BirchLane.net

July 2005

Sunday 31 (editing; words and images)

Ian and Ibby.

Saturday 30

Plastics. T-shirts.

For reference:

Friday 29

My moto: PIED (FEET)
Patience
Integrity
Equilibrium
Discipline
 

Thursday 28

 

Wednesday 27

Tuesday 26

Sad Story. I photographed a handsome young man today. A high school football player. Working three jobs this summer; one for his church preparing meals for shut-ins. He had a beautiful smile. He told me he did want to smile for any of the photographs. I asked him why. He said his smile made him look like his dad.  He said he didn't want to look like his dad. He said his dad abandoned him (and his younger two brothers and two sisters) and moved to Florida. "He always has an excuse why he can't see me," he said. I could have cried and I saw tears welling up in his eyes.

Monday 25

Photo Project Ideas.

1. Hot Dog Stands
2. Photos of the future
3. Photos of loneliness (slide at pool below)
4. Maxfield Parrish-inspired images

And nudes?

Sunday 24

Day Trip.

 I have been feeling rather lonely lately which seems to coincide with a sense of lethargy. This morning I decided to take a trip. With no particular destination in mind, except west, I was in my car at 10:15 driving along country roads; minutes into the drive Ernest Bloch's Barber & Walton: Violin Concertos came on the radio. I drove past this swimming hole, then quiet and without any swimmers, stopped the car and took a photograph:

My next stop was Chester-Blandford State Forest, where I hiked for a good two hours. I took a few photographs, none of which I liked, except for this one:

I continued west and stopped at Jacob's Pillow to pick up a brochure in hopes there might still be time to attend a free summer performance. Next destination: Wahconah Falls State Park. The last time I visited this park was years ago when Danielle had a softball game in Pittsfield. It was a tournament and between games a few of us spent an hour in the pool at the bottom of the falls. I plan to come back here soon and hike the falls. Today I simply rested on the rocks and dove into the chilly water.

At Wahconah Falls, I met Maya and Andrew (It was their one-year anniversary and they asked me to photograph them, which I did) who suggested I might enjoy Windsor Jambs; cascading falls that plunge through a 25-foot gorge, with 80-foot-high perpendicular granite walls rising on either side.  It was on my way home so I stopped here, too. I walked in awe. It is a magical place.

Saturday 23

Work. Nap. Read.

I Feel the Dead

I feel the dead in the cold of violets
And that great vagueness in the moon.

The earth is doomed to be a ghost,
She who rocks all death in herself.

I know I sing at the edge of silence,
I know I dance around suspension,
Possess around dispossession.

I know I pass around the mute dead
And hold within myself my own death.

But I have lost my being in so many beings,
Died my life so many times,
Kissed my ghosts so many times,
Known nothing of my acts so many times,
That death will be simply like going
From inside the house into the street

~by Sophia De Mello Breyner
November 1919--July 2004

"Sophia de Mello Breyner writes from a world of white beaches and glittering light reflecting both from the Atlantic Ocean that washes the shores of Portugal and the sea surrounding the Greek islands. Portugal and Greece: the open Atlantic, the closed Aegean – the two geographic extremes of Europe. Unified by the light and the sea wind, territory of birds, trees, and the moon, it is a world inhabited more by elements and angels and gods than by humans.… The Ancient Greek world, the past glories of the Portuguese navigators, the life and work of the great twentieth century Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa – all resonate through her poetry." ~Ruth Fainlight

Friday 22

I went to a party. (more about this later)

Thursday 21

Heaven & Nature.

 

"People with sunny natures do seem to live longer than people who are nervous wrecks: yet mankind didn't evolve out of the animal kingdom by being unduly sunny-minded. Life was fearful and phantasmagoric, supernatural and preternatural, as well as encompassing the kind of clockwork regularity of our well-governed day... it was not just our optimism but our pessimistic premonitions, our dark moments as a species, our irrational, frightful speculations, our strange mutations upon the simple theme of love, and our sleepless, obsessive inventiveness-our dread as well as our faith-that made us human beings." -Edward Hoagland, "Heaven and Nature"

Todd Essick

Wednesday 20 (editing and writing)

The Killer Sea Turtles. After a night of restless sleep and dreams I did not wish to dream, I woke to a blue sky and a green mountain range; not gray and misty as the past few days but glorious and colorful and beckoning me out of the loft toward adventure.

