Self-portrait with shattered mirror

There have been a number of self-portraits over the last thirty-five or forty years, which have marked periods and events in my life, and over the course of these many years the photographs have captured various stages of appearance and the state of my health. Mostly all but one were shot in a controlled environment, carefully setting a stage in my studio with a proper background and lighting, including an extra long cable release. However ‘Self-portrait with shattered mirror’ was unplanned and completely spontaneous.

I had been on another one of my photographic excursions, documenting empty structures that were surrounded by a new residential and part business redevelopment on a former company owned community referred to as The Hercules Dynamite Factory. The majority of the former homes and other structures were boarded up, but in some cases, concealed openings could be discovered that teenagers had created looking for adventure and excitement.

Self-portrait with shattered mirror

Ladies Room — Hercules, California, May 22, 2005

Digital duo-tone

Through one of these openings I had entered and explored for the past hour or so, a number of smaller rooms that were adjacent to the ballroom and dining hall, all of which looked as though it dated back to the early 1940’s. I had closed my eyes, pretended to hear the Andrews Sisters singing and stomping their feet to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B or Rum or Coca Cola, with walls reverberating the energy of the band and the sound of a clarinet. Yet all that could now be heard was a deadening silence interrupted by an occasional vehicle passing by.

I continued photographing, focusing at times on areas of the building that could tell a visual story of a child being physical and mental abused and that which it had suffered be reflected in the remains of these interiors, when I came upon the ladies room and a shattered mirror.

From a technical standpoint this is not my best work, when viewed from the esthetics and especially what it represents personally, the photograph captured the essence of a childhood lost through the eyes of an adult.

German reunification twenty years later

I remember following the news for almost four weeks with great intensity as East Germans were successfully escaping to the west and when the Brandenburg Tor opened on September 11, 1989, it signaled the end of a divided Germany. I wanted to fly to Berlin, taking my son with me and for us to be part of the history in the making. However Armont was only one year, a month, and three days old at the time when the fall of the Berlin Wall was marked officially down on November 9, 1989. To personally mark the event, I started a 36 x 36 inch painting, which for me represents my own beginning as an artist, even though it would take another ten years before I would pick up my brushes again, and seriously returned to the profession of painting.

The Berlin Wall – Section 276, January 17, 1990

Multi-Medium on canvas, 36 x 36 inches (91.44 x 91.44 cm)

The abstract painting noting the fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the few canvases that were created spontaneously, reaching for whatever paints and art materials I had on hand. Using acrylic house paint, model craft spray paint, children’s crayons and of course oil paint, I went at the canvas as if lead by a mysterious hand guiding me through the various stages and the multiple layers until it was completed. In the end The Berlin Wall – Section 276 also represents what I encountered in 1974, when standing before the wall for the first time.

I grew up in the shadows of the Berlin Wall as construction started August 13, 1961 while living in Southern Germany, attending a private boarding school until my return to Californian the following year. I found myself in Berlin nine years later attending the HFBK as a guest and once more in 1974, when I decided to take a train through East Germany rather than flying to Berlin.

 My East German passport stamps

The train ride took several hours, stopping at most towns along the way. During our trip into the DDR, our train was boarded by East German soldiers with submachine weaponry and remained posted at each end of the compartment until we reached the West Berlin border. We were also treated to East German propaganda, handed out by the DDR Cultural Ministry personnel upon our first stop after entering East Germany. The experience is one I am grateful for, despite the lapses in memory which is also weak on a number of other points, especially the details of what the landscaped looked like, other than empty.

I still have a number of those booklets and smaller pamphlets that were handed out that day. They are in some box that have not been opened since they were packed when I moved out of my San Francisco apartment to get married some twenty-two years ago. I did find my out-of-date passport, turning to the page the East German border control stamped my arrival, departure into their land. With the subsequent arrival and departure stamps on the same page a few days later, as I returned to the West the same way I had left, with a long train ride though East Germany.

The Berlin Wall remained closed until September 11, 1989, six months later on March 10, 1990 Germany reunification took place.

Postscript:

At Four Seasons in a Life you can see photographs of the remaining Berlin Wall and it's refurbishing by the original 86 international artists in time for the celebration to mark twenty years since its downfall.

Children’s Hands at Play

The structures usefulness has long outlived its purpose and been abandoned by the military and turned over to the National Park Services. These concrete structures of fortifications imbedded into the coastal hillside against an enemy that never arrived, are now left to the elements and to the many mischievous hands at play in the garden of forgotten childhood.

Sounds of the ocean are muffled; a sea gull’s shrill can be heard off in the distance, piercing the sky as it fills the void. My footsteps upon the lose gravel disrupt the surrounding rhythms measuring the intervals of time.

