Night-Portal-Lens 2

Night- Portal-Lens

"B Word" in Three Parts

Awhile ago Nori Mizukami asked me to write about how I feel about blindness. Here is my response...

More ongoing graphic

Ongoing graphic work #1

Perspectives on the Seeing With Photography Collective

The second video.

Several years ago I made a short video about our art group, the Seeing With Photogrphy Collective. Today I'm posting  this, plus another more recent one, both videos explore our perspectives and ideas we have about blindness and creativity  using photogarpahy as our medium.

Pluto at last

This latest image of Pluto was  New Horizon's last transmission before it went into a twenty hour long planned silence, while it is busy collecting data. Hopefully the space craft will emerge from radio silence later today intact, and full of new and detailed observations. Pluto is a striking world. Bravo NASA!

Excavated this spring

Onging excavations at a Roman villa in Arles France, uncovered an ancient wall mural. Here's a small fragment.

Slides #2

Slides

Various works, some not finished.  Developing ideasaround these and many many more right now.

Stored away

Afew months ago Nori Mizukami asked me some questions about art. Here is a response to one about painting.

The View from Here, part 2, "Snowfall"

The View from Here, Part 2, “Snowfall”

“The View from Here” will be posted as a series.This post may contain material of a mature nature, rate it “R”, please be advised.

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Exploring these images with words is new, more like the touch tour I once had of a Picasso sculpture, feeling the very metal, and splayed substance of its cold bulk, exploring its subtle aspects.

The snapshots are the same, with many facets, casting hues diffracting, radiating, mirrored, constructed, disnantled. I've put them here, out of the trash can of obscurity, safe for awhile. Just a few.

Recent work

Some recent work with gouache snf ink-jet prints of oil paintings and photos.

The View From Here, Part 1

The View from Here, Part 1

“The View from Here” will be posted as a series.

Some artists explore the personal or casual photo as their theme. I 'll delve in too. It's not the intriguing, ironic, or visually fascinating picture that interests me, no. Only the picture whose purpose is to remind and re-awaken, inspires this series to follow.

Casual snapsots evoke beyond their appearance. Unbound by concerns of form and freed of current trend, our snapshot albums let us time travel, the veneer of style peels away with laughter at our confidence and comfort among the hilariously outdated, Even the little paper prints now are part of another time, but their casual nature isnt, the impulse is still the same, now as then, only updated via digital media. I like to feel them though. It's one of the pleasures of time travel in the shoebox, to flip through the stacks. As great art, they fail – all- but retain their unmistakable grip,weaving back and forth with our memories and charming us with the light of a vanished world.

Being nearly blind adds to my frustration deciphering the jigsaw puzzles. Yet it compeles me also,with its dark obstacles and barriers, to gain strength, to go back again and again to take inventory.To burn in what I can't take with me on this trip. Photography impresses me, it's arms are strong.

Tiger Cai's , Argo Voyager

http://www.tigerchengliangcai.com/

"Night is Canvas"

At the Light Painting World Alliance websites, you'll find the phrase “Night is Canvas” . Night is no ordinary word for me, I suffer from night blindness. It's a powerful, often frightening word, separating me from the able bodied, putting me in the folder labelled "Unable"- legally blind, asking for help to cross the street. Night, and its draining, light-less hardships, needn’t be only that. After all, the other part, “canvas” is what matters more in the end.

Carol's visit

Carol Hualin Gu contacted me recently. She is a journalist doing a story for a new publication bringing American cultural trends to the Chinese audience. Its called ”Now U SA “ . Carol,is from China ,but lives in New York City now. Carol is interested in light painting and how we as sight impaired or blind artists,go about making images.

One evening as twilight deepened she stopped by with her husband Tiger,  a [hotographer,and together they documented a night of work.

New

These are all very recent and very small gouache sketches. Gouache is a particularly rich medium, being like watercolor, but opaque.The surface is velvety.

The two figures amid a reddish enviornment are from a series called "The Night Guard".

I've been starting to experiment with a new technique too, using ink -jet prints of my artwork as a starting point to complete with paint. If you use good watercolor paper it's possible, am very excited about using this combination of ink -jet print with painting, two such images are here.It's just the start

Scan Calotype

Scan Painting 2

Scan painting 1

Scan Pinhole image 1

Scan Snapshot 2

Scan Snapshot 3

Victor Zuga

Its March now, the frigid artic ice flows that choked the river are mostly melted under the stronger sun.

 2014 was a rollercoaster. I traveled and was fortunate enough to be with warm, good people and had two exhibitions in widely distant parts of the world. In May my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. My parents and I waited for further tests. They would come back when I was due to have my opening in Guanajuato Mexico, in a group exhibit there at the Foro Cultural 81. I wanted to cancel the trip, but dad insisited I go. He argued with me, he wouldnt let me miss this opening, despite my sadness and wanting to be near my folks. ”Go ! Go! What, are you kidding? “ I hear his words raisng in tone, even now.

 Nori Mizukami went with me, managing to carry his heavy camera gear through airport security, despite every roadblock fate could fling at him, dont ask me how he does it. Nori stayed with my friend Darius and myself at Darius'' home near the Foro. He filmed a lot, made lots of friends, and went dancing, after Darius had stopped being amusing and fallen asleep after drinking a good part of the four bottles of champagne he had bought for my opening celebration. Nori told us stories about the college club scene, which seemed beyond me mainly. The trip was good really, but I was barely hanging on. The only light painting I did, was just to kill time, my heart wasn't there. I was a wreck with worry. Darius dragged me around town, trying to find a pharmacy that sold Laetrile to smuggle across the border, because its illegal as a cancer treatment here.

Remembering Stephen

One of Seeing With Photography Collective’s original and founding artists died recently. Stephen Dominguez hadnt been in good health but I was still shocked to learn of his death at an early age. Stephen was a gentle, thoughtful and caring person, whose character can be understood in the indelable photographs hes left us. Awhile back i posted here some of my thoughts about Stephen, in a post called Two Artists. Please take a pause to briefly encounter him again,and maybe my words can enrich your understanding of his artistic creations etched into negatives.http://nothingperipheralasightimpairedartist.blogspot.com/2011/05/two-artists.html