Bring on the Clash...London Calling

Its been an amazing summer. First inspiration for new images while on road trips with a thick layer of ego frosting in the form of gallery recognition. OK, I'm still a starving artist, but at least I'm gaining some notoriety lately. I had sitting in my "spam folder" of all places....an invitation from a gallery in London asking me to post 8 images on their website in an artists gallery. Its a juried invitation and how they found me and my website, who knows but thank god someone sees it!

So...after much debating with me, myself and id, I posted my 8 images at Saatchi. Enjoy. Who knows who will see them, what they'll do with them or for me, but at least its recognition. You can see me there at: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.php?id=10830

Where will I go with all of this? Who knows I have many paths to meander and the only you can count on is I will take the one of greatest curiosity. I have a whole series of things I want to do in the Aztec Hotel in black and white as impressionist paintings to deconstruct and reassemble.

And on the topic of deconstruction and reassembly...Poppy Road taken out at the California Poppy Preserve in Lancaster spring of 2005.

Getting Nudged

Inspiration and ideas come from a variety of sources. This morning a neighbor happened to see me and dropped off a DVD he had on Ansel Adams. Its a biography of him and his work, lots of interviews with him, his family and admirers. Its from a PBS documentary and really well done once you get past the droning music and the whole PBS agenda.

The new thing I learned about the man is that he was also a prolific writer and wrote over 5,000 letters to the editor on a variety of topics as he believed that is a way to mould and direct a social agenda. This documentary really focused on the Sierra Mountains of California primarily Yosemite down to Kings Canyon and Sequoia. They spent just enough time one of my favorite photographs if his, "Moonrise Hernandez" which illustrated nicely how man fits into the bigger world around us to make the entire DVD worth watching.

This documentary brought for a lot of information about the man, much of it new or at least a new interpretation of what he did and why. He saw the world different than us in so many respects. Some of it because as the documentary put it, he was likely a "hyperactive" child and jumped quickly and very deeply into things that interested him. In his work you see his changes in themes over the years and how he worked them in his images. No matter what phase of his career you look at it is obvious he is the great meanderer of the fine art photographers always purposely wandering about and sharing his vision of the world. Meanders I think are by their nature, hyperactive children that luckily never out grew it or had it beat out of them.

Early work had a very high horizon line forcing you to look at the landscape itself, later had the lower horizon line forcing you to soak in the landscape and sky together and draw comparisons regarding the greater space of it all. The one thing the latter years brought out that influences me heavily was the use of darkened sky's to illustrate the depth of space. I tend to go a bit further most of the time and shoot not only later in the day where the depth of color (or shades of gray) is so much greater, but prefer to have clouds. Clouds for me are the ultimate piece of nature that we can't control and add so much drama it helps me illustrate better my feel for the time and space as I meandered through it.

So much for the trivia, I am always amazed how well he manipulated the image at the camera level through exposure and developing, then in the darkroom to get the final image he shared with us.

I have the PC and a bank of images from this summers road trips that move me when done in black and white. So as I meander down the road of black and white I still explore the relationships of man vs nature, or nature's elements with each other. "Pumice Road" and "Mosquito Range Treeline" are today's work.

Pumice Mine Road

Mosquito Range Treeline

Been a busy and terrific week

Like I said a few days ago the best validation of your work striking a cord is when you are invited to show at a gallery or online gallery. An unusual chain of events starting in July ended with an invitation to set up a "studio" (guess that would be an electronic studio???) with a new group calling them selves sculptr.com

On there I have a variety new images, several you have seen here of the last few months grouped by theme. Each theme of course is nice group of images that follow one of the many paths I have explored in over the last couple of years. The end result is some work I am very proud of.

I still need to update my own web site and decide what direction I'll go with it. One project at a time. Having finally finished cataloging and doing "stuff" with the image back log I have had from the last few roadtrips I need to take a break.

