Sunday, March 19, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Girl in Rogers Park - Queen Anne Hill
This photo was taken in the spring of 2005. The girl was a student at SPU where I did my undergraduate work in the late 60s. This shot reminds me of something by Monet or Renoir or Matisse, anyway that was what I was trying for a girl in a park on a sunny sunday afternoon.
I have a story to tell about Rogers Park.
It was sunny day during spring quarter 1969 at Seattle Pacific College and I was walking in Rogers Park on Queen Anne Hill a few blocks from the ship canal when I struck up a conversation with a young man who's hair was a little longer than mine. He started talking about Jesus and saying all sorts of things I had heard from other folks who looked and acted just like him. They were called "Jesus Freaks" back then. Anyway, he invited me up to his "house" on Queen Anne hill to meet some of his "family". I followed him up the hill to a large house in an old neighborhood. Nothing much happened during my 45 minute visit with the Love Family. A few people were sitting on the carpet in the living room meditating. I was offered a cup of market spice tea. There wasn't a lot of talking and when someone did talk they seemed to always be speaking in parables and quoting scripture. I left after a while and felt a sense of relief to be back out in the sunshine. There was something a little too "heavy" about the Love Family for my tastes. They invited me to come back again. I didn't.
From the WWW:
"The Love Family was a U.S. communal religious movement led by Love Israel. Formally called the Church of Jesus Christ at Armageddon, the Love Family began in 1968 when the community began living collectively in a community on Queen Anne Hill."
Really Bad Art
An improved version of Bad Art plus some more of the same.
This post is to remind viewers that the best stuff was posted first and is now buried in the archives so if you want to see the serious work you would be better off going to the early posts and working forward.
The posts titled Mark Toby, North Beach, Recent Work and anything else with trees or water taken with long lenses represent my attempt to pick up where I left off thirty some years ago with Frosted Tree and the water reflections Neah Bay. These early works were all taken with long lenses from 200mm, 300mm, 500mm. My current camera is an ultra-zoom which gives me the same look in one package. The long lens has two major advantages. It allows you to isolate your subject and it flattens the perspective. Having sort of grown up with abstract expressionism, I found the flat look suited me. I was looking for a way to do representational work that could be read (viewed) as an abstraction. It wasn't an intellectual thing but a feeling I got from looking at these flat images and how do you explain a feeling?
In the early 70s one of my artist friends Cathy Kushe was working on her MFA at the U of W and the professor who was in charge of her thesis project was demanding that she do nonrepresentational paintings for her thesis project. She worked out a clever solution, doing representational paintings that would pass as abstractions. Later on I had one of here thesis paintings hanging in my apartment when I was in graduate school and also a very stunning work by her husband Dave, a surrealist crucifixion.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
North Beach
Late winter & early spring 2005, from the North beach of Seahurst park, standing at the waters edge at low tide and looking back toward the bluffs.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Accurate Weight -1972
This was taken in the penny arcade on the lower end of first ave. in Seattle just off the water front. It was late at night. The store across the street is Warshall's Sporting Goods an Seattle landmark that is now gone.
The photo was taken with a Nikkor 28mm f3.5 using high-speed Ektachrome 160ASA pushed by Kodak to 400ASA. Nasty grain pattern and weird colors even under proper light but the lighting here was obviously florescent.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Bad Art
This post is to remind viewers that the best stuff was posted first and is now buried in the archives so if you want to see the serious work you would be better off going to the early posts and working forward.
The posts titled Mark Toby and Recent Work represent my attempt to pick up where I left off thirty some years ago with Frosted Tree and the water reflections Neah Bay. These early works were all taken with long lenses from 200mm, 300mm, 500mm. My current camera is an ultra-zoom which gives me the same look in one package. The long lens has two major advantages. It allows you to isolate your subject and it flattens the perspective. Having sort of grown up with abstract expressionism, I found the flat look suited me. I was looking for a way to do representational work that could be read (viewed) as an abstraction. It wasn't an intellectual thing but a feeling I got from looking at these flat images and how do you explain a feeling?
In the early 70s one of my artist friends Cathy Kushe was working on her MFA at the U of W and the professor who was in charge of her thesis project was demanding that she do nonrepresentational paintings for her thesis project. She worked out a clever solution, doing representational paintings that would pass as abstractions. Later on I had one of here thesis paintings hanging in my apartment when I was in graduate school and also a very stunning work by her husband Dave, a surrealist crucifixion.
The Catalog
These were taken on a sunday morning in April 2005 at the north plaza in the Pike Place district of Seattle. I don't know where these fellows are from but I would guess one somewhere in eastern Europe or the CIS. Seattle is a place where people arive in America and then stay. Like New York City a century ago. Since they arive by plane, most of them, they tend to stay close to where they touched down. Three Tree Point is five miles as the crow flies from the airport. A language acquisitions specialist for the county library told me we have 100 language groups living within five miles of the library. Yesterday in the park I talked two women from Bosnia who were collecting young nettles tops to eat. One of them spoke english but the other one had just arrived.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Thunder Storm
The sun was shining when I left the house today. By the time I had stopped to pick up some cranberry stuffed chicken breasts for dinner and driven to the park and walked down the hill the sun was gone. I had the camera along and decided to try and capture the mood. You can judge how well I pulled this off. Doing landscapes with miniature format digital camera is a bit of a challenge but it is a lot better than it used to be because I can go home and open up Photoshop Elements and fix the problems. I go caught in the shelter by the beach during a rain, hail, snow sequence and did about 90 exposures and nearly froze to death. After a while one of my park friends (See Off Leash) came by walking her dog in the rain. We chatted for a while under the shelter and then walked up the hill as the rain was letting up. I ditched my camera and took my walk which is three hills for a 1,200 foot total elevation gain (some days I do five hills). On my last trip to the water the sun was out. Typical march day, a little cold 2c.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Mean Puppy
I go to Pike Place to see the people. I've been going there for 45 years. I will probably go there again.
The Shout
This was taken on a summer sunday morning in the plaza just north of the Pike Place Market. There were hundreds of people milling about. No, he wasn't shouting at me for aiming the camera at him. I was standing on a little grassy knoll under the shade of a tree with a crowd of street people longing around me on the grass. He didn't even notice me there were twenty people closer to him than I was. I had to time my shots for openings in the continuous flow of humanity passing in front of him.
Monday, March 06, 2006
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