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Back on Paros…

By on March 5, 2012 in 4×5 photography, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized, working

I arrived here on Paros a few days ago.  The weather has been alternatively sun, wind, some light rain and clouds but overall very pleasant.  The new group of students is smaller this spring, but they are an enthusiastic bunch, very bright and ready for the challenges the school will put before them.  Having been through this process three times already I can attest to these challenges and will admit freely that once through does not mean that anything should be taken for granted or assumed.  We are all in for a wonderful and exciting time!

Today was the first official day and we have spent most of it in orientation and introductions.  The assorted work spaces have been visited and already people are eager to sign up for as many courses as they can handle.  I am helping out Liz Carson in the Silver Darkroom but I have also decided to take the painting classes.  As a third formal course I am going back to Creative Writing and will try my hand at some personal essay.  This is a heavy load, but I can manage the time and work required of me.  The Painting course means that I will be also attending the Figure Drawing, Basic Drawing and Free Draw sessions.  In total that is 15 hours of class time.  The Creative Writing is another 4 hours per week in workshop.  I will consult with Liz for probably another 2 hours per week.  On top of this I will be attending the Art History lecture (1 1/2 hrs), Classical Literature (1 1/2 hrs), and maybe Photo History (1 hr).  This is my official week of class time.  That’s 25 hours.  Top that off with the time I will be spending in my studio painting, working in the darkroom, writing and reading and I am looking at about 50 hours total per week working.  I am hoping to get some time in for Greek language classes so let’s just say that is another 2-3 hours total.  The Friday hikes will be a much needed breather for me and, I imagine, the others.

I am very excited about the days and weeks ahead.  Right now dark clouds are rolling in and I hear thunder nearby.  It is supposed to rain tonight and I am looking forward to this as it means more green things in the hills of this lovely place I am beginning to call home.

JDCM

 

12 days, 1200 Euros…

By on February 15, 2012 in 4×5 photography, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized

My debacle with Greek Customs is all but resolved.  Three of the four boxes I have sent have been delivered to Paros, safely and without incident.  The other four that Customs snagged have been evaluated and the price is high, in fact it is as if I have to purchase everything again.  They have assigned the value at 1200 Euros, just over 1500USD.  Ouch indeed.  As a good friend told me, I am now part of an exclusive club.  I have little choice but to comply if I wish to have my possessions back.  There is an avenue of appeal, but this would be a long, drawn out affair and in the end it is doubtful I would gain anything from it except to garner resentment from the Greeks.  As my friend also reminded me, the customs agents probably have relatives on Paros so why make my life difficult?  Give them their pound of flesh and be done with it.  Lesson learned, but what lesson that is remains unclear.  The good news is that the boxes have been released from customs and are waiting for me at the PO on the island.

I leave for Greece in 12 days and I am very excited.  The mystery of the future fills me with hope and I am looking forward to being a beginner in school, working on my own photography and contemplating the possibility of my own, first, book.  The recent news regarding the social unrest in that little country is unsettling, but according to friends I know in town the press has exaggerated the scale and scope.  Yes, there are troubles both social an economic and many Greeks are distressed about their own abilities to cope.  The good news is that they have gone through worse before and in more tense situations.  WWII and NAZI occupation, the Junta of the The Colonels, the Greek Civil War…These all overshadow the current crisis and, in a way, keep the population centered around what they can do instead of what they are powerless to achieve.  Their future, like all futures, is uncertain and I have faith that a solution will present itself.  No one wants a return to the military rules of the past nor the brutal foreign dictatorships that governed with iron fists.  Social reform and economic balance is never easy and the Greeks have their work cut out for them.  Europe will not let them leave the EU so it is logical to feel that they would not allow them to leave the EuroZone.

This brings up the Euro itself, a troubled and controversial subject from its inception.  It is incorrect to compare the EU system with that of the USA.  Europe is not the US, thank the gods.  Many analysts feel that the Euro was doomed front the start and perhaps they were right.  Still, it is always easier to destroy than to build, seemingly more sensible to abandon than to support.  Responsibility is a good place to begin and all of Europe must take responsibility for the failure or success of their fledgling currency.  It is a brave venture to change 1500 years of historical divisions and nationalistic pride.  It is a matter of faith and action which, I have heard, is like a blind man walking down the stairs.  This painful growth spasm is just that.  It will pass.

