Seeing not Judging

August 9, 2012 By

Feeling stuck? Immerse yourself in thoughts of infinity. If you are a narcissist, you have just found heaven as the Artist Joshia McElheny’s exhibit at the ICA in Boston allows onlookers to look at themselves infinitely.  My grand nephews loved it, ages 7 and 10. Their mother, my niece, age 48, and moi, 67, appreciated the chance to look at ourselves in a new way. Maybe narcissism isn’t so bad after all.

The ICA just changed their photography policy. Only three pieces are now restricted from all our pesky cameras.  Couldn’t have come at a better time for this ol’ girl!  In need of all the perspective I can get.

Here’s the link to a short video I made of of his “galaxy” chandeliers, inspired by the ones at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center the NYC.

 

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Filed Under: Contemporary Art, Inspiration, Narcissim Tagged With: , , , ,

Mailbox

March 5, 2009 By

mailbox02

This mailbox belongs to a corner house that is literally only several feet from a busy highway.  To illustrate the closeness, I took this photo late this afternoon while stopped at the light through my passenger window with only an 85mm lens.

I always notice this house as I have seen an elderly blind woman with short cropped white hair walking across the street with a dog wearing a harness and then walk into the side door.  She follows the dog across the street but at times it is hard to tell who is actually in the lead.

I imagine her to be alone although I do not know for sure.  I never see her walking with anyone but the dog.  The house has an apple tree orchard and a rather large garden.  I feel sure someone must help with these activities,  but it would not surprise me to find out that this lone woman takes care of everything by herself.

She gives off that air of resilience.

When I got home after taking the photograph,  I learned that Horton Foote had died, a playwright of over 50 plays and screen plays–”Tender Mercies”, “Trip to Bountiful” are two that come to mind.  He wrote about people like the woman  who lives on the corner of West Central.

In the NYTimes today they said:

Mr. Foote, in a 1986 interview in The New York Times Magazine, said: “I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on. What makes the difference in people? What is it? I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters.”

I have often wondered what I would be like if incapacitated in some way, in  some extreme way.

If blinded, my first thought is instead of a seeing eye dog, I’d probably opt for one of those human transport vehicles or sedan chairs with ten hulky carriers to take me across the street to get a coffee and a pizza and then haul me back stopping traffic.

I would go through a terrible phase where I’d face life by asking quarters every damn minute, feeling so very sorry for myself.  When I’d stumble around to get to the mailbox– nothing but bills would be in it.

Then, somehow, I think (I hope) I’d get over it.  I don’t know how long it would take, though.   But, eventually, much too long into it I feel sure, I’d grow a backbone or more than likely do something creative with my new found darkness.   How would the outside world know that I’d come ’round and it was safe to come to my door without me kidnapping them for some personal service request?

I’d flip the red flag up on the mailbox.  Maybe I’d have a letter in there to mail or maybe a failed cake (even sighted my cakes all fail) I decided to try to bake unable to read the instructions.  Maybe,  it would just be empty inside but the flag would be up.

And,  I’d ditch  the sedan chair and get the dog and try to get across the damn street by myself.

Rent Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful” sometime soon.  Geraldine Paige is the actress and I think she won the Academy Award for her performance.

Her character, I know, lives in my town in a corner lot with an apple orchard.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Filed Under: Aging, ANXIETY, ANXIETY 2.0, Deep Thoughts, Inspiration, Personal Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

USA ZIP: 012009

January 23, 2009 By

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At what point do icicles become a public safety issue?

These and other “deep thoughts” musings –Obama’a stark choice of the Valley Forge reference, the inaugural poet’s line “Take out your pencils. Begin” –have been filling my post inaugural days.

But, today, I’ll just give you this view through my window at dawn. Somehow, just inches from my chair was an image of the somber realities and the promise of this week.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Filed Under: 2009, ANXIETY, Creativity, Deep Thoughts, Inauguration, Inspiration, Life, Personal, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A Walk Down Pennyslvania Avenue

January 20, 2009 By

inaugurationday2009

I had no idea optimism was so exhausting!  It’s only 6:30PM and I’m listing 40 degrees to Serta Pillow Top.

There were, of course, so many images.  I haven’t even looked at all that I clicked.  And, words.  His, of course.  We are now officially in the hands of a wordsmith.  But, the surprise?  That poet who followed him.  I must find out more about her.  I loved it.

The television is now on mute in the living room.

Ironically, my final image for this series “Driving to the Inaugural” is not one from the inaugural podium, or the monuments, or even the millions of people crowded together on the mall.