I should have known the red sky Tuesday night foretold a delightful Wednesday.

I arrived at D.A.R. State Forest around noon. My friend Jessica from the photography studio told me about the killer sea turtles. They ate her ducks she said. They ate her chickens. They ate her neighbors pigs and cows. This was when she lived in Maine where these kind of things happen she said. The killer sea turtles moved. She heard this from a reliable source. Maybe, I thought, they moved to D.A.R. State Forest.

I looked among the reeds

I was alone when I first arrived

Later two older couples

I dreamed that the Killer Sea Turtles were the way they were because their mom and dad abandoned them and they became the Gang of

I put my book down and dreamed tics bore down into my scalp and when I woke--in my dream--days later, five small black balloons were attached to my head.

And then a family of five and others arrived

Suddenly I felt alone, and lonely, and wondered if I found the Killer Sea Turtles

And in the shimmering shallow water I thought at last I had found them

It was 3:30 when I left and on my way home I stopped at the Williamsburg Country Store for a root bear float and I think I sat in the same seat my friend Jennifer sat and I contemplated her conversion with her daughter.

Tuesday 19

Columbus Circle. I was, I recall, on my way to The New York Coliseum to take photographs of the Hearst Magazines' Motor Boating & Sailing booth (and people) at the Boat Show. It looks like winter and the Boat Show was held, I believe, in January. I am now reminded how I would often be asked to wander the city to take photographs for either our company publication or the presidents slide show presentations, which were given at conferences around the country; I also wrote his scripts. How, I wonder, this morning, did I ever move from photography and writing to marketing and sales. Money. I wish I knew then what I know now. Yet, how my life has come full circle.

A CRISTOFORO COLOMBO GLI ITALIANI RESIDENTI IN AMERICA IRRISO PRIMA MINACCIATO DURANTE IL VIAGGIO INCATENATO DOPO SAPENDO ESSER GENEROSO QUANTO OPPRESSO DONAVA UN MONDO AL MONDO. LA GIOIA E LA GLORIA NON EBBERO MAI PIU SOLENNE GUIDO DI QUELLO CHE RISUONO IN VISTA DELLA PRIMA ISOLA AMERICANA TERRA! TERRA! NEL 12 OTTOBRE 1892 QUARTO CENTENARIO DELLA SCOPERTA D'AMERICA A IMPERITURA MEMORIA (on the other side) TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS THE ITALIANS RESIDENT IN AMERICA, SCOFFED AT BEFORE, DURING THE VOYAGE, MENACED, AFTER IT, CHAINED, AS GENEROUS AS OPPRESSED, TO THE WORLD, HE GAVE A WORLD. JOY AND GLORY NEVER UTTERED A MORE THRILLING CALL THAN THAT WHICH RESOUNDED FROM THE CONQUERED OCEAN IN SIGHT OF THE FIRST AMERICAN ISLAND LAND! LAND! ON THE XII OF OCTOBER MDCCCXCII THE FOURTH CENTENARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA IN IMPERISHABLE REMEMBRANCE

Funds to build the Columbus memorial above were donated by a group of Italian Americans through subscriptions raised by the newspaper, Il Progresso Italo-Americano.

"...Barsotti [= Carlo Barsotti (1850-1927), an immigrant who in 1880 founded Il Progresso, in time the city's largest-circulation foreign-language daily newspaper] sponsored the most spectacular of New York's monuments that celebrate the specialness of the New World. Gaetano Russo's Christopher Columbus monument in Columbus Circle, unveiled in 1892 on the 400th anniversary of the Italian explorer's discovery of America. A marble Columbus surmounts a granite column, embellished with ship's prows and anchors like a famous lost column of Augustus, on which the Roman emperor had hung the prows of the ships he defeated in the Battle of Actium in 31 b.c. ..."

The marble statue of Columbus stands on granite column (70 foot high) with bronze reliefs. The three ships depicted on the column represent the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The fountain was a gift of George T. Delacorte in 1965.

On the base, facing south (primary facade): 9-foot-tall winged boy of Carrera marble, variously called "Genius of Geography", "Genius of Columbus," or "Genius of Discovery."

A failure of imagination.

