Mormon Cricket

Mormon Cricket, Hulls Gulch Reserve, Boise, ID

October 9, 2009

Most of these massive insects had long since swarmed their last in Boise's Hulls Gulch. As we hiked we primarily found them chewed up and expelled in great piles of desiccated coyote scat. My brother-in-law snagged this dark lady from the trail side as we meandered back through the sage and bottle brush.

It is easy to imagine how horrifying it would be to experience them in the thousands: swarming over every surface, always on the move to avoid being bitten and consumed by the hundreds of thousands that are behind: the hundreds of thousands that are anxious to devour the weak and the slow. . .

It started over the ridge.

It started over the ridge. 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, and wax on panel

10.5" x 10.5"

Click on image for larger view.

I used to hike to this small canyon near our house in La Canada and, on the ridges that surrounded the shaded glen, there stood some monumental electrical towers. When I hiked beneath them my body would quiver from the buzz of electric current coursing through the cables far overhead. You could tell from the lack of scat underneath them that the deer had an aversion to the power lines. I suppose, had I more sense, I would have heeded such a sign and steered clear of them myself.

But one cloudy day I stood below a tower with the seed of a headache forming and the hair on my arms being coaxed upward by the electricity. In the distance stood this bleak little tree silhouetted against the dismal sky. And it struck me that to a person standing off some distance from me, I would be no more than a silhouette as well. Just the form of a man standing on a ridge that could hide anything on the other side of the slope.

Week, Tweet Week

4T Hiking Trail Map, Portland, OR*

I want to understand the culture I live in. Really, I do. But it seems to grow faster and simpler just as my life grows slower and more complex— which puts us, if not at odds, certainly on opposite ends of a continuum.

I was mentally reviewing my week today as I hiked along Portland's new 4T trail; so named because it is an urban excursion that requires a tram, train, trolley, and trail to complete the loop. In doing so I realized that truncated Twitter-like statements about events do lend them a profundity (or at least mystery) they might otherwise lack if I employed a bunch of useless context. So, in a little deviation from the norm here, I decided to share the highlights of my week as they might have been depicted had they been tweeted. . .

• Running through a deluge of hail, blue tarp blowing out behind me, in a brave attempt to save the carcass of a dragon killed earlier that day.

• Whipping up a sandwich with goat cheese brie, biodynamic tomatoes, crushed avocado, salt, and pepper on rye bread. Delish! But don't worry, blogging about food won't become an ongoing thing— I'm not one of those wordy food nutters armed with a URL.

• The Weasley's busting Harry out of solitary using a flying car they "borrowed" from their father. Don't scoff because I'm only getting to the second book now— I teach children for a living, and don't have much time for reading the pop culture sensations that shaped their lives.

• Party banners from discarded upholstery fabric. . . Martha would be so proud.

• A business man on the MAX reading "The Portable Thoreau" while rocking out on his portable music device.

• Deciding that towns which insist upon one-way grids in their three block downtown area are deluding themselves in some pretty profound ways. That's right, I'm talking about you Hillsboro.

• Sliding along at 22mph 500 feet above Portland in a silver pea pod on wires. The Jetsons' theme song rattles against my skull as I stare at rooftop gardens and the glistening line of the Willamette River.

• Being told that I should be selling $60,000 worth of artwork out of every show if I want them to be successful. So that's what I'm doing wrong. . .

• Along with that whole lack of capitalistic vision comes the pleasure I had at giving two lovely works to Brandon as thanks for sacrificing weeks of summer to ensure I had two shows that came nowhere near $60,000 sales.

• Scolded! As an adult! By another adult! Insanity.

*Note that this is a different map than that provided by Portland Metro. It also depicts the slightly longer scenic route through Marquam Nature Park. This route has less time on roadways, but also leaves you wondering where to go when you find yourself below OHSU at the Marquam Shelter. Perhaps I just missed a sign, which is great, as it forces me to do the whole thing over again soon.

That's A Wrap

Elizabeth Garrett as Brady

Click on image for larger view.

Filming effectively ended this weekend. We closed with the climax of the movie, which was heart-wrenching to witness. It also left the whole house infused with an air of desperation and anger. I've considered smudging the place clean but am concerned that some unforeseen pick-up shot will be immediately needed should I attempt to reclaim my environs too soon.