One image not showing on the site is from last year I shot while up in the Loomis area, enjoy "Plums" ~ now go out and get your other fruits and vegies for the day!

Cross eyed and tired

But...wahooo I finished sorting, cataloging and working on the images from my Colorado trip.

I swear I must have Adult ADHD given how long it took me to get through these pictures and get them all done. The number of directions I went with the images tells me I am either unfocused or have to much energy to corral. You tell me.

Anyway, the Black and White stuff has gotten the most energy devoted to it the last day or so.
These 2 images are from the Fryer Hill area north of Leadville Colorado. Its a pretty easy to get to location...with a car even as the majority is paved or hard pack gravel.

Enjoy the latest two images.....

G.O.K what got me going with this one!

Busy working through the back log of July pics I found this one and only remember how funny it struck me at the time when I stumbled across an ancient farmhouse with a travel trailer next to it. It was like one of those husband/wife snapshots taken as they approach being older than dirt. This struck me funny as it has almost an "American Gothic" feel to it in a May/December romance sort of way.

Enjoy the pic. Hopefully it will give you a chuckle too. Back to work as I still have way too many pictures to review, catalog and do something with. With luck I'll at least have the backlog taken care of this week.

Playing it straighter

Well...If that is a word its what I'm doing tonight. After working on several more impressionist photo's I meandered down the course of old timey fade black and white on a few images to see what happened. I liked it.

Of course I can't leave well enough alone and tweaked a few things. Now if I can find a good glossy photopaper that mimics the base warm tones of the old silver based Kodak Portrait papers of years ago to keep my whites from going pure I'd be happy. (The pc can only do so much, c'mon someone out there must have a warm toned inkjet paper out there...first one to market it I'm in line for a few packs to test the waters).

Anyway...I have worked on a few more of the still lifes from Bodie this evening. Enjoy the results on "nursery" and "final game racked"

Invitations mean validation

No matter how you cut it being an artist isn't easy as you have your Ego and Id on the line. Every piece you complete you have your level of comfort in the final result somewhere between a failed mess and elements of what you believe to be your personal best masterpiece.
Regardless of how you feel you have to be prepared for the reactions or lack thereof by the viewer.

Around the campfire the other night we were talking about the stupid things that comes out of peoples mouths. I remembered a quote, attributed to Mark Twain that went something along the lines of "It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt". Art critics need to learn that one, and until then I'll continue to work on a thicker skin. Anyone one into assisting me with this project in self flagellation?

On that note, damn the critics and full speed ahead. I am exploring several avenues of late, most are in the impressionistic vein. Wonder what Freud would have to say about that...A trained photographer deconstructing reality and reconstructing into a new image of the world and new set of emotions in the process. Better than a heavy dose of SSRI and cheaper than an hour on the couch - simply reinvent the world around you.

The good thing is that on occasions you get invitations to join new galleries where you least expect it. A new group sculptur.com saw my recent nomination as artist of the month at the electronic cottage arts site and invited me to join them after they viewed my work there. (I really need to update the site and soon as I have a lot more and different stuff up to show). So there you go, validation is good, especially when it means you can drop your guard a bit and do what you love doing!

A few of the images I worked on today were just that - reinventing what I saw and pushing the envelope on how I present what I saw. To be truthful the trip to Bodie wound up being about shooting with the intent to breakdown and reassemble the final image.

One of the images was a dusty old bowl of buttons in a window. I flashed back to being a little kid visiting my Grandma Jasovec's house in the woods outside of Ely, Minnesota. On a windowsill in her kitchen she had a jar of buttons where loose ones were tossed in the event she needed one. Amazing how one image on the other side of the country can make you flash back to one from when you were a kid (even more amazing was the trivial thing it brought back into focus).

Another building I spent a lot of time on was the old Bodie church. You can tell it was a church, but now its shell is there, the stained glass windows removed and the hole boarded in, the cross missing from the steeple. Hollow.

Anyway enjoy the images "buttons and basin" and "Bodie Church"

Road Tripping.....

