Hi all -
This post sort of falls under the broad category of "If you are bored and you are tired of streaming videos on TV and it is to hot to go outside here is something else to pass the time."
I am working on an image that is proving more of a challenge than I originally thought and my hands are tired. But I didn't want y'all to feel neglected so I am shooting you a few bits and pieces of stuff that I come across when scrolling through my old files. I sometimes forget what I was originally looking for and fall down the rabbit hole of all the stuff that ends up there. So - Something Old, Something New.
First the old. There are a couple of old images that I see everyday, but I am not really sure how I created them. Please excuse the strange cropping. These are really old images.
Now the mystery behind Iris is that I have no idea how I got those pieces of the image so tiny but so clear. The finished image is about the same size as a sheet of typing paper. My guess is that I went from my original photo of the flower - which is also on my backup drive - to my usual routine of "remove the photo spaces and draw designs in them, then color." But then I think I took that "finished image which was probably 24x19 and scanned it into photoshop and reduced the image to 8.5 x 11 while increasing the clarity and saturation and printed the new image out. Maybe, I dunno.
Same thing with this image of a "paper mulberry" which hangs on the wall next to "Iris":
Next an early Wall post circa 2010 - written in Raleigh.
Picking Up Stones
.
Last week, down the road from here a piece, over in Alexander County, a miner named Terry Ledford pulled a 310 carat emerald out of the dirt. It reminded me of The Big Rock Show.
I am not sure exactly when Dan and I curated The Big Rock Show. I suspect it was the summer of 1958, our tenth summer. I pick that particular summer because in the summer of 1959 my family moved to Vienna, Austria, and shortly thereafter I became smitten with Patricia Miller – a green-eyed, fifth-grade temptress whose father had just been transferred in from Paris. Hence, I choose 1958 because I recall it as a languid summer on the calmer side of adolescence and hormones, when girls were minor, future irritations on the road of life.
The Big Rock Show capped an extended exercise in suburban fieldwork. Dan and I started out excavating promising gullies in the alley and exposed ravines in a local park in search of, well, rocks. This entailed digging and other forms of manual labor that, as our later lives have made clear, were not skill sets destined for either of our futures. Hence, the enterprise lagged. However, we soon discovered that a local church had just resurfaced their parking lot with the very artifacts we sought – rocks. Truckloads of rocks; flints, granite, maybe jasper, and the much-prized rose quartz with enclosures of garnet. I do not actually recall how we identified the stones – but we were enchanted by the rocky rhetoric.
We hosed the dust off our finds, polished them as best we could with rags from the basement, and glued them onto large pieces of cardboard. These we displayed in the garage, appropriately labeled and priced. The pieces too small for display were heaped in a plastic dishpan next to a sign: "Free Samples." I believe we priced the larger pieces in a range from a nickel to a quarter, with the truly grand samples marked “Not for sale.” I do not recall if we sold any. Entrepreneurial success has continued to elude us.
But, we too, unearthed an emerald that summer. One that came from sunlight streaming through deep green leaves of maple, from fresh cut grass, and from time that meandered endless and forgiving. We won no ribbons, no one videotaped our endeavors, and there was no “after The Big Rock Show pizza party.” We just rode our bikes all over town in pursuit of the rare rocks of Springfield, Ohio, and ended the days drinking Frosty root beer as evening faded into night and lightening bugs lit The Big Rock Show.
Last week, down the road from here a piece, over in Alexander County, a miner named Terry Ledford pulled a 310 carat emerald out of the dirt. It reminded me of The Big Rock Show.
I am not sure exactly when Dan and I curated The Big Rock Show. I suspect it was the summer of 1958, our tenth summer. I pick that particular summer because in the summer of 1959 my family moved to Vienna, Austria, and shortly thereafter I became smitten with Patricia Miller – a green-eyed, fifth-grade temptress whose father had just been transferred in from Paris. Hence, I choose 1958 because I recall it as a languid summer on the calmer side of adolescence and hormones, when girls were minor, future irritations on the road of life.
The Big Rock Show capped an extended exercise in suburban fieldwork. Dan and I started out excavating promising gullies in the alley and exposed ravines in a local park in search of, well, rocks. This entailed digging and other forms of manual labor that, as our later lives have made clear, were not skill sets destined for either of our futures. Hence, the enterprise lagged. However, we soon discovered that a local church had just resurfaced their parking lot with the very artifacts we sought – rocks. Truckloads of rocks; flints, granite, maybe jasper, and the much-prized rose quartz with enclosures of garnet. I do not actually recall how we identified the stones – but we were enchanted by the rocky rhetoric.
We hosed the dust off our finds, polished them as best we could with rags from the basement, and glued them onto large pieces of cardboard. These we displayed in the garage, appropriately labeled and priced. The pieces too small for display were heaped in a plastic dishpan next to a sign: "Free Samples." I believe we priced the larger pieces in a range from a nickel to a quarter, with the truly grand samples marked “Not for sale.” I do not recall if we sold any. Entrepreneurial success has continued to elude us.
But, we too, unearthed an emerald that summer. One that came from sunlight streaming through deep green leaves of maple, from fresh cut grass, and from time that meandered endless and forgiving. We won no ribbons, no one videotaped our endeavors, and there was no “after The Big Rock Show pizza party.” We just rode our bikes all over town in pursuit of the rare rocks of Springfield, Ohio, and ended the days drinking Frosty root beer as evening faded into night and lightening bugs lit The Big Rock Show.
And now for something new. That same Dan Coyle of The Big Rock Show (I mean when you are born 7 days apart and your parents live on two sides of a duplex, Fathers teaching at the same college, you are sort of fated to share much of your lives) who later went on to earn a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina - has created an fascinating internet presence. It is easiest to just share the link with you. To explain it precisely would require me to head down to "the old north state" and do my own graduate work over in the English department.
So here. Give it a try! Have fun!
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