I posed for a famous photo - this is the first time those words have crossed my lips." Being revealed as the nudist girl who posed for Arbus hasn't sparked a "huge onslaught of curiosity," Anton said. "It's been more like old friends from high school contacting me." Before now, perhaps the photo's biggest effect on her life was when she sold her only print to ease financial problems created by a failed business in the 1990s. She declined to say how much she got for the print. But in April, another print of the photograph sold for $138,000 at Sotheby's. She doesn't remember a lot about posing for Arbus. "I really didn't know who she was," Anton said. "It was such a brief encounter. She came in the dining room and asked if she could take my picture. I said, 'Sure.' We went outside the dining hall... and she said to put my weight on my back leg, keep my arms at my sides, and look over my right shoulder, I think it was. That was it, really." Anton, who possesses an ironic sense of humor, said that if she had "known it was going to result in an iconic image 40-some years later, I would have taken notes." She has thought about what motivated her to agree, several years later, to allow Arbus to exhibit the photograph. "My dad said, 'If you sign the form for the photo, you're going to acquire a certain notoriety,' " she recalled. "My parents made me sleep on it. The next morning, I said, 'OK, let's do it.' I felt comfortable with it. I always had an artistic bent, and this was something I could do to help an artist. So I thought, 'Cool.' " Anton speaks four languages and is a published author. She likes to design and make her own jewelry, and she considers tomes on theoretical physics and cosmology light reading. She does not see herself as a typical subject of the brilliantly creative but fatally self-destructive Arbus, who specialized in portraits of oddballs, freaks, and people on society's fringes. "I was a girl on the verge of womanhood, and I was a real person - not an icon, not a freak in an artist's collection of the strange, unusual and invalidated people...," Anton writes in her online blog. She has fond memories of her years at the park. Anton and her family were first invited there by her father's business partner and his wife. Anton was close to the couple, calling them aunt and uncle. They had a daughter about Anton's age. "There we were in the backside of a Lark station wagon," she recalled. "We were just about to turn into Sunshine Park when my mom says, 'Ed, should we tell them?' " Her mother told them that they were going to a "special place" where kids could swim and play sports, but where "people don't wear clothes." They drove a couple of miles into the park, "and there was my friend Judy in the altogether," Anton said. "Then Aunt Ethel came running out. She was a woman of some size, and things were bouncing all over the place." Once nude, Anton at first felt a "combination of embarrassment and awkwardness. I'd never seen a grown man naked. But after about an hour, the awkwardness went away, and it was natural." Back then, nudists considered shedding clothes a wholesome family activity. But even married couples were discouraged from touching each other in public while nude. "Holding hands and a quick hug were about it," Anton said. "Anything else was taboo." By the time her parents bought a trailer on the grounds, the park, which opened in 1934, had seen better days. Nudism was losing its allure, and camp memberships were declining. Sunshine Park was sold in 1965, and the "new owners opened it up to everybody, even single men, and the flavor changed," Anton said. The family moved to the Harding Lakes development in Mays Landing, and never returned to the camp or nudism. "We put our association with the park and nudism in general behind us," Anton said. The print was never displayed by Anton or her parents. At Oakcrest High School, "I wanted to be like all the other kids, not 'that girl from Sunshine Park,' " Anton said. "I just didn't bother telling people about it." Sunshine Park closed in March 1982. Some nudists continue to live on the grounds, but Hamilton Township, of which Mays Landing is a part, owns most of it. Sunshine Park may not have survived, but the girl in the photograph did. She wants people to know she has "turned out to be a woman of worth." By Rusty Pray Inquirer Staff Writer

A reminder:

"All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other thing. For things have been coordinated, and they combine to form the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one God who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, common sense in all intelligent animals, and one truth. . ."  ~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 170 AD

I will be shooting hundreds of high school senior portraits soon. This is mine:

Akif Hakan