Roz Wound Up

Maddie the Dog Is Coming to Subtext Books July 28, 2013

If the above video doesn't play, see Maddie on YouTube.

Maddie is a rescue dog, a Coonhound who likes to balance on things. When Theron Humphrey discovered this in his travels with her he started taking photos. "Maddie on Things" is a collection of these photos. The author/photographer and Maddie are going to be at Subtext Books on July 28, 2013; at 3 p.m. I don't know anything else about it. This is all I heard from a friend who thought I'd be interested because I love dogs and physics. I'll write more closer to the date, when I find more out, but for now, keep your eyes and ears open! And watch the short video about the book. (According to the video she drove right by my house but didn't stop! You'll recognized other Twin Cities locations if you watch the video.)

Last Week's Snow Storm and My First Snow Pile Sketch of the 2012-13 Winter

Above: Looking out the side porch door, down the handicap ramp to the yard fence. In the distance you can see the houses across the alley, and of course, snow everywhere. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

On Sunday, December 9, 2012 a snow storm came through the Twin Cities. When it was over we had 12 inches of fresh snow (other areas had varying amounts). It was a weird snow for December—warm, wet, a definite spring type snow.

Of course I was worried that the weight of the snow would bring down electrical wires (and cable access) but that didn't happen in our area, so overall the storm was uneventful for us.

I'm not going to complain about the snow. We haven't had a lot of snow in Minneapolis the last couple of winters. I know we need moisture as we are in a drought. The river (that's the Mississippi) is very low.

Left: Looking out the side porch across the yard. Click on an image to view an enlargement.

But I will complain about the fact—evident everywhere on Monday—that people here have forgotten how to drive in the snow. I hope they get a clue soon!

On days like this looking at the yard I wish I were a landscape painter and could make something of the values, recesssion, and overlapping shapes. Instead I can show you these two photos, shot in the middle of the day (yes it was that dark). 

I did sketch one of our trees the next day, the first in this year's series of snow piles. (Several years ago my friend, artist Ken Avidor, got me interested in sketching snow piles. It keeps my mind off the fact that I can't be outside riding my bike!)

Left: My first Winter 2012-13 snow pile sketch. Pen and watercolor in an approx. 8 inch square journal made with Magnani Pescia light blue paper. I started the page by placing decorating masking tape in a frame. It was my cagey way of eliminating the need to draw any of the pine trees and fence behind the apple tree. (This sketch was posted on Facebook.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

On days like Sunday I immediately remember how much fun it was to walk and train in such weather conditions with the girls. Snow storms like this, as long as the power doesn't go out and everyone stays home safe, are actually happy times for me.

I always loved the winter even before we had Malamutes. The memories of the girls help me recall all the things I loved about winter (no mosquitos is high on the list). And those memories in turn help me feel a little more balanced when I go up stairs to ride the bike on the trainer instead of the roads.

I Live in the Best Place in the World

Above: View of the Mississippi River looking south from the Franklin Avenue Bridge. Fall colors from September 25, 2011. The sky was even more blue. Click on the image to view an enlargement—Better yet, come and visit Minneapolis in the fall!

Yes the river is a bit low, let's just get that out of the way. I think it was about noon when I took this. It was about 60 degrees and I had just just been on a 20 mile bike ride. I finished my ride and got my camera and came back to the bridge to take this photo to show you how lovely it is here. 

We've had some cooler mornings and I keep thinking that "Today I'm going to have to get the tights out," but that just doesn't happen. I keep riding in a short-sleeved t-shirt and cycling sorts. (The first mile is a little brisque, then it's easy-peasy.)

Last Monday, riding down West River Road (that's on the right bank in this image) I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest (not just because I was working hard, and I was, but) because it was so beautiful. Leaves were all different colors and golden trees glowed next to dark purple foliage, and everywhere dropped leaves were being scattered by the 20 mph gusts. There were still enough leaves in the trees that the sun filtered through making everything look like Maxfield Parrish had just painted it.

This is THE Mississippi River. The river Mark Twain wrote about. The river Indians, fur traders, and settlers traveled along. The river along which thousands of birds migrate very year.

I live near THE Mississippi. Every day I'm grateful that my mentor Bob suggested I come up here to go to graduate school. The second day here, my second day running in my new neighborhood (I was a distance runner back then), there was a temperature inversion and a foggy mist held close to the river. As I ran along the parkway I could see down the banks to the river. I had a visceral understanding of the Impressionists on that day. "I get it," I said to myself as I ran alongside colors I'd never seen before.

I've been getting it every day since.

p.s. This morning and a couple days last week the tights finally came out—it's still stunningly beautiful here, just a little bit too cool for me to wear shorts when I cycle.  

For Folks Who Can't Come to the Minnesota State Fair…

The Minnesota State Fair is on right now, and continues through Labor Day. (On Tuesday, August 28, 2012 we'll be having the Fourth Annual Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out.)