I just got back from nearly a week of shooting in the Eastern Sierra's, mostly in and around the June Lake area. I went off on my own a lot and saw some amazing things, some revisited and others totally new.

One of the side trips this week took us up to Bodie, Ca which was an old gold mining town that eventually went bust and everyone moved away. Sometime in the 1960's it was turned into a state park which resulted in its preservation as a pretty accurate time capsule of life in the late 1800's until the early 1900's. Somehow this "ghost town" escaped the commercialization like Calico and as a result has a very haunting feel to it as you walk about looking at how folks lived some 100 years ago.

I don't know why I have a facination with the ghost towns, but I do and enjoy exploring whenever I can. Maybe its that very haungting feeling about treading in an area that has outlived its time here only leaving its shell like some pupa that has completed its metamorphasis.

Of course this aura of life past is something I enjoy exploring with my images and the transformation from a photo into one of my watercolor photographs. Bodie was one of those jackpot destinations that gave me much to work with and ponder how I wanted to communicate what I saw as I explored it. Certainly its been fodder tonight for a series of my more impressionistic watercolor photos.

Of course this week leaves me with nearly 2500 images to catalog and work on the those that taunt me the most. Somehow I promise to get my website updated soon...maybe an entire chapter to ghost towns?

Enjoy these images... "Bodie Clunker" and "Assayers Window"

time flies...

Well, time goes faster in the middle of mayhem. Moved into the new kitchen...yeah...started demo of another bathroom so that left me on the fly unpacking, ordering new tile etc.,. That left me no time at all the last 10 days to do anything with the 1,000 images left from CO to catalog.

Barely enough time to get packed for a road trip with the neighbors up to June Lake, Mono Lake, Bodie and of course Mammoth tomorrow. I promise I'll be better about updating and sharing when I get back.

Tonight was the August Art Walk on Myrtle here in Monrovia. At least it wasn't gawd awful hot like it has been the last few weeks. Lots of people milling about so it was a good night.

A couple of my prints on display at the Art Walk.....

Playing in the Zone

Actually the Zone here refers to a theory of how to expose your film to get maximum contrast with clean whites and detail in the shadow. I am so glad I paid attention on that theory since I have discovered that digital sensors have a pretty narrow range and tend to be contrasty like old slide films rather than the great latitude and range negative films had. It helped a lot too to learn the bracket functions and a few other tricks on with my digi to record the scenes more on how I wanted them to print rather than let the camera do a simple meter and risk losing a lot of information. (Shooting in raw mode also makes it easier to control the final print but that's a whole 'nother set of 'splaining I don't want to get into, suffice it to say shooting in the raw is not crawling around the rocks nekkid).

While in Colorado last week the urge to shoot in B&W struck me on more than a few occasions and I got to explore the Zone System using a few of the manual controls on the "creative" side of the digi's control dial. Fun place to play, I just wish it didn't need to have so many menus to switch through for something as simple as bracketing an exposure). All that aside I think its mountains that bring out the inner Ansel in me.

I explored several of the ghost towns around Leadville, CO on my own the first few days. Pretty amazing stuff that slipped right into my exploration of nature vs man made that has intrigued me a bit the last few years. Somehow having a car on dirt roads just isn't conducive to exploring too far up the mountain, maybe the traction control light kept popping on or its just me being a chicken. (I doubt AAA would have rescued me if I had really gotten into trouble).

Luckily we found a really great 4X4 tour company that took me the places I wanted to go. If you are ever in Central CO and need such a service I highly recommend DeeHive in Leadville, CO. Our driver loaded us into an old Suburban and hauled us up into the Mosquito Range for some incredible views and equally incredibly well preserved abandoned mines. We were often above the tree line (about 12,000 feet) and could literally touch the thunderheads as they crossed over us. Our driver also gave us a pretty good running history, commentary and rumory gossip about the characters that started up the mines in the 1880's. Interesting stuff there maynard no matter how you want to spin.