Looking out the from new new Time Warner Center building:

Previously to The Coliseum on this site:

Built 1902-1903 as "Majestic Theatre" by John H. Duncan for Pabst Brewing Company. Opened 21 Jan 1903 with the world premiere of the musical, "The Wizard of Oz". Used for musical and drama performances. 1911 renamed "Park Theatre". 1923 converted to a cinema/vaudeville theatre and re-opened as "Cosmopolitan Theatre". From 1944, again used as a musical and drama theatre. 1949-1954 used as television theatre by NBC. Demolished 1954 in favour of the New York Coliseum convention center.

Monday 18

Light and Life. In his book, Ablaze with Light and Life, photographer Lou Stoumen wrote:

What these memory movies bring to me now, and I'd hope to you, is a subtle gift: intimation of our own divinity. For if anything like God exists--and I'm open to that possibility--such power must surely manifest not in icon or theology but in works. A tree. A cloud. A fish. A cell, programmed. A million suns of which one warms us. The products of work. The process of love. A human face.

And then this:

An accretion of meaning foams on the river of time. The young woman photographed in 1937, if she still lives, now wears a less firm skin, dyed or graying hair, and a different grandmotherly beauty. Some others long ago photographed--the famous, strangers in the street, friends--no longer reflect light at all. They've become dust. That childhood picture of myself, that wide-eyed kid, he's become ancestor of the face in the mornings mirror. Who is that old man in my body?

(Aside: today I mention to someone I have a 20-year-old daughter and they say, "Oh my God, you don't look old enough to have a 20-year old daughter.")

And here is a photo from when I worked at Hearst Magazines. It is of Candie:

She was a secretary in a row of secretaries; this being the years when each executive had his own secretary. She worried about her teeth and she wore glasses. I always thought she was rather pretty and had a great smile. And where is she now--this woman long-ago photographed?

And we find this man at the corner of Broadway and 53rd. He looks at his watch with concern. Where was he going? Why? What was his story? What was in his portfolio?

Sally Gall

Sunday 17

Meditations.

In pursuit of happiness, the difficulty lies in knowing when you have caught up. ~R.H. Grenville I saw the angel in the marble and I just chiseled until I set him free. ~Michelangelo Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. ~Will Durant

I have a new friend and though she lives nearby she is simply an internet friend, which is charming and wonderful in ways both magical and mysterious. Every time she writes in her journal (now only a few weeks old) I learn more about her. And I feel inspired. Both creatively and spiritually. She is a mother of two teens and a gifted writer. A "student/mystic hippy theologian/domestic bohemian" with a soft spot for Joni Mitchell and Beth Orton. Billie Holiday and the Velvet Underground. Favorite movies include Wild Strawberries and Paris-Texas.  I quote from her journal, which I find refreshing for its clarity of sight and unabashed honesty; edited:

Today I took Alayna to exchange some broken earrings she had recently bought at the Williamsburg General Store...... Where's Tanglewood?", she asked.  "It's in the Berkshires"...  "Where are the Berkshires?" ......"Do you want to go there?" Of course she was up for an adventure.  So we finished lapping up the melting ice cream, took a quick look at the map confirming we were headed in the right direction, and set out for The Berkshires.  At some point in the trip (after the visit to the Berkshires) I had decided that Bennington College was our destination. Everything felt softer, looked greener, smelled sweeter, and seemed more old and alive than in manicured Northampton.  I felt myself relaxing.  I felt the tension in my neck and shoulders that has been confounding me and the doctors finally melting and I remembered, on the spot, why I was alive.  It was one of those moments when all questions are answered and it's really very simple. All my stress and grieving over the last months about my next steps, about our future, about familial relations, about people I have no control over, were wiped away in that moment.  All the goals, all the worries, they all pointed to the same thing but I couldn't uncover it, and here, now, I can't put it into words but there is a certain way in which I want to live my life, and I had gotten too far from that way.  That was all.  For Alayna there was also a revelation.  She was delighted with the campus town common and became more and more delighted as we explored this area of the campus.  This was it.  This was where she wanted to go to college!  I suspect the experience will make for some very good opening lines for a college essay.  Later, when I read from the website about the college's philosophy, her eyes were shining and she said, "You don't have to read anymore Mom, I already know it's perfect." It's the simplest things that are important.

Another new friend (a gifted teacher, art historian, photographer) joined me today for breakfast and a tour of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Botanic Garden/Talcott Greenhouse. The exhibition we had wanted to see, "Architecture of Silence: Cistercian Abbeys of France—Photographs by David Heald," closed July 3, but we enjoyed paging through the exhibition book and touring the museum's galleries. 