If you can't get to the Fair I thought I'd give you a little taste of what you would see. I have a new camera that has a panoramic "mode."  You can get some interesting things. I took these today handheld.

One of the things that will be immediately apparent—the crowd of people. However I hope you'll take a moment and look at these and enjoy the architecture. I rarely draw scenes or buildings at the Fair because I'm too busy drawing the animals—I want to make the most of my access to them. (OK, and I don't really draw buildings much anyway—if there weren't animals to draw I might work on my buildings.)

Above: A look at a portion of the swine barn. This is the northwest corner of the building, looking 180 degrees. Sheep and goats are in this part of the building. Look at the kid in the tie dye shirt and paper hat at the bottom left. By the time I got around to the end of the shot he was walking down the row perpendicular to my starting point. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Above: Inside the Cattle Barn. Look at the ceiling and the tall windows on the sides. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Above: Another view inside the Cattle Barn. This time I stood in the center aisle and started at the left, which is the northwest corner and panned so you could see the windows, fans in the roof, banners, and of course the other end of the building with the high entrance. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Above: Here I am on the corner near the Grandstand (center right). People everywhere here stop to eat corn (the roasted corn stand is to the left). There are a bunch of roads and walkways that meet here and take people off in different directions. It looks like there is a lot of space between people, but it was jam pack crowded today! Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Above: I'm walking out of the Fair and I do this by walking down towards the Midway (where all the games and rides are—I don't do games and rides). (No I won't tell you where my secret parking place is.) It's about 2:50 p.m. in this image. Click on the image to view an enlargement. 

Leisure Reading for the Weekend

My friend Tom sent me a link to Darren Rowse's blog post on Ben Heine's work. Ben Heine creates pencil drawings which he overlays onto scenes that he is photographing—i.e., he holds his drawing in front of the scene. The resultant composite is really not only clever but stunning. I recommend that you go and look at the post to see images, an animation of the process, and learn more about Ben Heine. 

A Peek at a Younger Roz

Left: Photos of me from when I was in graduate school! Click on the image to view an enlargement.

A couple weeks ago things got rather tense around here. We were missing some rather essential paperwork. I never had it to file, or so I believed. But it was so critical to have that I got Dick to drill out the lock on my two-drawer, fire engine red, legal-size file cabinet (which has followed me around the world through family moves and transitory digs in dorms).

The paperwork wasn't in that cabinet (I didn't think it was) but I did reconnect with a couple interesting things from my past.

All my journals from college were in those drawers as well as correspondence from my high school mentor. Your first reaction upon finding a folder containing letters from a comforting soul and influence in your life might not be to bury your nose in the contents. I got along well with scent dogs because that is my first response. Even after all these years I was comforted to find that I can still smell Thom on the paper of that correspondence. It isn't a cologne, it's Thom. Smell is very important to my amygdala. 

My diaries were in that drawer as well (from age 6 through 18 I kept a diary, until Thom convinced me I might just as well keep everything in my journal since it afforded me much more space and try as he might, by introducing me to all sorts of modern writers, he couldn't knock the "Victorian" verbosity out of me). I was too stressed looking for the missing paperwork to pay the diaries more than a passing glance.

Ditto the collection of hair, including my long, long pony tail from when I first had my long hair cut off as a child at about age 9. I was a blonde! I'm thinking of making a box to hold all the samples because the typical hair trim now is 6 inches and I keep them just to see how my hair is changing over time; in other words, how much gray does it contain as we go forward?

The scramble for the elusive document also turned up these two photos of me, mounted on a mat board. I had to think for a moment who had taken the photos. I've got several friends who are photographers, but their photos are technically better than these. And I printed and mounted these photos, so they were shot with my camera. 

At first I thought I'd taken them myself, shooting into a mirrored building (I'd done that as a joke when I was an undergraduate). But my mole on my cheek is where it should be if someone else were looking at me. (I had to do some mental gymnastics about this because the mole is gone now, removed in 2006.)

I realized later that night that the photos must have been taken by the young man I'd dated before I met Dick. I think I printed and mounted them as a memento for him, because for a short while we had a long-distance relationship. He returned the photos when we broke up. (He was a very proper young man on a five-year plan: get out of school, get a job, get married, have kids. He wasn't happy that I ran road races on Sunday while he was in church. Obviously it was a mis-match from the start [since I'm a pantheist and I'm arguably not proper]—and a very short relationship.)

When I look at some of the other photos people have taken of me in the past I think immediately about my relationship to the person who took the photo. When I found these photos I had only one thought, "I still have that vest! Damn, I love that vest."

No actually, I thought about how odd it was to be so young. At that time I felt so old, so "mature." Certainly I felt certain of what I was going to do and how I was going to live—and it was going to include running in road races on Sundays, so I'd already moved away emotionally from the young man taking my photo.

