Merging of Blogs

In the interest of "getting it together" I have merged three of my other blogs into this one. If you were one of the few followers of

Vermont Directions (my Art of Action blog)

Vermilion Hue (my painting blog)

Clair Dunn PHOTOGRAPHY (my, duh, photography blog)

Their contents have all been moved to White River (you are here!). I am posting this because I don't know if Google transfers the followers along with the posts. My artist's web site however remains the same at:

clairdunn.com

Out of the depths once again

Hey! It's not much to look at, but I woke up this morning with those colors, or a close approximation, in my head. First time that's happened since my last post on November 27,2009.

I know two things are responsible. The Art of Action exhibit currently at STAART Gallery in St. Albans (reception was last night), and talking to Susan Abbott again. It seems to be a potent mix for me. And that both things occurred at STAART Gallery added something extra; there is a vibe in that place that's hard to describe, but almost tangible.

Putting the family homestead on the market more or less wiped my soul of color. And, for that matter, most everything. I think I know how a mole feels on the first real spring day.

Making It In Vermont - Jay Hathaway

I usually wait to calm down before I write on an awful subject, but the tears are still in my eyes. Vermont has lost it's main mover and shaker in our cultural affairs.

Jay Hathaway was a man who did what he said he would. If he weren't, the many things he's done would never be.

I met him three times. The first in a two hour bar conversation in Montpelier during the Art of Action doings in January. And later again in Montpelier at a VAC meeting. The last time was in Richmond a couple of weeks ago where we both, along with everyone else in attendance, were over the moon about the display of AOA art that was spread across the sunlight-dappled wood of the Monitor barn. We just hugged and grinned at each other.

It was in the Montpelier bar that I first heard about his slogan idea that titles this post. He was so excited about the double entendre of scrabbling to get by AND creating anything in Vermont.

His enthusiasm was infectious--like a master teacher. And his subject was Vermont, Manchester, the arts--at any given time in any given order. And he did make it in Vermont.

It is the rare person who can mark me as soon and as deeply as Jay Hathaway did. I cried this morning as if I'd loved him my whole life. This is a terrible loss for Vermont and the arts.

White River II

This is where I'll be at 5 a.m. tomorrow: The Polka Dot Restaurant in White River.

This week has been packed. New work was on display last night at the reception at the STAART Gallery in St. Albans. Exhaustion (brought in the last piece 15 minutes before the opening), followed by excitement and a case of nerves because it was the first showing of my Rural Urban stuff (you know, trying to light my ciggie with a flash drive), followed by anticipation of White River (took forever to get to sleep).

Goes without saying that I'm bringing my camera and I sincerely hope it is not as cold at 5 a.m. tomorrow as it was on January 4th. Looking forward to this evening at the Tip Top, and realizing that what, in January was nervousness at meeting everyone, is now pleasure at meeting folks who are no longer complete strangers. It is a very nice shift.

Swan Song Here

Too bad that four months of passionate work and thought came down to five seconds in the end.

Nothing more to be said, except heartfelt congratulations and good luck wishes to those who got it right! (edit: This refers to my non-selection as an Art of Action Finalist. Ten of 20 were selected.)

Image Prep for Online Images and more

I have a tutorial about getting the IPTC information into your images. It's not finished yet, but there is some information that may help you get started.

NEWS FLASH re Blogging

If you have any doubts about the efficacy of blogging, try this: in the Google search bar type Vermont + "art of action" (including the quotes) and hit enter.

After the links you would expect to see first, my blog is 5th, Susan's On the Easel is last, and, the link to my AOA Database which I only put up this past week, is 7 or 8 on the FIRST page.

Also in the first page mix is a pdf/html link to John Zwick's AOA stuff on his own site. If you haven't stumbled on JZ's professional site yet, here it is.

The Light and the Dark

I just got in the door through a raging blizzard the last two miles before home. Today was a violently erratic day for me in Montpelier.

Immediately when I got there this morning, eager to see Susan's work, I saw it. Started pacing and talking with her, and then in one of those lulls that come into conversation naturally, I realized I was crying. Standing still and crying.

You all know that doesn't happen often for any of us. But when it does happen, there is a reason. As incapable as I am in expressing in words my own passion about my own work, my wiring is such that it can be extracted by the work of others.

