I just visited the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where I saw, among other things, a couple of Rothko paintings and a Barnett Newman. Maybe that’s why this installment of the continuing Yellowstone day is more colorful than previous ones (see parts one and two).
I stopped at a favorite spot along the upper Gibbon river, where it’s really just a creek. The snowbanks through which it meandered, diminishing daily with warming temperatures, appear to be only a meter deep. But to reach them from the road would have entailed passing across much deeper snow–a serious obstacle in spring when it is too soft to support me on either snowshoes or skis. Fortunately, there were a few gaps in the trees that afforded adequate views.
The images are similar to the natural abstracts I photographed elsewhere last year. Partly for that reason, I decided to do something different. With Messrs. Rothko and Newman in mind, I converted the black-to-white scale of values to a red-to-dark-blue scale.
Below are the black and white versions of the last two.
I am guilty, perhaps, of over-compensating, of going from too weak to too strong. But what’s a little exaggeration among friends? Don’t you ever over-do it on purpose, either for effect or experiment?
Works for me. From cold snow to hot lava, two extremes from one image. So appropriate for a place like Yellowstone. Well done.
Cedric,
Nice thought about the lava, that hadn’t occurred to me. None to be seen these days, it’s all below the surface, but maybe this is a premonition of the coming eruption.
Steve:
I was struck by the connection between Dark Blue Snow and my coming back from Akron last night. I love the roads at twilight and later as the constructed world, in a sense, turns itself inside out. Buildings that assume a uniformity during daytime, become lit from within according to their own lights. Add to this the spotted glow of traffic lamps, billboards, signage and the like and one has a magical world of manifold visual dimensions.
turns itself inside out
A nice way to put it. Walking around after dark is about the only way to see what’s inside most houses.
Steve:
How about those dolphins? Or more appropriately, those bats? Imagine supplementing the visual world with a sonic component – a sonar of sorts – that would merge with one’s vision. A house could become a kind of complicated aquarium, or an mri, or x-ray or the like.
Jay,
You’ve already shown us your house as facade and gallery wall. Methinks it’s time to recast it as night-time installation, complete with soundtrack.
Steve:
I’ve got some bats in my belfry that might work for the sonic part. You’ve given me an idea: along with those spindle pieces, I’m playing around with drape forming plastic. It’s all very primitive as I bought one of those propane weed burners and am trying to manipulate acrylic sheets with it without a lot of bubbling and burning. One result is a kind of vacuum formed look, like the see-through package for an auto part. If I place a sheet over a jerry-rigged surrogate of the house in sticks and stuff, and carefully blast it, I might come up with an approximate and transparent representation of the dwelling. This, then, might be a reasonable framework for the process that you propose.
Steve, I like the direction you’re exploring. Seems that it might be worth doing an experiment w/ one or two of these images, and try mapping the same images to a variety of color scales. Possibly even dropping in a third color somewhere along the continuum and see what you get. Since you’re looking at Rothko and Newman…
Steve:
I’m getting interesting effects just tilting the screen back and forth.
Steve,
My first thought was Wow — I like this direction much better than the black and white. And then I started thinking about scale and how part of what the Ab Exes did depended upon sheer unabashed size. You can’t see the edges of some of their paintings — no peripheral visual edge appears. Now that we all know how beautiful their work works, can it be done in miniature — or smaller?
Like you, the notion/quotation from Jay that the evening/night light turns everything inside out is worth exploring. What appeared to be going in one direction (down the street toward the corner) suddenly goes 90 degrees and even if you aren’t traveling there, it’s the house interior that your eyes work toward.
I’m playing (in my mind) with direction, time, and space and one of these days will have enought energy (and guts) to try to put these maunderings into words. It’s all tied to landscape, of course. What happens to the void when you turn on the stars?
I’m reading Yi Fu Tuan, Space and Place (or some such title) and he keeps tripping me up. However, I have hit upon a quirky explanation of some of my whacked out city-scapes. Which I might lay on all of you one of these days.
Jay, I don’t see how a plastic molded house would be sonar/visual — just can’t get my mind around it.
Steve,
I love your colored pictures.
Like David, I suggest ‘Seems that it might be worth doing an experiment w/ one or two of these images, and try mapping the same images to a variety of color scales. Possibly even dropping in a third color somewhere along the continuum and see what you get’.
…then I started thinking about scale and how part of what the Ab Exes did depended upon sheer unabashed size. You can’t see the edges of some of their paintings — no peripheral visual edge appears.
This reminds me of when I was in NYC years ago w/ my sister. We went to the Museum of Modern Art, and entered a room full of color field paintings. Asking about one of them, she said, “I don’t understand. It’s just a canvas painted one color. Why would anyone do that?” I said “come w/ me” and we walked over to the painting, close enough to where it completely filled her visual field. She stood there for a minute, and then said “Oh! Now I get it.”