The photograph is part of a series of 365 photographs taken at exactly 7:00 a.m. from the west window of our home on the banks of the Roseau River two miles south of Wannaska, Minnesota. There is a matching series of photographs taken out the east window, also at seven a.m. Sunrise on the 14th was at 8:09 a.m.
My series of photographs have two inspirations. About thirty years ago I saw in a magazine a series of twelve photographs of a small house in a rural area. The photographer stood in the same place and, on the same day of the month, took a photo of his or her house. It was nice. I live in a small house in the country so I started my own series of monthly photographs. This was in the days of roll film sent to a processor. I was good for a month or two, then I'd miss a month. I restarted the series a couple of times, then put the project on the back burner.
A few years ago I was touring the Des Moines Art Center with Steve Reynolds when I came across a display of 365 small pictures of a woman's face. The photographer had photographed her own face every day for a year. This was art? Well, it was in a museum. The mission of the Des Moines Art Center is to encourage and collect contemporary art. The museum itself admits that this can be controversial.
I liked this particular piece of art because it was something I could do. I only lacked one thing: self-discipline. Then the smart phone came along. It's a phone with a camera that also kicks me in the butt each morning at 6:55 with a reminder to Take pics at 7. I get myself in readiness. I'm easily distracted so I have an alarm go off at 6:59. I take my photo from the same angle out the west window, then scurry to the east window so both pics are taken at 7:00 a.m.
When I started this project on November 2 of this year, the sun rose at 7:12 so the yard was well illuminated. Then things began to darken. I wondered if I should start over at 8:00 a.m. But no, the early hour would provide a good contrast in the long run. On a couple of days, I was able to catch the setting moon through the trees. The next day I expected to get a clear shot of the waning gibbous, but that day was overcast.
Eventually I'll be able to travel again. Won't there be gaps in my artwork? No; wherever I am, I'll take pics out the west and east windows. What if my lodging has only north or south windows? Then I'll go outside my motel or tent and point my phone to the west and the east. This will provide a welcome break to the same old same old.
Steve told me that on the same day I told him about my Des Moines inspired project, he came across a book he hadn't seen in years, a massive hard bound collection of the art in the Des Moines Art Center. He dropped it off for my entertainment and edification. The cover appeared to have tire tracks across it, but Steve denied having backed over it. This gave me an idea for a future series: Books Run Over By Subarus.
Steve's book had a history of the museum. Up until WWII, the museum's galleries were on the second floor of a clothing store downtown. A couple of rich people died and left money for a new museum. The board decided to focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. I read about lots of fights among competing boards, directors resigning because they weren't consulted on purchases, and women who did the grunt work demanding and getting seats on the board.
The museum board acquired several acres of parkland west of downtown, and between 1948 and 1985 erected three modernist buildings to display its collections. Steve doesn't remember where he got the book but he does have a connection to the museum. When he was in sixth grade one of his teachers recognized his talent and he was given a scholarship to the museum's art school. Every Saturday for a year he gathered with other students from around the city for lessons.
Steve could have gone on to New York or Paris. Instead he came to Wannaska. He could have been a starving artist. Instead he got a job to pay the mortgage and take care of the family. It's not too late for Steve. Look at Grandma Moses and Winston Churchill. Even Van Gogh started painting relatively late in life. Now, the Des Moines Art Center with all its resources could not afford a Van Gogh, but it could certainly afford the work of a native son.
Good googa-mooga, you've written a masterful piece of documentation there now. You impress me almost every time with these blog posts you write, mate. Now will you be compensating for daylight savings time when she rolls around next? It will surely be messing with the daylight, I was thinkin'.
ReplyDeleteThose were good days, that scholarship period at the DMAC. Funny, I recall them as all cloudy days for during those years of the very early 1960s most of the classrooms were in the basement of what was then the eastern wing, their whole wall framed windows all facing north (which is supposed to give an artist the best natural light, I learned years later). The walls were tall, the ceilings high, and all gray concrete as my memory serves me. The rooms were often cold those mornings; florescent lights flickered until they got warmed up. The same odor of paints, paper, water and clay would one day, during college orientation some 20 years later, make me suddenly strangely teary-eyed upon entering a similar art room . . .
There wasn't anyone else from my elementary school, 'Brooks', it was. Visiting with you about it previous to your post, I think there was a girl too, that won, but I don't remember ever seeing there, and I think I would have as I remember her name was Bonnie and I may have had a crush on her. A guy would remember seeing her every Saturday morning -- but no, she's not part of that equation. The other kids there may have all been budding artists, like me, but not a one of them stand out in my memory, nor does a single class.
I don't remember ever entering an art contest. It may have been some city-wide endeavor by the DMAC to introduce art to elementary schools and some Brooks teacher thought I showed potential, but that nod must go unanswered as I'm ignorant of who that was too, sadly.
The art center award may have made my mother happy, but apparently not my father, whom I learned, long after he died, being an artist wasn't 'manly'. Had it been athletic scholarship to a basketball, baseball, football -- even hockey -- summer camp, he would've been much prouder of me. Draw a picture? Go to your room ...
It wasn't that apparent, I exaggerate; but it was true he had his druthers. Still, every Saturday morning for who remembers how long, he faithfully started his old 1951 Chevy sedan, brown I think it was, and he'd drive me from Des Moines eastside to Des Moines westside (Not West Des Moines -- whole different animal that one) west on Grand Avenue, over the Des Moines River, and through downtown, past what would become my old high school, on west past the Iowa governors mansion, past may of the more well-to-do houses in the city -- the whole six miles to the art center.
If Dad couldn't take me, my late sister, 'Ginger' Wilson would. She lived a few miles north of the art center and, as her husband, 'Jim' was a Structural Engineer; they were art lovers and yearly supported the art center as well as rented many framed paintings and prints for their wondrously unique home off Lower Beaver Road. She fully supported my art adventures.
Thanks for the memory.
DST will be a problem.
DeleteI may have gone off the rails by then.
I'm a bit of a flibbertigibbet.
I like the window idea. It's much more Wannaskan that doing a Chairman Joe version of Courbet's Origine du Monde.
ReplyDeleteX 365, E&W
DeleteI feel like I was with you two at the Museum. Nostalgia can stir the creative juices. WW's epistle is also worthy. When you mentioned When you mention WW's forfeiture of the Parise garret, it gave me memories of another museum I visited. It's name starts with an L
ReplyDeleteLas Vegas Museum of Neon?
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