Vermont Directions

From a View to the Death

2009-02-03T11:16:00.004-05:00

Exit Stage Left!

(Well, I could hardly exit Stage Right could I?)

For my tiny blog following, I invite you to change any loitering links to this:

White River

I will leave this blog intact here, because, hell, there are some good things amongst all the blather.

Swan Song Here

2009-02-02T13:02:00.003-05:00

Too bad that four months of passionate work and thought came down to five seconds in the end.

Nothing more to be said, except heartfelt congratulations and good luck wishes to those who got it right!

Image Prep for Online Images and more

2009-02-02T06:02:00.006-05:00

I have a tutorial about getting the IPTC information into your images. It's not finished yet, but there is some information that may help you get started.

NEWS FLASH re Blogging

If you have any doubts about the efficacy of blogging, try this: in the Google search bar type Vermont + "art of action" (including the quotes) and hit enter.

After the links you would expect to see first, my blog is 5th, Susan's On the Easel is last, and, the link to my AOA Database which I only put up this past week, is 7 or 8 on the FIRST page.

Also in the first page mix is a pdf/html link to John Zwick's AOA stuff on his own site. If you haven't stumbled on JZ's professional site yet, here it is.

The Light and the Dark

2009-01-30T17:40:00.006-05:00

I just got in the door through a raging blizzard the last two miles before home. Today was a violently erratic day for me in Montpelier.

Immediately when I got there this morning, eager to see Susan's work, I saw it. Started pacing and talking with her, and then in one of those lulls that come into conversation naturally, I realized I was crying. Standing still and crying.

You all know that doesn't happen often for any of us. But when it does happen, there is a reason. As incapable as I am in expressing in words my own passion about my own work, my wiring is such that it can be extracted by the work of others.

After I calmed down, I began to try to verbalize what hit me. The best I could do was that her use of colors that were, to me, "odd" did not detract from the subject, but rather forced me to look harder. Their slight oddness drew me in. Made me unable to say, "Yeah, that's a hay bale," and move on. I'm not sure yet, but I think because the colors are, here and there, odd, and that their oddness is not overdone, their use grants an ethereal quality that carries the real world solidity upon which these colors are placed to a slightly different dimension that we are forced to deal with.

As in, just what is it, exactly, that I am seeing here?

And, at the very end of the day, a strange thing happened. When I travel alone I always bring a book with me--just in case. Today it was Bright Earth, the book about painters' color by Philip Ball. After we had all gone our separate ways, I was standing on State Street, trying to wrestle the big easel into the car and not be run over. I also was carrying the book and my camera. In the course of this activity, the book slipped from under my arm. I swore and finished positioning the easel inside the car.

Then, I looked down to see my beautiful new book settled deep into the muddy-brown slush. Its gleaming white fore-edge plastered with brown and frozen water, its brilliant cover, and its "Bright Earth" words, now streaked with brown, glowed up at me. I hesitated before picking it up.

It was like Susan's work; it was like this project: gleaming up at me in contrast to the terror that, in my darkest moments, I truly feel for Vermont.

Wow! and a Correction

2009-01-30T06:08:00.006-05:00

Yesterday was wonderful--except for being dead nervous. The wonderful part was seeing the art of the other finalists in the flesh. To finally be close to the real thing after weeks of looking at stuff online was immensely satisfying. So much so, I coming back for seconds.

I figure I've worked this hard, I might as well see it through to the end. And, I'm sorry but I HAVE to repeat a story that I forgot to tell in my presentation. I buttonholed everyone I could find afterward so skip it if you were buttonholed! I'm just obsessed with the fact that I forgot it because it's so bloody key to the database part of my proposal!

In 1966 I walked from my apartment on Buell Street in downtown Burlington to the village of Williston. It was a pleasant walk. That's 11 miles. Imagine if you will that I had video-taped that walk then. And, if I did it again today. And then, split-screen, we ran them side by side, mile for mile.

I don't think there would need to be any voice-over.

Well, I'm out of here, heading south again. (I'm actually coming to enjoy the drive to Montpelier!!)

Montpelier, Here We Come!

2009-01-29T04:07:00.002-05:00

As they say in Houston – all systems go.

It’s on. We’re on the road to Montpelier and it’s the end of an odyssey.

And, true to the analogy, there have been Siren songs along the way for most of us I think. Mine was White River. A name that now shimmers with promise on my private map.

I am grateful to the VAC, Mr. Orton, and the initial review committee for this four-month marathon of thinking about Vermont and for providing a framework in which I "found" Kent Corners and White River.

And, I can’t thank those finalists I’ve met enough. It’s as simple as that. Some things exceed expectations, and some wonderful things arise for which there were no expectations. The latter is lagniappe. It’s rare and rich, and I got some!

Gruelling hard work and synapse-twisting problems have been alleviated by your comaraderie. For me, recently “re-emerged” into the visual arts, you have dispelled my loneliness.

I wish us all well these two days, but know that not all will be well for all. And, as I said in an email—-no matter the outcome, there will be sadness, only the degree will vary.

Good Weather News

2009-01-28T11:59:00.005-05:00

I just caught the CNN report (12 noon): the storm is shrinking and moving faster.

So, we should all be fine, just as long as John (Z) lights a fire under the Montpelier road crew. As far as I can tell, they will have about 6 to 8 hours to get ready for us. And, of course the legislature. (That is if they haven't kept up with it; if they have, then they need even less.) And, after all, this is Vermont. Let's summon up our vaunted rugged lineage and get on with it!

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail nor snow, etc.

Comic Relief --

2009-01-28T06:04:00.003-05:00

This is the first of two postings today.

I was mucking about on the vermont.gov main page, seeing if there was a VAC link and imagining where a link to the AOA Image Database would go when I stumbled on this link title under the heading, ONLINE SERVICES:

Obtain a Criminal Record

Wow! Must offer tutorials on how to hold up a convenience store or rob a bank. Now that is a helpful government! And here I thought I was all on my own.

The ARTS Economy

2009-01-26T14:49:00.008-05:00

I told myself I couldn’t make another post here until everything was ready for my presentation. Well, it finally is; at least the material goods part.

And now I can write about something that’s been bugging me for a few days. (Sometimes my tongue is in my cheek here, and sometimes not.)

The Creative Economy. I first came across this phrase when I stumbled onto the Creative Communities website months ago. It was intriguing then, and since my eye-opening trips to Montpelier and White River where I saw the obvious spoor of creative communities, and since I heard about their communities from Mariella, Charlie, and Phil, I’m even more interested in this.

Which leads me to the chapter in the CFV stuff where it is said that there is much confusion over WHO should be included when counting the contributors to a “creative economy.” I read that section several times. And got more irritated each time. (Not with CFV; it's only the messenger in this case.) Apparently this umbrella term might include chip designers, and the like.

