July Spreads Her Wings

July has been spreading its wings wide.

I did some Pennsylvania trekking with my pal Steve.

Had some diner food and read some strange placemat ads...

Stared at diner mirrors and thrift shop bathrooms...

Heard tabloid screams and saw night time diner scenes...

Walked beneath turbulent skies and had visits with Mom & Dad's dog...

I gazed at blossoms and weathervanes...

Found quizzical objects and wondered at skyscapes...

I checked out the steel and glass displays...

I found defunct diners and discount sunglasses...

I saw country couture and vintage kitsch...

I visited an estate sale in Hazleton, PA...

I did not want to leave this invitingly gorgeous old home

or end my conversation with the lovely people who owned it.

As I sometimes do, I visited the corner of 

Pine and Noble Streets in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

This is the home my Dad grew up in and the home that

housed his Dad's neighborhood bar for many years.

It's since been refaced but the profile is the same...

The side street garage looks pretty much as it did when we

would visit my Nana Rose and Pop Pop Phil in the 1970s & 80s.

Parting glance and a splitscreen...

Pop Pop Phil and My Dad (1950) with Pine & Noble (2015)

And then there are our skies...

There has been no shortage of beautiful skies this July.

The Present Moment (And Notes For The Future)

An early cold snap brought us ice and snow.

It didn't fully strip the autumn color from the trees.

My buddy Steve's house remained fully decked out in autumn regalia.

A gang of us went to see our pal Tracey (top center) totally kill it as Vera in the play "Mame".

Andreas, a former student, came to observe me for an educational psychology class.

Things remained colorful, if not muted, both outside and inside my home...

The sun was warm but the air kept a still and almost eerily steady chill...

And a junior in my painting class gifted me with a unique and humorous portrait...

With twelve new NYC pieces freshly completed, I decided to pull out a winter 2009 

sketchbook that had a double page spread of notes for a group of pieces I had planned to do later.

Over the past five years, this chaotic stream of consciousness list always sat in the back of my mind.

Before delving into more NYC pieces, I think I may need to explore committing these

  concepts of the past to fully realized artworks using my newly developed form language.

After re-examining this initial wall of words, I pulled all of the corresponding pictures 

from my reference binders and edited the list down to five short lists of carefully grouped 

images that will inform the composition of some new sketches.

  I'm going to see how they work as drawings on white paper before anything else

and beyond that, I'm interested to see how a kaleidoscopic arrangement of 

layered imagery will interact with layers of splatter paint, water crayon and ink.

I'd like to see some old ideas shake hands with new techniques. Let's hope they play together nicely.

As I Saw It

New Jersey & Pennsylvania: Late Summer - Early Fall 2014