Seattle, NE

Parking Lot, Seattle NE

There are public spaces that encourage life in the miniature, places that beckon us to pause. Some of these are little shops or unassuming restaurants, coffee shops or bakeries where you can stay as long as you like. There are lobbies, a place to perch when all dressed up, waiting until the next thing happens. Another place to be semi-invisible is the back alley, the nice ones; they exist and some progressive cities like Seattle are encouraging their use. The street corner requires that we stop and look; it might be worthwhile to stop a bit longer and look more closely at the passing parade. By the way, a quiet side street is recommended for this. And believe it or not, even the tiny, prosaic rest room might on occasion deserve an appreciative glance. The good ones try to live up to their names, and provide a sense of repose. And there are other small spots to find enrichment in the mini-meditation of a conscious pause. We each have our own list. These are some of mine.

Another topic that has always fascinated me is history. And for some reason I find World War One especially intriguing, especially now with the centennial of that great and terrible event approaching. 
This drawing is based on a photograph I took at a WW1 reenactment. It shows the backpack of a French soldier, or poilu, to use the then current term. The poilu carried a heavy burden of about 88 pounds. The round object shown here is a collapsible canvas bucket. The object on top of the bedroll is a mess tin.
I'm now working on a large series of drawings based on various WW1 subjects, and intend to post additional drawings as the project goes along.

I’ve recently seen a show of fine art photography that I feel is exceptional. The gallery is the Umbrella Arts at 317 East 9th Street in Manhattan, and the photographer is Ronald Gehrmann. Mr. Gehrmann blazes his own trails throughout New York. He takes his camera around the corner and down the ally, and discovers rich, colorful and dramatic, cityscapes in the profusion of city details that mostly go unnoticed by other busy New Yorkers.

It seems likely that the photographer has been inspired by the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi; which is the beauty to be found in the old and time-worn. Mr. Gehrmann’s photographs are most often semi-abstractions of architectural subjects aging and returning to a state of nature. Others have photographed similar subjects but Gerhmann’s sharp eye and keen intelligence never fail to compose elements of texture, form and color into unique and almost classically proportioned imagery.

His large images are boldly printed with gorgeous colors, and I imagine his photographs would be especially effective hanging in contemporary New York apartments or businesses.

This emerging master photographer’s work will be on display until Nov. 25, 2012.

See the gallery website at…
<http://www.umbrellaarts.com/exhibitions/falling-together-falling-apart-urban-artifacts>

During our most recent blackout, my wife and I were grocery shopping at our local 1950ish, so-called “supermarket”. We had reached the yogurt section when all the electric devices in the store began powering down, with a stomach-churning descending “humm…mm…m”. Instantaneously, everyone knew that the lights would be next to go, which they did a fraction of a second latter.

Things could have been worse. It was a near perfect summer day for a blackout. Temperatures were in the 80s, the sky was clear, and the city actually seemed pretty mellow about the event. We spent the evening sweating and reading by flash-light. With no air conditioning New York apartments, ours was a brownstone, can be ovens. So when bedtime came, we decided to sleep outside on our terrace. It should be a good place to sleep. It was relatively spacious, had a wooden deck and there were lovely plantings scattered around, and most importantly the temperature was much cooler out there. Sleeping out there seemed to us to be just another urban adventure. At 11:00pm without electricity, the sky was black, and all the buildings were black, except for the orange glow of candles in some windows. It was fun.

But something else was going on, something mind-bendingly hallucinatory. Right at that moment, the brightest object in the very black night sky was the planet Mars. It so happened that Mars was at its closest point to earth in several decades. Not only was it brilliant, like a mini-moon, but it was so close I could actually perceive it as a tiny disk in the sky. Mars was no longer just another bright star. Anyone could see it was really and truly our neighboring planet in space. Out there on the terrace, this situation was all very strange and exhilarating to me. I somehow expected the rays of light from Mars to…do what? Communicate telepathically with me while I slept? Who knows? I was at that point living in a science fiction fantasy. What would happen next?

A couple of hours later, we were awakened by the noise of a helicopter hovering in the sky. Its blinding searchlight was fixed on our sleeping forms. It must have been a police copter investigating our motionless bodies. This strange combination of events was beginning to rattle me. I picked up my eyeglasses from the terrace, put them on and was instantly slimed. While we slept, slimy slugs had been attracted to the cool smoothness of my glasses. When I picked the eyeglasses up and put them on, the slugs came loose and fell on my face and body.

There I was, in the night, in the middle of a major blackout, Mars shining madly overhead, a security helicopter observing me, covered with hideous slimy creatures.

Unusual, huh? 

Mars collage illustration by Erik Winkowski (see links)

 I had totally forgotten about the Space Shuttle coming to New York after its Monday flight was cancelled because of bad weather. Friday morning, sitting in my pajamas, scanning the news on the computer, there was the tiny article; “Space Shuttle to land at JFK at 11:30…Will fly over the Intrepid.”

It was 10:15 and I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t quickly get to the Intrepid Air and Space Museum on the Hudson River and 46th Street. However I might be able to see something from Riverside Park and 72nd Street. That was just a few blocks away. I screwed the 300mm lens to the Nikon and was out the door.

There was a crowd at the top of the steps leading down to Riverside Park. “Yes, the shuttle should be here soon…at 10:35,” someone told me. And it did arrive on time, only seconds after my arrival.

There it was, small but getting bigger as it flew low and slow up the Hudson, near the shore. At about 66th Street the brilliant morning sun at last fully illuminated the Shuttle and its carrier 747. Then there it was before me, bright, huge, magnificent, a dream become real. It was beautiful as it flew over and nearly filled the sky…the crowd audibly gasped with emotion. Here it was, an American spaceship, flying over 72nd Street on New York's Upper West Side, essentially my backyard. It was astounding.
 
And my photographs were astonishing. Just by luck all the elements of sun, clouds, and my position on the hill overlooking the Hudson River were perfect. I’ve photographed at scores of air shows, but that day’s happy combination of elements was indeed rare.