More to come…

JDCM

16 days, crossing things off the list and postal updates…

By on February 10, 2012 in 4×5 photography, craft, darkroom work, Greece, nude studies, Paros, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

I haven’t been counting the days recently so imagine my surprise when I realized that I had only 16 days until I head back to Greece!  Amazing, really, just amazing.  I am very excited to return to Paros and the Aegean Center and begin working. It feels like I do no work here.  Although I take pictures and develop film I seem to spend more time combing through my Netflix queue and meeting friends for coffee and all that.  On Paros I have days full of reading, dark room work, digital work, artistic discussion and more that are much more fulfilling.  I also get more exercise which is good since I tend to loaf around here more than anything-and gain weight in the process.  This isn’t saying that I do not “get things done” because I do.  I have been crossing many things off the list recently and  am confident that I will be departing Ancramdale in ship-shape-and-Bristol-fashion.

The tree work and storm cleanup has been finished.  The place looks lovely and we are getting everything ready for spring, which is just around the corner.  No snow to speak of, but we are supposed to get some tonight and this weekend.  the ‘Farmer’s Almanac’ claims a big storm later in the month, but thankfully before I leave.  We shall see.  Mom’s care is all set-up and all the important adjustments have been made for her going forward for the next few months.  I have visited my father in Pittsburgh and followed through on that commitment.  The donations to charities have been made and I feel hundreds of pounds lighter than I as before–not so much material stuff anymore.  It has been a cathartic few weeks for sure.  I have also hired some new employees to replace my mother’s long-time home maintenance man.  He has been a good guy but in the past few years has begun to flake out due to burnout.  It is time to switch to those who have the resources and will to do the job.  I’ll bring the Mini Cooper up to the shop in Latham next week for a tune-up and then it will be ready to sit quietly until I return in July.  I’ll have someone drive it once in a while during my absence.

The boxes I have sent to Paros have all but arrived.  Three are on the island and have been delivered to the school, but four are still in customs, waiting to be released.  I have had to jump through some hoops to have them cleared but I think that they will be soon.  I’ll be charged a fair amount of money for their freedom, but it will be worth it in the end.  The other night I had to call Greek Customs at 3:40 AM to speak to the official there, but I think I have solved that problem.  It was not without a lot of help so, from the bottom of my heart, I thank those who eased the tensions and fears around this issue and acted on my behalf.  You know who you are!

On another note, I have so many wonderful interactions with other Aegean Center alums here in New York that I am bowled over by the solidarity.  First was the meeting at the Metropolitan with Jeffrey, Liz and the others and then the other day I met with some other former students at MoMA and the Met for a wonderful day of art and conversation.  Really great!  I am grateful to have had the time with them and thankful that I am able to do so.  Super photography, beautiful paintings and a lot of crappy post-modern junk have assured me that I am on the right path and that my ethics are true.

More to come…

JDCM

Travel news and photo exhibits…

By on February 5, 2012 in 4×5 photography, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

In about three weeks I’ll be back in Greece.  I cannot wait.  My time in the US has been excellent and I have been able to take care of business, visit with family and maintain an adult demeanor most of the time.  Certainly there is a great deal of emotion surrounding my leaving for this extended period of time because in many ways I am moving to Europe.  I will return periodically, of course, to visit with family and friends, but my heart is now directed towards a new life.

I have shipped 7 boxes of personal goods to Greece and so far only 1 has reached Paros.  4 are still in Greek Customs and await negotiating to be let through.  There are no goods for sale, no items of great import except of personal value.  I am imaging a huge fee for their release.  The remaining 2 are most likely in Greece by now and I hope they will be let through easily.  Those 2 have my medium and large format cameras in them as well as some clothes and books.  I’ll cross my fingers.

I have just visited my father in Pittsburgh and yesterday we went to the Carnegie Museum of Art to view an exhibit on the photojournalist Teenie Harris.  It is an amazing show and worth seeing more than once.  Massive amounts of 4×5 prints spanning almost 40 years.  He did not consider himself an artist.  He worked and fulfilled his job.  Through this I feel that he has accomplished more than the artist that goes out to purposely to ‘create’ an image.  There is a purity to his work and it cautions me to the perils and pitfalls of assuming I am an artist.  My work will decide this for me and it is up to others to assign a label even if I find this label arrogant or incorrect.  I would rather be known as a hard worker and someone who tried to perfect a craft rather than a popular figure in the art world.  Skill and craft: the cornerstones of my life these days.  On Paros I can practice this.  Soon I will be back in my comfort zone and hard at work.