But I'm getting ahead of things. Perhaps a bit of background is in order.

* * * * *

Months ago Amy presented The Company with a script. Like all things Amy produces it was alarmingly good, and honored all of the edicts we'd set down after learning what we did producing Fine Arts. Namely, that we don't have any sort of budget and should only write in locations that are ours to access. Furthermore, actors and actresses prefer to have lines to speak when they act. It seems to be part of their craft— this memorization and convincing delivery of lines.

So this new script was talky, which meant Director Brandon wasn't going to be the Director, preferring the quieter screenplays as he does, and it would take place in my apartment, seeing as how I live next door to some other folks Amy and Brandon are quite chummy with and we needed a place for the creepy neighbor in the script to live.

Which meant my home became a movie set. A movie set that Ariana and I had to live in, always questioning whether or not we could use a certain glass ("Is this part of the set?") or throw away the soap dispenser when it emptied ("How can I dress the set for scene 18 if the soap dispenser from scene 17 is now in the landfill?"). All sorts of frustration ensued. Ariana nearly lost a lung to a melting plastic spatula and the cat started to neurotically scratch holes in her skin.

I lost sleep. I lost my keys. I lost my checkbook. At times, I must admit, I lost my cool.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, as the Director, I've been privy to the dailies (movie parlance for the footage shot thus far, or on that day, or something like that) and I can say that all of this trouble may just net one awesome short film. The two leads (Elizabeth Garrett and Raj Patel) were accommodating, committed, and exceedingly skilled at realizing a script that was anything but simple. I found myself watching them storm through a scene and thinking, "Where do actors find all of the extra energy to live all these other lives?" There were moments when I found it difficult to watch, what with the emotions flying about being so raw, and that speaks volumes about the efficacy of their performances.

* * * * *

There's plenty more I could say, but I'm sure that editing the footage for the next three months will provide countless opportunities for Blogger-powered reflection. . .

In the meantime I tried to grab a few screenshots from the rough footage for this post— which turns out to be more difficult than I thought (undoubtedly due to some silly copyright infringement fear on the part of Apple) so please forgive the rather choppy images displayed here. I can assure you that the actual footage is not only much crisper, but far more saturated as well.

Crisper and more saturated— words to live by.

Raj Patel as Jacob

Click on image for larger view.

Active, Adventurous, and Beautiful

Compass at the Dee Wright Observatory, McKenzie Pass, Oregon

I've returned from a week long trip through the geological wonders of Central Oregon. This is the third time I've taken this trip, and the second outing with students in tow.

For those of you who grew up with a public school education the idea of setting out with your teacher for a week long camping trip probably seems incomprehensible. The organization, money requirements, and liability complications would render such a trip impossible. Yet, I would argue, that it is just such thoughts and limitations that have neutered our public schools in the past three decades. Ultimately, I believe our inability as adults to free ourselves from such fears will contribute greatly to a dramatically diminished economic and cultural output in America.

The fact of the matter is, there is no better way to instill in a child the magnificent power of nature than to let them experience it first hand. Hiking to the top of cinder cone volcanoes in 98 degree weather only to descend through a 6000' lava cave that is 40 degrees on the same afternoon does more to nurture a child's imagination than any classroom demonstration or diagram. In order for education to be lasting and meaningful to a child, it must be composed of experiences that inspire and enliven— it must be active, adventurous, and beautiful— in short, it must be all the things that we believe our children to be.

Resistance

Resistance, 2009

acrylic, toner, graphite, and wax on panel

10.5" x 10.5"

Click on image for larger view.

There are a good number of things in life right now that are providing a bit of resistance. I'd like to think that I'm standing as stoic and strong as these evergreens, but the truth is quite different. I have fewer years, less pith, and a great deal more awareness of discomfort; which I suppose are the hallmarks of consciousness, but do not necessarily yield humanity a more enviable path in the natural world.

* * * * *

I remember witnessing this stand in the snow atop Mt. Hood during a snow flurry and feeling very small. These trees had already lost ten feet to an accumulation of wind and moisture that would have consumed me in a matter of hours if I opted to stand still.

Winter has long been portrayed as a season of death, but ultimately this is a great simplification. Winter, like modern life, is merely a catalyst and punisher of inertia.

Spoiler Alert!