But life changes us in odd ways we don't expect. Sometimes there are dramatic and tragic changes. Yet for everyone there are simple changes that build, accrue a little bit every day, until one day you aren't blonde any more and you don't run because of an ankle injury that in turn sent you down a different path (for me, towards dogs).

With the dramatic and tragic changes you have to step in and respond, often just slog forward and get through things. With the small changes that creep up on you it might just be that you don't recognize more has shifted than you intended or thought possible.

I think change is inevitable. If someone looks at a photo and says she hasn't changed since she was young I'm not going to argue with her about whether or not that's a good or bad thing. If he says he has totally changed, well only he can look into himself and analyze what he finds.

I have my journals to correlate. They are filled with my twice yearly self-evaluations which are sort of personal performance reviews (I too had a plan, but it stretched longer than 5 years). 

What struck me, upon seeing these photos of my younger self, was how much I had changed (and I don't just mean the outer package), while at the same time fundamentally I hadn't changed at all. I believe there are essential things that happen to us when we are young which form who we always will be. We can use the core created by those events in a positive or negative way. We can make adjustments.

Without dwelling on the past I believe it is helpful now and then to examine, not just your memory of yourself, but actual "hard copy"—contemporaneous documents so to speak. So I'm grateful that I have all those journals. They are useful to me when moving forward.

The photos also remind me that I have to keep choosing. Even though now I am supposedly as mature as I thought I was then.

It's good to have a reminder that life is about choice. We can't always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond to life's events. 

We have limited time. It's better to choose. Otherwise you just might end up not recognizing yourself.

Note: We never did find the papers we needed, but we were able to replace them. Somethings are replaceable—choice isn't.

Oh, and I do love that vest.

Appreciation (If Not Love) of Chickens Runs in the Family

Left: Photographer Rolf Hagberg shoots a goreous model. (Image ©2011 Rolf Hagberg.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I just found out that my cousin, photographer Rolf Hagberg, has been shooting chicken portraits! Imagine my complete delight in this knowledge. (Anyone who has read my blog for more than a few days will know I'm absolutely crazy in love with chickens.)

You can read more about his process with tips on photographing live animals here.

If you would like to view the shoot as if you were there (and frankly Rolf, why wasn't I asked to be there!) you can see a video of the chicken photography session here.

And finally, if you want to see the charming and delightful chicken portraits that resulted you can follow this link. (Prints are available for purchase. And while I'm related to Rolf I'm not financially connected in any way; the images are just plain cool.)

One of best things about Rolf's recent images…they take the heat off of me in the family for loving chickens. Next time my folks roll their eyes and shake their heads at the new chicken painting on the easel I can just say, "Rolf loves chickens too." (They adore him. Bingo, Bango, Bongo—what can they say!?)

MCBA Visual Journal Collective Meeting Reminder: April 18, 2011—Photographing Your Artwork

Due to unavoidable circumstances our meeting topic for April has changed back to photography. The reed pen making session will be delayed until later in the year.

Meeting Topic: Photographing Your Artwork
Do you have book arts pieces you would like to enter into shows? Are you unclear how to best take photographs to capture your artworks to their best advantage for the jurying process? We will look at ways to set up lights to take photographs of your flat and 3-dimensional artworks. We will also discuss formats and preparation of your images. Focus will be on photography, however, we will attempt to address related issues of format (jpg, tiff, etc.), resolution, scanning, and vendors to help you with processing your images, as time allows.

Join us on Monday, April 18 from 7 to 9 p.m. if you have questions about photographying your artwork.

Viewing Some Old Masters in High Def

My friend Linda alerted me to Halta Definizoione which has posted high-resolution images  of 6 masterpieces from the Uffizi gallery in Florence. The works include paintings by Caravaggio, daVinci, and Botticelli. With the click of a mouse you can zoom in on the smallest details. It's great to see how Bronzino handled eye details. It's great fun to see the cracks of time in the paint.

The resolution is up to 28 billion pixels—which is 3,000 times stronger than the average digital camera. (That statistic is from Associated Press.)

Go check it out. I love to look closely at paintings (museum guards are always cautioning me to stand back), now I can look with impunity.

Well I can at least until January 29, 2011. After that the viewing won't be free (also from the AP, because again, I can't read Italian.)

Click on one of the images you see in the opening banner to get into the magnifier. There seem to be prints you can purchase if you click on other bits of the site, and that's not where you want to go to see the details. Happy viewing. I'm off to check out details in Caravaggio's "Bacchus."

 

More on Camera Close Ups: Looking at Flowers

Left: Another unknown flower. Look close at the little pod like things that are beneath the blooms. The blooms come out of these veiny enclosures. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

That garden I toured a couple weeks ago had a lot of interesting plants. I took several close up photos of hasta beds (and other ground cover) to use as textures for various digital projects I'm working on.

