Monthly Archives: January 2012

Pee Wee’s Great Adventures

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Pee Wee at Wall Drug, South Dakota

This project began as a practical joke.  A friend treated a collection of  her closest family and friends to a fabulous Fourth of July celebration at her home.   Her hospitality was repayed with the merciless kidnapping of her cherished Pee Wee  Herman doll.  It so happens that I was shortly thereafter leaving on a road trip to Alaska.  The ransom notes arrived as photo postcards of his travels with text and images culled from ubiquitous tourist literature gathered along the way.  Who knew where it would lead!

Pee Wee Postcards

I have always written on postcards with stories of my travels.  (After all, I’ve got a steamer trunk to fill.  See Living in One’s Element) Up to this point, they were store purchased stock photo postcards that did not often match my experience and certainly did not describe Pee Wee’s adventure.  So, I started constructing my own.  Digital photography and 1 hour photo labs have made this a cinch.  Making and writing on postcards enhances my travels and provides a satisfying record of the journey.  I make and send them by the 100’s.

Postcards by the Hundreds

The Pee Wee pictures are not attempting anything very meaningful content-wise.  They are absurd spoofs of typical tourist shots in typical tourist places.  They amuse me because he is such a foppish character, out of place in the rugged Marlboro Man landscapes of the mythic Wild West.    It was a  silly pleasure to make the photos and my sister was thankful to be relieved of  the  duty of posing.

Post Script

Pee Wee went on one more road trip to Texas and New Mexico after his epic Alaska adventure.

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24 Adventures in 2012: Summiting K2

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I love concept gifts.  They are the best.  For Christmas this year, my sister, Shaunna, gave me an invitation to 24 adventures yet to be determined and a kit which included a corvid mascot (black crow in this case), a roll of 24 postcard stamps and a small black journal.  A couple of days ago, I received my first postcard invitation to adventure.

Invitation to Adventure

I filled out the cleverly designed reversible postcard she made for this very purpose and sent it back to her.  The next day a card arrived with instructions and a provisions list.

RSVP to Adventure

She arrived with the mysterious announcement that only 6 women in the world have successfully done what we would attempt today.  There was a small tableaux of K2 related objects:  Pakistani scarf, Cliff Bars and books on the mountain, K2.  She handed me a Lincoln Telephone book and directed me to find K2.  (There is a city map in the middle of the book.)  She said she hadn’t peeked ahead of time.

K2 Tableaux

We discovered that K2 is located in the extreme north and east part of Lincoln with most of it outside city limits.  The interior of K2 is not really transected by roads so we mostly flirted with the perimeter roads of Arbor road on the south, 40th St. for the West, Bluff Road on the north and Highway 77 for the eastern wall of our rectangle.  (I 80 does cut through the extreme southern end.)

Discovering K2

We set out on our constructed adventure with a stop at Schlotzky’s Deli to take along for a lunch inside K2.  It is a small area and we circumnavigated the whole thing before finding our picnic spot behind a gas station, pointed towards a little boggy area with cat tails and willows.

Boggy cat tail area behind gas station.

Though warm for January (44 degrees), the wind made the sunny day quite brisk.  We explored some round bales and the serpentine willows that arch over the muskrat lodges.  The pond was frozen with dry cat tales blowing in the wind.

Willows over bog

Willows over bog

Round bales silliness

Round bales silliness

Our next stop was at a small creek that runs under 40th street to see what we could see.  I first saw a deer frozen in a death rictus.  Then another and another.  We counted six dead white tail deer including does and fawns that appear to have been dumped here without having been butchered, though coyotes clearly visit this place at lonelier times of day.  It felt a little dreadful.

Grisly find

The next bridge on Bluff Road also had a strange find involving deer.  It appears that someone threw a large cooler full of skinned deer flanks onto the frozen creek.  Contents shattered many directions upon impact.  This all felt in contrast to the beautiful sunny day around us.

Bridge on Bluff road

Our final stop was at a farm house that had a chicken coop with a repeating crescent motif.  I obtained permission to photograph and felt nostalgic listening to roosters posturing for top cock of the walk.

Crescent Chicken Coop

It was time to return home and though we barely left city limits, it felt like we had a full adventure.  Thank you Shaunna!

Parentheses

Wide open spaces

Element

Everyday Stories 2012: Winter. Vol. 1

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I do like to stop at the passing of one year into the next to account for my living.  Sometimes, this takes the form of a New Year’s Resolution but more often, it is a looking back to make sense of what I have done, where this has gotten me and the setting of intentions for where I would like to be in the future.  As part of this process, I decided to merge my interest in editing images into books with a daily mandate to photograph my everyday life.

Pages for January 22 and 23, 2012, Everyday Stories 2012: Winter Vol. 1

I end each day by adding another page to the book and when I have January, February and March completed, I will send it off to the printers as Volume 1.

Possible Cover for Everyday Stories 2012: Winter Vol.

Inside flap of book with the "rules."

Foreward of the Book

By the end of 2012, I will have four volumes with 3 months in each book covering the 4 seasons of the year and my day to day life in pictures.  It will be a visual diary.  I could see editing this into some sort of show too once the themes have revealed themselves to me.

Pages from January 16 and 17, 2012

This is an exciting project and has spurred me on to be more creatively involved in the intention of my life.

(Parentheses)

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Sandhills road, Western Nebraska

The idea of Parentheses came about when I was trying to get a grasp on an group of images for a photography show.  The images were of road trips, camping, hikes, cafes and diners.  The feeling was of being on an adventure and completely tuned into the moment.  These hyper aware moments that are often explored with the camera feel like they are embedded in life but emphasized and apart from it as well.

Parentheses

Look Mom. No Frames!

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LUX Solo Show: Around the Bend

I enjoy the opportunity to hang a solo exhibition.  It forces me to edit and make sense of what I am doing.  Depending on the context, I sometimes hang a show without the use of frames. This is somewhat pragmatic as I can hang more images as some of the edited groups number in the 100s at this point. No frames is also an aesthetic choice as it makes the viewing more informal without turning the images into precious objects.  I love the opportunity to create grids around a  theme, idea or narrative.  Here are some examples of solo shows that were hung directly on the wall.

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Water

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In the fall of 2012, my work was selected to be exhibited in a show at the Lanesboro Art Center called H2O.  I enjoyed looking through my archives to find candidates.  I don’t usually edit groups by subject but it was fun to sort through images and I appreciated the opportunity to have my work exhibited with artists of other mediums.  Thank you Robbie!

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