Gazing in through the window frame, as it is absent of glass or the iron bars, I behold a chamber adorned by the hands of many, they who have left behind a trace of their presence by any means possible.

As the right leg climbs over the ledge of the window, I slowly begin my descent, intruding into a realm of unknown. Here where ubiquitous voices have sanctified impenetrable walls, now harboring the transgressions of our silence are the cryptic, enigmatic symbols. They, which converse in a mix of language, colour and texture, ever changing as transient voices add or subtract to the layers when their dreams collide.

Though surrounded by the ghosts lingering between the overlapping layers of indifferent pigmentations of colour, I find myself alone in this space, losing track as the hours pass with the swiftness of a sparrow.

I leave this place the same as I had found it, though richer for having stayed.

Notes:

All digital photographs featured in this photographic essay were taken on April 17, July 8 and July 12, 2007, at the Battery Mendell, located at the Marin Headland in Northern California and under the supervision of National Park Services.

My first ‘Blog Award’

As I greatly value each ‘Follower’, I have also had the good fortune of establishing friendships through the private exchange of correspondence, which I hold very close to my heart. So when I received this heartfelt and sincere ‘blog award’ from Trudi at Two Dresses Studio yesterday, I was deeply touched and of course very surprised. A big thanks followed by a California style bear hug for Trudi.

In the 144 days in which I have been blogging, I have been exposed to some incredible artist and especially seeing things in a different perspective. This wonderful venue has added to my life with richness that cannot be measured in words and I know that as I continue my on-line presence, these mentally enriching and visually stimulating treasures, along with the friendships that continue to grow and blossom, will only become more priceless.

To select even a small handful of blog artists is difficult, especially since Trudi also honoured Donna at Layers, with whom I also share a wonderful friendship. There is Sophie who mentally stimulates me, or my friend of many years, Gun, along with Seth, an incredible altered book artist, and others who would all be well deserving of this award.

While I ponder further I wish to express that any award given is not about the award, but what one feels in the heart about that person, therefore I ask you to look at my blog roll and find a new contact that applies to you and make a new friend.

In the end I feel this is the best gift I can pass along, since it rewards you the reader and the new friend you have discovered.

Influences

Artist working with different kinds of medium experience from time to time different phases, adjusting ones visual compass, afterwards returning to any project left undone and seeing it with a new vision. As I have looked back these numerous weeks upon the body of my work, from writing, photography, collage, painting, or drawing, even my attempts at combining any of these expressive forms, it seems I am still seeking a different structure of expressing my thoughts or creative urgings, not having settled into a comfortable set of combinations with a predictable outcome.

A repetitious humdrum of beautiful patterns

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

In reviewing my body of work, I look for a common thread that unites these various elements and forms in the end a unique composite identity by which I am identified and one recognizes the artwork as being of my hand.

Yet there is also the work that is an exploration of an idea or an opportunity, one that is infused with the influences of time and distance. What is created is not entirely ones own, rather the results of ones education, ones exposure to the ever changing surroundings. And though art is what we make it, it is still a reflection of what surrounds us.

My artwork is no different; it has not escaped these influences, despite my reclusive lifestyle.

The industrialization of the machine

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

Like many of us, we remember one or two things with vivid detail going as far back as our childhood, even if it is just an image we remember. For me I recall when Mr. Crawford, my sophomore high school art instructor and for an additional two more years, showed us paintings by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Unbeknownst to my instructor, the exposure to Mondrian’s work and class assignment that followed, which was to recreate our own version of Mondrian’s artistic style had forever a profound impact in how I viewed everything around me and how I would interpret what I saw in artistic terms.

The primary coloured squares and rectangles acting as weights to balance the vertical and horizontal black lines, intersecting into non-representational form in neoplasticism style of De Stijl, these areas became for me mathematical sequences with which to build upon a compositional idea that is then overlaid onto the sectio divina (Golden proportion).

March of the machine

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

Though Mondrian’s compositions continues to have a considerable influence, it is occasionally draped by supplementary influences affecting my other work and as I photograph the rows and rows of transmissions, motors and other vehicle mechanics, I am reminded of Margret Bourke-White’s photography. In 1929 she started working for Fortune and a year later for Life magazine, when she became the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union, capturing industrial images at a tractor factory in Stalingrad. Her career as an industrial photographer in which she captured the beauty and power of machines, later became known as the photographic essay technique.

1513.C — 3.0-1 Transmission

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

While the many images I produced at this location are not consciously following in the style of Margret Bourke-White’s photography, a selection of images were treated as rich duo-tones with a slight overall softening to emulate a series of industrial photographs she took. The photographs I represent with this post, not only pay tribute to her body of work, but also remains true to my own vision and voice as a fine art photographer.

Infinite

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006