JDCM

Sleeplessness…

By on January 11, 2012 in 4×5 photography, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, spring in the Aegean

I have slept for a few hours and am now awake again.  I am sleepless and need to examine my thoughts on virtual paper…

I have been preparing for my return to Paros for two weeks.  This time it will be for an extended stay, not the three-months-on-three-months off that I have been experiencing for the past two years.  To that end I have been divesting myself of my unneeded possessions, mostly books and musical equipment.  I have given them away, with no misgivings. I have kept one guitar, a Fender Telecaster I bought in 1986.  It is a candy-apple red 1962 re-issue and holds too much sentimental value to discard.  The books are a mix of volumes never read, read too often and those whose message I have outgrown.  Clothing has been gathered and that, too, will be given away.  The monumental task of collating and burning the  set of my 1200 CD collection has been accomplished and my laptop is now full of the best I have collected since the late 1980s, when CDs were first released.  It is also a mix: classical, jazz, old rock, new rock…the list seems endless but of course is not.  These will go to the local library in Hillsdale.  I have packaged up four large boxes of goods to send  ahead and will mail them tomorrow.  One more box remains because I still have some darkroom work to take care of.  This box will contain last minute odds and ends, some clothes, a few books and some more darkroom gear that I still need to process film.  I cannot send any liquids, however, which means that my developers stay here in the US.  I can purchase replacements in Athens.  I have decided to take one extra checked bag with me this time instead of my usual  backpack/camera bag combo.  This will allow a few more items than I have usually taken with me.

It really feels like I am leaving, which I am, but this has been coming for a long time.  I moved back to the Hudson Valley in 2004 for personal and family reasons and in many ways my job here is done.  It is time to go.  What I need to do for my family I can accomplish easily via email and telephone and I proved that last year when I adjusted insurance payments over the phone from the island after being alerted of a payment glitch via my Gee mail account.  The modern world has its benefits but I am looking forward to the upcoming year, a year of photography, writing and painting.  Will I begin and finish my book?  Only Kronos knows and that giant sleeps too deeply to wake for the answer.  The future, like always, is unknown, but this time it really feels as if I am departing for the next phase of my life.  I have been a professional chef and an unknown rock musician, a composer of hook-laden pop tunes.  These paths led to a certain point where I then abandoned them like a sailor diving into the ocean lest he go down with the ship.  The lifeboat that found me has proved to be more than a rescue craft.  Its design for living has been impressed upon me and I have followed it, despite my fears.  These have turned out to be echoing voices from my distant past.  Unfortunately I have listened to these voices too much, but to quote a line from an old Chinese morality tale, “How do I know?”  Indeed, how do I not know that it was necessary for me to begin this new life now, on the eve of my 47th birthday, after enduring all that I have in the past?  This is how it is, I think.  There is always the illusionary choice of a straight line, filled with drudgery and boredom.  I was on that track.  As one of my sisters commented, living is not a straight line.  There is no simple way to get from A to B.  Perhaps there is no ‘A’ or ‘B’ at all.  The life ahead is not a known set of coordinates on a chart.  Each of us has his or her own map to design.  Only hindsight shows us where we have come from and the seemingly strange coincidences that have made up our non-linear path.

JDCM

Showtime…

By on December 8, 2011 in 4×5 photography, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, Wright Morris

We hung the student show today at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts, here on Paros.  It is a very pretty show with a wide assortment of photography, painting, printmaking and drawing.  The vocal ensemble had their first concert last night in Naoussa and will have two more this weekend.  Overall I have a had an excellent time here this arm and am looking forward to being back here in about three months.  My photography has improved and I have also gained a little more patience with the younger students.  While I am no smarter than they are, I have experienced more of the world so I am perhaps a little wiser. Perhaps.

In the past few days I have thought a lot about what I will be doing next year while I am here.  Yes, my own photography certainly, but also the work with the director and painting in the spring.  On top of that I feel that it is time to begin work on my own book, probably in the format pioneered by Wright Morris and Andre Kertesz, the photo-text.  In this format the images on the page do not have to directly correspond to the text but by the end of the reading they have made sense as an accompaniment to the reading.  I have many other ideas but I will not share them lest I talk myself dry of the concept.

I have begun packing my stuff and will begin putting it in storage tomorrow.  I have to conduct the inventory of the darkroom supplies and print some last few pieces.  After that I head to Athens on Monday and back to New York Thursday.   Christmas, New Years, my birthday and then back here.  Time flies indeed.