After I calmed down, I began to try to verbalize what hit me. The best I could do was that her use of colors that were, to me, "odd" did not detract from the subject, but rather forced me to look harder. Their slight oddness drew me in. Made me unable to say, "Yeah, that's a hay bale," and move on. I'm not sure yet, but I think because the colors are, here and there, odd, and that their oddness is not overdone, their use grants an ethereal quality that carries the real world solidity upon which these colors are placed to a slightly different dimension that we are forced to deal with.

As in, just what is it, exactly, that I am seeing here?

And, at the very end of the day, a strange thing happened. When I travel alone I always bring a book with me--just in case. Today it was Bright Earth, the book about painters' color by Philip Ball. After we had all gone our separate ways, I was standing on State Street, trying to wrestle the big easel into the car and not be run over. I also was carrying the book and my camera. In the course of this activity, the book slipped from under my arm. I swore and finished positioning the easel inside the car.

Then, I looked down to see my beautiful new book settled deep into the muddy-brown slush. Its gleaming white fore-edge plastered with brown and frozen water, its brilliant cover, and its "Bright Earth" words, now streaked with brown, glowed up at me. I hesitated before picking it up.

It was like Susan's work; it was like this project: gleaming up at me in contrast to the terror that, in my darkest moments, I truly feel for Vermont.

Wow! and a Correction

Yesterday was wonderful--except for being dead nervous. The wonderful part was seeing the art of the other finalists in the flesh. To finally be close to the real thing after weeks of looking at stuff online was immensely satisfying. So much so, I coming back for seconds.

I figure I've worked this hard, I might as well see it through to the end. And, I'm sorry but I HAVE to repeat a story that I forgot to tell in my presentation. I buttonholed everyone I could find afterward so skip it if you were buttonholed! I'm just obsessed with the fact that I forgot it because it's so bloody key to the database part of my proposal!

In 1966 I walked from my apartment on Buell Street in downtown Burlington to the village of Williston. It was a pleasant walk. That's 11 miles. Imagine if you will that I had video-taped that walk then. And, if I did it again today. And then, split-screen, we ran them side by side, mile for mile.

I don't think there would need to be any voice-over.

Well, I'm out of here, heading south again. (I'm actually coming to enjoy the drive to Montpelier!!)

Montpelier, Here We Come!

As they say in Houston – all systems go.

It’s on. We’re on the road to Montpelier and it’s the end of an odyssey.

And, true to the analogy, there have been Siren songs along the way for most of us I think. Mine was White River. A name that now shimmers with promise on my private map.

I am grateful to the VAC, Mr. Orton, and the initial review committee for this four-month marathon of thinking about Vermont and for providing a framework in which I "found" Kent Corners and White River.

And, I can’t thank those finalists I’ve met enough. It’s as simple as that. Some things exceed expectations, and some wonderful things arise for which there were no expectations. The latter is lagniappe. It’s rare and rich, and I got some!

Gruelling hard work and synapse-twisting problems have been alleviated by your comaraderie. For me, recently “re-emerged” into the visual arts, you have dispelled my loneliness.

I wish us all well these two days, but know that not all will be well for all. And, as I said in an email—-no matter the outcome, there will be sadness, only the degree will vary.

The Bones of Vermont

This barn is near me, a little over two miles from my house. (This was shot about a week ago.) A bit more than a year ago now I first photographed it. When I looked at the shots, I was struck, as I had been when I looked at the barn itself, by its uncluttered beauty. The neat lines of its roof, the proportion of the building, its setting. It was, for me iconic.

For days after shooting it I couldn't get it out of my mind. So I began sifting through the images, picked one and went immediately to black and white. I didn't even think about it. It was then that I saw a picture of what my mind "saw" when it assimilated this barn. I hit "save" and knew now what I was going to do with my camera in Vermont. It was all there, the starkness, the emptiness, the sharp, hard edges of abandonment, the bones of Vermont.

With apologies to my painter friends, color hides. Color enchants. Though this might sound odd, I think it's true: color often enchants us away from reality. The incredible palette of the visible colors sucks us in like moths to a flame. Perhaps it's because we live in a world of color, all the time. And, like anything else that happens "all the time", we become desensitized to it on some level. Sometimes that world needs to be uncolored; so we can see what is there, and only what is there.

