Another Project Slips By ...

There's a story that, when Van Gogh committed suicide, his landlord in Arles was furious.  It was bad enough that he had to put up with the crazy artist who's rent was uneven at best (Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime) but the lunatic had painted all over his walls.  In addition to everything else, now he was going to have to pay for all these crazy drawings to be painted over.

Van Gogh's bedroom, as he painted it in 1889.

In the 20th Century there was another artist, Cy Twombly.  He did significantly better than Van Gogh.   (At a Southeby's auction in May, a page full of scribbles done by him in 1971 over housepaint on a piece of card about 16 by 20 inches sold for a little over $2 and a quarter million.)  Twombly died a couple of years ago, and one would think the price would be significantly elevated as a result, but his work has sold in the millions for years.

For $2,285,000 this too could be yours.

Twombly was originally from Lexington, Virginia, where I live now, and he maintained a home here where he would spend anywhere from a quarter to half the year.  The rest of his time was generally spent in Italy, where he preferred people thought he lived full time.  All the same, he had a nice home here and even rented a local storefront as a studio, where he would work.

When he died in July of 2011, the gallery and lawyers swooped in.  They had his assistant seal the studio, and strictly forbade any photos of the place.  I nonetheless was fortunate enough to befriend his assistant, and did a piece for WDBJ in Roanoke on Twombly of which I am unnaturally proud.  (The link has long since aged out of the system, I'm sorry to say.  I have it on tape still -- yes, actual, physical tape -- and should digitize and upload it here sometime.)

Butch, his assistant, let me into the studio, and we filmed his interview there.  I was forbidden to shoot the studio, but I stood Butch so that in the background, on the wall, were marks ... the paint that had smeared off the edge of the canvas Twombly had tacked to the walls as he worked.

The Last Twombly Paintings

Some time later, the gallery people took everything away, and the storefront has been available for rent for months now.  And for all that time, I have meant to call the agent and ask to be let in, just so I could photograph those marks.  A part of me wanted to do it for posterity, and a part of me thought they might be interesting abstract artworks in and of themselves.

But as I have gone past in the last few days, workers have appeared within ...

Shot today with my iPhone as I passed.

I fear the tragedy of Arles is being repeated.  A new owner has been found, and the last marks of Cy Twombly (you can see some quite clearly to the right of the ladder on the right) will be gone.  Frankly, I never could quite think of how to start the conversation with the realtor.

Once again, I must learn: when I have these ideas, I need to act.

The Ghost in the Machine

So in my quest to continue posting frequently, and also to avoid continuing to clean up the house, I was going through my old posts, and I found the one about getting into Cy Twombly's studio after his death.  As I said in the post, it produced a nice little piece, one I was and continue to be very proud of.  Unfortunately for me, I left WDBJ shortly after I did that to go to work for the Fox 21/27 Morning News, and so my hopes to rack up a few prizes for it were dashed.  So it goes ...

Anyway, I have it still on tape for my personal use, but I haven't seen the piece for a long time.  It runs over four minutes -- exceedingly long for a TV news story -- and has no narrator at all, yet I think tells a good history in an entertaining way.

So as I was looking at the post, I noticed I had hot linked to the video playout at WDBJ7.com ... and I got curious.  Would it still be there?

It is.  The entire page comes up, complete with a freeze frame in the video player ... but it doesn't seem to play.  Curious. like the aftershadow in your eye after a bright flash.  (Or like the frozen figures in Ray Bradbury's story in Martian Chronicles.  You know, the reverse shadows of the people charred into the house walls after a nuclear attack?)

Guess I'll just have to dig out that tape sometime ...

Meanwhile, In America...

Okay, I know I'm no Robert Frank. (Makes me think of The Online Photographer's immortal comment about how to shoot with a Leica. He said, when suggesting using a 35 mm lens, "I know Cartier-Bresson's favorite lens was a 50. You're not Cartier-Bresson." I can't find the link, but this is the start of the thread...) But I'm still stuck on my concept of "Meanwhile, In America ..." -- a modern, more upbeat version of Robert Frank's The Americans. So now you must suffer through more pictures of the sort I would do for that project...