So much for the background information. What I really liked about Dee Hive was their tailoring the tour to what we wanted to see and the drivers no problem with stopping on a crumbly cliff so I could jump out and get some pictures.

As your reward to my blathering enjoy these 2 pics shot while playing in the Zone. The first is the "Johnny Mine" where John Brown and his wife, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" made their fortune. The latter picture is of "Finn Town" where the immigrants from Finland settled to work the mines.

Relaxed and Chilled

Good way to sum up the morning. Got back from a week in the Leadville, CO area for my folks 50th. Interesting old mining town way up in the middle of the Rockies. Incredible scenery, great old mines and trails all over the place to explore. No, not ready to leave LA as that place has winter...There was snow even on the peaks around us and the wild flowers were only now starting to bloom. Not ready to back it in and play Rocky Mountain High in the background either.

The shooting was incredible. I explored all sorts of things, went up dirt roads with the car that I probably should have had a 4X4 to get into them better. Leadville has some 600 abandoned mines and those provide some pretty stark contrasts between man and nature, a theme I continue to explore. I now have some 1500 images to sort through and somehow get cataloged and printed for the Art Walk this Saturday on Myrtle Avenue here in Monrovia.

A teaser of one image I downloaded and worked on last night - "Abandoned Mine Shack"

Busy - sums up the week so far.

Its one of those weeks where the coffee jitters only speed up the brain into overdrive and you need it as there is so much going on. Between remodel going awry (your general really is only as good as his subs...and these knuckleheads need constant supervision) and trying to pack for vacation my dance card is way too full.

I've really been exploring the impressionistic side whenever I get the chance. I have been combining it with my exploration of shadow and shape mostly.

Earlier this week I went for a hike along the river at sunset. Knowing the long shadows and glowing red light at the end of the day was the start of a good recipe for warm and fuzzy photographs. Toss in the full moon and I have more to work with. I've now added a 3rd program to the mix for working images before I put them on the wet watercolor paper. Virtual Photographer is an interesting plug-in as it emulates the nature of traditional film, papers and films.

Anyway a couple of images that I am happy with are"Azusa Canyon Moonrise" and "San Gabriel River Moonrise"...

Hot, tired and inspired

What a weekend. Scratch that..What a week. In the last week I've installed at 2 galleries, done an Art Walk and helped host an artists reception.

Aside from the usual nonsense in life, gallery openings still make me a bundle of raw energy and nerves. Wondering what I did will or will not impact people, the old merchant in me (I did retail management for some 8 years in one of my career sidetracks) wonders if I have the right mix and have it merchandised correctly.

This week a cousin of mine, Ed Labernik who is quite the accomplished watercolor artist dropped me a note. He wrote: "... They don't call us starving astists for nothing but the recognition is always nice. You have some fabulous work on your website, the watercolor photography is most interesting, indeed, but the impressionistic work is truly outstanding. I've always held the impressionistic painters in my highest esteem, I wish I had the guts to paint like them..." (Sorry Ed, I am certain you didn't expect to be quoted here but it put me on a path of discovery today- to the reader of this blog, I am sparing you readers the request for his Mom's donut recipe even though it will put a krispy kreme to shame). Of course the odd twist in all of this is that Ed is a watercolor artist that does beautiful detailed paintings that have the look of photo-realism, I am a photographer that creates impressionistic images in his pictures. Go figure the genetic twists in our gene pool to come up with those trait twists. But I digress....

Back to the shows, the big show is one entirely composed of fine art photographers, most of it very straightforward photography. As I watched the people at the show most spent more time viewing, pondering or whatever those images that were done on watercolor paper in a very impressionistic manner....often with the help of the various tools in Paintshop Pro and Photoshop CS. Those are the images that I get the most enjoyment and satisfaction out of. When I paint I am more of an impressionist than a realist. For me to be able to take that same sensibility and apply it to a photograph to create new images makes life fun. I think the appeal of impressionistic paintings over realistic paintings is that the use of color, line, shadow etc makes one bring more of their own experiences and memories to fill in the gaps making it more of an emotional experience than a scientific one. My guess, what do I know?

