CoPA at Walker's Point Center for the Arts

Milwaukee's Coalition of Photographic Arts (CoPA) organizes an annual juried show that is open to photographers from throughout Wisconsin and several surrounding states. The current show is at Walker's Point Center for the Arts. Juror's Graeme Reid and Annemarie Sawkins picked a diverse selection of 40 images from 266 submitted. The work ranged in style from photojournalistic to abstract.

Onrush by Bernard Newman

At the reception last night Graeme Reid, saying he spoke for both jurors, extolled the overall quality of the work as well as the quality of presentation. I agree. While many of the photographers and some of the images represented in the show were familiar, it also was good to discover a few who were not.

Although I enjoyed many of the works in the exhibit, my personal favorites were a pair of prints from a series called "Duplex" by Madisonian Ken Oppriecht. I am attracted to them on several levels. Technically masterful and conceptually intriguing, they take their mundane subjects into creative and metaphorical directions that suggest a critique of contemporary culture.

from Duplex by Ken Oppriecht

(Full disclosure: I am both a founding member and a current member of CoPA. However, I am not included in the exhibit.)

Seeing Peru: New book available

It took me over a year to get around to it, but I've just completed a book based on my solo exhibit at Mount Mary College in 2011. It is entitled Seeing Peru: Layered Realities. At 11" x 13" it is my first large scale book project to date. The entire book can be previewed (and purchased) at Blurb.com.

The following is adapted from the introduction:

"In popular imagination Peru conjures up images of an ancient Incan civilization that lingers in jungles and atop mountains in noble defiance of the colonial conquest that led to its ruin. Despite a period of relative peace, contemporary Peru, like many of its South American neighbors, also suggests political unrest born of extreme social and economic stratifications. Most Peruvians, however, live simple lives from day to day, eking out a subsistence in one of the harshest landscapes on earth.

Seeing Peru: Layered Realities emphasizes the contrasts I’ve witnessed in a land both mythical and humble. The terrain rises almost vertically from the vast Pacific, reaching heights over 20,000 feet before falling just as precipitously into one of the most remote jungles in the world. Where it isn’t jungle, it is mostly desert. Amidst a largely barren landscape, irrigation in fertile volcanic soil makes possible the cultivation of a rich diversity of crops. Most tourists visit Cusco and the Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River, where the individual human is dwarfed by the colossal stonework of the Inca. But as impressive as these fabulous structures can be, they are themselves dwarfed by the sheer scale of the mountainous landscape."

"I was in Peru in conjunction with a Mount Mary College cross-cultural art therapy program. The program included a pilgrimage to Cusco, Machu Picchu, and other sites in the Sacred Valley, as well as an excursion to the Colca Canyon. But the primary focus was on service learning, working with the poor, and cultural understanding.

The goal of this book is to convey a sense of the “layered realities” I experienced. Along with the realities of geography, climate, and culture, I was particularly struck by the contrast between the typical views a traveler might bring back from Peru and the lives of ordinary Peruvians. The book is divided into two sections. The first provides a glimpse of the expected: the monuments and the colorful characters who appeal to tourists. The larger second section focuses on the conditions in a community that is hidden from the view of a typical tourist (as well as many urban Peruvians): the lives of the people who live in Alto Cayma."

In Memoriam: Carol Rowan

When our bodies return to the earth the flowers that grow there signify eternity. Carol Rowan was a lover of flowers. She painted them endlessly, perhaps in anticipation of that eternity. The lives of her many students as well as her paintings testify to her impact on the world, which was great.

Everywhere she looked she saw beauty and in her art she captured beauty and shared it. While there are other reasons to paint, there are none better.

I feel privileged and honored to be able to have called Carol a colleague.

To read her obituary in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, click here.

photo by Angela Peterson

Food vs. Art?

I learned to cook during my college years when I lived in a house off campus with a group of friends. We shopped at the local natural foods coop and we took turns making healthy dinners. It was the mid-70’s and we didn’t call ourselves hippies or foodies. We just liked to cook and eat good food.

I was studying art at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I would never have confused my studies of painting, ceramics, or printmaking with what I made for supper. I certainly wouldn’t have called it art.

I have been cooking – and making art – ever since. Never once have I considered either activity as being a substitute for the other.

