Tag Archives | abstract art

Quiet Andiparos…

By John on October 27, 2012 in autumn, beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, working

I am visiting Andiparos for part of our fall break from the Aegean Center. I have been sleeping in and staying up late reading and watching movies. Today I drove around for a while and photographed some of the stone wall formations that wind their way across the rugged landscape. I am disheartened by some of the building I see going on–large luxury estates high up on the sides of the mountains, along the steeply sloping terrain, ruining the views of the sea. Still, with my Mamiya c330 I can extract the beautiful lines of stone from the uglier new constructions, taking them out of context by cropping out the obvious greed and ego of modern man. Such is my fantasy.

Throughout the day I have had the song “Wichita Lineman”, written by Jimmy Webb and made famous by Glen Campbell, stuck in my head. I have always loved the melodic loneliness and deep heart of this song. A friend, mentor and colleague reminded me recently that country music is just as much ‘soul music’ as the famous hits of Aretha Franklin. This song is a good example for it is in that broad expansive landscape that one hears the lonely soul of America, forever distanced from its European and Asian roots, forever isolated from the rest of the world. Webb wrote,

I am a lineman for the county

and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload

I hear you singin’ in the wire,

I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman

is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation

but it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south

won’t ever stand the strain

And I need you more than want you,

and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

Campbell has many religious and political views that I do not share but one enduring legacy that I admire him for, however, has been his musical work, his labor. As a member of the “Wrecking Crew” he was one of the most sought out session players from the 50s through the 60s. He wasn’t a mainstream star until later. Last year he announced publicly that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. He is currently on tour with his family, a tour which will be his last. When I read Webb’s lyrics again, hearing Campbell’s voice, I cannot help but cry.

County Line Road, between Washington and Marshall Counties, Kansas.
Photo courtesy of Robert Crowe, photographer, St. Louis, Missouri.

For more of Robert Crowe’s photography and prose, please go here.

JDCM

Building the foundation…

By John on September 30, 2012 in beauty, craft, darkroom work, skill and craft, working

We all begin somewhere. If one wishes to build fine furniture, knowledge of the tools, types of wood, adhesives, joinery, stains and finishes must be mastered first. This begins with an apprenticeship, since the novice knows nothing except the novel desire to see a project through. ‘The right tool for the right job’ is not an idle cliché. This applies to the studio arts as well. When I began my painting classes last spring I knew little of this craft and had very limited skills. All I knew was what I would like to portray, not how to accomplish it. I had to ask for help. I asked my teachers, since that is what they were for. I asked fellow students who were more able than myself, for that is part of their role as well. The great leap is that I took their advice and my work improved. I also do this with my photography. I ask for help and take the advice. There are many ways to do this. I go to the Kodak webpage for help with start times and other technical details, for example. I ask those who have come before “How did you do this…?”

And so my foundation is built of sturdy stuff–strong mortar, supportive materials, able to carry the larger structure that becomes the rooms, halls and stairways of this artistic domicile. There is more to the photography than that, however. My skills and craft are broadened by reading Homer, or T.S. Eliot. I get ideas from looking at the sculpture of Canova and Bernini and the paintings from a diverse world of museums and galleries. I soak in the experience of waiting at the bus station in Ravenna in the rain. By writing about these things I synthesize what I know into something else, perhaps not new to the untrained eye, but certainly original, if only in small ways.