Photo by Edwin Aldrin, Apollo 11, July 16-24, 1969

Courtesy of NASA Image eXchange (NIX)

Hasselblad 70mm transparency

Ariana and I went with high hopes to see Moon the other night. Our hopes were dashed.

Here's what I hoped would not be part of a movie about the moon that had been billed as quiet, contemplative, and spiritual:

1. a talking computer with questionable motives— Talking computers may be the future, but after HAL, there's really no way to cast a computer without it being an obvious play on HAL, and that means that everyone will assume the computer is evil, heartless (if you have a hard time with the word evil), or susceptible to devastatingly literal programming by emotionally stunted programmers. Unless of course some clever auteur were to subvert our expectation of a HAL-like computer and give it a heart, hmmmm. . . didn't see that one coming.

Happy and sad face computer displays as an empathy device don't go over so well either; especially in a mostly monochrome movie of moon dust and plastic surroundings.

2. another clone movie that explores what it means to be human— Let me just say that there is not one moment in this film that comes close to the emotional resonance of Rutgur Hauer's justification for his right to life in the final scene of Blade Runner. Which isn't to say that Sam Rockwell does a bad job, because he doesn't. But he has a hard time really getting to a the low we would expect of a man left alone to die— a man whose whole world view has been shattered— because there's another, more vivacious him, to play off of. This ends up making it more of a surreal buddy movie rather than a reflection of selfhood.

Or, as my wife put it: it's hard not to just get Weird Al's "I Think I'm a Clone Now" on a loop in your head for the last hour of the movie.

3. lots of talking and even a few jokes— Clearly somebody didn't read their Making of an Epic Space Tale 101 Handbook. If the objective is to make a profound film set in space make sure everyone says very little.

Sure, Moon has the weird unexplainable visions part nailed. And it was adapted from a short story into a long feature length film, so those are some instant credibility points. But ultimately, the movie is awfully heavy on dialogue and woefully light on sweeping desolate vistas to truly enter the ranks of the memorable space epic.

So let me offer a suggestion for round two, because the sequel to this film could be awesome. In the final shot of Moon there is a bit of voice over that alludes to the reaction on Earth after Mr. Rockwell returns to tell his tale of clone woe. If you want to make a truly good science fiction movie, how about a genre-bending court room drama about a clone who falls to earth and explodes an international debate about what makes a human being human, coupled with an exploration about how immigration policy must be reconsidered in light of the cloning capacity of nefarious mining corporations.

I'll write it for any studio in Hollywood for, say, half a million dollars.

Call me.

The Lost Statement

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This quick Photoshop collage is not a part of my recent exhibitions. I put together this comp to compare the different looks of some daguerreotype textures provided by Caleb Kimbrough at Lost and Taken. Nevertheless, I think it proves to be a fitting accompaniment to the short artist statement I drafted for my current show at the Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro, OR.

It turns out that the Arts Center didn't have a designated location to post statements so this brief composition will find its only home here.

* * * * *

I spend a good deal of time longing to be outdoors.

This wasn’t always true. Much of my life played out in the suburbs and cities of Southern California where there are no true seasons— everything blooms and grows unchecked if you water it enough. Leaves don’t turn vibrant colors. Snow never blankets the ground. The sky is perpetually laden with heat and the particulate offerings of tailpipes. In such a place there was little incentive to be outdoors, and I had no real conception of the breadth and majesty of the natural world until I moved to the Willamette Valley.

That first year in Oregon I would drive around the farmlands outside of Salem, or up into the coastal range to the West, and I would witness a nature more magnificent than I’d ever imagined. Who knew the moon could be so large? How is it possible to have concentric rainbows? Isn’t it incongruous how the combines are so loud but create a dusty film that filters the setting sun into a splash of shadowy purple across the fields? In that year I discovered a sublime beauty and, quite by coincidence, I also discovered photography.

Well, I discovered pinhole photography anyway, which is a very primitive sort of way to take a picture; the camera being nothing more than a cardboard box with a hole to allow in some light like a lens would on a “real” camera. To be honest, the pinhole cameras I constructed did a poor job of capturing any of the sublime moments I witnessed, but in their indistinct and blurry compositions I discovered something equally beautiful. These crude images conveyed something about the underlying shape of nature; about nature in motion. A picture postcard of a vista doesn’t tend to do that, it just boasts about being somewhere. An image like that is about conquering a bit of landscape, whereas the pinhole image that takes minutes (or even hours) to expose is about experiencing a place.