Now just hold on here! Do they want to include the chip designer because his or her income will shield the world from the paltry incomes of most artists? Chip design, I think, falls under industrial design. How many folks are holed up in their drafty spare rooms designing chips, getting turned on by copper and solder?(Apologies to makers of stained glass.) So, then I thought, maybe the argument over who should be included is not really the problem. Maybe it’s the damn name. What’s wrong with The ARTS ECONOMY?

Things suddenly get a lot clearer for me and easier to understand. We finalists are artists, the VAC is in the business of funding and supporting the arts, gallery owners show art, etc. But then someone says, what about the writers? Writing is an art, without a doubt, as is composing, playing, directing, etc. Ain't no stinkin' chip designer within a million miles.

Definition

So what would be the underlying definition of such a beast. How about this: the arts economy comprises all who produce or work with in some manner, a product which produces value for one individual, and whose income drops like a stone in a recessive economy.

Susan paints a picture, a gallery sells it, I buy it. Then what? It hangs on my wall for my sole pleasure. It doesn’t make me richer, or give me a job, or increase the value of my house, my car, my land. This picture only contributes to MY quality of life. All of us in a theatre audience are just separate little MEs soaking up their own kind of pleasure, individually, in a group. We are all bettering our quality of life by these means. But for each it is an individual experience.

And, when people don’t have jobs, they can’t afford to buy art, so the artist’s income goes down. Going to a performance, buying art, attending a workshop, are not necessary for practical survival. You see where I’m going here? The artist or performer in the end makes things of absolutely no redeeming economic value. Susan doesn’t make a million paintings and export them to Brazil in exchange for coffee. I mean, no one actually needs anything "arty" to survive. Hey, art is civilizing. This is America! We don't need no wimp-barf.

On a lighter note: It should then be fairly easy to find out who should be included in the ARTS ECONOMY. Simply ask people what they would relinquish when their income suffers a setback: piano tunings, buying works of art, music buying, concerts, book buying, attending movies, plays, buying movies, renting movies, buying musical instruments, taking art lessons, music lessons . . . and there you have it.

The folks connected with all these no-longer-can-afford things are participants in the Arts Economy.

Some Changes are Good

2009-01-23T04:01:00.008-05:00

I woke up this morning thinking about change; I haven't done that since I turned in my proposal. I shrugged it off and went about my day's usual start. As I was shuffling things around on my desk, this picture fell out of one of my notebooks.

The man in the picture is Homer Sweet. He would be dead in a very few months. The little kid is me. The house in back is the one I live in now. He was born in Sheldon, and, could figure board feet of lumber in his head.

However, for his entire life, he could neither read nor write.

I also have my grandmother's autograph book, a popular form of pleasure in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (She was born in 1865.) On the inside of the cover she wrote:

Given to me on my 14th birthday, if I would not read a book for a year.

Some changes in Vermont are part of much wider changes that occur in history. And, funny coincidence--this post is I guess, my small contribution to The Big Read.

The Bones of Vermont

2009-01-21T03:53:00.007-05:00

This barn is near me, a little over two miles from my house. (This was shot about a week ago.) A bit more than a year ago now I first photographed it. When I looked at the shots, I was struck, as I had been when I looked at the barn itself, by its uncluttered beauty. The neat lines of its roof, the proportion of the building, its setting. It was, for me iconic.

For days after shooting it I couldn't get it out of my mind. So I began sifting through the images, picked one and went immediately to black and white. I didn't even think about it. It was then that I saw a picture of what my mind "saw" when it assimilated this barn. I hit "save" and knew now what I was going to do with my camera in Vermont. It was all there, the starkness, the emptiness, the sharp, hard edges of abandonment, the bones of Vermont.

With apologies to my painter friends, color hides. Color enchants. Though this might sound odd, I think it's true: color often enchants us away from reality. The incredible palette of the visible colors sucks us in like moths to a flame. Perhaps it's because we live in a world of color, all the time. And, like anything else that happens "all the time", we become desensitized to it on some level. Sometimes that world needs to be uncolored; so we can see what is there, and only what is there.

Red

2009-01-19T04:58:00.010-05:00

WARNING: No Vermont Content!

I'm now in the Red chapter of Finlay's Color. So far I've restrained myself from writing about this book, but can't any longer. RED is my favorite color and I have a vivid memory involving red.

It was 1973 and I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My roommate at the time was the daughter of Nobel Chemist R. B. Woodward. We got a call from him asking us to come down the lab. It was the day he had synthesized Vitamin B12. Of course the microscope was set up and we were invited to look through it. Well, I spent a long time looking because I knew he'd spent 12 years working on it. It was a crystalline structure of the most glorious and glowing red I'd ever seen. When I straightened up from the scope I said (of course knowing next to nothing about chemistry on any level, much less his), "Well, if I were an artist and had spent 12 years making this, I'd be happy."

I was startled when he slammed his fist on the desk and said, "That's right. There is NOTHING but science and art!"

He also had a fascination with dyes and, on one visit, talked extensively about indigo -- very little of which I understood, except that it had a long and interesting history. (Can't wait to get to that Finlay chapter!)

Woodward also, after asking for colored pencils one evening, scribbled a "test" on a blank sheet of paper. I've adapted it for the web here, but I suggest you make one on a piece of paper writing the words in the colors in the right hand column. You then ask the testee to run down the list, naming the colors on the piece of paper.

A Busman's Holiday-- of sorts

2009-01-17T13:35:00.002-05:00

And a very short post!

As you can no doubt see, I've spent a couple of days dinking around with my blog. And, miracle of miracles, you can now follow it! See the left panel.

This means I'm finally getting through some of the stuff that got put on a list while I was working on the proposal. One of which was to do some blog-tinkering. Now waiting for prints and supplies to come in and then it will be into the hands-on mode, putting my presentation together.

21 Below

2009-01-15T08:34:00.002-05:00

Yup. It was that this morning. However . . .

Vermont Funeral

2009-01-13T05:03:00.004-05:00

I went to the funeral of a neighbor yesterday. Someone I've known since childhood. After the church service the line of cars wound through the countryside, back past the house where she lived, the house where I live, past a road named for a family well-represented among the mourners, up a steep hill just a bit past my house to the cemetery. There must have been 40 or 50 cars. And, at the top of the hill, on the flat field across the road from the cemetery, the snow had been plowed and in the expanse the brown shots of last year's flattened hay remains speckled the white and the sun lit up the snow with diamonds.

We stood on the hilltop near the grave, 10 degrees F, where I've taken innumerable photographs and I found myself next to one of the members of the other "old" families. Of course we talked.

"Not bad for January."
"Could've been worse."
"Not much wind."
"Probably the most beautiful cemetery in Vermont."
"Yup."
"Mostly they're on hilltops."
"Yup."
"Going to end up here myself."

