Untitled Study (after Francis Bacon), 2008

Garden Study (Peony & Sweet Pea), 2008

Garden Study (Autumn), 2008

A while back I mentioned this free visualizer for iTunes, including why I like visualizers to begin with (some folks don't) & why that one more than most programs I'd seen. Shortly after the download disappeared. I now know why. Turns out that a new & improved version is the visualizer for Apple's iTunes 8. The new incarnation is much more elegant & refined than the old Beta version.

Garden Study (Beans), 2008

Storm Front with Helicopter (after George Inness), 2008

Suburban Study (Strip Mall & Gibbous Moon), 2008

Self Portrait with Print Shirt, 2008

I love this shirt. It's so damned odd & by far the most amusing article of clothing I own; nothing else comes close. At one point I considered bleaching it just a little to tone the colors down but I couldn't bring myself to take any of the fun out of it. This is also the most pretentious shirt in my closet. Why? Let me tell you. This is a Ralph Lauren shirt that retailed at well over $100. So here is this expensive shirt: it is a nice but completely unremarkable cotton fabric, it is your basic short sleeve summer shirt with no fancy tailoring but what really pushes it deep into the realm of the pretentious is the print. The pattern is a recreation of a cheap Indian print bedspread, complete with slightly off register patterns. The kind my hippie friends purchased at Azuma in the late 60s to hang on the walls of our dorm rooms & stare at while we were high, along with some Fillmore posters. OK, so I had an antique paisley shawl from Kashmir & reproductions of Gustave Klimt in my room, but that's not the point. No, the point is that this shirt is luxury sportswear designed to look inexpensive; it is meant to conjure up the allure of the late 60s, globe-trekking, hashish smuggling, I-just-picked-this-up-in-in-a-shop-in-Bombay/Fez/Bangkok bohemian & while it was manufactured in the Philippines (there is a tag sewn at the collar that tells me this) & there is a vague chance the fabric may have been printed somewhere in South Asia; the design was surely executed on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, ca. 2003. The topper? Ralph Lauren's birth name is Ralph Lifshitz. 

And yet, in spite of all this deception & pretense, I still love this shirt. 

See… This is why I find fashion so amusing.

By the way, I paid $25.99 for it. On the clearance rack at an overstock store.    

Self Portrait with Age-inappropriate Candy, 2008

I'm probably a bit too mature for the skateboard shirt as well but the logo was moderately discreet, it was a lovely blue color (which has only improved as it fades with repeated washings) & most importantly, inexpensive. In my line of work I ruin a lot of tee-shirts; almost everything I own has either a paint smear, an annoyingly scratchy drip of archival glue or burn hole somewhere.

The Kandy Korn is another story. Every fall, when it first appears in my local supermarket, I buy a small bag because it is so iconic of autumn here in the USA. I love the way it looks, not so much as a singular tiny wedge but en masse. I always use that same highly polished, stainless steel bowl because of the reflections. (Exactly like a diminutive Anish Kapoor sculpture.) It may be small, only six inches in diameter, but filled with Kandy Korn… Well, upon entering the room one simply can't ignore it. There's something about the absolutely ravishing, unapologetic vulgarity of those three lurid colors in combination all that sugar. The aroma has something to do with it as well ~ sweetly appealing, yet at the same time appallingly unnatural & artificial. (Like I said ~ so American.) I always say this yearly ritual is performed purely for visual & olfactory effect but since we all know that history repeats itself ~ I probably will have eaten half the bowl, made myself ill & pitched the rest out in the trash before the week has passed.

Ah… Tradition.

Garden Spider, 2008

That freshly spun web is about thirty inches in diameter. If anyone knows what species of spider this is, I'd be interested in knowing. By the way Mig, this is definitely not the Max Fleischer inspired, rail riding, derby wearing, musical saw playing, Big Rock Candy Mountain singing, spirit guide Hobo spider I imagined…

Although it's probably almost as big.