Here we see the talent and producer (Kim Pinckney, the one holding the papers, is the producer) of WDBJ's weekday morning news show, Mornin'. (Yes, absent the G -- it amuses me.) They are looking at the ratings. They're number one.

Inside a Roanoke, Virginia, firehouse, shortly before it was closed and replaced with a new, more modern facility nearby. The stairs lead from the garage-like area where the fire trucks are kept to the living quarters for the firemen.

Jefferson Street, downtown (it always amuses me to say "downtown" in a town of 7,000) Lexington, Virginia.

The owner of Roanoke's Putt-Putt golf course, during a tournament involving both amateur and professional players. Yes, professional Putt-Putt golfers. Really. There's a tournament circuit, just like Tiger Woods plays, but with giant gorillas and giraffes and windmills and stuff. That's not why he's laughing; he was once a pro himself.

The president of Roanoke's Tea Party, shortly after I interviewed him for WDBJ7 at a July 4 rally in Elmwood Park. As I've mentioned before, I think the Tea Party movement is something to be respected and attended to, not ignored and dismissed. I still haven't grasped what it is -- and I asked him for the opportunity to talk some more in hopes of getting closer -- but I sense a geological force (not a "shift," as I think it taps into something quintessentially American, whatever that might mean) that the Tea Party represents.

I think there is a really important article, or story, or book maybe, to be done about this -- one that isn't snide or superior or disdainful. Something not written in the tone of an educated elite regarding the boobocracy as if they were animals in the zoo. Something not written by today's H.L. Menckens.

I had read about George Plimpton's fascination with fireworks a long time ago, but it stuck with me. I saw my opportunity this July 4, and convinced the station to let me cover the setup for Lexington's fireworks. I was surprised; just two guys, a lot of wood planks, some PVC tubes for mortars, and boxes and boxes of explosives shipped all the way from China. (That was a somewhat scary thought, I've got to say, when I learned it. There must be shipping containers full of high explosives [!] on the Pacific as I write.)

The guy in charge, shown here, just started when a friend suggested he help out on a show. His day job is as a barber. He's going to beautician school now, to expand his business.

Pray and Play, and effort by a black evangelical church to occupy youth in a poorer neighborhood in Roanoke. I ended up covering it when the minister called the newsroom one Saturday seeing if we were interested.

A gospel rap group, associated with the church, was also there. I gave them my card, and I hope they call. That would be a good story, I think.

This is Josh Harvey, a friend, playing organ for a wedding in Lee Chapel on the Washington and Lee University campus in Lexington. A nice picture of a nice guy.

All of the pictures have been shot with a Leica M3. For some I used a 34mm Leica Summicron, some a Zeiss 21 mm Biogon. Most were shot on Tri-X, though Josh's is on Plus-X, and I shot one roll of Fuji B&W film because it was in the fridge. (I'm working my way slowly through everything in the fridge, as I can't afford to buy new film. I'm also now out of negative sheets.)

NOTE: Keep checking back. On my first upload of these pictures, it's ten o'clock at night and I don't have all the data -- like names and dates -- in front of me. I plan to keep updating these entries as I get the chance.

Also, check back on previous entries. I've been adding pictures as I get them processed and scanned.

Random shooting...

This is Main Street in Lexington, shortly before Christmas. Much of the over two feet of snow we received then had been cleared from the street, but the region remained a bit shell shocked for weeks after, and piles of crusty, charcoal-colored snow remain even now.

This was shot with my Leica M3 and Zeiss 21mm lens on Kodak Tri-X. I put it up ... well, as before, because I can.

About the snow...

Snow still clings to the ground in patches and piles, a continuing reminder of the weeks of bad weather that began before Christmas, despite a few blessed warmer days recently. I've been meaning in all the weeks since that first storm to write some of my experience, but also have kept waiting for the pictures to show some of it. There are more to come, but now I have the story of my commute...