This was a Vermont occasion and a Vermont conversation. Short sentences. Clear statements of the obvious. Acceptance of winter, nod to the past, knowledge of the future. One adjective. No frills.

We all then drove back to the church and ate. Among all the dishes of chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese, goulash, scalloped potatoes, bread, butter, rolls, cole slaw, ham, tuna noodle, there was a salad with Romaine, cheese, croutons, cherry tomatoes, and chick peas. An ever-so-minute note of change.

Vermont Television Programs

2009-01-12T07:53:00.005-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I watched two ETV programs about Vermont's past that I had taped when I was in the throes of proposal prep and didn't have time to watch. They were reruns from several years ago, but still really impressive. I had never seen footage of the 1927 flood before. A number of the still shots looked like the old snaps in the family album. I expect they looked like those in a lot of family albums. Some of the images I recognized from Hands on the Land and certainly the voice-over was right out of a lot of the material we've had at our disposal here. I took an image out of my proposal that I now see was dead on the money: basically I had envisioned a map of Vermont with a "central park" cutting right down the state. Turns out it would have been an expansion of the 1950's plan to put the "parkway" straight down the state on top of the Green Mountains. Sigh. (And, BTW, there was a slightly younger Lyman Orton in one of the programs! That was also a treat.)

OT - but Interesting

2009-01-11T06:27:00.001-05:00

As someone who loves looking at dishes in department stores, or anywhere for that matter, and who thinks one should not have a "set" of dishes, but rather plates, bowls, cups, etc. that are all different and simply selected because the owner likes them, I offer this link to a fine article in the New York Times about the recent troubles of Wedgewood.

It's a nice view of commercial "art" and business history, though quite sad.

And, also OT, but a bit less, I spent my $25 Barnes and Noble gift card yesterday and happily came home with a small, lovely book of Walker Evans photographs. (I already own the Getty Museum book of his sign images.) This one has a broader selection. I also scooped up another book: Color by Victoria Finlay. This is going to be a real treasure trove of trivia. Ever since I mucked about making my own etching inks years ago and just for the hell of it, immersed my hand in a bag of vermilion, I've never stopped drooling over naked colors. That was around the same time I discovered Winsor & Newton gouache on a paint chip card in my local art store. I came home with as many as I could afford, and put them all on a piece of tracing paper with a toothpick. Years later, I still like it. It's about the only thing I've left from my days in art school. (The brown is the masonite showing through.)

The cover of the Finlay book looks like a shot of pan watercolors in a ceramic framework, but it is actually an image of the front of some (cursedly unidentified) building with windows of unpatterned color--I can't tell whether they are glass or paint. The bibliography and notes are extensive which makes the non-identification of the cover shot all the more frustrating.

For Mariella

2009-01-10T06:36:00.004-05:00

In hopes of enticing a fellow finalist to Franklin County I offer this. It is a PARTIAL portrait of Fairfax Falls. This is not a wilderness falls, it is a working falls, powering a hydro-electric plant on the Lamoille River. It is a site and sound to behold and to hear in the spring. I emphasize "partial" because the falls are quite high and powerful, dropping down to the rock-encased river below. There is a nice flat, stone covered shore at the bottom, quite perfect for an easel and an artist!

Infrastructure (of all kinds)

2009-01-09T06:24:00.006-05:00

Lovely, undulating tracks!

Decades ago when I was living in Canada I was waiting for a train in London, Ontario and, as a lover of trains and train travel, I struck up a conversation with a railroad official. I complemented him on the London station and Via Rail in general and then lamented the sorry state of Amtrak. He then told me what the problem was with Amtrak: they got a deal of government support at one time, and spent the majority of the money on cars, plush, comfortable, snazzy looking, and virtually nothing on the tracks they run on. End of story.

The Mind's Infrastructure

John's recent post provided an excellent gathering of what is really, as he well knows, the tip of the iceberg on the subject of landscape. It is truly another world, but one which can be approached on and from so many levels that it makes one's mind a Rubik's cube. Each new essay, book, image gives another twist and the pattern changes. Endlessly. But, for Rubik's cube there is a solution. We don't have that luxury.

Still, even though my mind now proves the "string theory" I can't stop reading! It's like a damn disease. And, misery does love company, so here's something tangential that is well worth the time. I put this here especially for John because I can sense a real reader in him (which wins my literary heart to be sure). There is a book called Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald which is a masterpiece of delineation of time and space filtered through the human brain. Of places dimly remembered and revisited. The book is home to occasional, un-captioned photographs. The writing is a Siren-song. (You were warned!)

And, in early August, with some sixth sense, i.e., pre-AOA, I posted about this book and the work of Dana Mueller.

Still Chewing on J. B. Jackson

2009-01-08T05:11:00.005-05:00

I am still digesting things I’ve read while I was researching my proposal. Perhaps the most unsettling book I read was J. B. Jackson’s Discovering the Vernacular Landscape.

Irritatingly, to me, he seems to accept all too easily the incursion of malls and boxes on the outskirts of our population centers. Susan Abbott mentioned this in a comment: Now I hope you can help me develop more tolerance for some landscape feature that irritates the hell out of me. Maybe Mcmansions, or strip malls (and J.B. jackson actually likes them, though he was writing in the 60's before they took over the planet.).

Implied in her comment was the question is it possible to see them as positive. The next day, I offered a shot of the new Lowe’s on Shelburne Road as an image that was a good image, but not something Lowe's would like.

Near the end of his book, Jackson offers this: A landscape . . . is the field of perpetual conflict and compromise between what is established by authority and what the vernacular insists upon preferring.

The word "conflict" appears here, as it did in almost everything I read about Vermont (except perhaps in my mother's copy of the 1926 Vermont for Young Vermonters, a 1926 history text for Vermont schools).

But, I wonder, what percentage of the population actually does think about landscape? And the more I've read, the more I wonder. Do most go along with whatever comes along, unthinking because the subject is simply not on their radar as a subject? It's not that they don't care, it's that the subject is non-existent for them. The distinction is an important one because thinking about something and not caring is quite different from never thinking about it.

If the majority of Vermonters fall into the latter category, then perhaps the AOA works can have a significant impact.

My thinking here is that because any AOA exhibit will be about Vermont, the offering of content that will in some way be accessible to ALL Vermonters may get folks into galleries that have never been into a gallery. This could be one of the real strengths of the project. It could be that we reach all sorts of people and show them that they can interact with "art", that they can "understand art".

Exciting Times

2009-01-07T08:21:00.003-05:00

Finally, I actually get to do some art work. It's been a long time, dealing with budget matters, which I am wholly rotten at, and the proposal, which I hope I'm good at--lol.

