Cypress cones, Paros, Greece…November 2015

Local clementines, just picked, sunshine, glass, marble…

Pomegranates, lemons, bay leaves from a nearby tree and a pear…

–JDCM

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My most recent post was in the form of notes.  I think I will keep it that way for today as well.

–The session here at the Aegean Center is almost finished.  This week is the final full week of work.  It is also American Thanksgiving and Chanukkah.  Lots to do (food, work, art) and I imagine emotions are running high for those younger students who have never been away from home on these holidays.  We will have a big pot-luck feast on Friday evening, since Thursday is a work day.  We supply the side dishes.  JP supplies the turkeys and gravy.  I am making roasted butternut squash.

–The students who are working in the darkroom are making some interesting work.

–I have been able to noodle about with my own work, but nothing really substantial.  I have tried some portrait work with minor success.  Siga-siga.  If one were to ask how I think I am doing these days, the answer would have to be divided into three parts: personal, artistic and academic.  Personally I am doing alright.  I am building solid social bridges to people in the community who have little to do with the school or the arts.  I am biking a lot and feeling good about that that.  Artistically I am, as I said, noodling around.  I am letting the students have the lion’s share of the darkroom time.  The third aspect is etsy-ketsy.  I do what I can.

–Am I an artist-in-residence or faculty?  I have no idea anymore.  I have worked to define these boundaries within the small community in which I labor.  I can only guess that I receive unknown support and back-up from those I respect.

–I am opening a Flickr site and will post photos there, images that never made it here and other things.  Mostly travel stuff.  I’ll add a tab to the website next time I post.  Until then I have added an autumnal image: olive oil fresh from the press.  Yes, it really is that green.

Happy Thanksgiving!

–JDCM

Fresh olive oil from the olive press at Kamari.

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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

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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

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