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The season shifted towards autumn rather abruptly. Last week I was planning on putting out some plants. Then the air turned cool and windy. I felt it was too late in the season to do plant installations. It was probably for the better as a rowdy storm blew through with high winds and heavy rain and took the last traces of summer away.
I brought the plants inside and made some more cuttings. I will wait for spring. Then I hope to have more plants from the cuttings and can really green up the abandoned bicycles of the city.
I like equinox light because it is so clear and sharp. It is a bit harsh for photographs though. It softens at sunrise and again at sunset, I watch the colors melting together as I work in the kitchen. I always seem to end up in the kitchen, chopping something, watching the light in the street.
Today the sharp edges of the light pleased me. I wandered through Soho and was not horrified by the rampant commercialization and luxury explosion that goes on there. It was early in the day and the tourists were not ambling yet.
There is a really cool shop that sells tile. They have mannequins wearing tile mosaics in their windows. I have never really paid attention to the shop, but today it caught my eye.
I have been so disorganized. I feel as if I have to arrange my work better. I need to work on my dream images and eventually find a way to present them. My posts may be a little spotty as I try to get myself together.
There are summers that end softly, the warm days linger, the sunlight becomes slowly sharper. Other summers end abruptly in storms and darkness. This year we have the latter. Labor day weekend was a sorry affair. It was gloomy and cool, with the promise of bad weather.
In spite of this, we lit a bonfire and toasted marshmallows. After that, the rain moved in. On the last day of summer break, the young son and I had planned to go to the beach. The weather was not the best for such an endeavor, but we were stubborn. As we approached the shore, a storm moved in, the sky darkened, lightning crackled in the distance. We plunged on, even though Jones beach was closed, the town beach in Babylon was not. It was still raining as we picnicked in the car.
The rain tapered off, and we explored the deserted beach.
The sky was moody as the waves rushed back and forth.
The young son faced off against the surf, using the energy washing against him to fuel plots to anime style dramas.
The only sunny day this week was humid and too hot. Today we had two tornadoes, small ones.
Starting tomorrow, all the days will be beautiful, not too hot. It sounds like early autumn.
You remember JR?
Last week I volunteered to help some students from the Beacon summer program put up posters for JR's Inside Out project. It is a participatory art project in which people upload portraits that are printed on 4x5' sheets. The people then wheatpaste their portraits onto walls. JR is using the money from his TED grant to fund the project which recently met its goal of 100,000 portraits from all over the world.
These are some of the young ladies from the summer art program. They were lovely people and it was a blast working with them. They wanted to send a message against bullying.
Although I still have a lot of photoshopping to do on my first dream series, I decided that the young son and I needed a break from the city. So we went out to an odd spot in New Jersey where my best childhood friend used to live. It was supposed to become a reservoir, but that plan fell through and the area was declared protected farm space or something. The dream I want to illustrate was about a part of Bed-Stuy where the descendants of freed slaves lived, farming on land that was given to them. The farmhouse in the dream was from this area in New Jersey. We hung out near the canal, everything was so green and calm.
The surrounding nature did not deter the young son from his video gaming.
This is the house from my dream (with son crossing into the frame). But the reality of the house did not fit with my dream view.
I decided that this barn was better for what I am planning.
I found this farmer from a group of fsa photos online. The farmer in my dream was older and more grizzled with pride in his eyes. This farmer is at least smiling so I think he will do. It is a small image so I will have to work on it the way I did with my visitation pictures
And I know that New York slaves were freed way before abolition, They probably did not receive any real estate, certainly not any 40 acres, but it is a dreamscape.