Long Time, No Post

And there is a good reason for this hiatus. I've been posting to another blog which is centered on the Vermont Arts Council's Art of Action project. It's Vermont Directions.

And there is likely going to be a longer hiatus. I'm preparing my presentation for the VAC at the end of this month. And, to make matters worse, I'm chomping at the bit to create an album of shots I took in White River Junction. A very, very, photogenic town. But, that too will have to wait.

Still Chewing on J. B. Jackson

I am still digesting things I’ve read while I was researching my proposal. Perhaps the most unsettling book I read was J. B. Jackson’s Discovering the Vernacular Landscape.

Irritatingly, to me, he seems to accept all too easily the incursion of malls and boxes on the outskirts of our population centers. Susan Abbott mentioned this in a comment: Now I hope you can help me develop more tolerance for some landscape feature that irritates the hell out of me. Maybe Mcmansions, or strip malls (and J.B. jackson actually likes them, though he was writing in the 60's before they took over the planet.).

Implied in her comment was the question is it possible to see them as positive. The next day, I offered a shot of the new Lowe’s on Shelburne Road as an image that was a good image, but not something Lowe's would like.

Near the end of his book, Jackson offers this: A landscape . . . is the field of perpetual conflict and compromise between what is established by authority and what the vernacular insists upon preferring.

The word "conflict" appears here, as it did in almost everything I read about Vermont (except perhaps in my mother's copy of the 1926 Vermont for Young Vermonters, a 1926 history text for Vermont schools).

But, I wonder, what percentage of the population actually does think about landscape? And the more I've read, the more I wonder. Do most go along with whatever comes along, unthinking because the subject is simply not on their radar as a subject? It's not that they don't care, it's that the subject is non-existent for them. The distinction is an important one because thinking about something and not caring is quite different from never thinking about it.

If the majority of Vermonters fall into the latter category, then perhaps the AOA works can have a significant impact.

My thinking here is that because any AOA exhibit will be about Vermont, the offering of content that will in some way be accessible to ALL Vermonters may get folks into galleries that have never been into a gallery. This could be one of the real strengths of the project. It could be that we reach all sorts of people and show them that they can interact with "art", that they can "understand art".

Homage to WRJ for AOA Toilers

What this Vermonter thinks of when she thinks of White River Junction.

I look at this picture, and know that soon, when I see it in real life, I will be free, unfettered, and perhaps with just a little hair left!

And, I must say, this Saturday will be the first time in my life that WRJ is a DESTINATION and not a stop on the way to somewhere else!

Yet Another Driving Hazard

Reading the "Gravestones" section of Christopher Lenney's book, Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England, I came across another delectable piece of information illustrated by the following image:

Early Christian cemeteries buried folks with their feet pointing East so that they would, on the day of resurrection, be properly aligned when they arose from the dead. Thus, all graves are so aligned in our old cemeteries. At least in the ones I've seen. Further, as you stand before a headstone to read the inscription, the body lies on the other side of the stone.

I now carry a compass with me. And am even more in terror of driving off the road. As I said in a comment on Dana's blog, I now constantly survey any likely wooded area that I drive by in case I might spot a "wolf tree". And now, I also make fast calculations (if I can see the sun) about the headstone alignment in any graveyard. If the sun isn't visible, even with a cloudy simulacrum, I slow down and whip out my compass.

I sincerely hope I live to turn in my proposal.

Birthday Present

I'm scared to death to write this, but I think maybe the half-day off I took on my birthday a few days ago to play with my model railroad, might actually have uncramped my brain.

Or maybe it's just something in the Vermont November air, because Elizabeth has also just announced she's found her way to a project.

Whatever. I just may have done so as well. It seems to be becoming a "what is, what was, what could be (ought to be)" consideration of the landscape. And, I'd better say that my approach to landscape is all-inclusive. Taft's Corners is just as much a landscape as is the glorious view of Mt. Mansfield from the top of Carroll Hill next to my back yard.

I think I still have an issue to resolve however. And it arises when I think about the pieces of our projects being sold. Being bought by someone who wants to hang art on their wall. I'm not at all sure I'd want some of my visual presentations of my ideas hanging on my wall!

