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walking. talking (at the moment still unintelligible to me, but still there is the effort of verbal communications). feeding his snacks to the dogs. generally being a delightful nephew.
Our little Sadie is 1 year old now. At least another year to go of puppyhood.
Had a puppy mom breakfast with Dawn Tacker on Sunday. Sadie and Kalli, the lab girls, played all over the house and the yard. Dawn’s son Andrew helped pouring and stirring the pancake batter. Aaah, to be 3 again.
Today is the one year anniversary of my near-death drowning. I’m not sure how I feel about this; my heart and mind are all over the place. It seems like today is like a second birthday for me. There are no physical reminders of the accident; no scars or abrasions left. But clearly it is embedded in my psyche as much as a permanent physical reminder would be.
Yesterday at a used bookstore, I happened across(in the graphic novel section, where you’ll usually find me) a copy of The Wild Party that was illustrated by art spiegelman. I bought it and read it through last night before bed. It is a great poem, and worth reading if you haven’t. As suggested by William Burroughs in the forward, this poem and its’ images stay with you.
I’m not sure if today is for celebrating, and having a wild party; or for quietly enjoying the fact that I am alive and just having a normal day. I’ve had an amazing year, but still my soul battles; is this life for the wild party that we can get out of it? Do we live it up, drinking in every pleasure until the cops come in? Or is this life for a moderate cautious blend of simple pleasures and traditions?
Last summer on the long desert drive to Arizona, I heard a short piece on the radio about the growing number of high school mariachi bands. Suddenly I had these images in my head, very avedon-esque, of these teenagers, in their trajes, as musicians. Last winter, while doing a printmaking residency at the School of the Arts at San Diego High School, I met Serafin Parades, the band teacher and leader of one of these groups of teenage mariachi musicians. We talked about me making some portraits of the students, and planned for a few months. I dropped in a few times to listen to them play and to make them comfortable with me.
Here are a few of the portraits. As I said, very influenced by Avedon’s Southwest, and Arnold Newman’s genious use of the shape of instruments to break up negative space. While editing, I was fascinated how the countenance and body language of the students changed when in their trajes and while playing their instruments.
Trent and I volunteered to shoot the Hip-Hop Bunny Drop annual egg hunt that The Kroc Center partners with the radio stations Magic 92.5 and Z90.
Most of the kids were in their regular Saturday clothes. One girl had her full-on Easter best dress, heels, and straw hat. Her brother was wearing a tiny seersucker suit. The kids cleaned up thousands of eggs in under a minute. It waas amazing to see how motivated children are by candy.
See the elegance of a nine year old, waiting for the egg hunt to begin:
I’ve been working on a series of abstract images of my ever growing seashell collection. Here are a few images from this series, which I recently entered into a call for entires at a gallery in Hudson, NY.
