a walk in my neighorhood

oak tree gnarled branches bare

bright red holly berries

another red berry in the same yard

small creeping sedum are showing lots of color this time of year in boxes on our doorstep.

I went for a walk a few days back when the sun came out and took my camera along to see what I could see. These are a few of the sights that caught my eye and made me stop and look closer. Winter's dark days mean every bright spot in your day should be coveted and kept close to your heart to warm you through to spring. I collect pictures that pop up on my screen when I let my computer rest. These are some of my smile makers for today. I am happy to be part of Brookland a great garden community in upper northeast Washington DC.

Moving parts, dance, music, drinks and books

guests enter from the cold night air and sign in

Moving Parts: box sets stacked and open

bass and percussion

center pink Kelly O'Brein Moving Parts leader

the first of two dances

This week we met our goal to complete 10 sets of the Moving Parts collection for City Dance and Pyramid Atlantic studios. There was a party with live music and dance performing as well as silent auction of book parts individually and a raffle for a complete set. The whole event was wrapped in a very frosty December night air but the folks inside were happy to be warm and curious to see all that was on display. I had a good time watching and even though my raffle ticket wasn't the lucky one I still feel lucky to have made new friends and advanced my skills as a clam shell box maker. Now we begin the next phase of our project completing the other 40 boxed sets.

The highlight besides all the joyful faces of the artists who contributed to this project and the support people who made it happen was near the end. The man who got me involved at Pyramid Atlantic Studios almost ten years ago Steven Stichter arrived looking a little worn from rushing to find the gallery. He went to some other location and just made it during the last minutes of the party. He has been away from printing and Pyramid for some time now even though he works only three blocks away but said he is making a big effort to come back now. That was happy news for me. I miss his company, friendship and talents.

Roxy + orange and some red

"graft" is the title of this new stainless steel sculpture by Roxy Paine in the NGA sculpture garden

one part is upright and very vertical

the other part is more gnarled and winding thus the title is illustrated by grafting two types of growth to the same trunk

oak leaf hydrangea showed off it's autumn colors at dusk under the hard flash lighting.

unknown garden shrub had purple, red, and orange leaves

topiary azaleas leaves orange up as winter approaches

bright orange Alexander Calder sculpture stands near the new Roxy Paine stainless steel "GRAFT" (tree?)

red roses in concrete pots still blooming

Sunday afternoon Keith and I went down to National Gallery with our cameras and took photos in the garden. We found NGA's garden surprisingly colorful the day after a snow storm with flowers and changing leaves of shrubs and bushes. We went to photograph holiday trees inside and the newly installed sculpture by Roxy Paine which is very big and very shinny outside. It sits in the sculpture garden near the restaurant and just beyond the great Alexander Calder orange installation from the 1970's. "Graft's" creator Roxy Paine, a Virginian who lives in New York, was only about 10 years old when Calder built his orange stay-bill. Paine's massive creations are in museum collections around the world now and they are such a surprise to discover. At first one wants to see it as a tree. I thought to myself, "who is this guy doing copies of nature in stainless steel and why the heck did he make such an awkward looking almost ugly tree? It doesn't look right at all with one half being this and the other half looking like that." Once I did a little research I discovered he was a very accomplished creative fellow. This isn't a tree, it is a system. It reminds us of a tree but also other things and the manipulation of nature by doing purely human things like grafting one tree part to another and I think that is his point. We are part of nature and we impact it all the time. We have systems inside our bodies that look like these branches in the veins and arteries or millions of nerve fiber connections. Art needs to be studied to really understand the layers of meaning are more than what meets the eye on first impression. Being a tree lover I was drawn to look and then repelled by his steel tree, then drawn deeper again. Imagine if we killed all the trees with global warming, I thought and this is all we had left. Only man made copies of trees in non perishable metals. If trees were to die away it is likely we would go too Oh how this sculpture speaks to me. I wonder what other people see and read it's hidden messages?