This evening I went for a walk along the river. The intent was to get pictures of the fading sun and hopefully a moonrise. The moon rise will need a lot of work, mostly because the moon rose over an industrial complex instead of the mountains where I wanted it. Damn it mutha nature, could you cooperate once and put the moon or sun where I want it?

About half way into it I became totally enthralled with the way the sun was dancing across the various bamboos and stuff along the rivers edge. Even the way the sunlight lit the bottom of the bridge was pretty cool. So I started shooting with the intent of creating some impressionistic images. And here you go....a few of what I enjoy doing the most

Sunset Bridge

San Gabriel River Sunset

It's Good to be Hung


At least when its in a new gallery it's good. Its a good feeling to get into a new venue to showcase your art. Any artist will tell you its the outside validation that helps keep you going and creating. Without it you don't have the feedback on what's working on your viewers (or not).

Today was a pleasant surprise. I was conservative with what I brought...12 images and on the small side no less as the space was reportedly going to have some constraints on how much we can show. Well I get there and found I can bring 3 of my big images so those will be put on opening day. Wahooooooo!

Anyway, today was the big installation for 7 of us fine art photographers for the show that is running 7/5-31/06 at the Whittier Art Gallery. The reception is this Saturday, 7/8 from 2-5PM. The addy for you map quest folks is 8035 South Painter Avenue, Whittier, CA 90602. The gallery is open Weds ~ Sunday 12-5 PM.

Just a teaser from the trusty...Che-ez...COME SEE ME ON THE 8th!

Fried and Frazzled

Today was the first of the Monrovia Art Walks for the summer, much better traffic than last year in spite of the fact it was 105 when we set up at 5PM.

These are interesting affairs. The first one is the toughest, people aren't sure what to expect and don't bring their check books. Those that do, well even an Art Event vs art&crap there is a price point where impulse buying ends. Its $50...which at an event dedicated to the fine arts there isn't much for impulse buying. Fortunately the later Art Walks all of the artists do better as the word is out this not a "street fair" but more of a gallery with the artists out on the street. Check books flush with deposits are all over the place at the later events.

Its fun though working the crowd. More fun to watch them stop in their tracks when something grabs their eyes.

For me its my "watercolor" photographs that stop them the most. The most popular by far is "Desert Sunrise" and "Morning Glory". Displaying on a sidewalk is tough but I manage to stop a few in their tracks so it isn't that bad.

Big news is that I am the "artist of the month" with the Electronic Cottage Gallery. What that means is your guess is as good as mine in terms of sales (let's face it I need to make a buck along the way). I've been a member of the "Juried Online Art Festival" for a while and they made the referral. Any publicity or extra links and hits have to be good.

Well folks its been a very long hot day. Aside from the Art Walk, I installed at the "Art at the Aztec" gallery for the Monrovia Arts Festival Association in the morning and packed up to install at the Whittier Gallery on Monday.

The pic of my set up, is well bad but in that funky artsy kinda way. I started blogging with this teeny weeny tiny digital camera called the "Che-ez Snap" about a year and a half ago. Its the new century Diana camera for the fine art types. Its got horrible sharpness, contrast, color and color balance, but its got its charm....

Enjoy, have a great remainder of the weekend.

Modern antiquities?

Sitting here doing some show prep I kept thinking about where the photographic process has been from its inception as a scientific curiousity to a medium exploited by a new group of artists. The digital world sure makes it easier to explore those old technology's with a lot less fuss and muss.

It took a long time before a photographic paper process came along and was considered stable enough for consistent reproduction of images from a negative. Even getting to a useable negative on a transparent support took many years.