Normally, my drive to work from Lexington to Roanoke is like what you see above: often early, often in the dark (it's hard to make a picture of that -- though the wag in me is tempted to post a black rectangle). There are a few cars, usually more trucks, and quiet smooth hours running at speed on the interstate, occasionally interrupted by bits of debris and dead deer. But the snow changed all that.

My bosses at WDBJ, warned by the meteorologists, anticipated the big storm in December. They reserved rooms in a neighboring hotel, and cautioned me to pack a bag. I was skeptical -- any number of hyped storms have fizzled in past years here -- but became a believer when, on Friday afternoon, the storm rolled in and the snow fell in a continuous curtain. By the end of the six o'clock news, it was beginning to seriously accumulate, and when we adjourned to the hotel, travel was becoming difficult ... even down the short run to there from the station.

By morning, the 4-wheel-drive vehicle I borrowed from the station was well buried in a foot of snow, and the drive back was an adventure. Traffic on the highways ground to a halt, trapping thousands. I spent a second night at the hotel, to my wife Jennifer's increasing jealousy. Trapped in the house with five cats and two children, she envied my quiet nights spent in a soft double bed without company.

By Sunday evening, the snow had stopped falling for a full day. Roads were clearing, those trapped and then rescued -- having spent the night in ad hoc shelters at fire stations and high schools -- were setting out again. Roads in Roanoke were clear, though narrowed to the lane or two the plows could clear, but easily passable. It was time, I thought, to head home.

The temperature remained cold, so the snow had to be moved aside. Still, I drove out 581 and onto Interstate 81 easily enough. Things were moving well, with two de facto lanes of traffic moving in each direction, hemmed in by berms of snow. As I passed mile 156, about five miles north of Roanoke, I was amused to pass a snowplow that had slid off the highway into the median and been abandoned.

Then, with horrifying, inescapable certainty, the traffic began to slow ... and then stop. I imagine this was how it started on Friday, everyone thinking that they would start up again shortly. Maybe, if things remained slow, they would get off at the next exit. How far was that? Five miles? Ten?

We sat. I began to worry. As I left, people in the newsroom had questioned how clear the interstate was. Maybe I should take Route 11, the old two-lane state road that follows the highway, weaving back and forth under and above it as it goes. But I was confident; how bad could it get? Time passed.

But, soon enough, we began moving again. I was right. It wasn't so bad ... until it stopped again. After a while, I began making pictures.

Note the rear-view mirror: you can see the cars stacked up behind me. Looking forward was all but impossible for the trucks. Exits were miles away. There was nothing to do but be patient, creep forward when we could, relax and listen to the radio when we couldn't.

Across the median, there was no backup on the southbound lanes. It was a mystery; I have never learned the solution. Nor have I ever learned the cause of my delay. We would slow to a stop, wait some period of time, and then finally start again. Sometimes we would inexplicably run back up to proper highway speeds, and then some miles down the road -- usually just long enough to give me confidence that it was over -- the brake lights would flash on and we would rapidly decelerate to a stop again. Sometimes we would creep forward, a few miles an hour for a few miles, and then settle into another wait.

At one point, I looked out my window to see some orange peels tossed into the snow piled up against the guardrail separating me from the median. An earlier driver, stopped in the same spot, decided to have a snack. There wasn't just one piece; it was the peel of an entire orange. He had sat there long enough to completely peel the fruit ... and probably eat it too.

I never did find a cause: no wreck, no fishtailed truck, no piles of snow spilled out into the road ... nothing. Well, there was one stalled truck in the left lane once, but that was all. Oddly insufficient for all the stops and slows, the waiting and the creeping forward.

In the end, a drive that takes some 45 minutes on a good, normal day took some two and a half hours. It wasn't frustrating so much as ... absurd.