The foundation–my foundation–is greater than the sum of its parts, yet contains all that I have seen and heard. I become my work and in doing so my work defines part of my being, part of my ‘self’ and grants a sense of community. More about this later…

JDCM

Emerson on the beach…

By John on August 19, 2012 in 4×5 photography, beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, working

I sat on the beach the other day and listened to the waves lapping against the sloping sand. While the currents slowly rolled the soft-colored stones rounder, my mind drifted from the page I was reading to the motorboat out in the bay and then back to the page only to be distracted again by the clarity of the sky and shadowy islands lying not-so-distant from my colorful towel. I wonder if Emerson ever thought that one of his essays would become the subject of this writer’s musing or his book find its way to this sandy place? Probably. I am sure that his young admirer Walt Whitman would have felt at home here too. He’ll be next. “Leaves of Grass” during a wet Aegean February might be a good read for me. In any case, in his essay ‘Circles’ published in 1841, Ralph demonstrates prescience. In the modern world the concept of circles and cycles is common. Society knows the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘oneness’ as well as other ’round’ concepts. Buddhism is not the mysterious idea it was so many decades ago and the phrase “what comes around, goes around” has been in the modern lexicon since, I suppose, the early 1960s. “Ye reap what ye sow” has been around longer and means much the same thing. What Emerson speaks of, I feel, is something larger than that. Ideas come and go and those who live in the past naturally point in fear and condemnation towards any revolution of thought or action that may threaten their temporary power. That’s a good word too—revolution. It implies a turning. Seasons turn, wheels turn and the wheel inside the wheel turns as an analogy of an invisible world we may only glimpse in dreams or moments of sublime inspiration, connections with something larger outside ourselves. Then again, there I was sitting on a beach in an archipelago called the Cyclades, or “The Circle”. Hmm…Here is an excerpt from Emerson’s essay titled “Circles”, published in 1841:

“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it all this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea; they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice: here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam, by electricity.”

“There are no fixtures in nature…” Indeed. The waves roll and dissolve stones to sand, the wind shifts and islands disappear. My eye wanders from the page to the sky and back again. I blame the Meltemi for these ramblings. The wind rushes, sometimes feeling as if it is blowing through my head. In one ear and out the other.

JDCM

Counting down and mailing out…

By John on January 18, 2012 in darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, spring in the Aegean

I depart for Europe in about 40 days. By 1 March I will be back on Paros and in my apartment. I am looking forward to the next phase of my life, but I am nervous. Perhaps this will never go away. I have faith that if I show up, do the work I am assigned and participate in the human experience around me I will do well, and probably better than that. I am just nervous because for the first time in 10 years I am branching away from my biological family again and taking on the mantle of an adult, a garment I do not always wear well or properly.

I have heard that due to the economic crisis and possible political instability (from a US standpoint of course ) there may be a drop in enrollment this spring. This is believable in this day and age and perhaps this is one curse of the electronic info-era we currently live in. There has always been and always will be economic woes and political upheavals. The media has blown so much of this out of proportion that it feeds the fears of those who stay glued to their TV sets and believe everything they see and hear from that medium. As a student of history I am thrilled to be living through and in this period of time. Once again we are perched on the brink of change, imminent growth and cultural wisdom, but only if we take a helpful and positive track. Hiding in the shadows helps no one. As a species we are slowly overcoming many of the angers and fears that have directed our thinking for millennia. The currents flowing down the river of change are paced by the fierce creatures that run along its muddy banks. They wave crude spears and dark banners, shout slogans designed to divide and alienate and try in vain to alter the water’s course. But water always seeks its own level and these creatures have historically been left behind, rendered hoarse and obsolete by time. All of this is out of my hands. I am grateful for that.

I have mailed 5 boxes to Greece so far. 1 today and 4 last week. The first 4 have arrived and are being inspected by customs. If I have to pay fees for these I will, but I hope not. They are not consumer goods, but rather goods I have purchased for my own use at the Aegean Center. Most of it is used gear anyway. The rest are books–a small library consisting of some collections: Hemingway, Chekhov, Callahan, Kertesz, Frank, Ashbury, Oliver…the list goes on. To be honest I chose the best of my personal library and then weeded that out some more. Ex Libris Paros…

I have my painting supplies and will be carrying them in my checked baggage during the flight. There are no caustic materials and I am already in love with many of the names on the list…Permanent Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, Payne’s Grey. Soon I will be an undeniable beginner again, a place I enjoy of only for its foolish zest and unknown questions. I will be asking for a lot of help in the next few months.