And, I need to get out more--wandering around the Tip Top Building in WRJ I saw advertisements and the closed door of
Northlight Digital. I looked them up when I got home, because not only did I like what I had seen down there, but Charlie says he uses them.

This morning I sent off two files to them and will talk to them later today. I've been looking for a printer in Vermont, but so far have had no luck or bad. I've really got my fingers crossed.

They not only work with photographers but advertise themselves as preparers of digital images of artwork for artists.

After WRJ

2009-01-05T01:12:00.003-05:00

I didn't find Barrows Point. And, in daylight, at the freightyards, I found a heap of bricks and burned timbers: the roundhouse and yard buildings burned a month ago. All that remains is a street sign: Roundhouse Rd. Another Vermont sign with the name of something which once existed but is no more. I feel a sense of urgency.

I am thoroughly enamored of WRJ. It has railroads and art. What more could one ask for? I drove home without the radio, thinking about art communities and how we don't have one in St. Albans, in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of the leaders of the St. Albans Artists' Guild. Art just isn't on the map here--yet! We at least have a wonderful gallery--STAART Gallery (thanks to the extremely professional care and organization of Stina Plant), which is also a place for meetings, but we need more, much more.

In WRJ

2009-01-04T06:48:00.007-05:00

As I was eating my breakfast at 5:15 a.m. in the Polka Dot, I noticed the placemat had an old (1907) photo of WRJ taken from Barrows Point. So, after the customer next to me told me where he thought it was, I went looking for it. I think I found it, but since it was still dark, I decided not to get out of the car and wander around in someone's back yard as I don't think Trespasser arrested in WRJ--connection to Vermont Arts Council still under investigation. is the kind of headline the VAC, Alex, and Lyman Orton are looking for. Will go back at sunrise.

I also finally found the road down to the freight tracks. Can't wait to get back there. I've never been down into WRJ before and it is quite a place. It seems to have, from the cards in the hotel and the posters all over town, a vibrant arts community. Much like I felt in Montpelier. WE NEED THIS IN ST. ALBANS!!!!

And, BTW--the Polka Dot--for 55 years a diner, is up for sale. Every time you turn around pieces of Vermont are dropping off.

A Vermont Story

2009-01-03T05:15:00.004-05:00

It's done! And though, at Staples, after they'd photocopied my thumbnail page, I paid for it and started to walk out, all happified, when I realized that I'd forgotten to have them photocopy the proposal pages, I remain relatively sane.

So, I thought I'd commemorate the occasion with a little Vermont story.

I used to commute from home to Richford, for about five years. There was one stop sign in the 26 miles and a it was a lovely commute. But, because I was usually on the road around 5 a.m., I often had to stop and wait for cows crossing the road. I liked that. It also frequently occurred on the way home.

One afternoon, I came upon a loose cow in the road. And it was just over the top of the hill near the farmhouse. I slammed on my brakes, put my blinkers on, leapt out and raced to the house. As I came around the corner, the farmer was walking up from the barn.

"Quick!" I hollered, "You've got a cow in the road!"

"Which one?", he yelled, walking faster and grinning.

As I instinctively started to look back, I caught myself. I looked at him, grinned, and said, "A black and white one."

Having Caniptions (sp.?) Here

2009-01-02T10:02:00.001-05:00

Grrr -- have proofed this thing 'til I'm blue in the face. Thumb is bleeding. Want to go to Staples. Afraid to go to Staples. And, to top it all off, I'm freezing to death.

What a way to start the New Year. And the !Q@#$!@#$ blogger software would not operate yesterday. Can I be any more ticked? And I can't wait to be in WRJ.

Let Us Drink to January 20th

2009-01-01T04:29:00.000-05:00

Homage to WRJ for AOA Toilers

2008-12-30T05:03:00.000-05:00

What this Vermonter thinks of when she thinks of White River Junction.

I look at this picture, and know that soon, when I see it in real life, I will be free, unfettered, and perhaps with just a little hair left!

And, I must say, this Saturday will be the first time in my life that WRJ is a DESTINATION and not a stop on the way to somewhere else!

Reality Check Here

2008-12-28T04:52:00.000-05:00

This is my desk -- and I'll bet it's a stand-in for 19 others.

Christmas Eve Destruction

2008-12-26T08:03:00.001-05:00

This church building survived the 1927 flood, but not the night of Christmas Eve 2008. My cousins were all married here. As a child I went to the country fair here, before it got too big and had to move to behind the school. It is/was in the heart of Fairfax--its white steeple the quintessential symbol of the New England village. It's been a store now for many years, and like all village stores, you never went there without running into someone you knew. And, it was the only general store in the heart of the village. There are two others, but outside the village.

I have known for many years that one should make sure to tell the people you love that you do love them. You don't know what the tomorrows bring. Well, it can hold true for Vermont as well. We need to notice, and to show, that we love it. Because, over the course of many tomorrows, it too may be "changed utterly." (Yeats again.)

My close friend, Mike Cain, is not only a member of the Fairfax Fire Department and president of the Fairfax Historical Society, he also lives about 100 yards from the fire. On his web site there are many spectacular images of the Steeple Market Christmas Eve fire.

Only in Vermont!

2008-12-25T06:15:00.001-05:00

This is my holiday picture of the year.

This truck is driven around the north country at night during the holiday season. Coming home from Burlington one evening last week I found myself behind it in Westford and followed it all the way to where I turn off 104 to go home. Just after turning onto my road, I craned my neck to watch it disappear down the hill outside of Faifax.

Well, it didn't. I saw its blinker on to turn into Nan's Mobil and quick did a U-ee. Of course I didn't have my tripod, but managed to will myself still for the shot. This kind of thing can give you the warm fuzzies about Vermont.

The truck is one of S.D. Ireland's fleet of concrete mixers. And, notice the shamrock. On March 17th, Ireland lines up ALL of their trucks and the convoy drives around the Burlington area, shamrocks turning and horns blowing all the while. (They may go farther afield, but I don't know.) I once saw the line of them out my office window when I worked in a building at Tafts Corners. It was impressive.

Cityscape

2008-12-23T04:52:00.000-05:00

In her comment on my previous post, Susan asked if I could make malls appealing subjects to the artist. Well, not really. Though the image above is quite fine in my book, it's not exactly a building portrait that Lowe's could love. I'm working on some others, but it's like getting blood from a stone.

For Susan Abbott

2008-12-22T05:11:00.000-05:00

From the moment I knew I was a finalist I've known that somehow my project would have to include something ongoing for making and keeping connections between Vermonters and artists, and, I've just realized--also between artist and artists. And this post shows why.

I've been following everyone's blog and soaking up the images, but Susan was among the first heavy duty bloggers and so she's got the longest track record for me. And, as a photographer repelled by power lines, I've been fascinated to see them in her work. So, last Saturday on my way down to Burlington, I stopped the car in the middle of the road in Essex and shot this. It's not art, but it shows that I now see things I blocked out before.