And when I came home, I found this:

That's some 22 inches of snow burying the house, car, driveway and yard. There was no getting in or out, even in the SUV (we tried some time later, repeatedly ramping it up on pile of snow, backing off, and rushing forward to a skidding stop again). Entrance and escape was finally brought by Cliff, the fellow who mows our yard, showing up with his tractor and a plow some time later. But I was home at last...

Welcome to My World (on the Interstate)...

So I stepped out at 3 am to a wet, thick, chilly fog, smelling of wood fires. I was on my way to the early shift, editing for the 5:30 morning news.

Usually, these days bring a quiet drive on the highway -- 45 minutes on Interstate 81 from Lexington to Roanoke -- plunging through the darkness pretty much alone. This is nice, soothing in its way, because I need only to worry about myself. The occasional roadkill, especially the dramatic scene of a deer recently obliterated by a semi, warns me to stay alert, but the whole thing often takes on a sort of Zen peace about it.

Not today.

Today, it's Thanksgiving, and the road was filled with dozens of frantic drivers, pressing on through the night to their holiday destinations, north and south. That thick fog unnerved many, already undoubtedly sleep-deprived and uncertain of their surroundings, making their speed erratic and uncertain. Others rushed toward the destination, crowding the cars in front of them in the blinding whiteness. I hung back at those clumps of cars, fearing the knot of crumpled steel a simple error (blissfully avoided during my trip) could bring.

The license plates seemed mostly from New York, though I do recall one from Massachusetts. It is only my adopted status as a Virginian (marked by the faint Canadian accent to my speech) that prevented me from grumbling about damn Yankees.

And so, I think, I am thankful first and foremost that my Thanksgiving is at home. My commute may be longish, but I am not caroming down an interstate, eight hours out and God knows how far to go, with red rimmed eyes and discontented kids in the back, white-knuckling my way through fog in an alien state, surrounded by drivers in worse shape and with less competence (at least, based on their behavior) than me.

Welcome to my world...

A few other pictures...

Because I can, and because I've been having such fun with my Leica M3 and BW400CN film...

The view through a window in the Roberson-Phalen House in downtown Lexington.  Workers are adding the final touches on the restored home, and here one pauses to make a phone call outside while a group tours the interior.

From the same tour, an interior of the First National Bank building on Main Street, currently undergoing renovation.  The top two of the three floors will be apartments, and this floor -- on ground level -- and the basement are to be commercial space.

And finally, from one of the days I was preparing to go out filming, VMI cadets come spilling out of Jackson Memorial Hall after an event.  I made a number of frames of this, and while this is the best of those, I'm not sure it really captures the moment as hundreds of identically clad students spill out of the building...

Tromp, tromp, tromp, the boys are marching...

Seven VMI cadets are reenacting the march their predecessors did over 100 year ago, when they left the campus in Lexington,Virginia, in May of 1864 and marched 85 miles in five days to New Market, to the north, where they took part in the battle there on May 15.  The 2009 cadets are dressed in period clothing and (perhaps most importantly) wearing period shoes.

I had often said that it would be an interesting little film to follow such an adventure, but no one had done it since the last effort in 2005.  So when I was told it was happening this year, I could hardly back out.

Here we see the cadets marching up Route 11, having already been on the road over a day:

And at their campsite at the end of the second day (last night), at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia:

It's not much helping the drama of my show that they all seem rather cheerful, with high morale, and not very worn down by the beating their feet are receiving, after an 18-mile march on the first day and 19 miles on the second...

No teabagging jokes...

I've got to agree with some commentators that, tempting though it is, the current fascination of both open liberals and some "legitimate journalists" (put in quotes, because I'm not sure what exactly those two words are meant to mean in conjunction, sort of like "social justice") to make snotty comments about the Tea Parties last week -- particularly comments related to certain sexual activities and their slang names -- is not really commentary and is just an indication of a willingness to not take a serious thing seriously.  Would they dare make similarly dismissive and "humorous" comments about some of the wackier Islamic extremist terms?

