3/19/2013

edible recipe cover


Cover for the most recent Edible.  This was great fun.  I put out a call to friends to see if any one had their mom's box of old recipes and Erin Guinta came up with her grandmother's.  It was perfect for this shoot and an incredible walk back through time.  Each card is perfectly yellowed and filled with handwriting that just doesn't exist anymore.  It reminded me of my own grandmother who, for every dinner party she hosted, kept a card containing a guest list, what she served and any comments about how the food turned out. 

3/14/2013

the roundhouse

Great shoot with Liz Strianese last week at the Roundhouse.  This was such an all-star Beacon cast!  Here are some of the folks represented below:  Atlas Industries, Jessica WickhamModcraftNiche Modern,  Rexhill Furniture and Ten Willow Studios (of the Malfatti Glass).  Nice work!

















3/11/2013

seeking a sober mind and an ardent heart

color study #47
Whenever there is a review by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker, I do my best to read it.  More often than not, it's over my head with many ideas and references that I just don't get, but sometimes, just sometimes, I get it in a big way and I read it over and over just for the pleasure of his writing. His recent article about a survey show of abstract art at MOMA is one of those cases. One of my favorite sentences comes early on in the article when he is describing the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp:  "The work bespeaks a subtle eye, a sober mind, and an ardent heart."  I don't know who I admire more in this case:  Taeuber-Arp for being a person who could be described so amazingly or Schjeldahl for recognizing these qualities in her and putting them together in such a beautiful, succinct way.  He describes her work:  "Rectangles and squares in black, red, blue, gray and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy, visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry's matter-of-fact, nubbly texture."  Delightful!  I know!  And then, and this is the best description of why anyone would make abstract art that I have ever read: "If you could make something like that, you would drop everything else and do it.  You wouldn't need any great reason."  And there it is.  I came to my love of abstract art late and my minimal practice of it even later, but for me, Schjeldahl's description of why to do it is on the nose:  it just feels good and right.  I came into my jello pictures out of a need, as a photographer, to do what I do, that is, make pictures, while not representing something.  It was a relief to me to pull the context out of my photos and just pay attention to shape and color.  Picasso, Schjeldahl informs us, did not think abstract art would fly.  He thought that without any recognizable representation in art, there would be no drama.  I disagree.  I think color and form and the relationships of forms to other forms can, and have been proven to, say a lot.  These things are visceral.  They go straight to your gut.

3/06/2013

malfatti glassware from ten willow studio

Here are some pictures from a recent shoot for ten willow studio.  Most beautiful glassware I have ever seen!