It is one of the new President and his wife walking down Pennsylvania Avenue after the inaugural. One foot in front of the other, their-our- journey begins on pavement despite armored cars and bailouts trailing behind and before us.

They were on the way to the White House before attending the inaugural parade.

Me?  I went to pick up my repaired computer!  Hard Drive intact, nothing lost. A new logic board installed.

A good omen for the republic, don’t you think?  Ah.

See you in a few days and thanks for coming along for the ride.

I’m now mere inches from the pillow top, fading fast….fast…fa…..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION

This is the 15th and final post in my series called “Driving to the Inaugural.”   I am driving from my computer with the assistance of memory and past images and television and internet. Triple A doesn’t have road service for this journey even though I have a premium membership.  Here are the others in the series:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

NINTH

10th

11th

12th

13th

14th

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Creativity, Driving to the Inaugural Series, Historical events, Inauguration, Inspiration, Life, Personal, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

All Eyes On Washington, DC

January 18, 2009 By

alleyesarewatchingdct

This is the third in my “Driving to the Inaugural” series.  I am driving from my computer with the assistance of memory and past images and television and internet. Triple A doesn’t have road service for this journey even though I have a premium membership.  Here are the others in the series:

Day One

Day Two

____________________________________________________________

One could be persuaded by the smiles of the crowds and the President Elect that there is only joy and hope riding the rails into Washington, DC.

The washington post.com reports this morning that homeland security folks, FBI are bedding down in government buildings in order to not get caught in gridlock.

It also reports that when he was nominated in Denver, the Secret Service made the largest order of bulletproof glass in its history.

“The service requested about 5 tons of “transparent armor,” laminated with four layers of virtually unbreakable plastic to resist chemicals, flames and multiple gunshots.

When Obama is sworn in as the nation’s 44th president Tuesday, the ballistic shield will provide a final layer of safety in a massive exercise in presidential security, the culmination of two years of a steady ratcheting up of the protection around Obama to a level unseen for any of his predecessors.”

This moment is complicated in its joy. Fearful in its hope.  But, we as a nation have been here before.   Lincoln’s journey  to Washington for his inaugural was done under threats of secession as well as threats to his life.  He and his family were forced to make the anticipated change of trains necessary back then to continue on to Washington in the cloak of darkness when a creditable threat surfaced at the scheduled change station.

These fears and complications we feel today are the transparent layers of our past as well as our future.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Filed Under: 2009, Creativity, Events, History, Inauguration, Inspiration, Life, Personal, Photography, The Inauguration Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Light in Novembho

November 10, 2008 By

amatteroflight-copy

Artists talk about morning light, late afternoon light, dappled light…let’s us, just you and me, talk of Novembho 2008 light.

A minute before I took this photograph, this landscape contained the same tree, benches, grass, athletic field, background trees and cloudy sky.

I was there, a witness, looking at the tree, admiring its singularity, yet affected most by its isolation–and yet this lonely tree was surrounded by the promise of companionship–the picnic tables.

In a few hours, I thought to myself, there may be a family sitting there with wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with children running to and from the tree to the table, or even perhaps, in a few minutes, since it’s around 7:30 AM, there may be an elderly man walking his dog and he’ll come by and sit down to rest next to the tree.

Yes, I was simply a witness to Man, Dog, Tree, Family, Photographer, all of us there under cloudy skies until no word of a lie Novembho light broke through the clouds and lit us up like a roman candle.

Click.

©PAT COAKLEY 2008

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Filed Under: Creativity, ELECTION 2008, Events, Family, Inspiration, Personal, Photography, Politics, The Single Life Tagged With: , , , , ,

One Giant Step

November 5, 2008 By

nasa4-earth-moon-1

Not since this moment in 1969 have I felt quite like this.

Never have I/we needed it more.

But, this time.  This time?

The whole world seems to feel more like Neil Armstrong than a bystander looking up.

To be sure, this morning we begin our journey back to gravity and those Earth problems haven’t changed.

But, they seem more soluble as we shake moon dust off our shoes and sandals, and in my case, my 8 year old black Merrells.

They look brand new, people.

Brand freakin’ new.

©Pat Coakey 2008

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Filed Under: change, Creativity, ELECTION, ELECTION 2008, Events, Government, Historical events, History, Inspiration, Life, News, PHOTO BLOGGING, Photography, SCIENCE, Space Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Morning Wire

October 6, 2008 By

When I think of my small town, I don’t think “sky”.  It is a good example of me not seeing something right smack in front or, in this case, above me.  Has this sky been here all the years I’ve lived here?  And, I’ve not once photographed it?