To visit a Cistercian abbey is to make a voyage of discovery, but not necessarily a physical voyage. It may be an inward voyage, where one discovers a part of one’s own being, an inner experience from which one seldom returns unaltered….[I]t may be a brief and pleasant diversion, or it may invite a change in the direction of one’s life." ~Terryl N. Kinder, architectural historian, archaeologist, and editor-in-chief of Citeaux: Commentarii cistercienses

On our drive to Mount Holyoke she asked me about my new project (photographing hot dog stands) and suggested I might want to take the photos at night--at least of the one in Holyoke, which is illuminated at night. She referenced Hooper's painting "Nighthawks" and not one, two or three seconds later; as the stop light turned green and we drove forward, we saw this man walking rather quickly with a "Nighthawks" poster tucked under his arm (prophetic my friend said):

She told me of her project (photos of veterans) and I hoped I conveyed my thoughts powerfully enough to her; that it is a great project and needs to be completed and displayed and published. I would, in fact, be honored to exhibit it and work with a local VFW to promote it; I wish I had money to publish a monograph. Someday.

I took some photos, too; nothing great--nevertheless, a record.

Saturday 16 (editing)

Laundry and Photography. Enjoying scanning my negatives.

Brooklyn, 1970s

ABCNORIO, looking out gallery window (one of THE first galleries on Lower East Side, NYC)

I just like it.

July 15

Chloe. (need to write her, our cat)

Thursday 14

The Grapevine. Our newsletter at the studio reports:

Cicero’s Mistakes The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do. Cicero, Roman writer and philosopher (106-43 B.C)

And in the same issue of "The Grapevine:"

Harry Bullis, former chairman of the board of General Mills, used to give his salespeople the following advice: "Forget about the sales you hope to make and concentrate on the service you want to render. " The moment people's attention is centered on service to others, they become more dynamic, more forceful, and harder to resist. How can you resist someone who is trying to help you solve a problem? "I tell our salespeople," said Bullis, "that if they would start out each morning with the thought, 'I want to help as many people as possible today,' instead of 'I want to make as many sales as possible today,' they would find a more easy and open approach to their buyers and they would make more sales. "The person who goes out to help people to a happier and easier way of life is exercising the highest type of salesmanship. "

Wednesday 13

Menu, Please.

Daryl's birthday dinner:

Shrimp, snap peas, and pancetta in a vodka tomato sauce served over pasta.

Warm steak salad mixed with sliced radishes and a sweet orange pepper.

Asbury Park, NJ

Alice Odilon

Delilah Montoya

Tuesday 12

It is almost over. Today.

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

-Czeslaw Milosz

Optimism is essential to achievement
and it is also the foundation of courage
and of true progress.

-Nicholas Murray Butler

Images that do not relate to today in any way:

Monday 11

The Favorite. Today a customer told me that the photos I took of her were her favorites. It was great to hear as we rarely get any feedback from the customers; we being the photographers in the studio.

Sunday 10

I woke to hear a message on my answering machine that was left late last night. My friend said she was sad and she had been crying all day. In a search for a few words of comfort, I found this poem, which I did not send. Where I found the poem, my friend writes: "...Weigl has gained new insights into himself and into human nature from his life experiences. Though “What Saves Us” has a reference to Vietnam, the poem has much more to do with “love” than it does war:"

What Saves Us

We are wrapped around each other in
the back of my father's car parked
in the empty lot of the high school
of our failures, the sweat on her neck
like oil. The next morning I would leave
for the war and I thought I had something
coming for that, I thought to myself
that I would not die never having
been inside her long body. I pulled
her skirt above her waist like an umbrella
inside out by the storm. I pulled
her cotton panties up as high as
she could stand. I was on fire. Heaven
was in sight. We were drowning on our
tongues and I tried to tear my pants off
when she stopped so suddenly
we were surrounded only by my shuddering
and by the school bells grinding in the
empty halls. She reached to find something,
a silver crucifix on a silver
chain, the tiny savior's head hanging
and stakes through his hands and his feet.
She put it around my neck and held
me so long the black wings of my heart
were calmed. We are not always right
about what we think will save us.
I thought that dragging the angel down would
save me, but instead I carried the crucifix
in my pocket and rubbed it on my
face and lips nights the rockets roared in.