Note: these types of textures can be used at varying degrees of opacity and in different modes which can change the color and aspect so completely that you don't even realize you're looking at plants! They are useful to have around and I recommend that if you carry a camera you start your own collection of interesting plant patterns. Screened back they are also lovely as backgrounds for text when making quick greeting cards for friends. And they make great additions to any collage elements pile!

There's something else I have to admit to, however, plants sort of creep me out. I know we live on this big blue marble that is just the gem of the universe (and believe me if I were a marauding alien from another galaxy this is exactly the planet I would be drawn to and want to come and dominate—it's the law of "bright sparklies" but more on that another day) and it is a gem because of the trees.

Some days, especially after we have had days and days of rain and everything green grows with a profusion that can't really be explained unless you're watching time-lapse photography, I feel a little claustrophobic surrounded by the trees! (Yes, the trees, who do great things for this big blue marble.) It's as if I can hear them grow, hear them communicate. And like polar bears, they view me as trivial and of little consequence (which frankly I am, but it's beyond humbling to be told that by a tree—OK I just flashed on the scene from Wizard of Oz where Judy Garland/Dorothy picks apples).

I have to literally shake the feeling off. Especially if I'm on a walk, or when I was tracking through weedy areas with one of my dogs.

I put this sense of claustrophobia down to a lot of things—first, I am claustrophobic (we can examine how I became so another day, or not). I can control it most of the time (CAT scans, not so much). I have no problem on planes, trains, automobiles, and most elevators. I don't do caves or submarines.

Add to this the creep factor, which my brother (older and beloved) used to increase, by making me watch reruns of the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, which frankly I remember mostly as two series devoted to the exploration of the existence of pod-people and O'Henry type plot twists where two folks end up with exactly what they want but now no longer need.

Right: Close view of the post and vines. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

It's that pod-person thing I still have going on (still worry about it; and the first thing I do everyday, when Dick walks in the door, is give him a hug and smell his neck!). And when I see a plant like this yellow thing, with its twisty tendrils twining around a pole, clinching as it does, along with pods from which the blossom emerges, well frankly, I become uninterested in drawing the plant, let along standing near it!

OK, I just flashed on that Lost in Space episode where the plants take over the people! Vague recollection of Dr. Smith having a cabbage where his hair should be. But wasn't there one that was even more ominous—see, I'm not the only person who feels this way.

I wasn't just highly suggestive as a child. My imagination still does not need much to run away with itself.

Let's not forget John Wyndham's book Day of the Triffids. (And while they are animal related and not plant related, there are of course the pods of Alien, after which I didn't view another horror movie for 10 years—or until Aliens came out. Now I'm sort of OK with that.)

When I am confronted with a flower or plant like this yellow thing, let's just say that my first response isn't "cool, let's draw that." My first response is "euoow" and a scrunched up nose. (And I usually have an abnormally high gross out level.)

I think my reaction also stems (no pun intended) from spending time in the tropics as a child—where you literally can see plants growing without time-lapse photography.

Left: Flower emerging from the pod. Click on an image to view an enlargement.

For all these reasons, and many more that I won't go into today (or ever), I have to be won over gradually by plants. I have to be introduced to them more than once on average, before they interest me enough to sketch them. (This even goes for edible plants: though I have less difficulty with cucumber vines than any other such plant.)

I've found that taking close up photos of the plants with my little pocket camera allows me to look at the flowers later at my leisure. The photos erode the gross-out response and actually help me see points of interest. Then the next time I see that flower I find I'm more inclined to observe it in life, and even sketch it on the spot.

I find that this approach of taking a photo of something I find "difficult" to look at, and then "meeting it" as the photo first, works great with bugs as well. In fact, over the years it has worked so well with bugs that I have few problems with most bugs. (Very large spiders, still not so good.)

It's desensitization, like allergy shots. I frequently stop on my walks to look at bugs of all sorts from arrestingly beautiful dragonflies in brilliant colors to pale, soft-bodied maggots in road kill.

I imagine if I spent more time looking at plants, and less time looking at birds and bugs, and other fauna, my desensitization to plants would move along much more quickly.

The point is, if there is something out there that you're not too keen about, take a photo of it and look at the photo at home. Really look at it. Ask yourself some questions about the adaptations the plant, animal, or insect has made (or find someone who can help you with that). Then go find that subject in the "wild" again (under safe conditions of course, because poison ivy is after all still a problem, and some insects are deadly!) and see if you aren't more inclined to study and sketch it now.

What I've found is that the more I sketch something from nature, no matter what it is, the more wondrous I discover it to be. And that works out well for my journal page count. And if the photos help, well then that's a useful tool to get to that wonder faster.