year of the horse

It's a long time since any of my plastic horses have made an appearance here: since it's about to be The Year of the Horse, it seems as good a moment as any to resurrect them.  Indeed, I was reminded that they had a claim to an artistic existence last week when giving a ride to one of USC's Roski School photographers, who picked up one of them from the side pocket in my car and said Ah! I see that you have little ones, too!  Only he meant little human people, so I had to disabuse him of that one, and explained that said miniature simulacrum was only in my car because I'd taken it into a class to make a cyanotype.  Which was true - though I spared him the full lengths to which I've gone to include these horses in art work over the years ...

architectural

This isn't the kind of architecture that I normally associate with LA - but suddenly seemed quite beautiful out of the car window this morning, en route to the dentist.  It's on Wilshire - the beauty, for me, is not so much in the curved balconies on the left, but in the verdigris ones on the right.  But I can't find out more about these particular buildings in a very hasty on-line search (largely because without an address, I can't locate them ...) - and my Los Angeles architecture books are at work ...

palms against the sky

This wasn't the best possible view of these particular palm trees against the yellow sky on my drive home, but it was the best I could do once the lights had changed to red ... reinforcing Thomas Struth's point, yesterday, that there's something different to look at all the time - walk down a block, and each house is different.  It's a city made for walking, he said, except that nobody does.  Although ... not only do we walk around Los Feliz, but I think the continual supply of difference is a very major reason for why I drive home via the surface streets, not taking the freeway.  I think I'd rather have an extra fifteen minutes of looking.

Revising a piece today that I've just written, which has a whole chunk in it about Alvin Landon Coburn, I realize, of course, the influence behind yesterday's image.  It just needed a bit of tweaking.

rationale?

After hearing Thomas Struth speak for two hours (and show a whole range of slides illustrating his career, going backwards from the most recent to black and white cityscapes from the 70s, including a photo of New York in 1978 that I particularly liked - it summed up the more than slightly sinister shabbiness around Spring Street when I first visited) - it was kind of hard taking a photograph.  I was very struck by his opening statement that "to make a photograph, you have to have a reason."  I don't suppose he meant taking a photograph as one's personal daily assignment.  So what is the reason behind this?  I think that's a question that I should ask myself more often.

striped morning

I'm more than well aware that to a considerable number of you who may be reading this, that it's an act hovering somewhere between insulting and envy-inducing to post another image of more or less warm sunlight.  But it's certainly cheerful-making to walk into the living room before heading off to work and to see this.  The shelves seem strangely bare: I guess we're apprehensive about what over-exuberant cats can do to anything close to the ground.  But three shelves up I see a little clay bird, which I'm pretty certain I bought in Peru, on an island on Lake Titicaca: looking at this, I think I should push it just a bit further back, and out of the reach of paws.

hecho en nuevo mexico

It seems time for Walter Gomez to start wearing his collar.  I know he's microchipped, but if he were to get out ... then it would be good for him to be wearing a tag.  Born in New Mexico, what could he possibly wear but turquoise?  (or at least, I imagine, faux turquoise - this collar was expensive by kitty jewelry standards, but it wasn't that expensive).  I bought it him for Christmas 2012, when his little grey neck was rather too small for it, but now he seems to have grown into it very well.

sitting

...sitting is something that I've had very little time to do over the last few weeks: sitting in a quiet and contemplative and restorative fashion, that is.  And it was hard to grab much time today, given that I have an overdue article snarling at me (I could write it much better if I had 2,500 or so more words ...).  But here are the mock Adirondack chairs that we inherited with the house, looking out over the world (and the pea plants growing up the fence in the backgrounds, and the wintry branches of trees in Griffith Park beyond that).  I still marvel that this is twenty minutes away from downtown Los Angeles.