Hard Edges

2008-12-21T06:11:00.000-05:00

That's it. The title of my project. Hard is, well, "hard" as in not soft, but it also means "difficult".

Everywhere, in everything I've read--the books, the CFV stuff, letters to the editor about Walmart--everywhere. It's hard edges.

Walmart yes. Walmart no.
Jobs/Transportation. Seclusion/Privacy.
Development. Preservation.

If I close my eyes, I sense threats everywhere to everything that we want to keep. Violence is abroad in the land. Like any war, this one escalates all too easily. And, the only defense is control. But control needs consensus. And consensus slams up against the hard edges. It is a vicious cycle and we spin eternally. In Yeats' words: Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

He also gave us the phrase a terrible beauty. I will go after that. As beautiful things disappear, one struggles to find and keep them. As more disappear, terror creeps in. The beauty that we seek to hold becomes a terrible one in that we cannot hold it.

Hard Edges is something that photography can deal with. I can deal with.

Damn!

2008-12-19T05:18:00.000-05:00

The previous posts that might have been were consumed by my actually WRITING my proposal the last couple of days and by yesterday I was approaching cloud nine, sort of. And, this morning . . . !@#$!@#$!%*.

I woke up with a totally new idea. All along I've been wrestling with contrast, a tool I feel is among the most powerful that photographers have. The proposal that I just trashed doesn't cut it on that score; it just wimped around the edges of it.

With contrast it is possible, as was once said of the job of a diplomat, to hit you over the head and also make you like being hit over the head.

I know this: I don't want to get to just the people who normally look at art and visit galleries. I want to include images that might just appeal to those to whom an art gallery is a foreign country. (My relatives are mostly in the latter group, so I know what I'm talking about!).

I grew up in a small New York town on the St. Lawrence River. When I was 9 or 10, I was yelled at by my teacher for being late for school. The same day I was yelled at by my mother for being late coming home. Between me and the school was a steam shovel digging up the earth for a cellar. I couldn't tear myself away from it. The sound, the rhythmic swinging of its arm, the cascading earth as it fell from the shovel. It was blue and huge and it ate things. And, no one ever made a cute, squishey Barney out of that dinosaur.

Franklin County Pictures!

2008-12-15T05:36:00.000-05:00

Finally, I know something for sure about my project.

There will be pictures of Franklin County.

This is a matter of concern to me because in all the Vermont and New England books I've read or skimmed lately (and in my lifetime) pictures north of Burlington range from none to few and very far between. All my adult life I've known that folks were fond of saying "Franklin County has more cows than people." And, that statement always made me proud. (Aside: I think that may no longer be true.) But you won't find images from here among the luscious views in Washington or LaMoille or Orange counties. An occasional one on a calendar, yes, but, photographically, this seems to be the forgotten county. Not any more.

Though, I must say, it's rather a daunting task for a photographer to contemplate taking pictures of the "future". Hey, if I could do that, I'd be funding an arts project!

Future?

2008-12-13T05:47:00.000-05:00

I'm sharing this with you all this morning because I don't want to be depressed alone.

Climate Change and Future Land Use in the Adirondack Park is a very well-written short piece that will likely make you want to get drunk or to lock yourself in a room and do whatever it is you do to escape the world. We should read it for the simple reason that the Adirondacks are our closest neighbors and their problems are and will be ours.

Yet Another Driving Hazard

2008-12-12T08:18:00.000-05:00

Reading the "Gravestones" section of Christopher Lenney's book, Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England, I came across another delectable piece of information illustrated by the following image:

Early Christian cemeteries buried folks with their feet pointing East so that they would, on the day of resurrection, be properly aligned when they arose from the dead. Thus, all graves are so aligned in our old cemeteries. At least in the ones I've seen. Further, as you stand before a headstone to read the inscription, the body lies on the other side of the stone.

I now carry a compass with me. And am even more in terror of driving off the road. As I said in a comment on Dana's blog, I now constantly survey any likely wooded area that I drive by in case I might spot a "wolf tree". And now, I also make fast calculations (if I can see the sun) about the headstone alignment in any graveyard. If the sun isn't visible, even with a cloudy simulacrum, I slow down and whip out my compass.

I sincerely hope I live to turn in my proposal.

IP and Art of Action Art

2008-12-10T04:50:00.000-05:00

Something's been bugging me for a while, and now, with the advent of several more bloggers on our little scene, I can't sit on it any longer.

And, I'm apologizing before-hand, if anyone feels I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. BUT . . .

There is a lot of quite splendid images appearing in these blogs and I just want to make sure that folks are attaching at least the bare minimum of IPTC information to those images.

I know that most of you are painters and draughtsmen, but even though a digital image of your work is not THE work itself, it is still your property.

The "bare minimum" is your name, © Your Name 2008., and either your email or the URL of a website where someone can contact you.

Without this information, any image you put up on the web becomes what is now being referred to in the art world (and in Congress) as "an orphan work".

If you use PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements, you can get this info into your image by the File Info selection under the File Menu. (Other image handling programs may have similar access, though it might be under IPTC.) If your image handling program does not have this, toss it, and get another. AND, if you use any version of PhotoShop BEFORE CS4, and use the option "Save for Web", any data you have put into the image file is stripped! Adobe has been pounded on this, and has corrected the situation with CS4.

If any one wants to know more or needs help, I am easily contactable and happy to help. My phone is here. (Just not after 4 p.m. I'm usually at the keyboard by 3:30 or 4 a.m. so I'm apt to be somewhat inchoherent at the end of the day!)

Now You See It. Then You Won't.

2008-12-08T04:47:00.000-05:00

I've been reading letters to the editor in newspapers, and hearing snippets on the television about people having fits about potential installations of wind towers and cell towers--in their back yards or on ridge lines. I guess someone, somewhere always will object to some installation.

After months and months of this, I'm finally ticked off. As those reading this will know I'm a photographer. Part of what I do is shoot stock photos which include "travel/scenic type shots" of Vermont.

Well, I've yet to see a cell tower, or a wind tower that I can't get past or around to get a good shot in the vicinity. BUT, and it's a big BUT, I daily curse power lines. Loudly, vociferously, and profanely. They go for miles, occasionally changing over from one side of the road to another. But that's it -- they are ubiquitous and ugly as hell.

I don't, however, see any letters to the editor about power lines ruining the scenery.

And, I'll bet it's just because, most non-photographer types don't even see them. They've been here a very long time after all. So, I expect, that in 2080 or so, nobody will see the cell towers or wind towers either. As for me, I'd sure rather breathe clean air and be connected to the rest of the world, than not.

And, hey, we could paint the wind towers greenish on the bottom, moving through hues of blue and gray to white at the top. And, yes, you can put one in my back yard!

