It’s a cruel joke, mostly for tourists, that summer comes to So Cal in November rather than July.
“Good waves.” — Molokai
“Good friends.” — Ed
Molokai’s foam board isn’t sexy, but it’s honest. He broke his collarbone skating a pool. He surfs more than he skates, and was happy enough watching the waves from the lot. When I asked Ed what he was thankful for, he closed his eyes and really thought about it. “Good friends,” he said.
Auspicious numbers on the calendar get people very excited. This upcoming 11-11-11 will see many a great box office premieres, bar mitzvahs and other wild celebrations. It will also see the grand re-opening of Cranbrook Art Museum, with an exhibition titled “No Object Is an Island: New Dialogues with the Cranbrook Collection.”
I have a photo which will be a part of this show, Urbild 1: Intellasphyxia. It was a part of my thesis work, and was acquired into the art museum’s permanent collection upon my graduation in 2003.
Living in sunny LA now, those Michigan winters seem like quaint winter wonderlands. I remember a friend who built an impressive igloo smack in the middle of the wide, white lawns. Some teens from the Cranbrook Schools destroyed it shortly after, to our chagrin.
There was so much snow that year. The snow buried us in, and I buried myself in theoretical texts by Carl G. Jung. That spawned photo projects built on Jung’s theories on archetypes.
I’ll be in Detroit again on 11-11-11. With hindsight of the years, I know that I followed my bliss, put my head down, and made art which came from that certain place inside. That’s really all that matters, but seeing it on the walls of a great art museum will be a hugely humbling and cool experience too. Hallelujah!
It is the autumn equinox, where the light of day equals the darkness of night. Time to work on balance. I told that to a stoked longboarder in the sparse Topanga lineup. He said, “Bitchin! I’ll work on that in the water.”
Photo taken at Fanning Island Lagoon aboard the Sea Dragon.
When you do a beach clean up, there’s always the question, “How did all that trash get there?” There really is no mystery: Watershed. Litterbugs. Human impact. So to see so many humans come together for two hours, one day out of the year, simply to be garbage collectors for the oceans, was really quite phenomenal.
At Venice Pier on Coastal Cleanup Day, parents with waddling toddlers, grandparents with teenagers, busloads of school children and mobs of bicyclists from Otis College of Design came out on a cloudy California morning to do their duty. By noon, we counted a total of 421 volunteers. And they collectively picked up 284 pounds of debris.
What amazed me was the patience everyone displayed despite how long it took for them to sign waivers and get the 411 on procedures before heading off with gloves and trash bins. No one complained about having to wait in line. They stood there with infinite patience. It was the antithesis of the high blood pressure normally associated with Los Angeles living.
When you care, you just do it. No complaints.
Photo by Juli Schulz.
Blackletter hand type from Kiritimati Island.
Kiritimati Island lagoon, sunset. An eyesore of industrial shipping vessels the size of small towns lined like battleships on the horizon. Sea Dragon surrounded by water the color of turquoise gems. The crew is languid. Read a page or two, play with hair, hang laundry. Dinner is just about to be served. Noise, excitement. Cathy has the fishing net. She’s after something. Look out, polystyrene!