JDCM

An American Thanksgiving in Greece…the session draws to a close…

By on November 23, 2011 in 4×5 photography, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, Thanksgiving, Uncategorized

Tomorrow is the American Thanksgiving, but here on Paros at the Aegean Center we celebrate the Feast of Thanks on Friday evening, not Thursday.  This is mostly so we do not interrupt the class schedule at a point in the term when everyone is either scrambling to wrap things up or just feeling the crunch.  I have conducted an inventory of my darkroom work and I only need to reprint two pieces and then I can begin the selenium toning process, then I matte them.  My digital work is half-way done.  So I am in good shape.  I cannot speak for any of the others.

I have found an apartment, or rather one was found for me, and I am looking forward to the move in late February.  It is actually the former apartment of an Aegean Center faculty member and in spring of 2010 I visited it and loved it immediately.  It is on the second floor with two small balconies.  There is a large living room, a separate bedroom, a small but full kitchen and a bathroom.  Good windows, lots of light and the price is right.  It is also adjacent to the school, so I will be within shouting distance of whatever work I will be doing.

In regards to that, I will be taking the painting course this spring as a student plus working one-on-one with the maestro in the digital lab.  This means that I have to bow out of the darkroom as a formal student, but I am pretty sure I will be doing some work in there as well.  I know nothing of painting, or how to do it, which is hat they like here.  Jane and Jun would rather work with a blank canvas than try to re-teach someone.

John says the turkeys are in the brine.  I have to make a shopping list of goods to buy for glazed carrots as well as a normal style stuffing.  This means onions, celery, sage and veggie broth.  I also need to buy bread, cube it up and let it dry.  Perhaps I’ll toast it in the oven to facilitate that drying process, or else it might just mold.

I am so thankful for this life that I cannot figure out where to start.  This morning I was up early and out working with the 4×5.  The light was soft and lovely and there is no wind today.  This will change, I know, and that’s alright, but for now I am feeling pretty good about what is happening.   There is a sadness in the air, though.  In two weeks the student show opens and then we all go our separate ways.  Most of us will never see each other again and although it is a small planet and connections can be strong at the beginning, the ties will thin and eventually fade out.  I have experienced this firsthand in my life.  Yes, you may say, there are social networking sites and the internet, but truth be told there is nothing really very strong about them.  They cannot hold a candle to a strong network built on real communication and true friendship.  Clicking a series of buttons does not make you my friend.  Commitment, contact and honesty does, however.  There is at least one student here who I will miss terribly but she has made a commitment to her family and I respect that.  I have to believe that the time she has spent here has altered her life for the better, and forever.

JDCM

 

Much needed rain and fall in the Aegean…

By on November 14, 2011 in 4×5 photography, autumn, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, Thanksgiving

It is raining outside and has been since yesterday.  We do need the rain here on Paros.  The island had become so dry in the past few weeks.  The wind from the north has been blowing at Force 7,8 and 9 on the Beaufort scale but today it has seemed to have quieted somewhat.  This will end tonight, but the winds will continue to whip the water back into the sky for the next few days even though the sun will be out.  Autumn in the Aegean is very different than in the Northeastern area of the US.  The fall colors fade from the burned gold and silver of summer into a rich caramel amber and finally as the rains come in, more green, crocuses and smaller blooms accompanying the cooler air.  In the local gardens there is spinach, broccoli and cauliflower.  This morning I received a treat of fresh oranges, right off the trees.  Anyone who says there are no seasons here in the Kyklades have obviously never stayed here for long.

We have 26 days until the student show and 31 until I arrive back in New York.  My two portfolios are filling up as I slowly create more prints in the darkroom and digital lab.  If one were to look at them right now they would seem to lack cohesiveness, but really this is an academic regiment and not relevant to the Aegean Center, its philosophy or even my own thinking.  Relevance and structure are all around me and integral in my thinking.  At the very least the fact that I am making these pieces is a glue that holds them together.  That the silver pieces are all, with few exceptions, all of Italy in September and the digital are all 4×5 scans of Paros are also two values that assign a consistency to these two projects.

Upstairs students are drawing in the figure study class.  Still others are meeting with Liz Carson in the darkroom (I just came from there myself) and planning the week’s work.  John Pack is readying himself for another day of digital printing and wrangling the kinds of wild horses that only the director of a small arts center on an island in Greece can possibly ride.  Thanksgiving is just around the corner and we will celebrate here on Paros in grand style.  I am supplying the glazed carrots.

JDCM