Hear whee goe, sloe, a gain

I like to listen to music like l read books, just open it up, anywhere, and start reading, anywhere, enjoy reading for awhile and close the book. I oten watch tv the same way, At lunch I make a salad with pita bread, turn on the tv, watch while I eat, and turn it off or sometimes get interested and finish the show, It works well with stations which play the same tv show all day, such as Law & Order. Sometimes I see the end or middle before the beginning or see the middle without seeing the beginning or end and then later see another part.

As a graphic art, photograph, like the other graphic arts, has its own unique character, part technical/part meaning and people can “know that character by feeling.” Artists learn how use a combination of the two. People “trust” a photograph and have learned to “feel” the medium is a photograph and, photograph has an expectation of “some real thing.“

Makes no difference what kind of photograph—news, fashion, catalog, snapshot, selfie, arrest, driver’s license, PR, Art, advertising etc. There is a common expectation of something “real” which include the experience of seeing an image which you know by feel” is a photograph and at the same time “know by feel it” is not real, but you understand that the unreal image is a device to understand something else, a metaphor, so to speak, which is “real”.

Kite Day in Franklin Park circa 1970 at Bob and Karen’s crepe stand. You know in this photograph that the color in the sign was not real, but you also know I am not trying to fool or trick you into believing it is or was real and so its visually fun.

You know in Maine it does not really look like this to the human eye, you might like it, you might not, and you may even feel it offends your sense of photography.

Some Japanese Stuff

Hagi, an old Japanese kiln —kiln being an area where the same natural resources were available to an interactive group who shared similar potting and firing techniques and influenced each other.

I went with my son to see him off at Tokyo Station, we ate some curry in an olde style small place, visually it was like being in Master’s Midnight Restaurant run by an elderly couple with a prime piece of Tokyo real estate.

Later in the afternoon bought some sake and takoyaki at Shibuya and as darkness was approaching on a whim exited at Nihonbashi where I came across a store selling Shigaraki art and crafts, where there was a small little bar with tall stools for four people to sit, where you could sample three types of sake from Shigaraki for ¥1000, after which I purchased the one below, very good, very there, and only about $17.

Before drinking I made a poster with tokkuri and guinomi by Shigaraki potters. When drinking and using the guinomi it feels like I just reached over, off the wall grabbed a handful of clay using my hands to mold it into a container and instantly use it to satisfy my thirst. I feel a closer, more direct relationship to the sake.

Folk Art

Every peoples has a folk art appreciated as part of their tradition and usually considered as un- or less-adulterated by society, less alienation from your roots. Japanese folk art has a pureness of artistic intent and technique which is instantly communicated to many people all over this earth.

I used to like shiokara—salty squid— with sake, I still do, but its very salty so now just on special occasions The small ekaratsu plate was made Maruta Munehiko

Yanagi contrasted the contemporary potter who attends Art School, takes courses, absorbs and studies different technique of others to present their final creative style to the world, “their own unique style,” to the traditional potter who as kid grows up sweeping the floor, cleaning the kiln, doing odd jobs, delivering to customers. and learns one piece of one technique here and there, alwyas with some responsibility for the product , that culminates into one style, the stye of the kiln, the “true style.”

For Yanagi, the pots of the contemporary potter come from the intellect while those of the traditional pottery come directly from the heart.

That is Folk Art, it comes directly from the heart

In Japanese folk art may be referenced by the term Mingei or  民芸. It has a certain distinctive superficiality—i.e. the visual experience is easily, directly and with minimal, if any, viewer effort preparation, communicated to most people.

For some purposes one may, traditionally, differentiate Japanese pottery into Kyoto style, kyo-yaki and folk style or Rokkoyo kilns which specifically refers to six old kilns, yet all over Japan are found “folk kilns” with a history and style of a their own. Yaki refers to “fired thing.”

Kyo style is associated with Kyoto, the emperor, nobility, sophistication .complexity, technical perfection as differentiated from folk style. of simple , common, everyday and technical imperfections may be highly valued.

Celedon pots, a kyo style could hold hold liquid—an essential quality of a pot— before that ability was part of folk style pottery. Kyo style may often be made with porcelain and have more complex design requiring a sense of disciplined effort and knowledge to appreciate it while the folk stye may evoke the appreciation simply, directly and instantly.