There were lots of beautiful colorful autumn leaves and late flowers outside the gallery which made Roxy Paine's work all the more stark.

We went inside and saw a photographic process history show and had a nice lunch then enjoyed some gift shop browsing and then an attempt to photograph the Holiday trees in the gallery. These are all live trees that smell so sweetly of fir or some evergreen that has a heavy association with Christmas. I hope if you are in town you make it down to see the beautiful installation in the West wing rotunda. I will be posting more of the pictures on my flickr. page and they are already in an album on my facebook page. Happy holidays to you all.

1st snow

collecting on the evergreens

rain wet branches slowing coated in white

Today it began as rain then switched over to large flake snow that is so common early in the winter. I was sitting at my desk instant messaging with Keith and later my mother watching as it began to collect on the limbs of trees and grass.

We are going out to the memorial service for Margaret Cox Ayers my back up mom, aka godmother, who died a couple weeks ago suddenly. She was a beautiful woman, full of love, kind words, wishes and actions. She left a big family full of the same love and kindness to the world but we are all very sad that she left us so suddenly. I feel lucky that I got to speak to her in hospital by phone about a week before she died and to tell her how much I loved her. I am hoping everyone travels safely today to this gathering.

Meanwhile we have a beautiful Saturday surprise. You can see in my little video the view from my window as it just begins to cover the grass and branches of trees newly bared of their leaves. Houston, Texas where my sister Jenny lives and all across the south saw rare snowfalls last 24 hours.

sunny blue skies light up the oaks

tangled branches seek the light

unfolding in graceful systems of asymmetry

bursting through the giggling wind tossed leaves

sun lights bright blue skies

a few oak trees full of leaves

shift from green

becoming embers, flickering fiery orange, red and gold

I delight in the sight of flashing brilliance

as the cool autumn wind tugs them back and forth,

securely stuck to their branch tips.

I went for a walk today and was overjoyed by the sunshine pouring over the leaves of a few oaks on the edge of Turkey Thicket Park. Keith and I noticed the same trees a couple days ago when we took a similar walk but today they were even more colorful than the last time. I felt so inspired. I walked all the way home and got the camera then back to record the colors before the light changed. The funny thing about autumn leaves, we see them and think "how beautiful these colors are" but leaves are constantly changing as the light moves across the sky and the wind blows hour by hour. With a camera you never really know what you can catch until you try shooting and with a digital camera one is free to make all the mistakes you care to try. Hip hip hurray for 21st century digital technology! Slowly you discover ways to make the camera capture what your mind's eye sees, in addition to what is actually in front of you. Changes the angles and composition enjoy the fun of any experiment since you can only make one mistake. The mistake I think is not taking a the picture. You won't know if you could catch a delight to hold dear in those cold dark weeks ahead unless you try.

I heard the "state" tree of Washington DC is a Scarlet Oak "Quercus coccinea". I don't know if these are that type but the colors fit the name. Naming trees is hard to do and there are a lot of different types of oak tree. I wish we had a couple of these trees planted next to our house but a short walk down the street gave me some exercise and a destination to go visit my favorite Brookland oak trees. The best shape and style of oak are the oldest ones and the grandest ones are like the one across the street which is left to grow in full sun with no obstructions. The Elementary School Oak across the street has almost lost all it's leaves but the shape of the gnarled twisting branches and lumpy stems are one of my favorites. I also like the huge tall oak in our alley mid block but I didn't try to capture a photo of that one today.