JDCM

Sleeplessness…

By John 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 John 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

Watching the sea from a quiet place…

By John on November 27, 2011 in autumn, darkroom work, Greece, nude studies, Paros, silver darkroom, Uncategorized

I am sitting here on Paros, in a small cafe called ‘Pebbles’. The sun is out and sky is full of big, puffy white clouds. It is chilly and windy so the large picture windows frame the blue Aegean, the scattering of small islands and the tip of the peninsula across the bay. Near the tip, where the rocks meet the sea is a small church. The blue dome is darker than the pale blue sky above it. It is the Church of Agios Fokas whose name day is September 22. I am not sure what he is the saint of, or why he was martyred, if at all, or what miracle he performed.

I have only a small amount of work to finish in the darkroom. Two more re-prints tonight and then I can begin the selenium process. After that I can matte the 13 pieces that will go into the flip file at the student show on December 9th and choose the one piece to hang. I am pleased with the results and believe they show great skill, craft and an elevation of the commonplace to a higher status.

My digital work seems to be at a standstill with six finished pieces of the twelve I wish to complete. Truthfully I am waiting to hear what the Director’s decision will be on nude figure studies among the students. I still feel as if I have been discriminated against either due to my age, gender or sexual orientation (which is indeterminate-love is love and should follow no gender.) To be honest, I have no desire to photograph anyone nude anymore and my current work does not contain any examples of this milieu. A few days ago another student shot a nude figure study with a female student and for all I know this has been sanctioned by the head office. I applaud his work for I feel that this an art school and this kind of work should exist and continue to be a part of the process. It is not a cloistered convent or monastery. I feel sad about the turn of events for I feel that my future here on Paros hinges on the decision to come. If the answer is that some can and some cannot, then I will not return in the spring and, indeed, may even leave before the student show in less than two weeks. I am willing to admit that in the past I have made horrible and devastating moral and ethical choices. I am also ready to stand up for the fact that in the past 10 years I have not made these kinds of choices due to radical changes in my life and lifestyle. Instead I have tried to stand firmly on a rock of honesty, willing to admit when I have been wrong and trying my best to not condemn others for their own human failings. All of this takes a great deal of work.

So this quiet cafe overlooking the ever-changing sea is good for me today. Keith Jarrett is on the stereo and his meditative piano blends well with the sound of the wind outside, the wash of waves on the rocks and the gradual sinking of the sun to the western horizon. I have turned over my problems to those who can help me the most and hope that the worst is merely a figment of my imagination and that this has been just a misunderstanding.

JDCM

4×5 work, landscape portraiture, good weather and bad…

By John on November 10, 2011 in darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom

Much has happened since my last post. The figure study project I had been working on came to naught, both by my hand and outside forces. Thankfully I have the knowledge that I cancelled the shoots due to artistic apathy and ennui before there were complaints from some parents about “possible improprieties” in the studio. Although the models are all over 18 and therefore legally able to make up their own minds (and vote and die for their country) whether to pose nude or semi-nude and that there has never been any complaints or actual difficulties is apparently besides the point. I was told that I should stop the project. Like I said I am happy that I decided to end it before I heard that news. What’s over and one with is just that. I must admit however that these revelations left me feeling as if my integrity and honor as a man and a photographer had been questioned when really it is a matter of politics for the Center and the director. Once again art and politics clash and the outcome is predictable.

My new work is exclusively 4×5 film, scanning them in the digital lab and then working on them in RAW, PhotoShop and finally printing them on one of the big Epsons. The large format camera is a steep learning curve itself. So far I am achieving some lovely results. The portfolio will be a series of’ “Paros Portraits-People, Places and Things.” I am taking my time with this, although the actual time is limited. 12 pieces need to be finished by December 7th. The same holds true for my darkroom work–12 pieces of MF based on the Italian session and these also have to be matted–all by December 7th. The student show is the 9th and I leave Paros on the 12th to return to the USA on the 15th.