Yes and No.  Not once.

Since Chicken Little is residing within my synapses these days and this week does not appear to be promising his quick eviction, I’ve developed a new anxiety management program.

I go each morning rain or shine, since last Thursday, in search of views to focus me on what is present rather than on what is absent.  There will be more on the latter mid week but, for now, this photo introduces a new series that shall be on-going and I’d love any of you to join me, particularly those souls who find their anti-anxiety meds are no longer working.  This helps, I’m not kidding.

See those birds congregating on the wire near the bottom of the photograph?

That’s what I feel we would be doing.  Arriving from our perspective perches and doing a morning “huddle” to figure out the strategy for the day.

Each day, I am going in search of a what is around me and has been around me despite my total obliviousness.  I don’t need a train ticket.  I don’t need frequent flyer miles.  I just need to open my eyes.

I am going to photograph that which has been right here all the time but I’ve simply not been paying attention. (The parallels to this current fiscal crisis is not unrelated but I’m tired of talking about that)

I am not expecting a masterpiece from myself or you, just a moment when we think a new thought, see a new angle, see the leaden sky or the ground we walk on, somedays walking very dully along I might add, in a new way.

Game on?  Write it.  Paint it.  Photograph it.  Podcast it.  Do whatever you do. Let me know.

One thing.

Um.  Er.

I want the piece of wire next to the pole so I can hold on.

I afraid of heights.

Sigh.

The actor, Bill Bob Thornton, is afraid of antique furniture.  I think I actually heard him say it in an interview.

At least, I’m not afraid of that.

Yet.

©Pat Coakley 2008

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Filed Under: Creativity, fear, Inspiration, Life, Personal, Photography, The Single Life Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Past Present Future, Part II

June 13, 2008 By

PAST PRESENT FUTURE (2006) ANISH KAPOOR

The first thing you notice in Kapoor World is the smell of the Planet Saturn. Yes, yes, you heard me right: that sixth planet from the sun, second largest in the solar system, with an equatorial diameter of 74,130 miles (thank you, solarviews.com).

It appears to have collided with the front of the museum and penetrated through the upper floors to come to rest, lodge, and/or protrude from the white walls of this light filled gallery (larger and better lit than the one pictured here).

O, wait. It’s red. Mars is red, right? But Kapoor’s Saturn (actually titled, Past Present Future) is red from wax–pounds and pounds and pounds of wax, (which accounts for the aroma upon entering the gallery) not planet soil rich with iron oxide. This red is not yellowish like the hydrogen from the real Saturn.

But, make no mistake, the sculptor is a red guy, so in Kapoor World, Saturn has got to be red. He is not concerned with objects being beautiful, he says. “The world has enough of luxury goods”. And what good is it, I say, being an artist if you can’t make your planet the color that you like?

Why red?

Because red has a “very powerful blackness” he told the curator of the museum.

So, red is black? No, silly.

“Red is an open and beckoning color but it also associates itself with the dark interior world, and that is what interests me.”

Oh. Darkness. That absence of light thingy that we carry around within us, you mean? That little thing that makes us think there are monsters under our bed when we are three? Yes, where terror resides he says. Do you mean that Kapoor knows that no matter my jaunty waves at human planet big deals or blue suits and strands of pearls, that I struggle with darkness, my own resident terrors?

O, yes, Dorothy. We are not in Kansas anymore my dear. In fact, we’re no longer in Boston, either. If you don’t bring your terrors (as if I could just leave them home), Kapoor world will not let you in. The visitor completes his art with their own darkness, their own shadowy holes.

Okay. It’s about here right at the start of the exhibit that my stomach sort of twists. I’m feeling something and it’s not good but maybe it’s joy, I can’t be sure.

I think proximity to this planet has created a gravity pull. I am drawn to check out the white mechanical arm that arcs over the planet of wax. Wait one damn minute here.

It’s moving. Slowly. I mean slowly. But, it’s moving. There’s a track there and it’s moving through it, red wax dripping on to the track like blood and splattered like a scene from TV’s “CSI” off to each side. Its slow march is shaping the planet Saturn at the same time it is rotating around it.

Ok. Ok. Ok. Calm down. Do you mean this is creating itself as I look at it? Slowly creating itself, creating me, even? But no, I really mean it: creating so slowly, almost as slowly as living 63 years, that it’s 48 hours since I’ve been to the exhibit and I’m not sure it’s even completed one full sweep of the diameter.

