Have You Seen the Colors

.
This show looks good.
Some very well-known stuff, some lesser-known.

When Color was New:
Vintage Photographs from Around the 1970s
Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22 Street, 6th Floor
July 7 - September 6, 2008
Summer hours: Monday-Friday 11-6. Closed August 18-25.

Above, click to enlarge. Clockwise from top left:
William Christenberry, near Marion, Alabama, 1977
William Eggleston, Memphis, 1969
Stephen Shore, New York City, Sept-Oct 1972
Mitch Epstein, Topanga Canyon, California, 1974

Joel Sternfeld, McLean, Virginia, December 4th 1978


Unrelated and underrated:

Samara Lubelski Have You Seen the Colors mp3

Samara Lubelski has a bunch of solo records and has also played with Thurston Moore, White Magic, the American Analog Set, and many others. More info at her website.

A Pink Light, and the Coming of Dawn

My friend Christine is in Seattle right now and mentioned that the light on Mt. Rainier at sunrise was really beautiful yesterday. Something I will really miss about the East is that the humidity gives late afternoons a warm orange haze. Something I'm looking forward to in the Northwest is the pink glow that happens just before the sun comes up, like in the un-photoshopped photo above from my mom's driveway last fall.

Here's a good song about it:
Laura Veirs Pink Light mp3

We saw Laura Veirs play a really amazing, mostly-acoustic solo show at Union Hall earlier this year. One of the things I like about shows like that (including the recent spate of J. Ralph Phillips shows I've been talking about) is that they require the artist to make interesting decisions about how to fill up space, or leave it empty. Various looping devices make that even more interesting, allowing for some pretty complex layering and a deeper contrast between quiet and loud, or anticipation and fulfillment.

And, well, that's all I have to say about that.

Also, what gives? Two posts about weather in two days?
Am I getting old or something?

On a Rainy Day...

We've had the weirdest weather this summer—I don't think it's ever rained so much in New York. It's like Hawaii, it rains a little every day. You can't really tell from this picture but it super dark outside, right in the middle of the afternoon.

It reminded me of this record, which I found a couple years ago at a stoop sale.

I don't know anything about it but I like this song:
Willie Murphy & "Spider" John Koerner I Ain't Blue mp3

Writer's Block

Two flyers I got today that I like, both hand-written:

Goin' Out West

Via The Onion:

Nation To Try Its Luck Out West
Entire Population Seeking Greener Pastures
"Out past the mighty Mississip' all a man needs is a strong back and a good horse. Heck, won't take but two weeks under them wide-open skies to build a house, plant some squash, and wrangle a little graphic design work with full benefits, genuine growth potential, and two weeks' paid vacation. Now that thar's the life for me."

Read the article here.

The World Outside

My brother Sky and I went camping up at Lake George in the Adirondacks this past weekend, with his buddy Charlie and a bunch of other FDNY families and friends. We got rained on quite a bit, so I didn't get many pictures, but here are a few.

I picked Sky up bright and early in Park Slope, and with corner coffee and egg, sausage and cheese sandwiches in hand, we hit the open road.

We finally got a car stereo and were thus able to score the drive up with some Master of Puppets, Tiny Vipers, Loscil, and Andrew Bird. The rig is holding up really well so far and getting surprisingly good mileage.

Like I say, we pretty much got doused with rain the whole time, so there was a lot of this under-tarp action going on, and a slightly outlandish amount of beer consumed (as per usual, but more). During brief clearings we managed to take a really amazing little fishing trip out on the lake in a boat one guy brought up, we had some really good FDNY-sized meals (meatballs, seafood pasta, huevos rancheros, more meatballs), and we took a cool hike along some rocks by the lake.

Early morning, heavy-handed vodka tonics led to a Travel Scrabble game with probably the widest array of three- to five-letter words either of us have ever witnessed on a Scrabble board.

Take a guess who won.

The Adirondacks are beautiful. When Emily and I first started getting out and exploring the Northeast several years ago, I think we both expected it to be super-populated, with tons of sprawl and crummy strip malls everywhere. Once you get up north a bit, though, it's really nice, with large swaths of well-preserved land. New York State has been especially good about balancing its natural and commercial landscape. These are some pictures from a trip we took to a different part of the Adirondacks, a few years back:

I like it when trees grow over things.

We got rained on that time too. No matter, we come equipped like Lil' Dap. Well, not exactly like Lil' Dap.... We have a bunch of tarps, a canopy, and a waterproof tent (best wedding present ever, from my brother). Once that's all rigged up, it's actually fun to hang out undercover, play games and engage in aforementioned activities.

Hiking in the rain is also not bad if you have some light gear, or some well-placed plastic bags—and you get to see and hear things from a different perspective than when it's sunny.

Emily and I went up a really steep rock trail to this lookout tower when we were there.

She still had the cornrows she got in Spain earlier that summer.

(In Spain earlier that summer.)

We usually spend one day in local towns (groceries, thrift stores, bars) and one or two days hiking. Sky and I didn't get to hit up any of the towns this time out but took a few random shots on the drive back.
Santa, Uncle Sam, and a deranged-looking Paul Bunyan guard the Magic Forest. Yes, of course they do.
We didn't get to the see the diving horse, but there's always next time.