The Disappearing Article

2008-12-06T05:20:00.000-05:00

Reference to Vermonters being possessed of (or by) a sense of place keeps coming up in many of the materials I've been reading over the last couple of months--in books, in quotes from folks appearing in the various reports from the Council on the Future of Vermont, in reviews where art concerning Vermont is considered. Many places.

This reminded me of something said by someone I worked with years ago who had recently come up here from New Jersey. In a tone bordering on disgust, she said, "It drives me crazy that people up here use the definite article when you ask them where they live!"

She was referring of course to exactly the kind of answer I give when someone asks me where I live. My answer: I live on the Buck Hollow Road.

THE Buck Hollow Road. But, if one lives in a city, of course you don't say that. You say, "I live on Congress Street."

My deep language and literature background causes my skin to crawl when I consider how long it might be before this particular use of the definite article is not a significator of a rural Vermonter, but rather an anachronism.

And, I can tell you when this will occur: it will happen when your road is no longer a rural road. And then, the word "road" will itself be an anachronism. We don't have roads in cities, we have streets.

What Can A Painting Do?

2008-12-04T04:36:00.000-05:00

I was startled yesterday in Montpelier to hear Dana Wigdor ask this question in three-way conversation with myself and Susan Abbott after the webinar. We were of course talking about our art impacting Vermonters, or the future of Vermont.

As I drove north in the gathering dark, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I probably can't answer it to her satisfaction, but I sure can for myself, and maybe even in the context of the Art of Action project.

I sat in tears in the Turner Room of the National Gallery in London many years ago. And, years after that I stood transfixed and stunned in the Ontario Gallery of Art the first time I saw the work of Canada's Group of Seven.

In those moments something coursed through all the interstices of my brain, likely much as our blood flashes warmth to our whole body from a single swallow of hot coffee by way of the suddenly heated blood coursing through our arteries.

Maybe this is what we need to do. Go after that grail of "touching blood". Make them hurt, dance, weep, howl, feel heat in the blood, but above all think.

A Vermont Dichotomy

2008-12-02T05:52:00.000-05:00

Some pictures speak for themselves:

The Long Ago and the Now Future

2008-12-01T04:44:00.000-05:00

These days everything I read is read against the background of Vermont's Future. This article on digital privacy in the NY Times, 29 Nov. 08, is no exception:

"[Dr. Alex Pentland, MIT Media Lab,] says "there are ways to avoid surveillance-society pitfalls that lurk in the technology. For the commercial use of such information, he has proposed a set of principles derived from English common law to guarantee that people have ownership rights to data about their behavior. The idea revolves around three principles: that you have a right to possess your own data, that you control the data that is collected about you, and that you can destroy, remove or redeploy your data as you wish."

English Common Law

All Canada except Quebec and all of the United States except Louisiana follow common law. U.S. state statutes usually provide that the common law, equity, and statutes in effect in England in 1603, the first year of the reign of James I, shall be deemed part of the law of the jurisdiction. --The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia

The Expanded Party Line

If you were around Vermont after most folks had phones, you will remember the 8 party lines. I remember my Aunt Eula on her chair, heavy black receiver in one fist, the other hand clamped over the mouthpiece, listening. Fast forward to this, again from the Times article:

"The new information tools symbolized by the Internet are radically changing the possibility of how we can organize large-scale human efforts," said Thomas W. Malone, director of the M.I.T. Center for Collective Intelligence.

"For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew," Dr. Malone said. "In some sense we’re becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly."

A Tiny Loss to Good Progress

2008-11-29T05:34:00.000-05:00

In the past, my work has focused on what is fading from the landscape. But here is something not of what we usually think of as landscape. But it was once a common sight in interior landscapes. Less so now.

This will not be with us much longer. As we work hard to insulate our homes, replace old and rotting window frames in order to conserve energy and lower fuel costs, there is one small casualty.

Winter's frost on the window.

Broadband Advocacy

2008-11-27T06:05:00.000-05:00

For purely selfish reasons (as well as normal ones) I welcome the latest AOA blogger: Dana Wigdor. Her blog, eVillage is tackling an issue dear to my heart and aggravating as hell, but which I as a photographer, could not find a way to work with artistically!

She's coming to grips with broadband accessibility in Vermont. Right now thinking about how it can have a tiny footprint. Or at least I hope she is--our projects are still in the germination stages.

As a photographer, among other activities, I contribute to a stock agency that requires the size of submitted images to be at least 48MB. This translates to a file size of anywhere between 8MB and 14MB that has to be uploaded. The pain of this on slow satellite (which is not even working in rain and snow) is excruciating. And, for this privilege I pay $50 per month!! This is the lowest service tier of three; I can't afford the higher ones. (And, I paid $200 to get it installed!)

I'm living with the windy promises of our governor, and various official folks who are quite pleased to be able to announce that 2010 or 2012 will see all of Vermont with broadband-- and this from an administration that also says it wants to bring clean industry to the State. Telecommuting is growing and clean, and we're definitely missing the boat--in fact we've already missed it and are simply hanging onto the gunwales.

I'm rooting for Dana, even against my own AOA self-interest. You go girl!

Two Pages in "Two Vermonts"

2008-11-26T05:45:00.000-05:00

I've been plowing through Two Vermonts by Paul Searls and practically on every page wishing for concrete examples of just what uphillers or downhillers wanted at any given time. I would give a lot if Searls simply once defined authentically rural life!

And, on pp. 154-155 I at last found something quotable.

...Vermont's appeal to early-twentieth-century Americans lay in the degree to which outsiders perceived that the authentically rural life [...] described as extinct in fact survived.

...the downhillers' unilateral approach to achieving a "new Vermont" imperiled the very remnants of the way of life they praised as the source of Vermont's virtues. If they had wholly had their way, there would eventually have been nothing left to sell.

and finally this Vermont oxymoron

...Beautiful Vermont, a short book aimed at selling summer homes [put out by the State Board of Agriculture contained this quote:]"...in a scenic sense, Vergennes is superb." Therefore, "a great future awaits the capitalist or association of moneyed interests that decides to establish a big industry in Vergennes."

Postively schizophrenic. Now, and once again or perhaps, as usual, we are still messing about with this dichotomy.

Birthday Present

2008-11-25T11:30:00.001-05:00

I'm scared to death to write this, but I think maybe the half-day off I took on my birthday a few days ago to play with my model railroad, might actually have uncramped my brain.

Or maybe it's just something in the Vermont November air, because Elizabeth has also just announced she's found her way to a project.

Whatever. I just may have done so as well. It seems to be becoming a "what is, what was, what could be (ought to be)" consideration of the landscape. And, I'd better say that my approach to landscape is all-inclusive. Taft's Corners is just as much a landscape as is the glorious view of Mt. Mansfield from the top of Carroll Hill next to my back yard.

