October 9, 2010. A road trip to the Barnes Foundation museum in Marion, PA., yielded this find. Out in the garden was a small stand of Tea trees. The bark mottles like the older London Plane trees in Central Park I pass when on my walks. But here they were in shades of red, and shades of brown. If this is camouflage, who or what are they hiding from? How it peels, which layer is first or last is barely perceptible. What a beautiful precursor to the art inside the Barnes.
October 3, 2010. Remember the knit sentries from DUMBO? I think the same mad knitters found this bike. Alone maybe, abandoned, they swathed it in color and warmth and then left it somewhere to await its fate. And such was its fate. This is another one of those times when I wish I had a car, and a house with rooms. I would have given this a home. I regret leaving this behind.
October 2, 2010. Storm King Art Center. 500 acres of art, plus walking, plus sunshine, plus friends. There isn't anything wrong with that picture. I think we are probably always compelled to make art. Here, after passing by the Storm King Wall by Goldsworthy, one or more people felt the drive to mark their having come this way by creating this ancient marker. Or maybe they created this contextual piece of art because the spirit moved them to do so while amongst so many wonderful works. Every time we create a still life at the dinner table, or consider how our clothes look, or arrange a vase of flowers, we are fulfilling a drive to create.
September 26, 2010. Walking over the Bridge is a community event. Fast walkers, slow walkers, strollers, bikes, runners, gawkers, missionaries, protesters; everyone is there. It's easy to engage, encourage, and bypass humanity here because you are as closely packed as a subway at rush hour. From a distance you don't see the many cables and wires that make this bridge stay up. Up close, you appreciate their contribution.
September 24, 2010. In my dreams I float sometimes. I just lift off the ground, the bed, the pavement. Often I perform superhero feats, less so, I just look at the world below. Do cattle do the same when they slumber - do they free themselves from their earthly toil and measured existence? To dream and lift and float over the fences that constrain - what liberation!
September 16, 2010. There's something for everyone in this world, and street fairs in New York know it. Shape, texture, color; all collide here, glinting at the eye in the sun, or subdued when it is overcast. People, stones, booths, visuals, each bumped up against the next. Contact is impossible.
September 18, 2010. How long do you think this art form has been around - mosaic in one form or another? Here, the work predates and echoes the work on the street above, in the East Village, where street artists have taken over street lamp bases, door lintels, and sidewalks. The portrait of the birds, nearly noble, not seen as the pesky scavengers that dive bomb strollers on the sidewalk.