The papers of the time were not the fine grained quality type we see today, they weren't even the pure white we have now so that added to the character to the prints and unfortunately their instability. After a lot of experimentation with ways to get the light sensative silver to stick to a paper and not float about the scientists dipped back a few hundred years into the painters back of tricks and used albument, or egg whites to hold the silver on the paper for printing an image on paper. This process became known as the "Albumen Print" or "Albumen Silver Print" first patented in 1850.

It took a few more years to over come some of the early stability problems with the Albumen Prints. By 1855 a new group of patents were given to a process of "gold toning" that helped stabilize the final prints and gave them better definition and a nice warm tone most often associated with this process. This process remained the standard for photographic papers for nearly the next 50 years.

I love the look of those images, partly because of the warm tone, but also this was the period where photographers went from recorders of nature to applying artistic sensabilities regarding composition to put their spin on what they were looking at. The early processes may have lacked some hightlight and shadow detail, but the blocks of black, gray or white added to the artistic quality.

Its this area I decided to explore earlier this year, some of which were catalogued for the Whittier Art Gallery show in July. I knew already that wet watercolor softened an image. I used papers that were already a warm tone, or yellowish tint and furthered the look I wanted in the final image. I did stray from the really dark browns and yellows but otherwise kept the feel of those prints.



















Upper Yosemite Falls 2/2005

Color me Mutated

Today during show prep I stumbled across some old postcards of some old Autochrome slides sitting in the Smithsonian. I found them many years ago and had to buy them. Over the years I have sought out shows where they were a featured item. Very unique almost painterly quality to the images.

The Autochrome process was a rather ingenious development invented in France by the Lumiere brothers at the beginning of the 1900's. They died potatoato starch 3 colors then glued it onto a glass plate. The plate then was coated with lampblack to fill the spaces between the starch and coated with a silver emulsion. From there it was exposed in the camera and through some trickery in the dark room (that in itself would have gotten them burned at the stake some 400 years earlier for witchcraft) ended with a color slide.

This use of layers of colored starch produced images very similar to the Pointillism paintings of Seraut and others of the late 1800's. In both different color doalbeitbiet much smaller when its grains of starch, are placed closely together tricking your mind to see other colors. As an example a group of red dots and blue dots making something your mind blends to purple. In the end how those dots were placed together you saw a pictwhethereter it was the Autochrome image or that of a painting by Seurat. Its this link that ads a bit of romance to the Autochrome's allure.

The process was very grainy and colors remotely resembled what was in the original scene. Because potatoatoe starch was large compared to the silver grains in the emulsion the image lacked fine detail. Oddly, even with its lack of detail and fragility due to its organic nature they were the primary color photography medium until the 1930's. Sadly few have survived due to their organic nature. Those that have survived are well worth seeing when you get the chance.

So..today its the final crunch to put together a show for installation the first part of July. In the process I felt the need to supplement the watercolor photograph portion of what I am exhibiting. I worked a bit on "Lone Pine" until I got an image that paid homage to the sensibilities of the pointillists and the Autochrome's of the Lumiere brothers.

Enjoy!

Lone Pine

Today was a Kodachrome Day

Today was a day of curiousity for me. What I wanted was it all in total Kodachrome...rich, saturated color without any of the fuss of running out to buy real film much less send it out for processing. Ugh that's why I went digital in the first place. Thank you photoshop as it is possible to replicate the warmth and saturation of Kodachrome with digitally.

Anyway off to the river I went today to shoot the wild flowers in bloom. The summer bloom of the cacti is just starting and go a bit longer this year as we had a heavy rain last week. Covered with pollen I returned with some images, a few of which I am happy with.

Interesting side bar to all of this is that it dawned on me that the predominate color for the wild flowers...including cactus is yellow. Wonder what ecological twist caused that mutation. Yellow is such a powerful color, not dangerous like red, but always the attention grabber. Right now everything in bloom its just waves of yellow along the river. Really interesting stuff to see.