Eventually, I began to supplement my collection of muzzy pinhole images with antique photos that had similar properties. I would hunt through flea markets and junk shops for damaged and discarded impressions of nature. Then I would transform both my images, and the found images, into drawings like the ones you see exhibited here. These drawings allow me to adjust the scale of the images and to perhaps even improve upon the original negative by adjusting the composition or contrast of the subject as I draw it.

I suppose I could outline that drawing process here, but it is complicated, and the only important thing to understand is that the process allows me to devote time to each image— more time than one person ever really devotes to a picture these days when imagery in ubiquitous and, quite frankly, exhausting.

The way we spend our time says a great deal about what we value. When I consider these landscapes that I’ve drawn, whether they are places I photographed or places some anonymous photographer felt compelled to record, I realize how important these moments that cause us to stop in wonder- to stop in awe- actually are, and I feel a great longing to step outside and discover everything all over.

August 2009, Portland, OR

Another Opening Tomorrow Night

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After an unforeseen nine-day visit to Southern California I've made it back to Portland just in time to install another exhibition of the landscape work I completed in July. This exhibit is about twenty miles outside of Portland at the Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro, Oregon. An opening reception will take place tomorrow evening (Tuesday, September 1st) at six o'clock. For those of you with the time and inclination the particulars are below:

Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center

527 East Main Street

Hillsboro, OR 97123

503.615.3485

This is a three person exhibit (it also includes the work of Janette Cavecche and Robynn Fulfs) and it will run through September. Following the closing of this show I plan on taking a break from exhibiting for a while to focus on:

• finishing the second movie (more on that in a bit)
• beginning a new series of work (a bestiary— 'nuff said)
• a motley assortment of design projects meant to sharpen my Adobe skills
• finding a sense of balance and harmony in life

Goodbye Grandma

The desert was all gold and heat.

The desert was all gold and heat. 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, and wax on panel

10.5" x 10.5"

Click on image for larger view.

I recognize that I've been a bit lax with regard to blogging of late— there has just been so much to do to prepare for shooting the upcoming film that I've felt a bit overwhelmed. In the past I would have sprinkled a few liberal promises about posting more frequently to make up for my silence, but I'm not in a position to fully honor such vows, so the most I can say is that I haven't forsaken blogging regularly; I'm simply in the process of redefining "regularly."

* * * * *

The desert was all gold and heat. is an utter fabrication. It is an amalgam of a found image and the texture of an old daguerreotype plate. At the MKAC opening one of the other photographers exhibiting there told me it had the quality of an Edward Curtis, which made me glow with a golden sheen not at all dissimilar to that displayed in the work.

I don't belong anywhere near the same breath that would utter Curtis' name; he being a master photographer and me being something of a photographic imposter. But I could see how the color of the image might elicit a comparison.

Curtis, Edward Sheriff (American, 1868-1952)

The Morning Bath—Apache

from The North American Indian (published between 1907-1930)

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Divination Rod

Divination Rod, 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, ink, and wax on panel

7.375" x 7.375"

Click on image for larger view.

Forgive my absence. I've been away for about two weeks on a silent meditation retreat in Washington. Ever since my return friends and family have all been asking the same sorts of questions:

What was it like? Was it worth it? Did it help? Why did I do it?

The answers to these questions are neither short nor simple, so I will wait until more time has passed before I share more about that particular experience. Needless to say, it has been difficult to return to the bustle and frustration of a city after ten days of silence on a 40-acre parcel of wheat fields and evergreens.

* * * * *

Divination Rod derives from an image of a spray-painted branch I discovered on Bainbridge Island this past Spring. For some reason or another this branch, along with a scattering of stumps and leaves, had been sprayed a metallic blue color that looked most incongruous among the deep browns and greens of the woodland. A contented squirrel sat a few feet away from me gnawing on a nut as I searched for the right angle to capture this knobby wooden talon. It looked in every way like an object with some mystical power, glowing as it was under the overcast sky of the Puget Sound.

Months later, when the image was transferred atop the silver leaf, I was pleased to see that the same sort of luminosity that had been a by-product of the spray paint was evident in this little waxed panel.