A Spruce Moose?

Ok, not today but over the last two days..While visiting family in NJ, I kept up my runs during all the xmas cookie eating.

I paused a bit on my route to walk through the local memorial garden. This is less than a mile from my sister's home in Middletown NJ, next to the train station. Thirty seven people from Middletown lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks, most of whom took the train to work. It is said that this town had the highest casualty rate of all.

The garden has an arch and along the pathway are headstones, one for each victim, including laser cut photos of them and a few lines about each. Some have regular visitors, one even has a laminated memory book, each page written by a family member or friend.

Yesterday was really warm and we all needed to roll away from the holiday table for a good long walk. This one along the boardwalk in Asbury Park, NJ. I kept wanting to break out in song..."Born in the USA!"



The convention center building, now has a mini mall of sorts, with coffee, gift shops etc.


And the old carousel building...empty but not entirely abandoned. After Super Storm Sandy other things take priority..It really is an architectural gem.

That carousel building is beautiful. Did they lose the carousel during Sandy or was it already gone?

quote:

Originally posted by LL:
That carousel building is beautiful. Did they lose the carousel during Sandy or was it already gone?

Long gone before...

I got a wild hair and had a mashup of puff pastry and chocolate chips!

Easy peasy, you can, too.

He's found another business.

quote:

Originally posted by well-tempered gardener:
He's found another business.

[IMG]http://i895.photo bucket.com/albums/ac151/hlwalkerst/1230131318-00480x640_zps2d34aa93.jpg[/IMG]

Yes.

You are at Costco? I didn't get moving quickly enough, and won't go in afternoon traffic. Tomorrow! I need to pick up my Christmas New Year's greeting cards.

The Costco that we go to (it's a mile away from my house) is one of the smallest and least busy stores in the area. Our store on weekends is less busy than the average store is on a weekday. And they have self-checkout registers...we usually fly out of there in record time...

I'm pretty spoiled.

THE BIRDS!

Had a bunch of winter robins too, but they were all in the privet hedges and too hard to get a photo through the window.

These darn ugly ??? (grackles?) show up by the hundreds at times and devour any seeds and berries they can...

and then s-it all over my car!

Stop laughing...bird do is not easy to get off when it freezes!

Visited the John Singer Sargent exhibit of watercolors at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston today...My Xmas gift. I saw this very painting..one of my favs...the contrast, black and white, the ages, the older woman is more developed, the younger less so..her life is yet to be sketched out...the doorway, vibrant..heaven, the afterlife?

This photo was not taken by me, it was taken by Kenny on his first trip here, where we first met him and he stayed with us..he was delayed a day when the MFA allowed him a private viewing, with photography allowed! (They allowed photos today without flash but I left my phone at home and forget my camera..not a bad thing really..)

Kenny, I thought of you with every view..and was sad, as many were from the Brooklyn Museum exhibit..So perhaps we need to have a Brooklyn reunion with Bernard very soon so you can see them, too!

To all, may your New Year be filled with art that makes you happy.

Thanks Bee.

Yes that was wonderful, first meeting you and your wonderful family and the bizarre privilege I had at the MFA.

I stayed at a B&B in Boston which happened to be owned by a man who must have been a major donor to the MFA.
After seeing a pic of my watercolor painting of the crystal doorknob he made a phone call.

He arranged for the MFA to give me a private viewing of Homer and Sargent watercolors from their vault.
This remains one of the highlights of my life.

A man met me at the MFA's reception desk and led me to a private room with a wall of north-facing windows.
From their vault they wheeled in a cart with several archival boxes of ORIGIONAL Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent watercolors.
Yes, the originals.
IIRC there may have been 20 or 30.

After instructions on proper handling they left me alone for as long as I wished to handle, study and photograph what is certainly millions and millions of dollars of the world's quintessential masterpieces of the watercolor medium.
IIRC, there was one employee behind a desk ignoring me and working on something but nobody else in the large room.

The paintings were not framed, or covered in any way … only mounted in matts.
I could have sneezed and destroyed a masterpiece.
Each matt had a list of every time the painting was publicly displayed and where the painting had toured.
At the bottom of the boxes I felt sick to see flakes of paint that had fallen from the paintings.
I kept thinking to myself, why are they letting me touch these?
They must have been told I was someone very important. Hahahaha.

Works on paper, especially watercolors, are very fragile and many of the pigments, especially old ones, fade with exposure to light.
Even for the short time they are exhibited in museums you'll notice the lighting is relatively dim.
That's why they are almost always locked away in dark vaults, unlike oils which can remain on permanent display.
A major watercolor show is very special and brings in admirers from all over the globe for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I placed several side by side on top of a low book case.
They all glowed like a stained glass window, colors as vivid as the day they were painted.
No 'corrections' were evident in this transparent and unforgiving medium.
Each brushstroke was quickly, deftly, brilliantly executed.

Today the experience brings to mind that scene in that Mozart film, "Amadeus" when Salieri (also a composer) asked Mozart's wife for Mozart's original scores.
She handed them to him.
He examined them and said, "I want the originals. These must be copies because there are no corrections."
She assured him they were originals and Salieri seethed with jealousy, saying to himself it was like Mozart was just taking dictation from God.
That's how I felt viewing these original paintings.

Homer and Sargent knew just the right instant (when the clear water applied to the paper moments ago was absorbed and had spread and evaporated just the right amount) to apply the pigment so it would travel in the controlled moist path, just so.
Unlike opaque media such as oil, pastel, acrylic, or even gouache you can't fix watercolor booboos; you just throw away the paper and start over.
The mastery of technique brought tears to my eyes, literally.
Viewing their work, up close and personal, I felt like these two men were both talking to me, teaching me.
I ain't religious but this surreal few hours is as close as I've come.

I paint photo-realistically.
While not easy it is a hundred times easier than what Homer and Sargent can do in watercolor.
They know just what to leave out, to allow the viewer's brain to fill in.
Brilliant!!!!!!!


This was a rare holy-grail experience for a person who works in watercolor.

I shot the pics with film, and really should get the negatives converted to digital so I can color correct them and fix the distortions caused by not shooting them precisely on-axis.
The one above is too yellow and has convergence and pincushion distortion.

Thanks Bee, for reminding me of some precious memories.

What a wonderful experience!

How special is that?

Hope you can get them digitalized and share them with us, Kenny!

What the forecasters here are calling a "long duration" snow. Started yesterday and it's expected to continue through today and possibly into tomorrow. Total accumulation expected: close to a foot if the lake effect kicks in.

Looking out the front door this morning. Already shoveled once.



We thought it was too cool to hog it, so we decided to send it out to the east coast. It should arrive tomorrow.

You're welcome.

(eta...It started snowing again and the street is completely white. I didn't have time to grab my camera and take a pic of.....my neighbor out riding his bike down the street in a snowstorm....now *that's* a dedicated guy...