So the rings of Saturn are actually a sculptor’s bloody hand? Yes.

So the rings of Saturn are sculpting my dark interior spaces right before my very eyes? Yes. (No wonder I feel a bit queasy)

So, the rings of Saturn are scraping my current exterior to reveal my interior, whatever depths I have, as I stand slack jawed in front of it?

Yes. Yes. And, Yes. My knees begin to tremor every so slightly, a 3.4 on the Richter scale. This is only the first piece of this exhibit. What else does he know about my past? My present? Who shall I be at the end of it?

It is both terror and joy that I feel. I am not yet finished his work tells me. I am not the sum of my fears or my joys. I am still becoming.

This is what art can do in the soft hands of a magician.

©2008 Pat Coakley

PHOTOGRAPH IS FROM THE EXHIBIT BOOK, PAST PRESENT FUTURE.

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Past Present Future, Part One

June 12, 2008 By

(Photograph is collage I made from contents of Kapoor’s exhibit book, titled “Past Present Future”. The handwriting and thoughts are Kapoor’s own. “We have two outstanding attributes one is to believe the other is to relate. Art engages the need to believe great Art in its overwhelming ability to be intimate wraps us in relation.”

June 11, 2008

The first thing you notice when the big shiny doors of Boston’s ageless South Station swing open is the smell of the ocean.

In addition to everything else our founding fathers had—courage, vision, tenacity–they for sure had a good sense of smell. The busy, honking boulevard in front of you is called Atlantic Avenue.

In order to go to the Anish Kapoor exhibit, all one has to do is follow the scent of the sea. Down Atlantic Avenue past soaring skyscrapers on the right and left, you notice the facades of these buildings are all different shapes: rounded, cylindrical, squared, rectangles, sextangles…say, what? Well, you know a six sided building. (I wanted to make sure you were awake)

Boston has undergone in the past twenty years one of the most ambitious urban face-lifts ever conceived. Locals call it “The Big Dig”, others call it “The Big Boondoggle”.

Arteries and roads that used to channel folks and commerce into Boston now run “under” Boston instead of over Boston in elevated highways. To the old timer, one cannot but help noticing things in threes: light, light and light. Space, space and space. Color, color, color. And, oh yes, light light light.

Sandwiched in-between the line of skyscrapers is the occasional really old building, like the Boston Fire Department on the left or what is sadly left of the wooden, one story J.B. Hook Lobster Company. It burnt down last month taking with it two million dollars worth of lobsters.

You take a right where the Hook building used to be and go over an ancient draw bridge now dedicated to pedestrian traffic only. It crosses the Fort Point Channel and takes you officially into the Seaport section of the city. It is called Fan Pier. Boston’s Inner Harbor is on your left. Boston’s Logan airport, directly across the inner harbor, launches planes rising sharply and soundlessly into the sky every 60 seconds or so, and the newly opened (one year) Institute of Contemporary Art is a 10 minute straight walk.

The relatively new Court House is there, the Barking Crab restaurant is there. This one story wooden building appears to be the next candidate for a conflagration and was recently closed down by the Health department. Politics, the owners say. The developer of the Seaport wants to relocate them. They have great chowder.

Once past the noisy construction site for a luxury condominium and retail shop complex scheduled to open in 2010, you see the museum, all by its lonesome out there, its formidable odd self. It’s built right on the edge of the Inner Harbor. The design appears to be a marriage of box and ship. Along the outside of the largely square building are metal steps and railing that descend in stages to the bottom. They make me think of the rigging that old sailing ships had for the sailors to scramble upwards to set the sails.

I’ll leave it to art critics to tell you what it really looks like, but that’s my take on it.

Some guy wearing a Top Chef outfit and obviously from the Planet Big Deal is posing for a video camera crew. I know he is from the Planet Big Deal because his entourage includes a shiny Black Cadillac Escalade and another town car and who else travels with a video crew?

I pass behind the subjects (and into their video background) and give the camera a juanty wave, “Greetings from Planet Little Deal” my sardonic wave says as I disappear into the museum, get my lapel access ICA pin securely fashioned on my blue suit and press the elevator button and floor # 4 to rise to the exhibit.

Rise to a world, people, more ambitious than The Big Dig or any other earthly construction project. I rise to a world that I shall remember for the rest of my little planetary life.

People, I rise to Kapoor World.

(and you will, too, if I manage to get the words out right in Part Two tomorrow)

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