[ Lost in the Landscape ]

up the coast in the rain

Last night was the offi­cial open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion I’m in at the Can­non Gallery in Carls­bad, but the nice gallery folks had a lit­tle break­fast event for the artists ear­lier in the morning.

It rained lightly both head­ing north and back. Since rain is such a rare event in these parts, I got out my camera.

These two shots are of the wind­shield on the way back. Don’t worry–John was dri­ving. The first is with Inter­state 5 in the back­ground. The sec­ond is while we were being passed by a truck.

They’d set up a nice break­fast spread for us. With the meal being served at ten in the morn­ing, how­ever, we were all starv­ing artists. We dis­patched the edi­bles in almost no time.

And then it was finally time to go inside and pre­view the exhi­bi­tion. Here’s my wall in the exhi­bi­tion. Tonight there’ll prob­a­bly be a few hun­dred more peo­ple at the open­ing, so it won’t be so easy to doc­u­ment the exhi­bi­tion view.

The gallery itself is part of the com­plex that houses the Carls­bad Pub­lic Library. Land­scap­ing there is a mix of native sycamore trees and exotics–spiky sedges, bio­mor­phic hedges and myopo­rum for ground­cover. Like the library and gallery com­plex, it’s mod­ern with­out try­ing to be par­tic­u­larly avant-garde. Nicely done, I thought.

Run­ning around the perime­ter of the build­ings is a screen wall that is set sev­eral feet from the main walls of the com­plex. Join­ing the two are these over­head screens cut out of pati­nated metal. The branches on the screens curve in arabesques that reminded me of Art Nou­veau, but the tri­an­gu­lar frames give them a geo­met­ri­cal edge that joins them com­fort­ably with the architecture.

Isn’t it a shame most peo­ple are so busy look­ing down they never notice the branches–or artwork–overhead?

Post on the work in the show
The Can­non Gallery

December 14 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design • photography • places | Tags: exhibitions • food • Interstate 5 • rain • William D. Cannon Art Gallery | 2 Comments »

the yellowstone fires, 20 years later

It seems a lot of my recent posts have had some­thing to do with fire. Liv­ing in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing the fall, fire is a con­stant worry at the edges of the city. This year saw some bad exam­ples, but we’ve got our fin­gers crossed that the worst is over.

When I vis­ited Yel­low­stone last spring, reminders of the mas­sive 1988 fires were every­where, with fire-downed trees still to be seen through­out the park. But there were also signs of recov­ery every place you looked. Some places the fire looked like a dis­tant mem­ory, other places it looked like only last month, a reminder that in a land dom­i­nated by cold and snow much of the year, recov­ery can come slowly.

I took a lot of tourist pic­tures that trip. I also turned the cam­era on some of the acres in the park where the burns were still a strong pres­ence. Four of the images will be part of the upcom­ing 2009 Juried Bien­nial Exhi­bi­tion at the William D. Can­non Art Gallery in Carls­bad, in North-County San Diego. The jurors of this year’s show, Stephen Hep­worth, Cura­tor of the Uni­ver­sity Art Gallery at UCSD, and Sue Green­wood, Direc­tor of Green­wood Fine Art in Laguna Beach, selected forty-eight works by twenty-seven artists.

The pub­lic open­ing is Decem­ber 13, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the show runs through February7 of next year. It’s a city-run space and is attached to the pub­lic library. Admis­sion is free. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood!

Here are a cou­ple of the images that will be in the show. The first, “Burned Slope II,” fea­tures a site in the north of the park where recov­ery seemed just about the slowest.

A pho­to­graph can describe things clearly. You can see the slow decay of the wood, along with sub­tle signs of regeneration.

But I’m also inter­ested in a pho­to­graph that can reach for things that aren’t at all about quan­ti­fy­ing the world. I like how the slope here gives you a sense of simul­ta­ne­ously look­ing down on the scene as well as out across it, mak­ing the space–and maybe even time–seem ambigu­ous, like a puz­zle need­ing to be worked out slowly.

The sec­ond, “Hoop on Burned Tree,” was shot behind the employee hous­ing near Tower Falls. The scene made me laugh. When life give you fire and burned trees, well, why not take advan­tage of a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and make your­self a bas­ket­ball court next to a scorched pine?

December 04 2008 | Categories: art • landscape • photography • places | Tags: basketball • Carlsbad • fire • William D. Cannon Art Gallery • Yellowstone National Park | 4 Comments »