it was only a matter of time

Congratulations, David Rees.  It's a runaway hit.

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. 

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 Wickham, Modcraft, Niche Modern,  Rexhill Furniture and Ten Willow Studios (of the Malfatti Glass).  Nice work!

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.

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!

beacon portrait project gets a grant

beacon portrait 80-81

I am very pleased to announce that I have received a grant to pursue the Beacon Portrait Project which I began shooting about 4 years ago.  The idea for this came to me when I moved to Beacon, NY from San Francisco, CA in 2006.  My life, to date, had been spent in large cities, so the idea of moving to a smaller, more intimate place was extremely appealing to me.   I decided I would celebrate my new home by doing a portrait of every resident of Beacon (this was before I checked what the population of Beacon is but I like the idea that I will never run out of subjects).  I started shooting in 2009 and I have made more than 80 portraits so far.

Beacon’s history is interesting.  Once a thriving industrial town producing the nation’s hats, it suffered a deep economic downturn in the 1970’s. Several factors have led to a sort of renaissance here, but perhaps the most transformative milestone was the opening of the contemporary art museum DIA:Beacon in 2003. While this art institution has attracted a new community of artists and young families, it has created a community of contrast: families who have lived and worked here for generations living alongside new arrivals who bring with them the values that they developed after years in more urban environments.  As a result, there is racial, cultural and economic diversity here, yet, to me, it feels integrated and intimate.

I want to record a cross-section of the citizens of Beacon, NY to give it visual expression and to illustrate what are the parts that make up a place.  The more I pictures I take for this project, the more I examine the idea of community.  There is community by coincidence (the neighbor you live next to) and community by desire (who you feel drawn to and partnered with).  As the project progresses, the idea of what I am recording evolves so stay tuned for more thoughts on this.  More Beacon portraits here.

Part of the grant I received funds a show that will happen at Fovea in October.  I hope you will join me!

Now for the small print:  This project is made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Dutchess County Arts Council.

put a bird on it

Sometime in January I decided that I would make a bird for each one of the 43 years I have now lived.   Forty-three is my lucky number so I wanted to mark it in some way.  Perhaps this is a sickly sweet, overly sentimental thing to do but I could not help myself.  I like to make things and even though I know it is totally hip and trendy  (as is hilariously clear in portlandia's 'put a bird on it' skit), I still like birds.  Stay tuned for some kind of hipster bird hanging device....