Some Comments

This is the headpiece to the poem "Dawn"

Before continuing with the progress of this day in August I will make some comments. These images are all of the area immediately around my apartment, as will be the next few. You've seen these locations before. The man walking through the snow in "Orange Pink Sky" is walking on the same path as can be seen "8:26,"and the bollards with iron rings which appear in "Dawn" are also at in my last post showing snow. The have also, by the way, received the attentions of "The South End Knitters." I am fortunate that when I found myself unable to move around, the place I was confined to was so rich in beauty.

I have told you about my pictorial objectives before I started this series, and now that I have shown you some of them I'll tell how my intentions have changed. The change seems to have stuck because as you will realize the images since, since regaining my mobility, have continued to be informed by it. The image that will follow this post "Morning" was the turning point. I made it on a day when I hadn't any choice but to stay put, but you know the latin proverb, "nulla dies sine linea," even when laid low...

This view out of my window (all right, I'll confess, it is actually from the door) is of the yard which quite literally lies outside my window. There are a few spectacular trees and a lot of junk and clutter. I do, after all, look out onto a functioning, unpaved alley, albeit a very nice one. What to do with the beach chairs, cars and garbage pails? What to do with the telephone poles and low hanging wires? I made them a challenge for myself. The artist, in creating, faces a tricky dichotomy. Are the creation of beauty and the depiction of beauty the same thing? It is the difference between coming upon a beautiful view and making a record of it, on the one hand, or taking a much more prosaic view and arranging it in such a way that a formal beauty is achieved that the passerby might never have noticed on the other. What I had to work with included a lot of junk and wires so I decided to accept them as elements in the composition and see what could result. "Morning, 8:24 am" was the result. it was very stimulating to feel that I had created an image that I felt was beautiful from the mix of elements that I was confronted with. The beauty is not a fiction, I do truly experience it out there, but is created in a very complex process of visual selection and processing that the casual snapshot does not partake of. In fact I felt that I had recorded the beauty of my experience rather than the facts of the objects. I'm very proud of that and having done it, I have continued to work with the wires and signs and even the "pedestrian crassness of the playground with it's ground rubber pavement" which you will see shortly.

I have been asked about the word "rident" which appears in the "Dawn" poem and will appear in some others which follow. It is one of my "Thackeray" words. I had to go to the OED to find the meaning: "radiantly joyful"- what other word could describe a child's laugh or the rising of the sun after a storm. English has a huge lexicon of amazing words of which we use only a small percentage, many are duplicates, of course, but many are beautiful, subtle and very specific.

In the corners of the images you will see some lettering and a box. I design these images to be printed on my printer. The sheet size is 13 inches by 19 inches. they are archival prints and I limit the production to 50. Since I am printing them myself I have the ability to number the sequence of the edition in the file itself each time I print one, and I keep records of when and for whom each was printed. I deal with it in a traditional "printmaking" way. Perhaps one day that will matter to someone! The box receives my signature and the date of the print was made.