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Green Day Bozeman, Montana 2013

Well, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, so what more needs to be said except that it’s also the Fashion Queen’s Birthday? Below is a bonus photo in recognition of her very own Green Day. I call it Figuring It Out because she’s obviously concentrating hard on something.  Perhaps she’s busy planning her assault on that Mecca of all fashionistas, Paris, where we’re headed on Wednesday. Either that, or she’s working on her other addiction: a crossword puzzle.

Figuring It Out Bozeman, Montana 2013

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The Process #2 Bozeman, Montana 2013

Another piece of cardboard in my garage. On this one I’m wondering if that dent in the center right is a distraction or an important component of the composition. I’m leaning toward the distraction conclusion.

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The Process #1 Bozeman, Montana 2013

I was reading recently about the paintings of Jackson Pollock (a.k.a. Jack the Dripper). The conventional wisdom seems to be that, as with other abstract expressionists and perhaps more so, his art lay as much in the dance of making a painting as it did in the final painting itself. To him, a painting served as a record of the process of it’s own coming into being more than it did a product unto itself. In that spirit, the name for today’s photo comes from the fact that it’s a photo of a piece of cardboard I have fastened to the wall of our garage and to which I tack photos in order to spray them with a protective coating before surface mounting them. However, rather than finding it interesting because it is a record of part of my artistic process (at least to the extent that printing, mounting and framing is part of the artistic process), I like it because the  the various degrees of shading of the rectangles formed by the over spray of the protective coating impart a three-dimensional depth to the flat cardboard.]]>

Up on Mistake Mountain Bozeman, Montana 2013

One of the things I hate about getting old is not only what seems to be an increase in the frequency of my stupid mistakes but the growing lifetime list of such mistakes I unfortunately (for my self-esteem) am capable of recalling from time to time. Not much point in beating yourself up about these I know. And I don’t; much anyway. But really, it’s frustrating. Maybe confronting mistakes head on for a moment and then letting them go is the best way to proceed. To that effort I submit this figurative mountain of new greeting cards I printed the other day in which the photos, although right side up on the computer screen image, ended up turned upside down when the card stock is folded in half. I’ve created dozens of different cards over the years and I know better, I just forgot with these new ones. I was probably dumb-tasking again. (That’s where for efficiency sake you try to  do multiple things at once and end up just screwing up on multiple dimensions simultaneously!)]]>

Organic Mondrian Bozeman, Montana 2013

I have, as you may have noticed, an occasional interest or fascination with the paintings of Piet Mondrian. Or rather his later paintings in what Rick Steves calls his “T-square” style. He actually started out painting realistic landscapes but his interest changed over time to abstract work. So what are these T-square paintings supposed to symbolize if anything, I wondered (because it might provide a basis for understanding my own interest in them). According to the (very little) critical assessment of Mondrian’s work that I’ve read, it seems he viewed the up and down and left and right lines as representations of opposite ends of nature’s dualities such as man and woman, humans and nature, good and evil, etc. while their asymmetrical arrangement into grids symbolize the balancing of these various dualities. What do the primary colors, red, yellow, and blue mean? I haven’t read anything specifically about them but think perhaps, since his paintings are supposed to represent nature at it’s most basic, their use is sufficient to represent all the colors of nature since any hue or shade can be formed by combination of the three primary colors. Anyway, given that background, perhaps what I’m trying to do with these Mondrianesque photos is to attempt to represent this same kind of simplification of nature photographically. Or maybe I’m just drawn to natural arrangements of simple geometric shapes such as occurs in buildings, my grain elevator photos being a prime example. In the spirit of Mondrian I suppose today’s sidewalk and curb POTD photo takes this attraction of mine towards the extreme end of simplification.]]>

Chaos at 32 Degrees Bozeman, Montana 2013

Lots of turmoil and struggle apparent in the freeze-thaw cycles this puddle has been going through.

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Rorschach Test Bozeman, Montana 2012

What do you see when you look at the wet pavement in this photo? This photo from the movie Nosferatu that I have previously posted came immediately to my mind:

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Life in the Fast Lane Bozeman, Montana 2013

A busy day on the squirrel highway.

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Photo by Marcin Rychzek

This image by Polish photographer Marcin Rychzek is so compositionally striking I am envious, very envious. I first saw in posted on Mike Johnston’s blog The Online Photographer here. The blog post itself is an interesting read. I fully agree with the comment by Adam Lanigan: “Gorgeous. I’m always tormented when seeing photos like that. I feel the need to rise to a higher level blended perfectly with the desire to just hang it all up.”]]>

Everything is Broken Bozeman, Montana 2013

Reminds me of a song (very good although sometimes disturbing visuals with this video):

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