Uncategorized

Bare Tree #133
Cedar Mesa, Utah
2024

Illegal  in Some Jurisdictions
Bozeman, Montana
2024

When I was a kid it seemed like every home had some sort of clothesline in the back yard. Now almost none do. This is in part to some HOAs and cities actually banning them. That’s too bad given the climate change issue. I know in some places, e.g. Idaho Falls (at least this was true 20 years ago) there have been local efforts to bring back clotheslines. The HOA for our house in town does not allow them, but at our mountain house there are no such restrictions; and even if there were I don’t think the deer or other critters that wander by would care if we were breaking the rules.

Home Ground #22
Bozeman, Montana
2024

Some unrelated items on display here, but the horse and the vase have something in common because the vase is a piece of horsehair pottery. To produce horsehair pottery, the artist first heats the pottery to some insanely high temperature in a kiln and then drapes horsehairs onto its surface. They are quickly burned off and the carbon residue forms the pattern on the piece.

Home Ground #21
Bozeman, Montana
2024

My first serious photography work in the late 1960s was done using my father’s Argus C3 35mm rangefinder camera. I don’t know what happened to his old camera, but when I say this one for sale for a few bucks several decades later I bought it for old times’ sake. This one was in noticeably worse cosmetic condition than my father’s, but then it was quite a bit older by the time I acquired it.

Home Ground #20
Bozeman, Montana
2024

No rural home is complete without a set of appropriate field guides for understanding the natural world around them. I think actual print copies are still important, even in this digital age.

Home Ground #19
Bozeman, Montana
2024

My first dog Pilgrim, a German shorthaired pointer mix, spent much of her life in this house and is buried on the hill nearby. I am reminded of her every time I see these bookends.

Home Ground #18
Bozeman, Montana
2024

Since I was designing the house using inspiration from old Victorian homes, I really wanted to include a back staircase or even a hidden staircase somewhere in the house. The problem was that those old Victorian homes with those kinds of features were way larger than the 1300 square feet we were working with, so there just wasn’t room and I had to settle for just the one stairway.

Home Ground #17
Bozeman, Montana
2024

A carving by my uncle Tommy, a gifted carpenter and wood carver and one of the hardest working men I ever knew.

Home Ground #16
Bozeman, Montana
2024

Asian bells, likely one of the Fashion Queen’s garage sale finds, and unusual limestone (I think) balls that rolled out of the hillside one day when I was doing some excavating near the house with my backhoe.

Home Ground #15
Bozeman, Montana
2024

A lot of the photos in this series are of pretty static objects, i.e., they’ve been sitting in one place for years in some cases. The items here are regular features in the house as well, but they move around quite a bit–sometimes even finding their way back to the bookshelf and cupboard where they belong.