iPhone autumn

for more of my iPhone photos go
here

juxtaposing

for more autumn in new england
check out the three galleries here

mass moca

museums are already filled with
isms.
when, exactly, did they succumb to
acronymism?

before it was MoMA,
the Museum of Modern Art was just
'the modern'. i liked the modern.
it was, you know, modern.

the acronym for the
museum of contemporary art
in north adams massachsetts
sounds like a highly caffeinated
flash mob event.

kinda cute though, i admit. the name.
the museum is nothing short of spectacular.

i had the opportunity to visit
with m. heart of secret notebooks during the first week of my well deserved 2 week vacation.

the sol lewitt building - a four floor retrospective
of his wall drawings -
will be around for 25 years.



above is a piece by sean landers from
the exhibition 'this is killing me'
about being an artist,
and the nature of creation

the rest is the architecture of
mass moca and pieces of sol lewitt

last week of october

i had expected
to find massachusetts
past peak and was delighted
to find so much color

you would think...

wouldn't you
that during a
two week vacation
(even allowing for a week
in the wilds of
western mass.)
there would be
time enough to
catch up with blogs and
post to my own.

you would be wrong.

curiously there has been
no time.

thus have i been remiss in commenting
and in replying to comments on my own
meager recent offerings.

sigh.

bygones.

autumn rain, new england

subway

subway collages
welcome me home
from a week in the country
(country collages
and landscapes
to come)

moody

MoMA mini

the museum of modern art
never looked more
manageable.

manipulated with the tiltshift app
on the iPhone

fingerpainting

the app is brushes.
endlessly amusing.

tired

very.
and still a bit achy.
but back @ work.

that's all i got right now.

oh, and this quote from
carrie fisher's "wishful drinking"

resentment is like taking poison
and waiting for the other person to die.

flu

so.
the flu.
not even the trendy one
just the ordinary, achy, feverish, chills,
and other icky symptoms
one.

so.
pictures of things within
a few feet of
lying on the couch...
with the iphone

polaroid-ish

tweets


apps


gnarly


seedlings


these not-quite polaroids
are iPhone photos manipulated
with the camerabag app.



street fair watermelon


MoMA fountain


billboard


Whitney lobby


zinnias (thanks j)


MoMA garden


bittersweet


singular apple


gerbera

at the whitney

no shooting at the o'keeffe show
of course
but then the guard said
i couldn't even sketch
in my ipod.

bummer

in the gift shop
though
these rubber bowls
echoed her forms...









p.s. more of my iPhone shots here

greenmarket

shooting with the iphone
makes everything new

on saturday it rained

each new weather
is an exploration





i've had my iphone now
for a week.
i'm enthralled
amused and
astonished on a regular basis.

and distracted beyond redemption.

trash

niagara falls...

the phrase popped up
a debate ensued...

whose routine was it?

abbott and costello, the stooges, lucy.
they all did it.

this is close to the version i remember

more of Friday morning...

...because i'm hoping to sleep in

some mornings...

some mornings everything i see seems
worth recording.
today that might be because i awoke at
four thirty am
and had consumed a goodly portion of
peet's sumatra blend
by six thirty.

at five i had stumbled upon a short film,
'on detour with manny farber',
which had me wide awake immediately.
it's on pbs saturday again on saturday morning at 5:30.
seek it out. or google his work:
wonderful.

it was probably farber
who made me
see things
this morning.

greenmarket / autumn

o'keeffe

haven't been to the show at
the whitney
yet.
to complement the tv movie
with joan allen as o'keeffe
here's a bit of herself
from the pbs movie

faces

whether masked or open
yesterday's parade
celebrating mexican independence
was all about
the faces

goodbye cheyenne

the cheyenne diner,
corner of 33rd street and ninth avenue,
is no more.

it served it's last club sandwich
more than a year and a half ago
but until this week it stood
where now there's a ragged hole
surrounded by chain link.

it was much like any diner
anywhere. everything was
kind of greasy.
the coffee sucked.
the staff was
usually surly or
distracted.
but it was always there
and kinda cool
and, after all,
you want your fries greasy
or what's the point.




















i took these photos
on october 16, 2002.

torn

when i take the e train
instead of the 1
the billboards
are too enticing
to pass
without shooting.

seeing

i haven't been carrying my camera lately.

i did today
which made me realize
that i see in a thoroughly different way
when i carry it.

not better or worse
just different.



sixth avenue is also
the avenue of the americas.

though no one
calls it that
it still sports the evidence







if abstraction happens in the city
and no one records it
is it still art?

eavesdropping

borders, penn station
september 11, 2009
9:00 am

september eleven

the photographs are mine. the black and white ones were taken in 1998 during a ride in the sanyo blimp. the color images were made on september 11 2003 during the annual tribute in lights downtown

i am not a number...

huge fan of
Patrick McGoohan...
Secret Agent? the best.
it's quiet enough for a drum solo...

and The Prisoner is one of those classics
you don't want to mess with
and yet...