People die sometimes so near you
you feel them struggling to cross over,
the deep untangling, of one body from another.

~Bruce Weigl

Saturday 09

I woke before dawn today. Mist draped on the mountain like a torn baby's blanket. I fell back to sleep at ten, three, and eight. Catnaps. And again, later, at eleven, when I went to bed and read. I wanted to read all day but I wanted to sleep, too. I sat on the couch and read Art on Paper. I sat on the love seat and read The Rings of Saturn. I sat on the futon and read The Leopard. I made meatballs. I listened to The Who. At the car repair shop, I read:

The trouble with second marriages is rather like the trouble with new shoes: they don't fit the way your old one did. They pinch in places you are not used to feeling pinched in. All those easy moments, the private codes, the nicknames, the easy patterns, are gone from you......When I said (my wife) I meant (my first wife), not (my second). ~"Sentimental Memory." The Lone Pilgrim, Laurie Colwin

Late afternoon, beautiful storms clouds rolled over the mountain range:

Friday 08

A Poem:

Lineage
by Jeffrey McDaniel

When I was little, I thought the word loin
and the word lion were the same thing.

I thought celibate was a kind of fish.

My parents wanted me to be well-rounded
so they threw dinner plates at each other
until I curled up into a little ball.

I've had the wind knocked out of me
but never the hurricane.

I've seen two hundred and sixty-three rats
in the past year, but never more than one at a time.
It could be the same rat, with a very high profile.

I know what it's like to wear my liver on my sleeve.

I go into department stores, looking suspicious,
approach the security guard and say
what, what, I didn't take anything.
Go ahead. Frisk me, big boy!

I go to the funerals of absolute strangers
and tell the grieving family: the soul of the deceased
is trapped inside my rib cage
and trying to reach you.

Once I thought I found love, but then I realized
I was just out of cigarettes.

Some people are boring because their parents
had boring sex the night they were conceived.

In the year thirteen hundred and thirteen,
a little boy died, who had the exact same scars as me.

One more  poem.

Thursday 07

Some Thoughts About Negatives. I have been spending most of my free time looking at my file of negatives--some 50,000; maybe more; who knows; it is alot. A few thoughts: I am a great photographer; there, I said it, and I believe it to be true; there is a powerful and consistent vision over the course of the past 25 years. Two--I had forgotten but I have been taking self-portraits for a very long time. Of course, at least half of the images are pictures of Betsy and I wonder if I look hard and long enough will I find the time when things changed.

 

 

Wednesday 06

Because it is Raining Today in New England.

F.C. Gundlach

Unrelated Images:

A few more here:

Tuesday 05

 

 

 

Monday 04

The Fourth of July. Holidays are the hardest days. Betsy and Daryl are out on Cape Hatteras. Danielle is in Vermont. The day of the tradition of the backyard barbeque has vanished from our lives; neither steak nor salmon on the grill--hamburgers, hotdogs and talk of colleges. Divorce changes everything. Out early this  morning on my bike; the streets are quiet. American flags are hung from every lamp post. A little boy peddles past me; playing cards clothes-pinned onto his spokes. A man in a small boat fishes in the pond. One, two, three people out walking. A dog barks. 

I woke early and did two loads of laundry. On the internet I found inspiration in two photographers:

Anita Andrzejewska and Aline Smithson.

I miss the beach.

"It is that way," she motioned.

And I drove to a beach late this morning but by the time I got there the police had blocked the entrance. It was too crowded.

So I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a few magazines: Modern Painters and Cucina Italiana , which reminded me how much I miss cooking. It takes a great deal of energy to cook for one person and I often feel it simply isn't worth it; pizza rather than an elaborate Indian meal becomes the staple. My mind drifts back to a newspaper story:

"Cook of the Week, Indian Food in Hoboken:"  Bruce Barone may be one cook who has to have a hand in every pot. That doesn't just apply to situations, such as when he spends seven hours by the stove preparing nine-course Indian food meals for guests -- it appears to be in his lifestyle as well. Though a writer by trade, Bruce's tastes in the arts appear as varied as his interest in cooking different things. His Hoboken apartment, which he shares with this wife Betsy, is a mini-gallery of artwork, varied music, diverse reading Employed in Manhattan, the Ramsey natives moved to Hudson county almost a year ago and say they find Hoboken a nice place. Characteristically, Bruce can quote what the 19th century actress Fanny Kemble said about Hoboken, as well as the Englishwoman Frances Trollope and William Cullen Bryant. (They all heartily approved.). Says Bruce, "Cooking is just as creative as writing or photography. I've been cooking ever since I remember." The magazine promotions man shares kitchen duties with his working wife just as he did with college friends on Nantucket. However, his attractive wife laughingly admits, "When he's in the kitchen, I'm out."