When my wife is at work I like to read the newspaper while I’m eating my lunch. Yesterday, I settled down to a large tossed salad of spinach, red leaf lettuce, chopped kale, grated carrots, cherry tomatoes, sliced avocado lightly sprinkled with cumin, and crisped free-range turkey bacon, garnished with slivered roasted almonds, diced scallions, and crumbled Gorgonzola, drizzled with fresh lime, and dressed with balsamic vinaigrette. I opened the NY Times to an opinion piece called “A Matter of Taste?”

In the article the author, William Deresiewicz, asserts that Americans have been on a foodie fad for a couple decades now that has led them to abandon other aesthetic pleasures, specifically art:

“Foodism has taken on the sociological characteristics of what used to be known…as culture. It is costly. It requires knowledge and connoisseurship, which are themselves costly to develop. It is a badge of membership in the higher classes, an ideal example of…conspicuous consumption. It is a vehicle of status aspiration and competition, an ever-present occasion for snobbery, one-upmanship and social aggression.”

As I continued to read my curiosity turned to dismay. Had my 30-year career teaching art been for naught? Could my former students even now be finding in food as much satisfaction as in art? One that I know of is currently owner of a fine, upscale restaurant in a hip part of town.

The parallels continue: “Like art, food is also a genuine passion that people like to share with their friends. Many try their hands at it as amateurs — the weekend chef is what the Sunday painter used to be — while avowing their respect for the professionals and their veneration for the geniuses. It has developed, of late, an elaborate cultural apparatus that parallels the one that exists for art, a whole literature of criticism, journalism, appreciation, memoir and theoretical debate. It has its awards, its maestros, its televised performances.”

I found myself so absorbed, if appalled, by the author’s thesis that I didn’t notice the blood dripping down my fork. Finally alerted by a widening dark red stain on the newspaper, I applied a Band-Aid to the cut on my finger that was producing this gusher. I must have sliced it while dicing my scallions.

Only then did I notice the pain. The obvious metaphor loomed: here was an unconscious expression of my distress at the ideas I was reading.

Bandaged and thus fortified, I turned back to the Times to discover that Deresiewicz feels the same way I do about the situation. “Food is not art,” I read with relief. “A good risotto is a fine thing, but it isn’t going to give you insight into other people, allow you to see the world in a new way, or force you to take an inventory of your soul.” (There’s more: check it out.)

All the while I was absorbed in this personal, almost existential drama, my one-year-old granddaughter, whom I babysit, had been in her highchair, absorbed in her own distinctly aesthetic food experience. I had given up the spoon to her for the first time and she was busily figuring out which end held the Gerber lasagna. She alternated fiddling with the increasingly sloppy spoon and gumming the slice of real, farm fresh apple in her other hand. Some of both even ended up in her mouth.

She was proof, although it wasn’t needed, that food is not only an aesthetic experience but also a visceral, tactile one. As she gets older I hope she will learn to discriminate between the real food and the processed kind. Oh, and the very real and important difference between food and art.

Announcing: new website and book

I invite you to visit my newly designed, sleeker website ("powered by Livebooks") at www.eddeedaniel.com. The new design is intended to emphasize my Fine Art Photography.

My old website remains as urbanwilderness.net. I've kept it because it contains much more detailed information not only about my ongoing Urban Wilderness Project activities and portfolios, but also about Nicaragua and other projects.

I also want to announce my newest book, Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole, which is available from Magcloud.com.

The title, Synecdoche, is a literary device in which the part represents the whole. The photographs in the book are meant to be visual examples of synecdoche. My subjects are the complex, often paradoxical, relationships I see between nature and human civilization. My approach symbolizes the fragmentation we experience all around us.

I am interested in how we perceive nature and its relationship with human impacts upon the land. I focus on how we use natural features in manufactured landscapes to compensate for cultural alienation from nature. Alienation from the natural world creates psychological tension, whether conscious or not. We cope with this tension through symbols of nature: parks, lawns, trees, etc. In my view, these fragments do not simply represent nature; they are the parts that embody the whole.

Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole is a second volume from the Synecdoche Series. Both have the same conceptual basis. The images in this newer volume tend to be more refined and abstract than in the earlier volume. Both can be previewed in their entirety online.

And if you're interested, Magcloud is even having a fall sale, going on right now. What a deal!

