Stone As Flesh, A Photographic Series

This gallery is just a little bit different.  There is a lot of color manipulation in these photos.  The striations in the sandstone look like large slabs of raw meat.  It’s not going to be for everyone, but it is a definite statement.  I really love it.  I may be the only one.  I’m okay with that.  Please feel free to comment on your impressions.

Five images for your consumption.

Poland and Slovakia

I’ve just put up two new galleries, Poland and Slovakia.  They were taken during the same shoot, when a friend and I were on our way to Krakow, Poland.   I have to say that Slovakia is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and I would love to live there.   I’d love to live there with about 4 coats on at all times during the winter, that is.  I’d do it though, I’d make the sacrifice.

I spent two days in Krakow walking around looking at nuns and monks and eating Polish sausage.  The city is really interesting, and a bit run down in places, but the colors and textures of the buildings are amazing.  I really love eastern Europe.  I’d go back right now if I could.  Amazing.

Madrid

Last Christmas and New Year’s Eve I was in Madrid, Spain.  These are just a few images from that place.  In Europe, Madrid is supposed to be the place to be.  I spent part of New Year’s in hotel with fellow company members, and the other half hanging out on a rooftop with another entertainment company, laughing at Jessica being pursued quite ardently by one of the cast members.   Ah, good times.

Montreal

So, there is my gallery of Montreal.  What can I say about the city?  It’s lovely.  What’s really great about it is that it’s not too far from home for anyone who wants to get a little feel of Europe.  Not too hard to navigate around, either.  It has some nice pubs, and I would rate the people as acceptably polite, so there’s no hostility towards Americans to worry about.  The greatest thing about it is that it has a little mountain in the middle of town.  It’s called Mont Royal.

I ended up going up the back side of Mont Royal, instead of taking the most direct route to the observatory, which has an amazing view.  It’s so great that something like that view is just there, for the public.  You have to pay big bucks for that kind of thing in the U.S.  A great view is one of the most expensive things on our market.  I’m really glad that I went up the wrong  side, though, because the whole way up the mountain are all these little broken stairways.  They start, and then they stop and a hundred feet to your left, they begin again.  By far, this is one of the best places to be in the fall, because of all of the maple trees.

I decided to go ahead and finish editing this city, in honor of Thanksgiving.  We were there during the Canadian Thanksgiving.  I had enchiladas.  I don’t even eat enchiladas here in Texas on Thanksgiving, not that enchiladas are Canada’s choice of Thanksgiving fare.  Margaritas, however, should be.  I’m starting a movement.  Canadian enchiladas are a bit weird, but by far, not the worst interpretation of Tex-Mex I’ve had abroad.  Not at all.

I was thankful for the margaritas and good company then, and I’m thankful for the fall photos now.  Thanks, Canada!

Sorry, Sarah and Jason.  I still don’t get Poutine.

I’ve been sentenced to home arrest.

I’m at home now, because of my wrist.  My ulna is peeking out just a wee bit.  I don’t have a doctor appointment yet, because, well, let’s just say my adjustor does not have a “sense of urgency” about her.  Therefore I am working on my pictures from Montreal in honor of Thanksgiving twice, and probably other places once I’m done with that (I’ll have plenty of time), and I posted a small amount of writing samples.  You can find them to your right there.  Take a look, have a good giggle at my expense.

On the upside, because it’s the holidays at the moment, I am not that bummed at being home.  Well, at least, until the crazy starts to come out of the relatives, that is.

Crack Kills, People. Crack Kills.

When I was a little girl, I lived with my grandmother for a considerable amount of time throughout my life. I actually began to reside there shortly after the doctor slapped my behind and began my career as a breather.

My grandmother had a great house that she raised her own kids in. It had three bedrooms, and the master bedroom and living room were those really long rooms that most modern builders would chop into three rooms and call spacious. The house had hardwood floors, nothing but windows for walls and those circular patterns on the ceilings. The ones that made you a little dizzy and crosseyed to count.