And thinking of Hoboken, here is a new scan of a favorite old image:

Hoboken, NJ 1970's

And in keeping with the holiday:

Sunday 03

A Summer Place.

Hilton Kramer writing in the recent issue of The New York Observer:

The American painter Megan Olson (born 1971) calls the current exhibition of her paintings Still Movement, which I take to be an allusion to still life—an impression that’s amply confirmed in pictures that depict the dynamic processes of nature with a precision, stability and concreteness that are traditionally reserved for the painting of inert, three-dimensional objects. To this oxymoronic endeavor Ms. Olson brings an eye that’s steeped in the movement of the heavens as well as the ocean tides, and a sensibility that finds in the changing character of natural light a challenging range of pictorial subjects. The result of this concentrated attention to the nuances of nature is a pictorial style that’s at once highly abstract and persuasively realist in its fidelity to observed detail. It may be that in the rigorous design of Ms. Olson’s pictorial structures some viewers will discover a kinship with the abstractionist aesthetic of Jackson Pollock’s celebrated "drip" paintings, but it’s doubtful that any such reference is intended by the artist. What’s more likely is that a familiarity with abstract painting will incline viewers to discover certain elements of abstraction in what are essentially faithful depictions of the natural world. This double vision, as it may be called, defines the essential aesthetic character of Ms. Olson’s paintings. In studying them we find ourselves observing the way light is refracted in watery depths and in the changing configurations of luminescent skies. This is not landscape or marine painting—or, for that matter, sky-scape painting—as we usually encounter them. There are no horizon lines to be seen and no landmarks to direct our attention, but instead myriad close-up views of unbounded spaces in which to observe the metamorphic impulses of nature itself. The painstaking detail with which each of Ms. Olson’s subjects is rendered is itself a feat of micro-representation, and this gives to each painting the look of an elaborate conception that has been fully realized. In Ms. Olson’s drawings there’s a similar control of abundant detail. These drawings are in themselves a significant achievement: The largest of them in the current show—a 2003 untitled work in watercolor on paper measuring 60 by 40 inches—is a tour de force of such amazing mastery that it instantly nominates itself for prompt entry into a permanent museum collection. It’s a characteristic of Ms. Olson’s paintings that she favors a single color for the space that encloses the swirling configurations of silvery light that is her principal subject. In Fiery Ocean (2004), for example, the swirling traces of light disport themselves in a ruby-red sea, while in First Light (2004) and Failing Star (2005) it’s an oceanic blue that dominates. In every instance it’s color that generates a sense of energy and movement. The pictorial result is unfailingly original and compelling. Who, then, is Megan Olson, and where has she come from? Her dealer, Maxwell Davidson, provides the following background in his text for the show’s catalog: "During the summer of 2000, Megan Olson was a part-time staff member at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery while she completed a three-month independent study course towards her degree at the San Francisco Art Institute. When we visited the project’s unveiling we felt strongly enough about the work to offer Megan representation. Since then, Olson has gone on to have two very successful shows of her organic abstractions done in a variety of mediums, but all applied to paper. This exhibition entitled Still Movement marks her third one-person show with the gallery but her first experience on large-scale canvases." Clearly, this is an artist with a very promising future. Meanwhile, Megan Olson: Still Movement remains on view at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, through June 25. You may reach Hilton Kramer via email at: hkramer@observer.com.

Before I left for a walk this morning:

And further along:

And from the same issue of The New York Observer:

"Whenever I must make a decision, I ask the Grateful Dead. I have a photograph of the Dead from 1966, just after they changed their name from the Warlocks. (Pigpen is in the picture, of course; without him, the image would be useless.) I ask my question, aloud, to the photo, then close my eyes and await the answer." For example, when I had to decide whether to do this reading (a poetry reading), I asked the Dead. Their answer was: 'Yes.' "The voice seemed to come from Phil Lesh."

Saturday 02

Every Picture Tells a Story.

 

 

 

Long is the Way and Hard is the Road which from Hell leads to Light !Dante

Friday 01