Scribbles and Photos

Ever since I purchased Marie Antoinette at the Saw Dust Festival in Laguna Beach (yes, the Laguna Beach of MTV fame), I've been fascinated with junk. Marie Antoinette consists of a slab of slate resting in a rusted piece of metal. a mini-guillotine of sorts -- that artist had a sense of humor. I am never really sure whether the junk I like is "found" or "outsider" art or just plain junk. All I know is that I like the idea of creating something beautiful from someone else's leftovers. Take this picture -- it is from a farm junkyard of sorts that exists in the middle of a Kangaroo Preserve on Kangaroo Island. It's a little bit of nothing that makes me smile. Isn't that one of the main things art should do? As for Kangaroo Island -- it's one of those very cool places where nature and man seem to have reached a reasonable agreement around cohabitating together. We (my niece Julia, nephew Andrew and I) were there as 2008 faded into 2009 and t...

Last year -- sometime in the fall -- I acquired my first ever "real camera". For the past five years, I'd been shooting with an all-in-one super zoom by Olympus. Great little camera but took a bit of time to focus and was limiting my ability to capture ocean waves and others thing that move. Lions sitting still as if posing for a portrait -- however -- no problem! This new camera of mine is also an Olympus but one with lenses and settings like aperture and shutter speed and the digital equivalent of film speed. You can also just use the good old failsafe -- auto -- but what is the fun in that? I've managed to master aperture (or so I think) with the camera doing the rest. I have to start on shutter and then learn to put the two together. In the meantime, I can lose myself for hours on the hunt for interesting photos. Can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I live in NYC and used to long for an outdoor space until I started to meander in Central and Riverside Park. Shakespeare's Garden is one of my favorite nooks -- a great place to sit with a book and listen to the birds. One can almost believe that the roar of the cars in the background is the sound of the ocean. almost. This is a blog about the world that I live in -- nothing more and nothing less. Some posts will be about far away places and others about that favorite garden around the corner. Every once in a while I'll throw in an opinion (lord knows I've got lots of those!). Mostly, it will be about the small things that together make for a beautiful world...