I think I still have an issue to resolve however. And it arises when I think about the pieces of our projects being sold. Being bought by someone who wants to hang art on their wall. I'm not at all sure I'd want some of my visual presentations of my ideas hanging on my wall!

Here's part of one "diptych":

I'm going to have to chew on this a bit.

Lost History Recovered!

2008-11-25T08:09:00.000-05:00

Two exciting days in Fletcher, Vermont!

Yesterday I met with Charlie Tinker, our local genealogist, at the Town Clerk's Office to look at some of the 350 4 x 5 glass negatives that town residents have recently purchased. They will be and are the basis for the fledgling Fletcher Historical Society of Vermont. So far it's Charlie and me.

The negatives were stored in a Fletcher attic somewhere around 1910 or so, and then, some decades later were shoved out to a barn. Where they have remained until someone (unfortunately not a Fletcher resident) came across them when he was was asked to look at stuff in the barn for possible purchase.

Well, he got them, and now the residents of Fletcher have forked over $4,000 for them. They contain images of ancestors of many current Fletcher residents, images of buildings, farm animals (especially oxen), schools and school children, snowstorms, and heaven knows what else.

I've just finished pricing the necessary archival storage materials for them so that we can beg folks for more money. (Archiving them properly will cost about $300.)

They are currently wrapped in pulp paper, some of it actual newspaper--an archival nightmare. But, fortunately, they are almost all labeled with names AND dates. So, the old wrappings will have to be indexed as well. It is a large task, but thoroughly exciting.

Yesterday I photographed some of them in a makeshift manner, but scanning will be much better. Here's one of them from 1907.

Finally: a lighter moment in this project!

2008-11-23T05:44:00.000-05:00

This is an excerpt from today's Sunday NYTimes on the multiplying markets for commercial advertising. I've cut out the extraneous bits.

Hitt: Let me give you a scenario. I'm the somewhat desperate C.E.O. of a company called Jack's Overalls. We manufacture functional clothes, and in the era of corporate farming, our market is fading. My younger vice presidents are telling me that we need to try new media.

Bastholm: Well, we do have a ton of different new media and new ways to use them. But before we get there, I would suggest that first, you take a step backward and ask yourself, How do I make my brand relevant? Overalls are a staple of Americana, a cultural icon. The question is, How can you make overalls relevant to people today, and how can you use these different media channels to accomplish that?

Palmer: Your customers in the past have been farmers. Overalls are a commodity.

Rasmussen: Very functional. And your market is shrinking.

Palmer: So you have to create a new market. Farming may be going away, but what's on the rise? Right now your overalls are made with special pockets and holders for farming tools. Maybe we retool them for urban farmers, as it were, and their specialized gear. You have special pockets for your iPhone and your BlackBerry, and a pocket for your headphones, another for your wallet, your subway card, your keys.

Bastholm: Let's really take the brand into the 21st century, shall we? Why don't we put a ShotCode on the front of every single pair of overalls. A ShotCode is like a bar code. You scan it with the camera in your cellphone. And then something comes out the other end. With bar codes, it's a price. But with a ShotCode, it could be a song, it could be a picture, it could be a link to a Web site.

Hitt: People would come up and shoot me with a cellphone?

At 5 a.m. this gave me a real chuckle. (Disclosure here: I wear overalls a lot, especially in the spring and fall.)

Landscape and Responsibility

2008-11-21T05:37:00.000-05:00

The following quote--though not specifically about Vermont, does give a broad view of historical "progress". (Italics are mine.)

By the end of the nineteenth century the majority of Americans were already living in towns and cities; the majority of Americans, that is, had pretty well broken their ties with the rural landscape and had begun to forget the role that the landscape had once played in the formation of their character and identity. I do not mean to imply that the new industrial order invariably meant a lowering of the quality of the environment of the average American. Quite the contrary: many small farmers and farm laborers were happy to exchange their exhausted acres and squalid houses for less strenuous work in a factory and a home in a company town. . . . Furthermore, the urban American found that all significant experiences, good or bad, now usually took place in the company of many other people, often strangers, and in environments owned or controlled either by the public authority or by a corporation: factory, office, or store; beach, park, or sports arena--environments for which the average citizen did not and could not feel any responsibility.

John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, pp. 62-63.

More Stumbled on Stuff

2008-11-19T08:23:00.001-05:00

I'm finding it truly amazing the Vermont bits I am falling over as I research this project! But this one may beat all for its oddity:

Vermont Town Repeals Ban On Fortunetelling
ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP)-- . . . . Soothsaying might still be banned in some parts of the country, but St. Johnsbury has repealed the ordinance against peering into the future that it had on the books since 1966.
. . .
The ordinance had left little to chance, banning practitioners from telling fortunes or attempting "to reveal future events in the life of another or by means of occult or psychic powers, faculties or forces, clairvoyance, psychometry, spirit-mediumship, prophecy, astrology, palmistry, necromancy, cards, talismans, charms, potions, magnetism or magnetized articles or substances, oriental mysteries or magic of any kind or nature; to undertake or pretend to find or restore lost or stolen money or property, gold or silver or other ore or metal or natural product; or to undertake or pretend to unite, or reunite or to find lovers, husbands, wives, lost relatives or friends."

Full link here to the story which is on CBS3 online. (Note: the ban was repealed in July 2008.)

Perhaps We Need a Referendum Too?

2008-11-19T04:54:00.000-05:00

Read this in today's New York Times Editorial Section:

Across the nation, voters approved $7.3 billion in new spending for parks and open-space preservation. Sixty-two of the 87 referendums to acquire or otherwise protect open space were approved. And the support came in rural, Republican areas, as well as in those that lean toward the Democrats.

Full editorial is here.

Especially called out were California, Florida, Minnesota, and if you can believe it, New Jersey.

New Jersey voters showed that they feel strongly about acquiring open space before it is all eaten up by strip malls and McMansions.

If Vermont doesn't figure out something soon, we may lose our edge in the new "Green" World.

Going in Circles

2008-11-18T08:04:00.000-05:00

I ran across this note in the Public Forum Notes from Chittenden County (on CD from Sarah) June 2008:

"Transportation is an issue. VT is very spread out – hard to get places. One person said even getting to Burlington from Essex Junction was difficult."

I'm scratching my head because I know that one of the two prime influences that changed Vermont in a major way some 40 years ago was the construction of I-89. The change came because by means of the highway, it was EASY to "get off the farm"--to commute to Burlington for the job market.

Maybe our art should consist of medieval wheel of fortune images? With some regularity it seems the same issues rise and fall in some mystifyingly structured order.

Are we condemned to always have the same history repeating itself for each generation?