Cactus are interesting plants. Growing up "back East" they were a curiousity of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons. The real deal are something that amaze me. Today was productive. Managed to get a few of the "beaver tail" in bloom.

Enjoy my "pop" of color and a change from the Black and White work I have been doing....

strawflowers

Cactus Flower & Two Bugs

The Desert is a magical place.

To most making the "Vegas Run" I-15 is reason to complain and basically crab about nothing to see or do. I could not disagree more. It is an amazing place. I really learned to appreciate the desert and all its vitality and hazards while living in Death Valley for a year while I was taking a break from college.

I cannot think of any other place I have been where there were such extreme changes from season to season. How each season changes the landscape is something truly amazing if you take the time to see what's there. How life has adapted to this environment is equally amazing. Every drive through is a treat to just watch how light and shadow dance across the landscape.

Monsoon season starting as early as July in the Southwest is one of those extremes. It is during this time of year the Mojave Desert has these pockets of moisture pumped up from the Gulf of California. As this moist air hits the desert it is energized by the intense heat of the desert. What happens next is these incredibly intense highly localized thunderstorms spring up and provide quite a show, day or night. One of the more interesting phenomena is "verga" or rain that falls but never makes it to the ground as the air at the desert floor is so hot and dry it evaporates on its way down. Of course the recently evaporated rain goes back up to feed and energize the storm further.

I spent time last year in the Mojave around Red Rock Canyon and Mount Charleston in the Las Vegas area. I was up before sunrise (suppose sleep disorders do have some advantages) and hiked in a wash, watching a storm brew and the sunlight slowly skim the ridges and work its way into the canyon. Another day I was up on Mt Charleston and got to watch a surprise storm work its way across Kyle and Lee Canyons. Watching a monsoon work its way across the desert into the Spring Mountain Range is one of my favorite things to do.

I pulled out a few images from those shoots as part of the gallery exhibition I am preparing for in July. I also will have some of those images at the Art Walks on Myrtle Avenue this summer.

Enjoy, and remember my motto, buy your art to match your soul not the sofa!

Red Rock Drive Sunrise

Mt Charleston Storm

Totally jazzed and amped.

Its not often that you get validation as a starting artist from the community, but when it happens wahoo the adrenaline is running. I run on the premise that the piece works if I can stop someone in their tracks to really look at the image. When that happens then I did alright. That is usually enough, but when you get a lot of attention its a real ego boost.

I worked on a set of prints exploring man-made vs nature over the last year. A lot of elements came together in a print I did of the old Monrovia Rail Station. The shoot itself was fun simply because of the character of the old station. It was part of the old Santa Fe passenger rail system that ran from Chicago to LA back in the early 1900's.

In fact Monrovia got its name from the conductors on the railroad. The town was established as "Monroe" some 120 years ago. Monroe was one of the stops along the way into San Bernardino, and conductors would call the route "Monroe Via Pasadena...." and eventually we became known as Monrovia. Local trivia, but what the hell good is a brain if you don't fill it full of stuff. Anyway the old station is in disrepair but still has a wonderful patina. It sits there waiting for restoration.
One of my pictures done there was a seperation and abstraction of nature with some artificial colors introduced versus the manmade simply given more depth and printed on wet watercolor paper (HP forgive me, but that is more fun than you can imagine...try it some time). I showed it at the Monrovia Art Festival Association's "Acknowledge the Arts event at the Historic Aztec Hotel here in Monrovia. It got a lot of attention by everyone that viewed it that evening.

What really got me amped was that City Council Member Joe Garcia liked it enough to purchase it that night. He is going to donate it and have it hung in the station after it is rehabbed and converted to the new Goldline Metrolink station. How cool is that!? Of course it is clearly and cleany labled "frazgo" so there is no doubt it is my stuff! Out of fear of jynxing the deal I held off announcing until the transaction was finalized. Wahoo it happened tonight.

Anyway....here's a photo of the print they bought to donate to the new station -