The weather has been up and down. Cool at night, dry and sunny during the day with a north wind that whips all the warmth from the stones. We are expecting tough weather this weekend with rain, Force 9 winds and temperatures in the low 40s F.

There are other things to blog about but as of now they are vague. When I can speak of them with surety, I will. Right now, mums the word!

JDCM

Pistoia, The Aegean Center, photography e studenti…

By John on September 4, 2011 in Uncategorized

I am finally here at the Villa Rospigliosi in Pistoia, Italy for the fall term of the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts. I have waited almost two years for this session, already having spent two spring sessions on Paros, the home of the Center.

Italy is lovely. What can I say? The villa is a 16th century affair with lovely wooden ceilings, old fountains (some in disuse) and stone staircases. Lectures and classes are held in the rear garden, a deconsecrated chapel and in and around Tuscany in general. We travel to Pisa, Venice, Rome and of course Florence. The students are an energetic bunch with many questions and like I was at the beginning, not sure about where to go, what to do and who to speak to. There are quite a few painters and writers and, in a few minutes we will see how many wish to practice the craft of photography.

Art History after this meeting, then dinner and then Dante…

More to come…

European relief, directional aids and new courses…

By John on September 1, 2011 in Paros

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene I was unsure as to the status of my flight to Italy. Thankfully Air France did not cancel the flight, the weather cleared overnight and I flew out of JFK without mishap or delay. My hat is off to the staff at that illustrious airport and the fine job they did Monday August 29, 2011.

I arrived in Florence around 9:00 hours and had to wait a few hours until my room was ready. The Hotel Orto di Medici was kind enough to let me sleep on a couch in the day room until 14:00 when I could check in. A simple but clean room was presented to me and a crawled into the sack for some more shuteye. That evening I walked around and found a decent trattoria: carpaccio with spicy arugula, baked beans with garlic and tomatoes and fried rabbit reminded me that I was no longer in America and safe and happy here in Europe, a place I seem to be calling home more often than not. The next morning I awoke very early and took a dimly-lit walk through the empty streets, down to the River Arno and onto the Ponte Vecchio, devoid of tourists and closed for the night. It was lovely. The street cleaners went about their business as I strolled about, buying off the jet-lag and getting my bearings. My internal compass is more-or-less realigned. I returned to the hotel, snoozed for a couple of hours and woke up to one of the better continental breakfasts I have had. The salami and mortadella were excellent, the cappuccino was tasty and they even had rice cakes as a choice over than toast. I ate well, knowing that my day trip to Fiesole would burn off the calories. I took the bus to Fiesole and walked around the Roman and Etruscan ruins virtually alone–after another cappuccino. I came back to Florence by lunchtime and made my way from the Piazza San Marco to the San Croce area and visited the Museo Galileo, which is also called the Science Museum. Wonderful, really fantastic. Measuring devices of all types, styles, eras and functions were on display, most collected by the di Medici family over the centuries. I was hit by an understanding of the nature of man, or of at least intelligent man. We are born to measure, to divine distances and directions, pressures and quantities physical and ephemeral. My common metaphor of the sailor’s compass is held up by the cases of quadrants, octants, sundials, Jacobs staffs, clocks and globes of any and seemingly all varieties. I am inspired.

Today is Thursday, September 1. I am meeting some spiritual friends for coffee and conversation at 13:30. Before that I hope to beat some of the crowds to the Palazzo Pitti and then head to the Museo Zoologico la Specola. In the afternoon My day is free to wander. I would like to avoid the crowds for an hour or so and then come back to the hotel for a short siesta. Then I’ll pack my bags. Tomorrow I head to Pistoia, the Villa Rospigliosi and the Aegean Center. First, however, I am meeting up with a fellow student at the train station, which leaves me with Friday morning free before I check out and dump my bags (carefully re-packed) at the left-luggage office, Firenze Santa Maria Novello. I can only imagine what awaits me…

JDCM

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