I remember from my childhood a single ancient oak tree in the center of a narrow Appalachian valley cow pasture in Pulaski County Virginia where my Aunt Alice lives. It was broad, thick, round and stood all alone in a that pasture just past the gap where we turned to drive up in the valley to her farm. This country dairy we visited to see them using the milking machines and feeding kittens bowls of warm milk. That oak was the shade tree during the hot afternoon to the whole herd of milking cows. Some time in the past it was struck by lighting and burned down to the base so it is no longer there and I can tell you I really felt sad when I learned of it's fate. Trees are great monuments and should be respected and cared for to the best of our ability. I doubt there would be much help for a tree that caught fire from lightening so this was unavoidable. When I see the trees here in the city I know they live on the razor's edge. I am especially impressed by the old ones that stand in the hellish city forests.

flickr links into Orange blog

pyramid-atlantic-Kelly6814
Originally uploaded by woodcut55

I just added a new feature to my Orange blog which allows me to post my blogs from the photo sharing site FLICKR.com and today I am trying it out with this portrait of Kelly O'Brien. She is the leader of the team who is creating the Moving Parts small artists book collection at Pyramid Atlantic Studios. I volunteered to help her and the team build 50 large red and black clam shell boxes for the collections ten artists book about the City Dance company's season. Last Saturday I felt like we should have some document of our team at work out here on the web.
There were four of us working Saturday afternoon but I only captured Kelly and Jody this time. There will be plenty of time to catch the rest of the team. In this photo you see Kelly stacking bricks on the 3rd box we have finished building. We plan to have 10 complete by the premier event Friday, December 11th, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm at Hillyer Art Space (located at 9 Hillyer Court NW)

I am not sure this technique of writing a blog post from the Flickr site is going to be as flexible as using Blogger to write my posts. Blogger I have been using for the past year. I wanted to explore more ways to use new connections to share photos and ideas. One new feature of the Flickr connection, if you click on the photo in this blog post it will take you to my Flickr pages. There you can see the whole set of images I have posted from Pyramid Atlantic Studios. the past year I am really enjoying working with new book and print artists and it is beginning to make me feel like I am part of the family at Pyramid Atlantic. I first worked at Pyramid Atlantic when it was located in Riverdale Md. back in 2002 with Steven Stichter (letter press printer) and Monica Hand (poet) We called our production Seven Hands Press and created a beautiful book of Haiku poems in an edition of 100 and only completed building 55 books over the course of about 18 months.

Facebook has stolen some of my steam for writing blogs but I am sure this is more interesting work than posting little bits of whimsy, political commentary and news on that social networking site. I enjoy Facebook but it isn't as fore filling as writing a real post and sharing photos here has been. The good part about Facebook is that I have found a connection to many people I thought were lost and I can share these blog posts with them there.

News flash! I just saw that the yellow bellied sap sucker (woodpecker) has returned to drill new holes in the tree by my window and sip the sap he is so skilled at removing. He was here earlier this year and posed for a few photos...

chickens and turkeys

the appalachian farm where I first knew turkeys and chickens was Aunt Alice and Uncle Kenny's place in Pulaski county Virginia. In this view I shot in high school about 1973 you see the barn and some bird coops to the right.

antique post card of home grown chickens

the "crooked house" and garden fence where I next met live turkeys in Pennsylvania at the Hermitage Farm

heirloom turkeys on the Hermitage farm in Pennsylvania 2006

Royal Palm are the black and white turkey in the front of this lineup and one Bourbon Red turkey and in the back of the line are several Norfolk Black turkeys and a couple of Bronze. The Broad Breasted White turkey is the type we get here in our supermarkets. Those are raised in the same way chickens for market on huge industrial farms. I miss the gobble and trilling sounds these birds make on the farm as they march around the fields and search for bugs and grass to eat. They really are quite charming once you get to know them. Exotic colors help make them more interesting but wild turkeys are beautiful the most colorful with irredescent feathers that show off well in the sunny days of fall. I was inspiried to write again about the turkey by a new blog I discovered recently From London to Land Girl . A young woman nam ed Holly moved to the farm in Cornwall, England and she writes about her exploits on a farm that Keith and I watched develop in the program from BBC called "It Isn't Easy Being Green". Several years ago a weekly on Sundance Channel and we really enjoyed for two seasons. It hasn't been showing on Sundance Channel recently but this new blog is great because we can read all about new developments on the farm and see pictures of the current state of things. Most recently there was a disaster in the field for the best wheelbarrow that made a must read post.