Traveling Light

So I'm going to San Antonio to spend a week with my friends Jesse and Julie. I'll be flying on Southwest Airlines courtesy of the Kanner Lubbering Foundation for Peace, Love and Happiness which is hosting an event up in Kerrville, Texas called: The Total Eclipse of the Sun.

I'm excited. I haven't been on a plane since 2016 when Danielle and I flew from NYC to Los Angeles to see M83 at the Greek Theatre. I'm opting for the window seat since I'll be flying during the day which presents the perfect opportunity to playact the role of Helios looking down at all the mortals gazing skyward (on April 8th, the day of the eclipse), which I consider an appropriate prelude to my pilgrimage. I revel in dramatic flights of pretending, especially if they are inspired by the spirit of symmetry.

Pretending is manifest in a variety of fashions: such as the spontaneous improv, or the long contemplated ruse, and the most common pretense of all—the godforsaken habitual. I like to be equitable and taste everything on the appetizer tray, so I might start my 7am coffee ritual with a harmless bit of operatic wailing performed for a family of mice bickering in the laundry room, and naturally, I'm accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma who is all smiles as he encourages a skosh more soprano even though he knows, damn well, I'm a tenor. But honestly, I'm grateful for his nudging. And after lunch (grilled cheeses with a side of kosher dills), I'll lace up my sneakers with the intention of walking my requisite 2.5 miles yet inevitably I end up in bed reading another chapter of The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich and just as I contemplate a nap I bust out the iPad and start writing a new blog and debate whether I should sit by the window or the aisle because they both have their pros and cons but I end up convincing myself the window is better because I can be Helios, and it's settled. Then night rolls around and I think about weed and how I haven't had any gummies or hit the pipe since the start of the year and I say, good for you, and wonder where I ended up hiding the stash even though I know it's in the bin I tucked deep inside a dead closet so I wouldn't think about it—the "it" being whether or not I'll convince myself that weed helps me sleep better and eases my chronic-itis—but instead I'll get on the yoga mat and do my three sets because I'm reborn and I've put my hurts in the same bin with the weed and then tomorrow night I'll turn on the purple light and I'll think about how there is no way just one puff will make a difference. And these are the ways I pretend.

As my friend Doug would say, "We all got to be something."

I think I'll be a good listener when I get to San Antonio and I'll bring my camera even though I have a tendency to use the viewfinder as a doppelganger. But I know that somewhere between me and my pretense is the spiritual balance that I speak of and trust.

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Benefit Exhibition at Maryland Art Place

I am honored to be included in the 11th Annual Benefit Exhibition at Maryland Art Place (MAP) this Friday, November 17th from 6pm-10pm.

This will be the second year I have been invited by MAP to exhibit my work in this festive show in which 50% of the sales benefit MAP and their mission to provide thought provoking, contemporary art and other cool things.

At last year's benefit I contributed a larger print (13 x 19") and two smaller prints (9 x 12"). But this year I wanted to submit three works that were more cohesive as a whole and all the same size (13 x 19" which includes the maple frame). My cohesion philosophy was based on a few things: 1) the concept of a beginning, middle and end, 2) the color blue, and 3) confident horizontals and strong verticals.

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The First Time We Met | Baltimore, MD | 2023

The beginning, middle and end, like all good stories, is the structure of my triptych. The beginning suggests an encounter (The First Time We Met), the middle hints at the good days, bad days (Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm), and the end alludes to closure, Act III (Curtains).

Is this a happy ending?

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Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm | Baltimore, MD | 2023

On another level, The First Time We Met, was captured in Pigtown and was literally the first time I walked this wonderful neighborhood in March, 2023. Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm was taken in Old Gaucher in July, 2023 and was the second time I shot this location, so I knew what I was getting into, and of course, the weather was as reported—mostly sunny skies with an occasional thunderstorm. Curtains was taken downtown in May, 2023 and is probably a five minute walk from MAP with the title character of the photo being a wide swatch of curtain seen through a window looking up to: nothing but blue.

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Curtains | Baltimore, MD | 2023

When all three images are lined up side-by-side, there is a through line of horizontals and verticals. For example: The First Time We Met (Act I) has confident horizontals by way of the glass bricks which pair nicely with the third string of red-white-and-blue streamers in Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm (Act II) and continues through the building reflected in the window of Curtains (Act III). And the vertical line in the middle of Act I flirts with the confident flagpole in Act II and foreshadows the climax of the vertical blues in Act III.

And yes, it’s a happy ending.

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The House

I love the concept of an alternative gallery space. 

When I visited the Storehouse dispensary in Mount Washington back in March, I was inspired to see some art on the walls by several local artists. It wasn't always like this—art on the walls—but I was stoked about the new direction. Paintings and digital illustrations, very cool, but I didn't notice any photography. This felt like an opportunity, so I decided to track down the manager to see if they'd be interested in supporting a Woodberry photographer.

I had the perfect photo in mind, a mash-up of two images that I captured in the neighborhood of Locust Point and wrote about here. I thought the work—if displayed in a sweet maple frame—would compliment the rainbow signage in the lobby, which also had a stylish wood frame. And the thin white line separating my two photos would play nicely with the horizontal lines that underscored the sativa, the hybrid and the indica, which are varying strains of the cannabis flower. And for bonus points, a mash-up and a hybrid are kinda the same thing, the hybrid being a blend of sativa and indica.

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Hybrid | Baltimore, MD | 2023

The manager was excited, I was excited, everybody was excited. I only had one deadline to meet; make sure the mash-up was hanging in the lobby by July 1st, which was the first day recreational cannabis would be legal in Maryland.

Done. We hung that badboy on June 1st. 

The mash-up will live in The House indefinitely, or until it sells, or until I decide to replace it with something new. It's basically an ALT exhibition that I can have fun with, keep it funky, mix it up. 

There is a t-shirt you can buy at Atomic Books in Hampden that says, "Baltimore: Actually I like it." I'm digging that. But maybe an ALT tee would go something like, "Be: Art, Love & Trees."

Find your happy home.

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