Anyway, there was a Tea Party here in Lexington, Virginia, in the small park that sits in the center of town, attended, by my guess, by 100 to 150 people.

Here we look out into the town from the pergola in the park, past the speaker.  

Here we look back toward the pergola, visible in the background.  As you can see, it was a cool and drizzly day.

After the evening rally (from 6 to 7 pm), people lined up to sign letters to their congressman and senators.

I know I announced at the beginning of this blog that I wouldn't do politics, and I like to think I'm not doing that here, but a hundred people in a town of just 7,000, with a social scene dominated in many ways by two college faculties, turned out on a cold rainy evening to make a statement against an otherwise popular president.  This is something that deserves a reaction besides dismissive sarcasm...

POSTSCRIPT: An interesting comment today in the New York Times by David Carr, simultaneously doling out scorn to cable news for ginning up the Tea Party phenomenon and noting interest in the symbolic connection to history.  Who would have guessed an event in today's shallow culture would still use the resonance of an historical event to inspire it?

So let's see how this works...

I'm engaging in my first experiment in viral marketing.

You see, I made the mistake of speaking up in a meeting.  It's a lesson I never learn.  This time, I was in the meeting for the Haiti Committee at our church (which probably requires an explanation in itself.  I think I'll save that for another post -- suffice it to say that many Virginia Catholic churches have twin parishes in Haiti; it's something encouraged by the diocese).  I had the brilliant idea, inspired by an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, of opening a "flash" art gallery of Haitian arts and crafts for the period of Lent.

You see, it would get money to the artisans, it would raise awareness of the situation in Haiti and the twin parish program, and it would (through the markup) get money down to the projects we were working on.  As a "flash" art gallery -- lasting only one month -- I wouldn't have to create a steady supply line; just fill the gallery once, and you're done.  I figured there would be some overhead, but hoped the profit would more than make up for it.

So I pipe up, and everyone in the room looks at me and says, "What a good idea.  You get right on that!"  So there's a pause (much longer in my mind than in reality, I'm sure) while I come to grips with the fact that I, who know nothing about retail or sales or anything but making the occasional interesting news picture and documentary film, realize this whole basket of worms has just been dropped in my lap.

No problem, I think.  I'll just get started at the start, and either it works or -- more likely -- some massive, impossible to overcome problem kills it, probably before anything even really gets going.  I discovered that God apparently wants there to be a flash art gallery of Haitian art in Lexington this year.

All the legal problems were gently and efficiently solved by local officials.  (Really, how often can anyone write that sentence?)  The problem of having a physical location was generously and easily solved by a local gallery owner, local artists (and even nationally known ones, like photographer Andrea Baldeck -- check out her website at www.andreabaldeck.com -- who gave us four prints and a number of her books on Haiti) contributed, and just yesterday my final problem was solved when another Virginia parish, Redeemer in Mechanicsville, agreed to buy and bring back additional arts and crafts when they return from Haiti at the end of the month.  And that overhead thing?  There essentially is none.  Almost all of the costs have been contributed.  Everything we make will be going down to Haiti.

So now I have to hold up my end.  This starts with marketing, and my first step is to begin a mysterious campaign with the name of the gallery: Karant Jou.  It's Haitian Kreyol for forty days.  (Imagine saying the words with a French accent: Quarant Jour.)  I have begun distributing flyers, myself and through friends, which say only:

KARANT JOU

A Unique Opportunity

Only in Lexington

Only in March

What will happen?  I don't know, but I hope some curiosity.  I'm hoping that, by mention around the 'net, I can move up in Google searching.  (Right now, "karant jou" only brings you Kreyol translations of the Bible.)  I'm hoping that, as I begin the actual PR campaign -- involving press releases and all the usual stuff -- next week, people will begin to wonder.  I'm hoping that it will bring people to Lexington to see what it's all about, and to learn something about Haiti and our efforts there ... and to buy something.  

Yeah, that would be nice...