New Collages
First, the collages. No – first, the weather. Finally, here in Bakersfield CA, we had temperatures that didn’t start with 10 or 9. It’s been over 100 degrees for so many days, weeks, that the energy has been drained right out of me. But today we were only in the 80s! That gave me energy for the fist time in forever. So I got to work and my two collages came together in no time.
Ok, that’s a little deceptive. I may have put them together quickly but I’d already done the thinking and the photo printing. I had the concepts. As usual, they changed themselves around on me as they took on lives of their own, but I’m satisfied.
Had to order the background prints as I can’t print bigger than 13×19. These are 20×30. The background is an umbrella in Vernazza, Italy. Here’s the first. Click here to see the original umbrella in its setting. Just flip through the photos and it’s the one after the Orvieto vineyards. Look carefully and you can spot this umbrella.
I should make the photo disclaimer – these are too big for my scanner, which also only scans up to 13×19, so the photographs are hasty. No matter – you get the idea. This is titled Kern County Fair. It could be County Fair, Anytown, USA. These are the photos I took of food booths and then added the tilt-shift effect. It’s bright and gaudy and jumbled just like the fair. Or at least, that’s how the fair appears to me.
Now for the Kern County Anti-Fair.
This one could not be called Anytown Anti-Fair, because Kern County is in the San Joaquin Valley, aka the breadbasket of the world. At least at one time, that’s what we were called. We grow so much citrus and so many grapes. This collage is subdued, calm, and full of Kern County produce. It really is the anti-fair.
Collages delivered to Metro Gallery
I took 31 collages to Metro Gallery on 19th Street, downtown Bakersfield Fine Arts District, this afternoon. The show opens Friday, October 2. My works are called Altered Landscapes, and showing upstairs will be Unguarded Moments by photographer Michael Fagans, who was embedded with troops in Afghanistan. I’m looking forward to seeing those.
If you can’t make it, you can look here to see the collages, but they are better in person!
Tilt-Shift Video – Bathtubs
After my post on tilt-shift photography, my friend Tom Hall alerted me to this wonderful series of tilt-shift videos. Keith Loutit, the artist, speeded up his video of the Sydney Harbor for the Bathtubs Series. Notice particularly the whole point of tilt-shift (at least here) – the ships, people, everything look like model figures, with the colors brightened to look like model paints. Take a fun look. Great music, also.
Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
Here’s Keith’s website, and I’ve posted it on the links on the sidebar also.
Complexions Contemporary Ballet
No one really knows this but soon the world will – at least the very small portion of the world who reads this: in my secret life, I’m a dancer. Ballet is a passion of mine. Don’t get to see much anymore, so when friend Kristen Doolittle, who runs Imagine Ballet Company in Bakersfield, posted this link on facebook, I was transfixed. I’ve watched it over and over and over. I’ll just let you watch so you understand because mere words could never express the beauty of these dancers and the movement.
