week nine: October 4th on

Work continues steady and I am eagerly preparing for next week's critique. This week I returned to Beaver Cove to photograph Janise Kimball-King. She is a character living along the shores of Moosehead Lake. She retired in her twenties and embraced the do anything and everything life of surviving in the North Maine Woods. She is the Jacquline of Moosehead for sure! Her ash baskets, wool rugs and tapistries are a testiment to her rich experiences and ability to spin a tale. I hope to get more portraits Friday interviews folks up in the woods. This is a matter of asking and synrodyzing the right place and time.
I continue to read and work out the outline of my research. Writing is a matter of doing and editing, but I eag and awe myself into a tissy before I succumb and write. This too closely resembles the temper tantrums my two year old throws before she gives in and falls asleep. I love the readings, but order is a challenge I struggle to address; I am and that is the first step.
Thursday evening the University of Maine Museum of Art opened the Todd Watts exhibit, String to Short to Play. The bold color and play of focal plans were a marvelously refreshing sight. The element of movement was paired in several images by the placement of birds or water. The affect of this symbolism took the architectural space from the geometric to the psychological. In the words of photographer Frank Van Der Salm, today's best architects are photographers. The earlier prints brought held graphic repetition into play while the latest work juxtaposition the graphic repetition of birds from the formation of a square to that of a circle breaks up. I, of course, thought of Lefebvre's everyday repetition and the cycles of nature versus those of human engagement. The Piece depicting driftwood and a child's orange rubber ball repeting reminded me of David Spero's work, Ball Photographs, in which he places colorful rubber balls as puctuation marks on the scene marking the still lifes within the frame. Content becomes subject. I truly liked Todd's work and I will return on my next visit to Bangor. It warms my heart and mind to see such contemporary expression in the North Maine Woods. Cheers.
The opening also included the solo exhibition of Bangor Russian Artist Llya Askinazi. Llya shoots with a classic 8x10 deardorff producing traditional black and white landscapes of cityscapes from Maine, Israel, and al. The images are beautiful: alluring and haunting. The contact printing on slow contact paper produces images that must be seen to be truly appreciated the detail and tonal beauty. Like the F64 photography of the early 20C his prints have depth and breath that must be experienced to be appreciated. I love this technical achievement. I applaud its successful achievement as the poetry of photography that it is. Cheers.