Father; tokkuri and son; guinomi. Ki-seto is from the Mino-Seto area. My understanding is that Ki-seto was the first Japanese folk-style which enabled mass producing of pots which would hold liquid.

Alameda Creek

These are “blanket designs” using a small image of myself usually holding the small camera in my hand, repeating it to create patterns as a blanket or rug. Below is the image I used and the pattern created using it.

Still daily I walk, with the Covad crowd, its my everyday escape from the house. People come out, it seems safer than other activities. I guess I am pretty lucky, I have house on the suburbs to live in, a place near my house to walk everyday, reasonably safe convenient areas to shop.

How do you think the path to “normal” will unfold? Will there be a “new normal?” Of course it will be different, Does a “reversion to the mean” have meaning here.

The first couple weeks the Alameda Creek Levee was crowded with new walkers and bicycle riders who had their own rules about the unspoken path protocols .

Will there be sitcoms which enable us laugh at ourselves,? until we finally become so sick of the stereo types and look around to find Covad is in past. something about which we we fondly warn our children who do not understand what we are talking about —and we say “You will have had to be there”

I was burnin 1945 and remember while growing up in the 1950s and1960s thinking the 1940s was way back history and the ’20s and ’30s was ancient history. Yet today, in my mind, the 1950s seems like yesterday.

I have been walking this creek almost every day for at least 20 years. One young woman who I have seen twice now, once about six months ago and again a few weeks ago. At our first encounter she was made at me for walking on the side of the path because she was walking on it. Its not paved and better for my knees. I walk there eveyr day.

On the second encounter ,probablyfour to five months after the first , she again was angry at me, beginning her “comments” with“What is wrong with you I told you before you cannot walk there!!!

But the people using the path has changed, some regulars stopped going because there were too many path newbies who were too rude, or perhaps too dangerous for the Covad,

Many them were left

Its hardest of all to see homeless with their collection of possessions.

Shado Blankets

When I read about “String Theory” And when it started talking about more dimensions I cannot logically go there. Dimensions are the units our five biological senses measure and are tools human created for survival. Dimensions are how we as humans interact with the universe.

These are “blanket designs” using a small image of myself usually holding the small camera in my hand, repeating it to create patterns as a blanket or rug. above is the image an below is the pattern created using it.

What are these things we call dimensions. One dimension— a point?? There is no such thing as a point. Two dimensions? Euclid (the author of The Elements) is clear, there are no one or two dimension things in reality.

But then I thought how about a shadow? A shadow has no dimensions yet humans share the same sensaul experience of a shadow, there is a common word for it in all languages , we can measure it in two dimensions and there is no height to those two dimensions. that is when I started making photos of my shadow andthenlater making these Shado-Blanket designs.

My parents retired to Albuquerque in early 1980s and when visiting I would browse “Old Town”and especially an Indian rug store where I would spend time s if in a museum looking at the designs of the “rugs” or “blankets.” Of course the Pueblo weavers used imagary based on nature while this “self absorbed” designer uses images based on himself.

Then and now I also had an interest in pottery, which was wetted by seeing Pueblo pottery and the combination of the design ideas of both pottery and blankets was interesting.

Its not that these these look like Pueblo Indian blankets or are even meant to imitate them or culturally mis-appropriate them, they are fun.

I once remember Stephen Hawking say (my summary) “Philosophy had been leading Science and guiding Knowing for a long time, but now Science was ahead of Philosophy (in knowing) and Philosophy would never catch up until Science “knew everything”— and then he said that day was coming.

I may not have stated his exact words but I believe they express his opinion as concerns Knowing and the relstionship between Science and Philosophy. And my personal opinion, like Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus it just goes on and on, there is no end.

The book Flatland by Edwin Abbott, published 1884 is a satirical novel which described how humans would function in a two-dimensional world.

End Closing

Krishna, Where are you when I need you???

Its obvious what Krishna is doing and can be doing it twice at the same time, the wonders of painting, but I wonder what everyone else is doing.

Previously I mentioned Shigaraki sake and pottery and did not want to mix this with that but still wanted to mention San Fransisco potter Bonita Cohn who has been influenced by Shigaraki potters, she has dug her own clay from the SF area, and her work may show Shigaraki influences, including firing using Amagama kiln (wood fired kiln).
Chawan by Bonita Cohn

Feet always make think I am at the end,

But hundreds of years later Shakespeare is still being heard.