When you grow up in a house like that, you learn the value of napping. Old southern women do not believe in central heat and air. What they do believe in are large stand up metal fans that will remove that finger (all parents try to get their children not to suck) and gas stove heaters that don’t heat anything but the seat of your polyester footie pajamas when you stand in front of them at four in the morning. They also believe in ice tea, lemonade, coffee and cocoa. And switches from the front yard, in case the heater is not to your liking.

I would always lay down for my nap in the front room. It was my absolute favorite place in the house. The wardrobe was almost floor to ceiling, only cut short by a smaller cabinet up top, where a lady could keep her hatboxes, or a grandmother could keep all the things she wanted to make harder for her grandchildren to get into. Harder, but not impossible. The room was painted that “tan-beige-inbetween-whatever color your mom decided to call it that forever marked what you would get into an argument with your friends over, “No, Marcy, that’s not cream, it’s beige”-brown. The windows were covered in those great pull shades, that for some reason mini-blinds became a better alternative to, and were also covered in lace white curtains. Proper homes have curtains. You ask your grandmother if you are uncertain on this point. The windows themselves were lots of big panes. Great for accenting moonlight, shadows of crepe myrtle trees and obnoxious streetlamps.

I would lay down on the bed with the cool, thin, white bed spread, my grandmother would open up the windows and turn on the amputator, and I would lay down in this room that had the only picture in the whole house of my grandfather. She had a couple of knick-knacks that are only interesting to me and my cousins that you would play with instead of taking a nap, like you were supposed to do.

She had a large mirrored dresser, with a lot of drawers for overly curious children that wanted to stick their fingers into something that would allow them to keep them afterwards. Lots of trinkets in the drawers. Broken watches, little gold chains. Pennies that you could have sworn were different, else why would they be in the same drawer as all the other loot?

I have absolutely no idea why I became particular to this lamp she had on that dresser. Of all the things in that room, that is what I wanted to be mine one day after she was gone. Maybe it was the fact that when the windows were closed and the curtains weren’t rustling, and you couldn’t watch the train go by and see the water tower across the street because the stars were out, but the lightning bugs were already sleeping, it’s what she used to read by. Or maybe I just thought it was pretty.

It was one of those replicas that looked like it was made in the 1800s, but it was cheap, ceramic glass, with red on the bottoms of each glass piece (one top and one bottom) and it had a big rose painted on each of the bells. It had these great brass feet, with detail. I don’t remember exactly. I know the lamp had already been glued before from where a piece got knocked out and replaced because there was nothing in my grandmother’s house we were not allowed to touch.

When my grandmother passed my mother made sure I got the lamp because my grandmother had told me a long time ago that I could have it. It got broken twice in the whole “divide and conquer each other” process that happened when the harpies (or as I should really call them, my aunts and cousins) divided up the remains of the day, and then in the relocation of my grandmother’s belongings from her old lady apartment to our respective pits and lairs.

I didn’t care that it was broken. I used it anyways. It gave off the softest, warmest light.

One day my mother had to relocate to another place, or else build an ark, due to the water pipe that busted in her front yard. In the process she had a few things left in the house. My fish aquarium, some of the books I inherited from my grandmother (my other coveted prize), the ceiling fans, a toilet, and my broken lamp. Someone decided they needed these things, so they broke into my mother’s trailer and stole my little broken lamp. And the other stuff, including the toilet. Crack kills, people. Crack kills.

I miss my little broken lamp.  I do not miss the toilet.

Bird Holes and the Art Of Foraging

When I was growing up, my grandmother had a number of things growing in her yard.  She had two apple trees, two plum trees, a fig tree, and strawberries growing on the side of the house.  She also had several pecan trees, and a vegetable garden.

Her neighbor, Mrs. Adams, had blackberries growing on the same side of her house as my grandmother’s strawberries.  Mrs. Adams had a cookie tin tree growing inside of her home as well.  This cookie tree, I’m not sure if it was a foreign strain or not, produced shortbread cookies all year round.  She also had a plant that produced those orange, gummy candies that are always coated in sugar, however I never really asked if it was a tree, a bush, or a vine that made those.

