Spots Before My Eyes.
I’m in what I could interpret as a time
of lean pickings, so when I feel my eyes being sucked in
by sharp Geiger Counter clicks I really sit up
and take notice.
I was recently offered a meal prepared by a friend who has the
impressive initials of RR. These cucumber slices were the very first
to appear on the table. I immediately reached for my little pocket Leica.
This cat photo below is the only one that I felt compelled to take
in a recent walk around the Auckland Zoo. Zoos used to be
rich picking ground in my early days but I seem to have
moved to other quarries. Still I am ready to revisit. I like to keep an open mind.
I would speculate that the spots on this magnificent animal are the main reason why
I picked up my camera at this point. I waited for
quite a while to get the best profile but that didn’t happen. Looking straight at me would have been the ideal but I had a 3 year old with me and she had other priorities.
This photo below is not a work I would exhibit. It’s the spots that are important I believe.
Broken Arrow
Two or three years ago I started making some shapes in polymer clay with the intention of turning them into brooches. Fimo is a polymer clay although in this case I used a Palmerston North equivalent.
I glued cheap clips onto the back of a couple of them and even had the temerity to wear them a few times. Didn’t feel that confident and now they are in a shoe box. There’s probably about 20 of them.
At one stage though one of my favourite cheap clip brooches fell on the floor and the end snapped off. The combination of the body of the brooch and the snapped off tip I responded to, so with white chalk on the kitchen blackboard, I made this drawing. I like this drawing but better still, since this last weekend, I feel that I want to get the shoebox out again. If you see someone wearing on his lapel a shape like this but with the tip reglued then introduce yourself.
Red Rose
About a year ago I took this photo, here at my New Plymouth studio.
I know the approximate date because this is a Dublin Bay rose that I have growing in a pot, and as well as doubling in size over the last year is about to flower again. This bloom in the photograph came from last years blossoming.
I made a print at the time and it’s been up on one of my walls since then. Now I’m having another look at it.
Rocks
About a month ago I was at a birthday party in New Plymouth and all night I couldn’t take my eyes off a most unusual fireplace. In three or four places rocks stick straight out. I know that they were intended as ledges but there is something extra about them albeit something a little strange.
Today, at my request, I was invited back to have my second attempt at photographing these rocks.
Sometimes I take a photograph of something to see what it looks like when I photograph it. The image that I took today is an example.
I was going to take it in black and white, but I prefer the subdued colour of this.
There’s something going on in the picture. I’m going to live with it for a while. I don’t think that I could do better with this subject though. I may be wrong.
Oakura
Almost a couple of weeks ago I went on an early moring walk along the margins of Oakura Beach, about 15 minutes drive south of where I am right now, sitting on my Aeron Chair.
As I was returning to the car in the rain I noticed this doll perched in the Muhlenbeckia.
Fingers
A few posts ago I showed some fingers and some tree roots and mentioned that it’s not the fingers and roots at all but something behind them that I am really interested in. it seems that fingers or roots are not in fact the real subject. The real subject lies within a template that, unconsciously perhaps, I am carrying around as my own personal geiger counter, all the time looking for somewhere to apply it, even weak signals catch my attention.
Above is a photograph that I took when I had a studio in Lister Building in Victoria St, right in the CBD of Auckland. At the time Karen Walker was on the floor above me, she was in the early stages of her career. The building, was filling with alternatives such as film, changing it from the medical building that it had been, although medicals still coexisted and in fact I had much dentistry there, a floor or two above. The surgery had several of my photos on the walls.
I used to walk from my studio down High Street to a yoga school, upstairs, near Unity Books. Janet, one of my favourite instructors agreed to my request to walk back up to my studio and press her hand against a wall. At the time and even now I still marvel at the flexibility of her joints, not a white knuckle to be seen.
Here is an art historical footnote. My old studio is now the workshop of a tailor, Gus McKay, brother of Hamish. I’ve had two suits made there, they’re natty and it’s fun being able to say occasionally that I have to go because I have an appointment with my tailor. Gus’s number is 021 784623. Men and women. Tell him I sent you.
Visitors. (bah!)
It’s sobering having visitors turn up with pictures on their laptops of this quality. I’ve lived here nearly 10 years and wish that I had seen this particular view.
I thought that I knew this part of Taranaki quite well, but I missed this one. On my maternal side my rellies have lived in this area for more than 150 years, so I should have, perhaps, been more focused.
There is an elegance to this view that I like.
Thank you again Jim. High Five.