Garden Study, 2008

The Other Spider, 2008

I mentioned in my original post that there were two spiders… This is the other one, whose web may be even larger. You will have to go with my estimation on the relative size of these things as I have absolutely no intention of going near them with a tape measure.

Garden Study (after Albrecht Dürer), 2008

Self Portrait with Print Shirt, 2008

For some reason all of my female friends love this shirt & all of my male friends think it looks like Grandmother's wallpaper. Even the gay ones.

On yet another completely unrelated side note: Fugitive Ink, is back & posting after a rather quiet summer (One can only hope spent on a beach by the Mediterranean or perhaps in one of the hill towns of Tuscany…)

Garden Study, 2008

Garden Study, 2008

Suburban Study (Autumn Moon), 2008

The less artistic version…

Full Autumn Moon, 2008

Am I taking the same photograph over & over? I'm having a difficult time determining if these moon studies are interesting variations on a theme or just repetitive. There's just something about the painterly quality & the slightly melancholic mood that I find very appealing.

On a completely unrelated side note: as I was hanging out of my third floor attic window & attempting to brace my camera for the three-second exposure needed to take this photo (looking back on it now, an imprudent & risky position for a man my age to assume simply for some creative diversion) ~ out of the corner of my eye I noticed something fly by me. Very fast & quite close to my head. At first I assumed it was some sort of large insect but then realized there aren't any insects that large, or that fast, around here. 

It was a small bat!

Moon with Helicopter Lights, 2008

I thought there might not be a moon to see tonight. It had been clear but very hot & humid all afternoon & there were thickening clouds at moonrise that allowed only the very, very palest smear of moonlight to penetrate. Damn, hot weather ~ there might be thunderstorms… Tonight of all nights. However, as if on cue, the clouds began to thin & there it was… The great autumn full moon, thinly veiled at first but now totally clear, gigantic & glorious. As always, I have my chilled saki at hand. My fellow moon watcher in Japan had reminded me with an extremely flattering gesture to be sure & look.
Kampai Peony!

I try to make these full moon photographs a bit different each month & usually the atmospheric conditions have obliged me with the necessary variations. This time, while admittedly not my best attempt, the helicopter intrusion at least managed to provided an unexpected element of surprise.

Arachne (after Ovid), 2008

So here is the artistic version, which is considerably less creepy.

Arachnid, 2008

This was absolutely not the itsey, bitsey, spider of the nursery song. The abdomen alone was about the size of a grape. I try very hard to not be repulsed by these large spiders, but it was fairly difficult for me to stand six inches away from the web to take this photo.

There was a second spider making another web about six feet away.

Gibbous Moon, 2008

Autumn Moon, 2008

Melon, 2008

Gourd, 2008

Suburban Study (Mount Fuji), 2008

Last Clematis, 2008

In the end (though it's not over yet) we turned out to be lucky as the storm sort of deconstructed itself, losing its eye & becoming just a tropical storm. Even so, wet seems a bit inadequate to describe the conditions outside.

Rain #4, 2006

So, here we go. The storm has arrived.

Sky Study, 2008

Rumor has it there will be a hurricane, or at least a healthy tropical depression ripping through here later today.

Garden Study, 2008

The Feral Lawn #4, 2008

Yes my friends, there were indeed herbicides involved here…

Garden Study, 2008

Atlas #4a, 2007

I haven't posted any of these little doodles in ages. They weren't really meant for others to see but as etudes or study pieces: the incentive to learn my way around a drawing program. I ended up rather pleased with these atlas things & I'd sort of forgotten about this one. Quite colorful, eh? It's no secret that I've always been captivated by the colors of Indian miniatures, particularly the paintings from Kangra & the Punjab Hills. Having been inspired by fourteenth century cosmology & celestial maps, other works from the Atlas series were predominately blue; this one isn't…

That red is so damned intense, which is exactly as it should be. (It's a map of Hell.)

Etude Rouge, 2008