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.

D is for Durable

M is for Muir, 2009

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

7.375" x 7.375"

Click on image for larger view.

When I'm on field trips with my class I don't get too many opportunities to take photographs. The reasons for this should be obvious. However, and here is the great irony, the only times I tend to travel are when I take field trips with my class. Oh wicked conundrum!

* * * * *

I learned very quickly that only the most durable camera will survive a road-trip with a class of adolescents. That fancy new DSLR would certainly be the most versatile camera, but it would hardly hold up to falling out of the back of the van when the cooler lid is thrown open carelessly in the pursuit of snacks. So, I opt for indestructible over versatile, and always bring my trusty manual Nikon FE with a first-gen Lensbaby. The Lensbaby, while exceedingly limited in what it can do, has no glass components. That means that 70lbs. of lumpy duffle bag can be thrown on top of it and nothing much will happen to the simple plastic bellows.

* * * * *

M is for Muir was taken in the California Redwoods as we wound our way down to San Francisco. The students were completely immersed in ensuring that the quiet majesty of the Redwoods was anything but quiet so I took a moment to fixate on a few of the fallen giants that bordered the path. As usual, some yahoo had felt the need to deface the soft orange bark of a 200' long nurse log and that is what I ended up photographing. I'm still a bit unsure as to why I compile so many images of initials carved into trees— I suppose because defacing a tree is not all that different an act from taking a picture. Both claim that one tiny presence shared a moment with something much greater.

Organizational Irony

May 9, 2005

My wife set up a display board of faux finish brushes to photograph for our home staging and decorative painting business that we started in Southern California. It was one of many "staged" images we created to generate the look of our website, but unlike some of the others, it was quite useful. Whenever we needed a specific brush it was easy to locate (which, I suppose, is why peg board is so popular in garage workshops across America). But, once a brush left the board it rarely made it back on to it, so the effectiveness of the peg board quickly fell victim to our moderately disorganized working habits— the irony of this is easy to spot, as we were in the business of helping people become (or at least, for the duration of an open house, look) more organized.

Bastion of Hipness

May 4, 2005

One of the things I really appreciate about this photo is the oh-so-obvious shadow of my head in the lower left of the image. A photographic novice mistake par excellence!

* * * * *

In light of the industrial theme of today's image I thought I'd post this little piece I recently completed.

I still have some thinking to do before the proper christening can take place. For some reason the term "airborne toxic event" keeps pulling at my synapses, but then, some may mistakenly assume that I'm referencing a band from Los Feliz* as opposed to a metaphorical cloud of death from a Don DeLillo novel.

*Yes, that very Bastion of Hipness, the oh-so-hip Los Feliz of Los Angeles locale. Can't you feel your jeans getting skinnier just reading about it?

May Day; Subtly

May 1, 2005

I've tried to use words to convey the differing qualities of place, but my handling of them is rarely nimble enough to convey the great discrepancies between my life in California and my life in Oregon. 

It would be better to just let two May Day images, separated by 819.6 miles and four years, impart whatever analogies they will.

May 1, 2009

Jalama Beach

April 20, 2005

So what's my excuse for not having Photo Phazer imagery the past two days? Simply put: technological difficulties. 

You see, the Photo Phazer can only store one 1-minute movie at a time, so if someone were to, say, go on a camping trip to Jalama Beach on the California coast for a few days, then that person would only be able to capture one movie for the entire trip unless they were lucky enough to own a laptop at the time (which they weren't). Ergo, only one bit of video must suffice as a record for the entire trip.

Well, one video and two eye witnesses. The eye witnesses would probably give you a much richer narrative than this one parting shot (taken as we drove away from the secluded little beach).

The eye witnesses would probably mention "toaster forks." I'm sure that the highway death of one Toyota Camry would come up. As would getting stuck in traffic with Jake Gyllenhaal. And then there's the midnight raccoon raceway, the bleeding tree, the wind, and the crypt. . . 

If only I could have captured more on film.

Irrational Fear

April 17, 2005

I spent many sleepless hours staring at this ceiling fan. In earthquake prone California I had a hard time suppressing fears that one good jolt was going to plant that fan directly onto my sleeping face. It never happened in reality, but in my mind I died thousands of times.

Toxic Tide

April 16, 2005

Perhaps to celebrate the passing of another tax day the family took an outing to the beach on April 16th. After winding our way down some precarious one-lane roads north of LA we found ourselves a tiny little sliver of sand not owned by some individual or business. It seems that half of LA County was equally relieved about filing on time and had decided to join us on said sliver of sand. It made for a rather loud and crammed experience with nature. I marvel that I was able to get a still without someone walking into the frame.

My wife and I had attempted to go the the beach a few weeks earlier only to find the shoreline littered with signs about the dangerous toxicity of the water. Beach goers were advised to not let any ocean water contact their skin. Needless to say, the need for a hazmat suit tarnished the romantic sentiment of the evening. 

Flintridge Funk

April 12, 2005

We walked the McDuff quite often. He was always quite keen to get out, and we used him as a rationale for getting whatever counted for "fresh" air in La Canada-Flintridge. 

