GLYPH

Tuesday, March 19, 2013.  The lava fields around the active volcano on Hawaii.  A spiritual place, a holy place, a place where people went to commune with the ancestors and to continue their line.  I saw this around Kona, in shops, and then I saw this on the lava field.  Rough, minimal, meaningful.

TIKI

 

Monday, March 87, 2013.  We stand tall, we stand here, we are here.  What carver dreamed about these, and gave each of them their unique countenance?  They stand on sacred ground.  They stand at the Place of Refuge.  I wonder if they are here to warn me from seeking refuge or to warn others from violating the refuge they provide. 

WEEPING FACE

Sunday, March 17, 2013.  He guards the spot of remembrance for children swept away by tsunami.  His grimace, is it to prevent his stone face from shedding tears, or is to scowl at the ocean as a reprimand or as disapproval?  His visage does not say to come here lightly, but to come here and consider what happened.  We do.  We think about the power of water, and we watch it at this site.

NAILS ON WOOD

Saturday, March 16, 2013.  Metal and wood figures in a lot of work I see.  Central Park's trees try to incorporate metal that they come in contact with and encircle it, to hide it, to include it.  This post cannot grow, the staples and nails are there, visible, permanent, unless someone removes them.  They are a testament to the utility of this post as a communications tool.  Over and over messages were left and removed, read and destroyed, remembered and forgotten.

COFFEE TREE

Friday, March 15, 2013.  What a beauty at 100+ years.  This old coffee tree is one of the originals at a plantation in Kona, Hawaii.  The trunk twisted and thick, spotted with lichen, sprouting a few leaves, trimmed of its many branches.  It is no longer fruiting, but a testament to nature.

HOMAGE

Wednesday, March 13, 2013.  Palau.  I can never look at fowl without thinking of Jakuchu's Colorful Realm.  This particular rooster was in Palau, part of Micronesia, preening in the early morning sun, before I left to dive far out in the Pacific.  He was a beauty.  His contortion turns him into a ball, with a tail, seeing where he has been but not where he is going to.

RED FISH

Saturday, February 23, 2013.  A red fish swimming in a yellow sea - maybe a premonition for my next diving trip.  I don't often see yellow coral, so maybe this fish has jumped out of the ocean to view the sun from a different point of view.

STOMPER

Saturday, January 26, 2013.  My nephew used to call draft horses 'stompers.'  I immediately thought of that when I saw this image worn into the orange safety strip on the subway.  It might be one of the Titans, and every time his foot reaches the earth it becomes huge, the other foot lifted into the surrounding universe, and small to our sight.

SNOW SCRIM

Monday, January 21, 2013.  A scrim of falling mist, turning to snow in front of my eyes.  It was so cold and the snow makers were making snow, not the heavens, but men snow makers.  This entire section of the park was blanketed with a fine mist that fell as snow, and the trees and the brightening sky were hidden behind this lovely shifting pattern of frozen mist.

HALF CIRCLES

Monday, January 21, 2013.  Early morning in the park, the half moon of the reservoir pointing to the brilliant red of dawn.  Everything was circular for me, the water, the tree line, the duck's wake, the coming sun.

MIXED MEDIA

Sunday, January 20, 2013.  How long had this escaped my attention?  29 years?  This tree, and some unknown Parks worker, started this piece many years and the tree has engulfed the stranger that came to be pressed against its mighty and growing trunk.  Now I see this all along my walk and I recognize the shape and I recognize the tree and its unyielding need to grow.  Life will always find a way.

EL BARIO

Saturday, January 19, 2013.  What luck, for me and for countless others.  Art comes to you.  Art drives by.  Art parks next to your home.  I wonder if this was welcome by the owner of the vehicle, or some random act, which then the owner couldn't wash away. What a sight our streets would be if all panel trucks were covered with art that travelled around Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx and Staten Island.  Maybe it would even travel further afield and blanket the roadways, exporting vibrant color, text and imagery.

THE EXPANSE

Tuesday, January 15, 2013.  I recognized this solitary vessel, floating in the broad expanse, alone and isolated from community.  Is it drifting or resting, bound for a destination or not?  Or could it be a pleasure boat, unmoored, but containing delights beneath its peaked roof.  See how the moon illuminates it on this night voyage with the secrets beneath.

KITE IN FLIGHT

Sunday, January 6, 2013.  What random act of man and nature created this scene of  a bird of prey against a winter sky, flying high over the mountains?  Walking, walking, walking, I turn my head to the earth, not skyward, and I pass this image by, but I returned to it.  What a perfect reflection of what I did see that day, as red-tailed hawks soared over the park on a hunt or maybe just a territory review.  Would some Department of Transportation road painter be pleased that this was the result of her work?  This pebbly bubble of white, rough-edged for the mountains and textured snowy white for the sky, might not be what she had in mind.



Sunday, December 22, 2012.  I was getting ready to leave on a holiday trip.  Glass, twinkling in the early morning light, caught the sunlight and sparkled in the early cold.  I love the tiny shapes that shattered auto windows make, the green blue of the pieces strewn on the ground.  I would like a box of them that I could take out to look at whenever I wanted to.