Here's part of one "diptych":



I'm going to have to chew on this a bit.

Same Sunset - Two Artists!

This image (from an earlier post) is here again because of a wonderful coincidence.

I swear that this same sunset was photographed by David Kearns from the Firehouse Studio in Burlington, Vermont, just 30 miles south of me. David is not just another artist, but he is also, as I am, a finalist in the Vermont Arts Council and Lyman Orton's Art of Action Project in Vermont.

Here the link to his images of it that he displays in the small slide show that's second on the right of his page.

And here's my image (again):

YAS = Yet Another Sunset/Sunrise

I just can't let go of these. The color creeps into my peripheral vision at the end of day through my southwest window as my computer work is coming to an end. I look, and then grab the camera on my way out the studio door. And, so with this one, I finally gave in and uploaded it to Alamy. And, there it will sit, no doubt with the other gazillion sunset/sunrise images. It is, and will remain, the only brazenly obvious sunset image in my stock image collection.

Also, I've started another, very specific blog. It is a chronicle of my thoughts, experiences, excitement, and angst as I create, prepare, and finalize my proposal for the Art of Action project for Lyman Orton and the Vermont Arts Council. I figured it deserved its own blog, rather than having bits scattered among the general visual stuff here.

Art of Action Update: Sans Art

Just read a fellow finalist, Elizabeth Torak's latest post here, and was happy to find I had company in my state of critical mass. Everything that passes into my brain now goes through the "AOA filter". Unfortunately it's not exactly a semi-permeable membrane. Rather it seems like the huge grates that stop logs upriver from where they are not supposed to get. Which means of course, that almost everything gets into my brain.

So far rolling around is Priscilla Paton, Edwin Smith, William F. Robinson (TWO bloody books) and, Spirn on the Language of Landscape. Unfortunately, her writing style leaves something to be desired, so that's a tough row to hoe.

You will note there is no image in this post. I, like Elizabeth, am, at the moment entirely "imageless". This may be the first time I've cursed my excellent academic background.

But, I am driven to read, to note things of note, which by now are all over the map and in absolutely no order in my notebook. I'm just afraid I'll forget what was triggered if I don't write it down.

An so it goes -- and right now, I can only go with the flow. I just want to read, though I wish there were four of me. (That's the number of books I've got going.)

Vermont Artists and a Coincidence

I've just spent the morning checking out a number of Vermont artists and what I saw was indeed "something to write home about."

Art of Action Finalists will take you to the AOA project coordinator's blog where he offers links to those artists who have a web presence. Take your time with these sites. (Skip mine.)

If you, like so many non-Vermonters, are one of those who has experienced Vermont as a state of mind rather than an actual place, you will get your grounding here.

What I've seen this morning makes me jealous of painters. Makes me love them unreservedly. And at this moment it also creates one of those "coincidences" that often occur to us, and which we usually shrug off.

Last night, early evening actually, I went outdoors to have my last cigarette of the day and noticed a faint, small reddish glow in the distance, rather near my neighbor's house. I determined that it wasn't emanating from their house, and began to get a bit alarmed as the glow was on a hill, and reddish -- in the countryside this usually means fire. As I kept watching, it began to get brighter and less red. And, in the time it took for one small, self-rolled cigarette, the moon rose, fully engulfed in wisps of clouds and pieces of night. I wept because I could not paint.

September was a good month!

Earlier this month I announced that I'd made my first stock sale. Now, on the very last day of the month, I received notification that I was one of 20 artists out of 300 applicants to be selected by The Art of Action in Vermont. This means that I will receive a sizable grant ($2,500) to research and prepare a proposal for a visual arts project that will direct attention to some of the challenges facing Vermont in the coming decades. Vermont's independent newspaper, Seven Days, has a good summary of the project.

When I received the short note from the administrator of the Call for Entries, I cried--something I don't often do. And, it was because this award told me that others saw what I was trying to do with my images. The administrator, John Zwick maintains a blog on The Art of Action here.

I'm deeply grateful to Lyman Orton, the person who made this opportunity possible. He is a member of the Orton family which owns and operates The Vermont Country Store. More to the purpose of this entry, he and other family members administer the Orton Family Foundation, a foundation intimately concerned with the environment, with quality of life, with community enhancement in any number of areas.