One of the many ironies of La Canada-Flintridge was that all of its ritzy estates were saddled with ailing sceptic systems. It had never joined the municipal sewage system so every sprawling mansion had to be on sceptic and, without fail, one sceptic tank or another was always in need of some attention. The pungent odors of decomposing waste would waft over the oak hillsides and manicured lawns on hot summer days. Frequently, one would wake in the darker hours before dawn with invisible tendrils of funk tickling the nostrils. We called it the "O" for short; its root word being that classy French noun odeur— for Flintridge is a classy place.

I'm sure that all of this sweet scent was most appreciated by our dear McDuff, who took his greatest delight in rolling about in fresh cat poo at every opportunity.

LA Decor

March 30, 2005

A banal shot of our sitting room in Southern California. To the left you see a cord leading up to another Ben Ediger creation. In the lower right hangs the back piece to the bleached plywood and astroturf settee I created in college.

This was a lovely room. It had a vaulted ceiling and a peculiar hunter green carpet that we ended up quite liking once the primer white walls had been painted with a sage tone. On its best days it looked like this:

And on its worst days it looked like this:

Let this final image serve as warning to all artists out there who think that a home studio might be a workable solution.

Cherry Canyon

March 28, 2005

I have been away. After tallying up the number of years I've been married and comparing that sum to the number of times my wife and I had taken a vacation together I determined that we were long overdue— so we left for Seattle and spent the week not thinking about work, blogs, computers, or creative commitments.

* * * * *

When living in California I would often feel the need to escape into some natural setting. The closest bit of nature that you didn't have to pay to enter was a spot called Cherry Canyon. It was a scrubby little canyon amidst the La Canada hills that housed not only a few majestic oaks, but the hulking steel towers that supplied Glendale with its electrical power. When standing near the welded legs you could hear the buzz of power crackling through the thick cables overhead. It seemed a peculiar edition to the dry grasses and crab apple trees. 

Tension, Polaroid photograph, 2004

I often went to Cherry Canyon to take photographs and, in theory, my familiarity with the place should have led to ever more confident and subtle images of that locale. But this never quite happened. Instead I developed a mish mash of stills on a variety of films; all of which look like the work of an ungrounded personality flailing about for some sense of peace.

Sunburst, Polaroid photograph, 2005

The Post

March 21, 2005

I can still recall the crispness of the flags cracking in the Santa Ana winds as I crossed the street to the post office. Inside I would take a number and watch the people mailing tubes, parcels, and bills to all the remote and mundane places that make up everywhere else. When my number was called I wouldn't mail anything at all. I wanted to know about field trips and tours of the facility. I wanted to know that I'd get support in sharing the local things— the infrastructure of the present place. That is what civics education should be about; the awakening of awe towards the complexity of that which we take for granted. That, and a sense of responsibility for it all.

Inside the Mausoleum of Horticulture

March 19, 2005

In Southern California, one of the finest places to be is in a walk-in floral shop refrigerator. This mausoleum of horticulture is an environment in every way opposite from the one beyond its walls. The air is crisp. The air is fragrant. And, most importantly, the pulpy greens of plant life overshadow those materials that constitute life in the LA basin: concrete, glass, and metal.

Run-Off

March 15, 2005

Who knows what would become of Southern California without the Colorado River? Perhaps it would have to devise an actual infrastructure of self-sufficiency to ensure its own survival. My first suggestion might be to catch the raging torrents of rain water that flow down the concrete streets during the periodic Spring rain. Every drop that is pictured here was destined for only one fate that March day: an underground journey to the neighboring Pacific Ocean. 

Passive-Aggressive Landscaping

March 8, 2005

We walked to the crest of La Canada-Flintridge and looked down towards downtown Los Angeles. A few skyscrapers scratched a skyline out of the smog while the sun set out over the Pacific. This cul-de-sac used to offer a better view, but someone had built a house off to the left and planted this large palm to block the view for any pedestrians or parked cars. This "house" leaned out into open air, the hillside falling steeply away below it as scrub brush and grit raced towards the valley greenery of the Chevy Chase Country Club. I watched the palm swim about in a gentle ocean breeze and thought about how we'd come to a place where people could both own, and deny, a view of chemical haze.

Walk It Out

February 18, 2005

Ironically, I devoted far more time to walking and hiking while living in the LA area than I do now while living in the splendid Pacific Northwest. I attribute this to the fact that I'm far busier here with creative pursuits than I was in LA. In Portland I must juggle my studio practice with small film production, so very little time remains for traipsing about the hillsides outside my home. 

Eventually, this will have to change, as most of my ideation process derives from interactions outside of my normal context, and nature tends to be the most fruitful ground for generating new imagery and inspirations.

Shadows

January 20, 2005

Just outside the hydrogen peroxide closet you could open a window to look down on the play yard at my first school. I always found this vantage point to be unnerving, and yet I often found myself standing there admiring the way the harsh California sunshine would carve crisp shadows out of the cement. 