Ian McKellen...



Jim Caviezel...

has possibilities...

i've been, what's the word...

remiss?

distracted?

aloof?

this weekend...long, lovely, hint of autumn,
brown leaves scratching the sidewalk...
i saw two movies.

the first, ostensibly science fiction
the second documentary.



these posters began showing up months ago.
just gorgeous graphically. and, of course, intriguing.

i walked out of 'District 9' on monday
unsteady on my feet. it's extraordinary
on many levels. a familiar tale told
with conscience and soul, the sense of reality
heightened by the judicious use of documentary
technique: news broadcasts,
interviews, surveillance camera images...
none of it new
but used expertly.

i read later that much of the dialog was
improvised and that sharlto copley
who plays wikus van de merwe
is not an actor. amazing.

the allegorical aspect -
man's inhumanity to alien standing in for
man's inhumanity to man
is not overwrought
but it gets you in the solar plexus,
not least because it was filmed in
johannesburg by south african director,
neill blomkamp.

no spoilers here - just see it.

i also saw "the september issue"
the documentary about the creating of
vogue magazine's september 2007 issue -
the largest in it's history.
fun to watch, of course.

but after seeing these two films back to back
i couldn't help being struck by how the former
seemed real and the latter fantastical fiction.



seriously. who's the alien?

objects

for lawendula's one tribe project i have mailed a small
package to germany.



before packing together this collection of odd, unrelated objects
in an empty bandaid box
i drew them in my sketch book.

drawn together they become
related.

this is, too, the purpose of the project:
to bring together a collection
of unrelated individuals
from distant places and
by the act of
collecting
connecting them.

a miscellany of three

contributing

i'm really not a promoter of my own work.
here and on my photography site at pbase.com/magpiejst
is pretty much where it lives.

when someone finds it and appreciates it
i'm delighted. when the opportunity to share it
for a good cause presents itself so much the better.

this was the case in april when i was contacted by
linda ligon, founder and creative director of interweave press,
about the possibility of using some of my guatemala photographs in a book about guatemalan weaving that was being produced to benefit friendship bridge, a non profit ngo investing in microeneterprises to help the women and children of guatemala.



the book, Guatemalan Woven Wealth has just been published
and i couldn't be more delighted. it's a book i would
buy even if i didn't have photographs in it.

it's available through the friendship bridge site and at
interweave press with profits going
via friendship bridge to the women of guatemala.

zen rain

narrative

a minute in the morning

endless inspiration

more from snow farm...

mysteries

more beads

still haven't had a chance to
properly photograph them
so these are scans



two sides of one bead -
this one uses silver leaf,
silver wire,
transparent and opaque glass
the close up scan makes it seem flat
which it isn't.



a set made with opaque ivory
and transparent teal
and etched with acid after
being annealed.



a bunch

back from snow farm

here's one of the beads i made.
technnically it's very flawed.
i love it though.

most glass beads don't scan well.
have to figure out how to
photograph them.

unless you're a steel worker or a mine worker
don't talk to me about hot
until you've worked in a small, enclosed,
unairconditioned space
with six torches blowing 1400 degrees
in humid 90 degree heat.

the dew in the mornings was delightful.

having not melted glass in five years
my first day's work was hideously disappointing.
i wondered why i'd come.

i got happier each day as my glass instinct
got stronger.

laundry

the shapes reminded me
of laundry
tossed in the dryer or
slapping the wind

snow farm

some impressions.
do you wonder why i want to return?

like a moth...

...to the flame



i used to melt glass
to make beads
and i miss the flame...

the luna moth
(the only one
i've ever seen)
was at snow farm
where i learned to melt glass.

if i'm lucky i'll be going back
next week...

morning joe

resting on a ledge
at the spring street station.
thinking coffee
that was
all i
saw

sandia

taxi rain blur

other people's blur
can be
incomprehensible...

these are mine, tho, and
to me they look like
beginnings.

i want to
write dark thoughts
over them
with white ink




mask



swim



fried egg



rush



primary

zen rain

diving into the wreck

one of my favorite lines
in literature
from the poem by adrienne rich:

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth

i have thought of it many times
during these two months
of the wreck this journal project
and dismissed any connection
between this project and the poem
(thinking the project somehow 'less',
the poem being as extraordinary as it is...)

yet perhaps it isn't so farfetched
to think this exploration
as significant:
seeking something of myself.

and discovering?
still uncertain
exactly what.

the last of the pages -
i've decided that the journal
will be complete -
in whatever state -
at the end of the month


the poem can be read (or listened to, anne waldman reading) here


















the pencil rubbing was done with this milagro studded
watermelon
i had high hopes.
alas

what would you do...

(originally here by way of both
marie and nancy
comes a challenge:

What would you do with this?



i see nothing but
that color
and for me
that color
is guatemala.

so i found images
to post on that wall
among my galleries...

rain/conversation