Now, since it’s summer, I think it’s a good time to discuss the cycle of fruit trees and the nature of birds and children.  It’s very simple:

The birds land on the top of the trees, and peck at the fruit.  Once they taste the fruit and determine that it is not filled with poison or dangerous bugs they actually throw it on the ground for children to eat.  It is a general rule that if a piece of fruit on the ground has a small, brown hole in it, you can, in fact, eat it without fear of stomach ailments.  A child can in fact eat anything a bird eats.

The evidence exists in the amount of unripened apples we consumed as a child, despite my grandmother’s protests that it would make us sick.  The only time I ever got sick was when I drank an entire jar of pickle juice at my cousin’s prompting. Now, my grandmother made a potent pickle. Where I made my mistake was not looking for the small, brown hole.  These pickles were indeed filled with poison and dangerous bugs.

If you eat half a bug, you are okay.  If you consume a whole bug, you will most certainly die.

More evidence that children can consume anything a bird eats are holly berries.  I ate more holly berries than I can count.  Here’s the trick.  You must peel them.  All things in nature display their danger with the color red.  If you take away the skin, you can suck on the orangey inside until you can scrape and roll the little gritty seed against your teeth.  It makes a scratchy noise on the inside of your head.  Why did this amuse me?  Scholars may never know.  Holly berries have their own taste.  They are slightly sweet, but only in the way that holly berries are.

However, nothing is free.  The birds will never let you have the plums.  They eat all plums themselves, and only leave enough plums for your grandmother to make 800 jars of plum jelly.  I would say that we never got ahold of the plums because my grandmother gathered them all for jam, but I refuse to think of my grandmother that way.

Poor Mrs. Adams never got any of her blackberries.  We were too quick for her, often eating them when they were still green.  We always got in trouble for it, though, the evidence of juice stained teeth and scratched up arms being too strong for any jury not to convict.  Crepe myrtle trees make powerful switches.

Pecan trees grow the smartest, I think.  They are way too tall to climb to get the pecans, and they protect their seeds with a little green pouch, and don’t let you have them until they decide to stretch.  Then all the fully grown pecans fall down like dandruff.  I don’t know exactly what qualifies as a smart pecan, because the trees make a lot of pecans, if you’ve ever been around a pecan tree, but they don’t make as many trees.  Stupid, unknowable pecan trees.  They make a lot of pies, though.

The strawberries never stood a chance.  Low to the ground, pretty, bright colors that call to you, covered in dirt.  They didn’t last a day.  Poor strawberries.

I’m still not sure if any of us ever liked the figs.  We ate them, because they were there, of course.  I think they are too much of a contradiction.  Crunchy, mushy, and kind of scratchy at the same time, because of all the fuzz;  I still haven’t made up my mind about figs.

We would steal potatoes from neighbors and eat them with clover and wild onions.  If you were prepared for your dining experience, you had a little plastic cup hidden in a hole somewhere so that you could get water from the spicket.  All good gourmet chefs should be prepared with the proper tools.  You only get one cup of water though, you don’t want to wash off all the dirt.  There is a reason why children smell bad when they come home at dusk.

Eventually I grew into a teenager, and so did all my cousins, some before me, some after.  My grandmother’s trees began to die.  I’m not sure if it was just nature’s signal that it was the end of an era, if the trees were sad to see us go, or if the birds just got complacent.  Eventually my grandmother cut down her trees, stopped growing her garden, and left the house on Main Street.  Now I’m sitting here, in a rental house of my own, writing this recollection to whoever used to get fed by the birds, too, so that I can remember the dirt in my teeth.

Disclaimer:  Do not eat holly berries.  They are in fact, poisonous.