* * * * *

As a teacher, I confess that I periodically miss that predictable sunshine. It made teaching about light and time so much easier. In Oregon it is much trickier to use the colors of sunrise and sunset as a teaching aide, because so often the entire sky is nothing by an endless sea of gray cloud and drizzle. Likewise, building a sundial in the Willamette Valley can be an almost comical exercise in futility nine months out of the year— the very same nine months that school is traditionally in session. On the flip side however, my current students never have to stay inside for recess because of astronomical pollutant levels and it's unlikely that they'll ever sit on the highway watching ash settle on the windshield with the silence of snow.*

*Although, if I recall correctly, 1980 did provide a very dramatic dispersion of ash in Oregon.

So Rank, So Banal

January 18, 2005

What do you do when a really good idea gets rejected? You return to the table with the polar opposite of a really good idea: the excessively dumb idea. An idea so rank, so banal, that its very existence is an insult to consciousness and thought. You bring this wretched display of mediocrity forth as a reaction to your initial rejection. It reveals your pettiness and condescension towards those that deemed it necessary to pass on your genius. If they won't have the steak, they can dine on the hoof. . .

On January 18, 2005 I sketched out my second, and final, submission for a Rose Parade float concept. The design of the previous year had consisted of a collection of family portraits in assorted frame styles. The images in the frames spanned a period of time chosen to match the decades that the city hosting the design contest had been in existence. It was tasteful, nostalgic, and thematically accessible. I labored over that first design for a week before sending it off.  It was rejected for a dancing animatronic cactus.

I funneled my indignation into the second design, which I resolved to make as inane as possible. There would be a group of fat hippos undertaking a new year's resolution of weight loss. They would be exercising under the watchful eye of their new trainer, a buff alligator with shifty eyes. This sad display would take place under a tree where some birds (possibly Kookaburra, this detail was to be decided later) would be laughing at the sad spectacle below them. With this design I could riff on California's new Governator and the narcissistic pre-occupation with self-image that is so deeply entrenched in California culture. It was clearly a horrible design that no one in their right mind would select.

Which was true. It was rejected, as it should have been. God only knows what won.

Otis

January 16, 2005

Otis College of Art and Design occupies the former IBM building in Los Angeles. It's an intriguing building and is in keeping with the architectural inclination of the 1960's toward stark cement cubes. The exterior facade is meant to be reminiscent of a punch card; which I suspect is lost on the majority of current Otis students who were undoubtedly born long after punch cards, or IBM for that matter, had much life left.

Image by Marc Meridith, OTIS Director of Admissions

Courtesy of Wikipedia and licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Naturally, the interior has been remodeled to match our stereotypical conception of the artist loft, but I think the greatest success of the building is not in the exterior view or the elaborate remodel. No, the greatest asset of OTIS is the views it frames of the outside world.

Inside this cold concrete block the dingy Southland sky seems to burst through the tiny rectangular windows and, in doing, is granted a liveliness and power that you cannot perceive from any other vantage point that I've discovered in LA. It is a simple matter of contrast— a living proof of that old photographic axiom that the finest silver gelatin prints always place their blackest black next to their lightest light tone. 

While I can't claim any advanced understanding of architectural principles I can claim many years of working with contrast, and furthermore, I have an appreciation for simple solutions that net profound results. For those who haven't called LA home, who haven't been able to see the city skyline from a hill top vantage only five miles away because of air pollution, it is undoubtedly difficult to understand the magnitude of being awakened to beauty in that chemical miasma. But for someone who, quite literally, grew up in a cloud of chemicals and particulate, I tell you that, until the day I visited OTIS, the only potential for the sublime that high noon smog ever held for me was in its unyielding repulsion.*

I'm of the opinion (and it is a rather plebeian opinion, I admit)** that cement cubes are generally not the best architectural solution for most projects or climates. In Southern California, where the heat is oppressive and banal boxy buildings are the majority, I suppose you can make a case for a cement cube on the grounds that it will stay cool and affably blend in with the neighbors. But if I'm to dissect what I appreciate about OTIS's building it is the opportunities it affords for the eye to escape when the body cannot, and perhaps that, more than balances of compositional light and darks, is what creates the impression that the oppressive grey outside holds more promise than one had ever perceived there before.

*More of a formaldehyde-soaked Damien Hirst type of sublime, as opposed to the sweeping Romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich 

**I spent every afternoon following middle school studying in a cement cube, so experience must serve as my credentials here.

Candlelight Within, Magnolias Without

January 8, 2005

While living in the LA area our rooms were on the second story of the house. When you looked out the windows, our sight line was in the center of a wooded canopy. The large waxy magnolia leaves would reflect the shifting patterns of light and the vast quantity of diminutive oak leaves would shimmer like green sequins when touched by the coastal breezes and Santa Ana winds. To wake up in the warm California morning amidst the tree tops was a delight that I won't forget, and I greatly miss the sound of the leaves rustling about just outside our balcony patio door.

* * * * *

Now I wake to the sound of air-braking trucks on the highway that runs along a small hill top outside our front door. It isn't all that bleak, as I can often trick myself into thinking that the persistent hum of traffic is the flow of a river (which, metaphorically, I suppose it is), but it has none of the sensory charm that our oak grove bower held, and I look forward to the day when the sound of birds rustles me from sleep more frequently than the sound of horns.