The Commons III, from Synecdoche

The High Line: Good and Bad

It was a glorious fall day, warm with buttery sunlight, as I made my way slowly along the narrow, tree-lined pathway. I was moving slowly for multiple reasons. First, I was enjoying the sunshine as well as my first experience of the High Line. Second, I frequently paused to inspect intriguing details of the park, which include wildflowers and public art, as well as marvelous panoramic views of mid-town Manhattan. Third, I was in a crush of like-minded revelers, an enormous, snaking parade of humanity out to visit one of New York’s newest, most innovative parks.

And fourth, of course, I was stopping periodically to take pictures. Like just about everyone around me. Spirits were high and the mood festive. A polyglot cacophony of human voices surrounded me, ebbing and swirling as people passed in both directions.

Amidst the many languages and inflected exclamations as I was, I might have passed by without noticing the one installation of public art that had no physical presence. But when I stopped to frame a photograph atop the steel grated “flyover” section of the park I heard a calm, measured voice speaking slowly and deliberately. It was oddly out of sync with the clamor. When I started to pay closer attention I heard the names of animals.

“Cheetah, …goose, …elephant, …hen, …lion, …mongoose,” intoned an invisible voice. The narrator paused and pronounced, “Bad animals: …spider, …bat, …shark, …head lice, …cockroaches….” The speaker must have been hidden under the walkway. Upon nearing it an expression of curiosity would appear on people’s faces and they would slow to figure it out, as I did.

I waited for it to cycle to the beginning: “Good animals: …penguin, …turtle, …swan, …house cat….”

A distinctive circular sign on the railing informed us that it was one of the many public art projects along the High Line, a sound installation by Uri Aran called Untitled (Good and Bad). I wondered how Aran decided which animals were to be considered good or bad. In my own opinion, a couple of the “bad” ones—bats and sharks—have gotten bad reputations for various reasons, but prove beneficial upon objective observation. And at least a couple of the “good” animals—geese and raccoons, for example—often are considered pests.

Then there’s the ambiguity of “goodness” itself. Listed among the “good” animals, the qualities of a rhinoceros look very different to a safari hunter, a naturalist, and a poacher intent on cashing in on the horn.

On another level, every kind of animal has its appropriate niche in the interconnected web of life—even head lice, I guess! The artist, according to the description on the High Line website, is trying to “spark dialogue about the arbitrary nature of classification in language.” It certainly spurred an internal dialogue for me, one that continued beyond classifications and even linguistics. 

The context of the piece, situated as it is at the center of the High Line, led to a larger question in my mind: Can nature be considered “good” and “bad?” Or, more fundamentally, what is nature? The High Line is one of the most unnatural places ever to have been conceived as parkland. Yet one of the amazing things about it, I think, is that it was inspired by nature; by what was perceived by some as wilderness taking over an abandoned elevated railroad.

Are there “good” and “bad” parks? The masses voting with their feet have clearly proclaimed the High Line “good.” I concur. By contrast, some parks, considered unsafe, are shunned by the general public. However, those parks are more likely to be refuges for wildlife. This also seems like a good thing to me. Good animals? Bad animals?

During the past week I spent four days walking and photographing the High Line. Time well spent, I believe. The park is a remarkable accomplishment. But, although it was inspired by the kind of urban wilderness to which I am usually attracted, it can no longer be called one. The website says that the landscape design is “reminiscent of the quiet contemplative nature of the self-seeded landscape and wild plantings that once grew on the unused High Line.” Emphasis mine.

What role should an urban park have in bringing the experience of nature to the citizens of any city? Followers of my Urban Wilderness blog know that I am fully committed to urban parks that enable connections with nature. There has to be room for a variety of experiences and a spectrum of natural features, from formal gardens to outright unmanaged “wildernesses.” New York happens to be large enough to accommodate both. The High Line is a hybrid, exquisitely designed and carefully controlled.

Public art is a significant feature of the High Line’s program, but I submit that the High Line itself is a work of art that will always transcend the installations on and around it. The High Line elevates questions about the intermingled roles of art and nature to a unique level. Pun intended.

This is the first of what I expect will be at least a few meditations on my experiences this week on the High Line. And a lot more pictures. I hope you’ll stay tuned. 

Frank Lloyd Wright house to be demolished?

Photo by Neslie Cook

There's been a temporary stay of execution, but this remarkable house in Phoenix designed in 1952 by Wright for his son may very well be sacrificed to the god of mammon.

See a brief story in the Los Angeles Times.

See a longer version in the New York Times.

See a gallery of lovely images here.