Birmingham, Alabama

Fairly uneventful I would say.  My show locals were good, no complaints.  I got an MRI, and that was exciting.  I think I may be the only person I know that can be shoved into a little tube with sonic grinding noises going on and feel so relaxed that I fall asleep.  Perhaps I am just that deprived of sleep.  Although, I did almost miss my MRI because Birmingham cab service is horrible.  I do not recommend it in the slightest.

So, we fly into Houston, later today and I will immediately go to see another doctor as soon as I get there.  Hopefully, it’s a hand doctor.  I’ve been chasing one for 3 weeks now.  The medication is killing my stomach.  Oh well, better an ulcer than no pain meds.  We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, doubled over and crying for our mothers.  I actually miss mine right now, although, she’s not very cuddly.  I guess it’s that human reaction to want your mommy when you are not well.

I can say this because I haven’t given her this web address, yet. 

It’s been awhile…

It’s been awhile since I posted last, and we have been oh-so busy.  The biggest development for me has been injuring my wrist in Chicago.  No, I didn’t do it to myself.  Now I’m in the hands of workman’s comp insurance and I am waiting for them to send me to a hand surgeon for evaluation.  Lots of fun, kids, lots of fun.  Needless to say, I may be waiting for awhile.

We’ve been to a lot of places, and it’s been fun.  We went to Philadelphia, but had no time for me to photograph, really.  My photos have taken a little bit of a back seat to the wrist, since I’m not really supposed to use my hand.  Yes, I am actually running my cues with one hand.  I did get some shots of Montreal and the river between Cincinatti, OH and Covington, KY, and when I get through my editing processes, I’ll post them.

The biggest change in how I’ll display my work is that I bought an account on Photostream, and so I’ll be able to display the images the way I want to and easily link my blog together.  I determined that displaying my images here was just a bit clunky.  Any images here will just be the regular kind, with folks I know.  You know, the fun stuff.  Because everything  just got much easier to maintain, I’ll update more often.

Moving away from talking about my vanity site, I have decided to get a cell phone again (against my better judgment).  I had a good run, with my ability to escape the bonds of human relationships, but alas, I was born too late.  Internet connections are so iffy in nice US hotels as far as speed and reliability, so I’m choosing to look at it as a mini computer.   Give me a Best Western any day.

Let’s get some blogging done.

I have been very bad.  I started this site as a fix to not having a website designed, and I was in such a little hurry.  Once I got it up, I neglected it.  Isn’t that the way?  Well, enough with procrastination.

I just started the new tour with the new show.  Right now we are in Chicago.  Hopefully tomorrow I will go out and take some photos, but as we haven’t had a day off in a couple of weeks, no promises.  We are in a great location, and the hotel is more than acceptable.  So far, we’ve been to St. Louis, MO, but we were extremely busy doing an on-site refurb, so I didn’t do much.  I also went to a jazz club (The Green Mill.  It was one of Capone’s hang outs. http://greenmilljazz.com ) the other night to celebrate my birthday, so I’m in a bit of recovery.

Over the summer I went to a couple of places.  I visited my friend who lives in Denver, met some really incredible artists (http://artsmyths.com ) while I was there, and then ended up working in a Renaissance Festival, which is funny because generally I really dislike them.  I’m pretty sure that those two will be friends for life and I hope they are doing incredibly well.

I also went to Seattle and got to visit some people I miss very much, and then off to Faerieworlds (http://faerieworlds.com).  This is Brian Froud’s festival, and I actually got to meet him.  He’s a bit of an idol for me, and then he drew in the books I purchased.  Yes, he does that regularly, but it’s still the one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me.  So, because of that, I’ll post some pictures of Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Faerieworlds.  Hopefully, I’ll wake up tomorrow and not feel half deceased and actually get out during daylight to take photos of the Windy City.

I will try to do this more often and post links of the places I go, so that you can come with me.   Currently I need to update my photo editing software, so I am really behind on this, but I’ll post a couple anyways.  Perhaps not tonight, though.  I’m fighting my eyelids right now.  I’m going to work on this site dilligently over the next week, so bear with me.