July 4th was the first time the Colorado Airstream Club did an Urban Rally. Most rallies are done at a dedicated campsite and so far never within a city. During the winter we meet without our ‘rigs’ at a restaurant usually in a city. So an Urban rally was a hybrid - bring a rig or not.
This year the Urban Rally was hosted by Mike Artz of The Public Works a local Multimedia, Design and Fabrication company. As The sole provider for multimedia for Airstream you could say he has a soft spot for the brand!
This was the 4th of July so we had a full day @ Mike’s playhouse. This included a neat tour of the Battery 621 building which houses not only The Public Works but other creative workspaces. Mike and some of his partners gave us a look into what they do. This included Mike doing an impromptu lecture on Adobe’s Lightroom software.We went to lunch at a local , authentic Mexican restaurant.
And…. drumroll….. the topper literally was time spent up on the rooftop deck at Battery 621
Prentice Women’s Hospital ( also the Psych Institute) was were my first wife worked and my first child was born. It was an Iconic building by the architect Betrand Goldberg. When it was announced that they were tearing it down a lot of us alums protested. Never went anywhere and it came down to make way for a $90 million research building. Here is the link ( long) about the politics
I guess the adage ‘You live by the sword you die by the sword’. This is typical old school Chicago politics- would you really expect anything more?
In a career spanning more than half a century, Bruce Davidson is known for his dedication to the documentation of social inequality. Davidson attended Rochester Institute of Technology, as well as Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers. He was later drafted into the army and stationed near Paris, where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of the renowned cooperative photography agency Magnum Photos. After his military service, Davidson worked as a freelance photographer for Life magazine and, in 1958, became a full member of Magnum. From 1958 to 1961, he created such seminal bodies of work as The Circus and Brooklyn Gang. In 1962, he received a Guggenheim fellowship and immersed himself in documenting the American civil rights movement. In 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his early work in a solo exhibition, the first of several. In 1967, Davidson received the first grant for photography from the National Endowment for the Arts. For two years, he focused his lens on East 100th Street in Manhattan. The photographs were exhibited at MoMA in 1970, and remain one of his most acclaimed bodies of work. In 1980, he explored the vitality and distress of the New York City subway. From 1991 to 1995 he photographed the landscape and layers of life in Central Park. More recently, he followed this exploration of nature to Paris and Los Angeles, carefully examining the relationship between nature and urban life. Davidson received an Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship in 1998 to return to East 100th Street to document the revitalization and renewal that occurred in the thirty years since he last photographed it. His awards include the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography in 2004, a Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Arts Club in 2007, the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award from Sony in 2011, and an honorary doctorate in fine arts from the Corcoran School of Art and Design. Classic bodies of work from his fifty-year career have been extensively published in monographs and are included in major public and private fine art collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, International Center of Photography in New York, and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. He currently lives in New York City, and continues to make photographs.
Vance Kirkland (1904–1981) was among the most important Colorado and regional painters of the 20th century. He was born November 3rd in Convoy, Ohio, a small country town west of Cleveland, near the Indiana border. Kirkland studied at the Cleveland School of Art, receiving a Diploma Degree of Painting (1927) and a Bachelor of Education in Art (BEA, 1928), continuing a second year of studies in art history and art education at the Cleveland School of Education and Western Reserve University (1926–1928). Kirkland married Anne Fox Oliphant in 1941 and enjoyed traveling and entertaining with her.
In addition to his 55-year career as an innovative and successful painter, he was a remarkable educator and collector. Kirkland came to Denver in January, 1929 as the Founding Director of the current School of Art at the University of Denver (DU) at Chappell House. Aside from his influence as a professor, Kirkland was active in the local art community and worked to establish the Modern Art movement in Denver, where he lived for the rest of his life. He left DU in 1932 to establish the Kirkland School of Art (1932–1946) at 1311 Pearl Street. The Kirkland School of Art was highly successful, and in 1946 DU enticed Kirkland to return as director of its school of art until his retirement in 1969. He continued to paint in his Pearl Street studio until his death in 1981.
Robert Capa once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Capa wasn’t advocating the use of longer lenses; he was telling us to physically get closer — to become more involved and intimate with our subjects. In fact, a wide-angle lens is often a better choice than a telephoto lens when you want to “zoom in” on your subject.
Just finished The Man who caught the Storm - it’s about Tim Samaras who was one the most prolific storm chasers. He was unfortunately killed in 2013 along with his friend and son chasing in El Reno, OK just west of Oklahoma City. Now that I’m traveling to Kansas I’m much more vigilant about storms. Today is just such a day where there is high convection in the west central portion of Kansas. I took the other pictures from my hotel window and correlating with the Nexrad radar. I surmise that the activity seen here is over Scott City which is 35 miles north of here. More later…………
Spent several days in Moab, UT. Very hot and ultimately left a day early because of the heat. We went with the airstream but even with the A/C going full blast the afternoons were torture. Early in the morning and after 6 PM things were bearable. Here are a few pics from the visit
Bill Owen achieved fame early on in his career with the publication of SUBURBIA. It was and is still the penultimate tome on suburbia. I received my copay as a gift from my brother. How he knew this was going to be a classic is not known - perhaps it was because it really spoke to the subject.
This book is one of the most valued in my collection.
The big rage in photography is the re-introduction of instant film photography. My version uses the Fuji SQ-10. Square instant film ( Instax) .I love the SQ10 because it’s a hybrid. It takes digital and can print out a photograph right on the spot or later on. Below are some examples shot while on a camping trip to Ouray/Ridgeway, CO
Memorial Day 2018 -= This is the storm headed our way was we went to Coor’s Field to watch the Colorado Rockies take on the San Francisco Giants. We got caught in the lightening/thunder and hail as we went thru the turnstiles.
Captured this great photo of Mammatus Clouds:
Mammatus are pouch-like cloud structures. They’re also a rare example of clouds in sinking air– most clouds form in rising air. Although mammatus most frequently form on the underside of a cumulonimbus, they can develop underneath cirrocumulus, altostratus, altocumulus and stratocumulus.
For a mammatus to form, the sinking air must be cooler than the air around it and have high liquid water or ice content. They derive their name from their appearance, like the bag-like sacs that hang beneath the cloud resemble cow’s udders.
Mammatus are long-lived if the sinking air contains large drops and snow crystals since larger particles require greater amounts of energy for evaporation to occur. Over time, the cloud droplets do eventually evaporate and the mammatus dissolve.
Despite popular misconception, mammatus clouds are not a sign that a tornado is about to form. While associated with thunderstorms, mammatus clouds are not necessarily an indicator of severe weather. Mammatus result from the sinking of moist air into dry air. They are in essence upside-down clouds. The sharp boundary of mammatus is much like the sharp boundary of a rising cumulonimbus cloud before an anvil has formed.
Eventually things cleared up. A hard fought victory for the Rockies into the 10th inning. 6 to 5. Some bone head tactics on both sides but also some amazing fielding from the likes of Nolan Arenado.
I just want people to know about my Tumblr - most of what is posted is NOT mine. It’s a combination of Art, Photography, Architecture. There are themes for sure: Dennis Hopper, the other Hopper, James Dean. I tend to be drawn to the photography of the 40’s thru the 70’s.
There really should be no happiness with this holiday - shouldn’t be a holiday at all. This day is to honor those that have given their lives for our country. For them we absolutely honor you. But wait….what about those that may not have died but have been physically and/or mentally maimed? This day is to honor then as well. And finally we as Americans should try to get into as few a wars as possible. This is why we can’t have nice things in this country.