Troubled Thinking: My Ball and Chain

2008-11-15T06:53:00.000-05:00

The pause in the blog resulting from my laser eye surgery, was maybe a good thing. I think I've come to terms with why I'm having such difficulty with this project. And, ironically, the reason is the same one that made me want to apply. What got me here now seems like a ball and chain.

As long as I read the several books I have going and keep on taking notes, I'm fine. Whenever I start to think visually and viscerally, I short circuit. And, this picture represents the reason for that disconnect.

This was my field, my mother's field, my Aunt Eula's field, my grandmother Clara's field, and my great-grandfather's field. He bought this land in 1867. My grandmother was born in 1865. The cluster of trees on the far right surrounds and now encases a large rock ledge. My Aunt Grace died on that ledge one morning in 1925 when a blood clot moved and struck her heart. My parents built a shack there in the 1930s. My cousin Brenda and I played there often in the late '40s and early '50s. And, until 1969 or so, that was where all the detritus from the farm was dumped. Most of it now gone back to earth, except for bigger pieces of iron, and the glass.

To survive and keep what few acres remain of the family land, I had to sell this field last December. Right in the middle of this image, there will be a house next year. And, as far as the Art of Action project goes, I have not been able to get past this image. It, me, and my family history so clearly and strongly illustrates one of Vermont's on-going issues while causing me real pain, that I can't find my way forward. But I will keep trying.

Short Hiatus Here

2008-11-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

I had non-elective laser surgery on my right eye yesterday and it seems likely to be couple of days before things are back to being better. Thought I could put up a new post with images, but that proved too much.

So, have to do the things with deadlines. I simply can't imagine anyone have such stuff done to their eyes JUST so they wouldn't have to wear glasses. Boggles my mind!

Vermont Infrastructure Rant

2008-11-11T06:40:00.000-05:00

These images, taken this past September, are "lovely" indicators of the state of rail travel in Vermont. The first one is a view of the Amtrak Passenger Station as you approach from the parking lot. The second is a closeup of the station sign, which perfectly illustrates the current state of rail travel: neglected and underfunded.

As an interesting aside to do with post-9/11 "security issues" there is this:

Because I live about 14 miles from St. Albans, but want very much to photograph freight trains, I inquired at the NECR office about the freight schedule. No dice. Forbidden to give out freight schedules. So, I left and went about shooting, including the first in this post. As I walked up to the door of the Amtrak station, there, for all to read, was the schedule of the daily Amtrak passenger trains! Save the goods and to hell with the people.

Farmers "disappeared" by Census Bureau

2008-11-10T08:24:00.000-05:00

Read this somewhere recently and can only conclude that I must have read it after I was in bed and without my notebook.

Apparently, in 1990, the word "farmer" was removed from the occupations list of the U.S. Census Bureau and replaced with "agricultural worker".

That should have cut all Vermont farmers to the quick, and likely did when they found out about it.

A Model for Development

2008-11-09T06:04:00.000-05:00

The image is from Vermont Images in the FSA-OWI Collection-1935-1945.

It is by Arthur Rothstein and is of a garage owner sitting in his garage in Cambridge, Vermont which has been converted from a blacksmith shop. It was shot in the later 1930s. Talk about your small footprint! Horses and shoeing have gone to pasture, and automobiles have taken to the roads. Same building, same "industry" and yet development with the changing times and without encroachment.

I am drawn to photographing the magnificent, but decaying barns that once were part of small Vermont farms, which of course has led me to think about abandonment in all its forms. And, the other day, a friend of mine commented on the new Lowe's store that has been recently built on Shelburne Road. She said that about a mile closer to Burlington there are large abandoned buildings near the K-mart store.

There must be infrastructure in those buildings--wiring, plumbing, drainage, concrete cellars, or at least a platform. Surely we can develop of kind of "Revival" architecture. Just as we commonly site new building projects within the existing landscape, why can't we consider that an abandoned building IS part of the existing landscape (as it surely is) and create a design that incorporates it?

Vermont's Future

2008-11-09T04:41:00.000-05:00

Vermont's development as a recreational region affords the most promising opportunity for business growth in the state at the present time, and so far as can be foreseen, for a considerable period in the future . . . . The whole subject should be approached in a hardminded, intelligent, . . . spririt.

Interestingly enough, the above quote is from The Vermont Commission on Country Life, published in Rural Vermont (1931).

Let's see, that's 77 years ago. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

A Footnote on Roads

2008-11-08T05:00:00.000-05:00

If you've ever attended a small Vermont Town Meeting, you will be aware that a sizeable chunk of that meeting was likely taken up by a discussion of road maintenance. The following excerpt from George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature (NY: 1864) will clearly explain the reason for this.

Why wolf trees will be scarce

2008-11-07T08:06:00.001-05:00

In my previous post I described a wolf tree. The image here provides a visual explanation of why wolf trees will be and are in short supply in Vermont. Fields that might have previously been abandoned for all the years needed to surround the wolf tree with second growth forest, are already sold as building lots. If there was a tree in the field, the best we can hope for is that it wasn't sitting where the "best house site" was. It might then have a chance of survival.

As fast as land ceases to be farmed, it is sold. Piece by piece. Acre by acre. Field by field.

Of course there will be development and growth. But, should it be two miles out from the urban area? Or six, or eight? When will the road between Fairfax and Fairfield cease to be a road and be reborn as a city street?

Study in Brown & a Wolf Tree

2008-11-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

And then this:

I learned from Anne Whiston Spirn's book, The Language of Landscape, that there is such a thing as a "wolf tree". It is a tree that grew in an open, tilled field. It was left alone when the field was created. At that time it was not a wolf tree, but rather, just a tree.

After the field was left untilled, unfarmed, uncared for, the vegetation that had been kept at bay by plowing or haying, began to reclaim the field. As years passed, tree seeds fell on the field, from the wind or birds and began to grow. As is typical of new growth, they grew up straight. As they grew, they came to surround the old tree.

The new growth, untended, resulted in the tall, straight trunks with foliage at the top to get the light. At eye level there are none of the huge, horizontal branches that we see in the old tree.

So, there, in the middle of the skinny, new forest growth, is the very old tree, with its very old branches, large and horizontal, looking nothing like its new neighbors. And, now, its new growth grows upward rather than outward, because it too is fighting to reach the light.

New Blog for the Art of Action Project

2008-11-06T08:10:00.000-05:00

Ideas are wildly careening in my brain and I'm setting up this blog, separate from my Photography blog, in order to help myself corral ideas that are, as Stephen Leacock famously said, "galloping off in all directions".

Being selected as a finalist in the Vermont Arts Council's Art of Action (AOA) project supported by Lyman Orton, has completely upended my visual life over the last month and will continue to do so at least until the end of January.

I realized that AOA bits were appearing piecemeal in my photography blog and thought they deserved better.